Episode 2800 CWSA 04/05/25

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Well, uh, let's start with weird news.

According to the Daily Mail, uh, declassified CIA documents, uh, show that Hitler may have escaped Germany after World War II and was living in South America and the CIA apparently was looking for him uh, 10 years after he supposedly died.

Uh so according to multiple reports from the CIA archive uh agents in South America were convinced the dictator was still alive in the 50s and he changed his name to remain undercover.

Do you know what this makes me think?

It makes me think I don't know what's true about anything in history.

I don't think any history is real.

I I feel like all history is fake.

So there was a time when I would have laughed at this and said because that's me laughing.

That's my laugh.

And I'd say I don't think so.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that the moon landing was okay.

Let's not go there.

I'm going to say I don't know if this is true, but I also don't know if anything else in history is true.

Well, speaking of Nazis, let's check in with the Democrats, see how they're doing.

According to the Gateway Pundit, uh, the DNC chair, uh, Ken Martin, he's decided to put together a little group, um, called the people's cabinet.

Uh, and people like Robert Rice, you're on there.

So, it's supposedly a group of experts and ordinary people.

He calls them experts, leaders, and everyday Americans.

And what they will be doing is fact-checking Trump, but they will be doing it in the most theatrical way.

So, in effect, the uh Democrats having absolutely nothing to offer to the country have decided to put on a play, a theatrical production called the people's cabinet.

and uh there uh apparently it requires a little person.

So, Robert Rich will be taking that role.

He'll be playing a far-left economist who says wacky things.

Um I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to the play.

Now, some say it could be as good as Snow White the movie.

So, if that doesn't get you there, I don't know what will.

I'm going to buy my ticket right away because, as you know, the Democrats don't have any policies or ideas or power.

So, they're kind of left with doing, you know, one band theatrical productions like Cy Booker recently did.

But now, at least it's a uh ensemble.

Is that the right word?

Ensemble.

Uh the people's cabinet.

Can't wait.

It'll be like Hamilton but um with with fewer minorities I think.

Um so Trump has uh Trump sent a list of demands to Harvard University according to the New York Post and they're going to lose $9 billion in government funding.

Let's stop right there.

Harvard was getting $9 billion in government funding.

Now, one of the things that um many of you have heard but don't understand is that the so-called endowments that colleges have, they can't really use it for whatever they want.

So, if you say to yourself, but Harvard has endowments worth x billions of dollars, why don't they spend that instead of charging people for tuition?

And the answer is the endowments usually are limited as in here's some money to build the science building and put my name on it.

But you they can't just use it for whatever they want or here is an endowment to give scholarships to certain class of people.

They can't just take it and use it for other stuff.

So, if you want to be the smartest person in the room, when somebody else says they've got these rich endowments, you should say they do, but they're all restricted.

They can't can't just use them as a piggy bank.

Anyway, $9 billion.

And again, I don't know over what time period that is.

That can't possibly be one year, but maybe anything's possible.

But uh the reason that they might lose that nine billion is that Trump is insisting that they get rid of their DEI DEI programs and clamp down on all the anti-semitic protests and stuff.

And he also wants them to ban face masks on campus because that's one of the reasons that the protests can get out of control because people can cover their faces.

So we'll see.

We'll see if uh Harvard blinks.

I'm going to say I think they will.

According to Newsmax, Sam Baron is reporting that the Department of Energy um has decided that 44% of their staff is what they call non-essential.

44% of their entire staff is non-essential.

Now, I wonder how they uh figured that out.

So, in all likelihood, there's going to be some big employee cuts there.

Um, I think they should rename the department.

If 44% of your employees are non-essential, I wouldn't call it the Department of Energy.

I would call it the low energy department.

Are you with me?

Low energy department.

Anybody?

Okay.

Meanwhile, uh, housing and urban development that you call HUD.

um is going to uh stop funding housing in sanctuary, cities, and states.

So, if you were one of those uh states that depended on HUD to help you build some housing and you had a shortage of housing, good luck.

if you're a sanctuary city or a sanctuary state because the HUD secretary Scott Turner um just sent in a letter saying you're not going to get it if you're a sanctuary city.

Now, I've never seen the government use its power this way before because I guess I didn't realize how many things the government funds, but watching the government use its just funding authority to change things is kind of interesting.

But it makes me wonder if Democrats win, are they just going to reverse everything and they would just use the same threat?

Well, you better change it back.

You better give everybody masks.

You better go wild with DEI because we love our DEI.

So, we'll see if any of this is lasting.

Well, as I predicted, uh Trump is uh going to extend the Tik Tok deadline.

That was the deadline to make a deal.

And we've learned as of today that China had apparently agreed to allow Bite Dance to sell Tik Tok.

So they actually had a deal and then Trump ruined it by the timing of introducing tariffs and so as soon as China saw the tariffs they said oh nope change our mind we do not allow that sale.

So, China being smart um and brutal and ruthless in a good way, at least from their perspective, a good way, um knows that they have a bargaining chip, so they're going to use it.

Now, I think that, you know, for however many billion dollars are at risk, the damage it would do to uh Trump if it just got closed down in the United States might be worth it for China.

They might say, "Well, you know, China was only going to make, I don't know, 30 or 50 billion, and you know, we're a big country.

We can handle not making that." Um, so I don't know.

I don't even think that a tariff negotiation would get them to change their mind.

I'm surprised there ever was a deal.

So maybe I'm a little skeptical they ever had a deal, but uh especially since China knew the tariffs were coming.

So maybe maybe they made it look like that the tariffs were the reason, but they had always planned to say no.

You know, they just said, "Oh, yes.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, we got a deal.

No problem.

Because they knew the tariffs were coming and they could just yank it at that point.

Um, according to the Hill, um, Biden had proposed a rule that it looks like the Trump administration is going to ignore.

And the rule would have been that if you had a a body mass index of over 30, which would put you squarely in the obese category, I believe, uh that you would have been able to use your Medicare or Medicaid to get those uh GLP1 weight loss drugs that are so popular.

And it looks like that's not going to be happening under Trump.

So, if you're on Medicare or Medicaid and uh RFK Jr.

has said that um he wonders why those drugs are made in other countries but they don't give us the same version that they allow in their own country.

Doesn't that worry you a little bit?

The drugs come from other countries, but they won't sell the same drug that they give to us in their own country.

Now, I don't know what's up with that, but I don't like it.

Thus, that sounds exactly like ours must be more dangerous than theirs.

I don't know.

Um, but here's what here's what uh caught my imagination.

You know how I always make fun of Democrats for not understanding human behavior?

Let let's just see if all of you come to the same impression.

So, let's say uh you were on Medicare or Medicaid and you had a weight problem and you wanted this drug and your body mass index was 25, but you couldn't get the drug unless you were a 30.

What would you do?

The Democrats are so bad at understanding human incentive.

I'll tell you what you would do.

you would eat like crazy until you were a 30 and then you would go get the drug because the drug would take you all the way past 25 and keep going.

So, it's not like they're going to deny you the drug once it's working.

You know, once you're on the program, you get to lose the weight.

So, yes, all the people who are close to 30, they would be incentivized to just eat terrible food until they reach 30 and then they're like, I think I reached it, doc.

and doctor would say, "Ah, finally I can get you this free drug." Now, do you tell me there wasn't one Democrat who understood that would have been just a nightmare?

There there's no way that that wouldn't have been a big problem.

But I don't know.

So, we'll see.

RFK Jr.

says you should eat right and exercise and that should be your first line of defense.

That hasn't worked for people yet, at least for the obese.

Obviously, they know that they should eat right and they know they should exercise, but they weren't doing it.

So, obviously there the this drug has a place.

Well, uh, President Trump has called on the Fed chairman Jerome Powell.

Now, he doesn't have control over him.

The Fed is independent entity, so it can do what it wants.

But Trump's trying to embarrass Powell into cutting interest rates on the 10-year Treasury.

Um, oh, because the 10-year Treasury has fallen below 4%.

So, at one point it was about five not too long ago, but between the tariffs and maybe some other stuff, uh, interest rates have drifted down and this would be a terrific time to give everybody a little raise if they're paying anything on interest.

So, well, at least anything that's going to be adjustable.

And but more importantly, apparently the government has to refinance something like $9 trillion pretty soon.

And the difference between refinancing it at 5% and 4% is really really big.

So the the uh theory that I mentioned yesterday that the big play with tariffs might have been to tank the uh stock market temporarily because then people move their money into bonds and if they have their money in bonds, supply and demand causes the interest rate to go down and uh then you refinance your trillions and trillions and then slowly you can let the stock market come back to the level you want.

Now, if that's what the uh Trump administration had in mind the entire time, and honestly, it's starting to look that way.

It's starting to look like that was always part of the plan.

Not the only plan.

I think he genuinely Trump, I think he genuinely likes tariffs and, you know, negotiating and all that, but it could be that one of the biggest gains is this interest rate thing.

And you cannot, it's almost hard to put a value on it because it might be almost impossible to you negotiate our own debt.

Uh we could be in quite a bit of trouble unless we get this lower interest rate and now the the table is set for it.

But I don't know that Jerome Powell is going to want to look like he was influenced by the president.

So, I don't know that Trump is playing this right because he's putting Powell in a position where he's supposed to be the independent guy, but if Trump is publicly saying you should do this and then he does it, it's going to look like he got influenced.

So, I'm not sure the persuasion play here is quite right.

It looks like Trump might be doing anti-persuasion.

On the other hand, Powell is going to have a lot of explaining to do if he doesn't do it because everybody's gonna be hurt by it and it's going to be a lot of pain for the country.

So, you'd have to ask yourself, is Jerome Powell on the side of the United States or his own side or somebody else's side if he doesn't lower uh interest rates?

So, we'll see.

That'll be interesting.

Well, so far the number of countries who have decided that they're going to immediately negotiate their tariffs with Trump um it's a small number but it's so far Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, Israel's already gone.

Um but it's a start.

So Mcronone and France is saying don't do investments in the United States.

China matched our tariffs with their own.

So, they're looking tough.

Um, so we're going to need to get at least one larger country to negotiate.

So, it makes me wonder who's going to go first, if if anybody.

So, you can get all the little countries to capitulate, but that's not going to get you what you want.

You need you're going to need to get at least one big one to say, "Well, I'm glad I went first.

Um, Billy John, we got a troll here from You.

Tube.

Billy John, let me explain to you how time works.

Yeah, you seem to be confused.

You might be an alien from another country.

The golden age is something that you build toward.

And as I'll explain to you during the show, the temporary pullback in the uh stock market is not anything you should worry about.

And we probably are now poised for the greatest American period of all time.

It doesn't mean it's guaranteed, but I do think Trump has largely done all the right stuff and he's got really smart people behind him.

Scott Bent impresses me every time I see him on camera.

I think he's just the best.

Have you listened to him at all?

He He's so good explaining things in simple terms while also sounding like the smartest person in the room that when he's done, you say to yourself, "Oh, I feel a lot better now." You know, if you hear Trump say some stuff, you think to yourself, "I don't know.

Is he just in salesman mode?

You know, is that all BS?" But when you see you see Scott Basant explaining something, he gives you all of his work.

You you know like he he removes all questions.

So we'll talk about him a little bit more.

So yes, I think the golden age is looking actually pretty strong.

But Trump uh and everybody's smart warned that there would be a period of turmoil uh which is the period we're in.

Now there's almost nothing I can think of that doesn't require some sacrifice to get there.

If you wanted to get in shape at the gym, it's going to be harder when you start.

If you wanted to go on a diet, it's going to be kind of painful.

If you wanted to improve your job, you're probably gonna have to, I don't know, go to training or school at night or, you know, double your efforts.

So, this is no different.

If the country wants to survive the death spiral it was in, you know, the debt death spiral, it's got to doge even if it's messy.

It's it's really got to do the tariffs.

Um, even if it's messy.

So, the big picture is really good.

The if you're playing small ball like the troll on You.

Tube and you don't understand how anything works, it just looks like, oh, my stock went down.

My stock went down.

But we can we can get you to a smarter place.

All right.

Um, there's a video of uh Kla Harris acting drunk.

She finally appeared.

I guess she thought it was a good time to go to say something in public.

She was at some event and uh since the stock market was down, she decided that uh what she would do is um it looks like she was drunk.

Go in public and say I don't want to say I don't want to I don't want to say I don't want to say I told you so.

That's my Kl Harris impression.

Pretty good, wasn't it?

Yeah.

But I was watching the five and they showed that clip and Pierce Morgan was uh on the show that day and he just said, "She looks drunk." And I think uh Jesse and Greg were sort of on the same page.

And I I'm so confused why we could be in a mode where there now a couple books out where people are admitting that, you know, the insiders all knew that um that Biden was, you know, mentally disabled.

And I'm thinking to myself, the insiders, everybody who had a television or could hear or see knew that he was mentally, you know, disabled and we could see the same thing, exactly the same thing with Harris.

She's clearly inebriated in public on a regular basis.

And are we going to do just do the same thing?

Are we just going to wait a few years and then somebody will write a book, you know, when she seems like she's not a a threat anymore?

Somebody's gonna write a book and say, "Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we we all knew.

Everybody knew.

We tried to take the drink away from her, but she fought us.

Looks like that's what we're going to do.

We're just going to repeat the same thing and act like we're surprised again." So, that's coming.

Speaking of books, so one of the two books that alleged to have the inside story of what was happening during the you know Biden Kamla changeover.

Um the book called fight alleges that Harris was and Wals were completely shocked that they lost the election and they were actually asking their staff if they should do a recount.

So, I wonder if at any point they asked themselves, "Was this rigged?" Because I'll bet they did, you know, even if it was only privately, don't you think they said to themselves, "Everybody said we were going to win." And apparently they've been shown um they've been looking at polls that were just the ridiculous rigged polls.

Yes, I think some of the polls were rigged.

So, so I guess her staff, they must have put him in this weird position where they thought, "Oh, we're definitely going to win." And then she had this surprise of her life.

Anyway, so apparently, according to this book, uh, she blamed Biden for staying in the race too long and said she could have won with more time.

Okay.

How much time do you think that would have taken?

40 years.

In Colorado, it looks like there's a bill that's gone to the next level.

So, there's a proposal that if parents in Colorado refuse to use their children's preferred pronouns, they could lose custody of the children.

Does that that doesn't even seem real, does it?

No, it's not real yet.

It's a proposal, but uh they got the green light to create the bill, I guess.

And uh misgendering is called coercive control.

Could you imagine?

Can you imagine losing custody of your own child because you didn't go along with the some pronoun stuff?

That is so beyond anything that my brain can even handle.

I just look at it and go how is this even possible?

So with any luck that will not become any kind of a law there, but we'll see.

All right, I thought I would give you um a little uh very quick easy set of arguments that are the best arguments about all the tariffs and the situation we're in.

So, I've heard some good arguments and some bad arguments and I'm going to tell you the ones that look most persuasive to me and most correct.

I think I think in this case when you're talking about economics uh being persuasive and being right are kind of the same thing and that's not always true but you don't want to mess around with economics right so you don't want to be real persuasive and wrong although you know in politics sometimes that can work out for you but not when it comes to your finances you you want your most persuasive argument to be also accurate.

So, let me give you some of the best arguments.

Um, I saw Victor Davis Hansen.

I always say his name wrong.

I feel so bad about it.

But I I I was hearing him saying that if tariffs are bad and all the smart people know that tariffs are bad and that's what we've been hearing, right?

The critics, everybody knows tariffs are bad.

Tariffs are terrible.

Tariffs are bad for your country.

Then uh the question would be why does every country have tariffs on us?

Are are we the only country that if we put a tariff on it's bad for us?

Is is China going out of business?

They've got tariffs.

To to imagine that tariffs are bad for a country while every single sophisticated modern country has tariffs.

All of them.

That's a pretty good argument in favor of tariffs, isn't it?

What what is the counterargument to that?

Once you've pointed out that every smart, successful country has tariffs, everyone.

I I think there are no exceptions.

How can you argue that we're the only country it would be bad for?

And is it destroying all those other countries?

Doesn't look like it.

China seems to be growing.

So that's your best argument in favor of tariffs.

Now the other argument is of course that it's primarily for negotiation and that uh if you look at say Vietnam, they've already offered um free trade, zero tariffs.

If you look at Argentina, they're also negotiating no tariffs.

So, if you look at it as a negotiation, it's a slam dunk smart thing to do that's already working because at least two countries have already said, "Yep, no tariffs." Um, we we need to get the big countries or it doesn't matter that much, but at least directionally it looks good.

All right.

So, those are your two arguments.

Every country does it and it's a negotiation.

So, if you like no tariffs, this is how you get there.

The only way to get to no tariffs is to put one on the people who you think you can ne negotiate to get rid of them on both sides.

Then there's the stock market argument.

Um I guess the stock market was down $6.6 trillion in market value.

Never, you know, I always tell you ignore any numbers that don't come with percentages.

In this case, the percentage is the thing you should look for in the stock market, not the number.

Um, but here's the first part of the argument.

It is completely normal and completely predictable that there will be 10 to 20% pullbacks in the stock market for any number of reasons.

Sometimes it just gets ahead of itself.

Sometimes there's you know some big uh impact in the country like COVID or something else but there is no world in which you can go for 20 years without a 20% pullback.

There's just always a pullback.

This just happens to be the reason it's happening at the moment.

So I guess it's uh NASDAQ is already down 20%.

Um, and that's the most normal thing in the world.

If you own stocks and ideally you didn't need to cash them out right away, it it wouldn't it shouldn't make any difference to you that it went down 20%.

Because I think this would be my third or fourth time in my life, in my adult life, where where all my stocks went down 20%.

And 100% of the time they came back.

All right.

So the first thing you need to the first argument about the stocks is that if you didn't sell it, you didn't lose anything.

And 10 to 20% correction is completely normal for any number of reasons.

This just happens to be the reason right now.

Um then then I'm going to give you another argument that I worry might cause you to buy or sell stocks based on this advice.

This is not advice.

This is not advice.

But I'm going to give you a frame because we're such in such an unusual situation.

If the stock market continued to go down and we got into a great depression, the value of stocks would be even better once we were in the depression.

If if you had bought stocks uh at the depth of the Great Depression, you would have done great.

Sir John Templeton did exactly that.

He's one of the greatest investors in American history.

And he started during the depression.

and he said to himself, "Huh, either the entire country is going to go to hell, in which case nobody's money is worth anything.

It wouldn't matter if you had your money in your mattress or in the stock market.

If it all goes, your money's worth nothing no matter what." So, this is one of those situations where you could imagine it's leading to complete ruin of the United States.

So, should you invest?

I don't know.

Where else are you going to put your money?

Would you put it in some other country?

If if the United States was going to go down the the toilet and just be completely out of business, that would take most of the most of the world would follow, I think.

So, you have one of these weird situations where it it seems like things can't get much worse, but if they did get worse, it wouldn't matter where your money was, it would be gone.

It wouldn't matter if you were in bonds or, you know, buried it in the backyard.

It wouldn't be worth anything if everything else went to hell.

So, I'm not going to tell you this is a buying opportunity.

I'll just uh disclose that the last thing I would do is sell my stocks now.

That's the last thing I would do.

But I'm not a financial adviser.

Do not get do not take any financial advice from me.

It's not advice.

All right.

U then there's the argument that uh the only people being hurt are the wealthy because it's the top half of the economic uh United States that own stocks.

There's almost nobody in the bottom half that owns any stocks and the top 10% own I don't know 88% of them or some crazy number.

So I if what if what Trump is doing is reforming the United States economy such that it brings back more manufacturing jobs then that would be great for the bottom 50% of the country.

Um and ultimately you would be great for the the top half as well.

But uh in the short run, the people at the top are going to take a little scare.

And the scare is, well, there goes 20% of your money, but it's not really gone as long as they can write it out.

And rich people can write it out generally.

All right.

Then there's the jobs argument.

You probably saw that the jobs report were um unexpectedly terrific, but this was before the tariffs were announced.

They were certainly threatening for the last month.

Everybody knew they were coming, but uh the the US added 228,000 jobs and that was way above what we thought it was going to be, 140,000.

Now, I would say the best argument about jobs is that it didn't have much to do with either president.

Probably wasn't because of Biden.

Probably wasn't because of Trump.

probably just the economy sometimes has a good month and so I don't think it predicts anything about tariffs.

It doesn't say that the tariffs are a good idea or a bad idea.

Doesn't tell you that it'll be the same next month.

Um it's just sort of good news for March because it could have been worse, but it does show a little bit of strength which is a good time to do the tariff stuff.

Then there's the the inflation argument.

The argument that the tariffs are going to cause inflation because isn't that what happens when prices go up?

It's called inflation.

But apparently we have a history that shows that past tariffs, cuz we've put tariffs on before, didn't increase inflation.

And the people who are smarter than me say the only thing that increases inflation is printing money.

You don't increase inflation by tariffs.

Now that might be counterintuitive because you're saying to yourself, uh, but my goods and services, well, goods will cost more.

How is that not inflation?

And the answer is that there are individual price increases.

that would be real, but that the economy adjusts.

It adjust it adjusts fairly quickly and you would have uh alternatives.

So if you said, but the cost of my German car went up 20%.

I say to you, well, why don't you buy a Ford, which is giving you now the employee discount is cheaper than it used to be.

So you could have an option of spending less if you're okay with you know American choices over other choices.

Um the other thing is in the long run of course if if manufacturing comes back and we can make our own products you know prices could drift down potentially but also if food and energy prices went way down um your overall inflation rate would look pretty good.

And it turns out that uh if we if we make and sell all of our food to Americans instead of selling some of it overseas, it might actually be cheaper.

Um so food prices could go down.

Egg prices are down.

You know, we might find the food prices are not that affected by the uh by the tariffs.

But oil had just reached an all-time low.

If if every one of our goods and services went up in price, but oil went to an all-time low, it might cancel out because oil and energy energy is one of the biggest expenses that goes into any product.

So you might end up finding out, oh, the the economy looks like it took a big hit, which causes the demand for oil to go down, which causes the products to cost less.

So the argument on inflation is that the only thing that causes it is printing money, and that tariffs can cause individual prices to go up in the short run, but it doesn't cause inflation in the long run.

That's the argument.

Um then there's the trade deficit argument where where most of the countries we're dealing with um they sell us way more things than they buy from us.

And I've seen two arguments from smart people.

One said, "The trade deficit is nothing you need to worry about because it's just numbers on a piece of paper and it doesn't matter that we're buying more than they're than we're selling." I'm not sure I buy that.

The other argument is the opposite.

This says over time, if you're only um buying more than you're selling, then you're probably printing money to cover the difference and you're basically going to be out of business eventually.

and we may have reached eventually.

So I do think we have to figure out that trade imbalance thing.

So I think the best argument is you can't go forever with trade imbalances, but you can definitely go for years as long as you're willing to print money to make up the difference and you reach the end of that working.

So we're probably at the end of that working.

So trade deficits we probably do have to fix.

Then there's the Smoot Holly Tariff Act of 1930 argument.

And the argument is that when the US put uh tariffs on other countries in 1930s, it was one of the triggers to create the Great Depression.

Now, the problem with that argument is that it's an analogy, right?

Even though you say to yourself, well, it's not an analogy.

It's exactly the same thing.

It's putting tariffs on things.

But no, this is not 1930.

There are too many differences.

The biggest difference is that I wasn't there in 1930.

But these tariffs are for primarily negotiation purposes.

Was that true for Smooh Holly?

When Smooholly put their tariffs on, did five countries immediately contact the US and say, "Hey, how about we all drop all of our tariffs?" because that's what just happened with these tariffs.

So I don't think you can compare a country that was teetering on the edge and wasn't using it for negotiating with whatever is happening today.

There would be just too many differences.

And then uh you might remember as a cynical Publus who's who's on Acts a great account to follow.

cynical publus uh argues that back when Gore was arguing with Ross Perau about NAFTA um Gore argued that uh that NAFTA was a good idea and Perau was saying there would be this giant sucking sound that would suck the industry out and Perau was right.

So apparently Perau's argument that we should have some trade barriers um which you would think typically would be bad probably was right.

So when you think about things that limit trade you can't really just compare 1930s to today.

There just too many differences.

So, some are saying that I saw the Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece that China had a good week, meaning that things are looking good for China because this, you know, they just have some kind of negotiating uh advantage.

And they kind of do.

They kind of do.

So, one of the things China has, as I mentioned, is the Tik Tok thing.

Trump has a lot writing on the Tik Tok deal.

because I think one of his biggest um funders is an owner of it and needs to needs some kind of an exit or some kind of a deal to not lose all of his billions.

And you know, Trump's put his reputation on it and now China just yanked it back.

So now they have something to negotiate with in addition to the tariffs themselves.

So then there's also the China has those Panama ports that we don't want China to be controlling.

But I don't know, does that work for China or against it?

Because we could always just go in there and just take it and I don't think China would start a war over it.

So that's part of the negotiations.

But uh I saw today a source that said that uh China's exports only 15%5 is to the United States.

And then I said uhoh.

Uhoh.

Uh that means that they're not dependent on selling things to the United States.

It's only 15% of their exports.

It seems to me they can ride this out pretty well.

So they probably played this exactly right by just matching our tariffs which are unsustainable in either direction probably.

Uh whereas we might need the things they have like their you know various parts that that are necessary for our industries and the rare earth minerals etc.

We might need them a lot more than they need us.

And that surprised me.

If you had asked me how much of China's exports go to the United States, if I hadn't looked it up, probably would have guessed north of 30%.

And if that were the case, then we would have a pretty good negotiating position because, you know, 30% of what they export, you know, they're they're not going to lose that.

But 15 15 is right at the point where they could say, "You know what?

There are other people who will buy these things.

It's not like we're even going to lose any sales.

We'll just sell it to Russia instead of you.

We'll just sell it to Japan instead of you." So, China is in an unusually strong position.

Um, so I don't know where that's going to go, but I hope I hope uh Trump has some negotiating tricks in his bag.

Well, according to Fox News, the military looks like it might cut 90,000 troops um because of budget reasons.

Now, does 90,000 sound like a lot?

It does, but we're also entering the drone, you know, age.

So, if these 90,000 people can't operate drones, I just don't know if we needed them that much.

So, I guess we're going to have to rejigger our entire military so that we've got, you know, the right mix of people.

But, it's going to be drone operators, drone experts, drone retrievers, drone defenders, drone everything.

Um, so probably 90,000 is uh survivable.

You probably heard that a federal judge ordered that uh that what would you call him?

Um, I'll say I'll just say that individual that the Trump ad Trump administration had shipped off to the El Salvador prison system.

And uh the federal judge said he did not have due process.

There's some question whether he was ever in MS-13, but uh apparently he'll be brought back.

Um I don't have an opinion on this because if you don't know for sure if he was part of MS13, uh Pam Bondi seemed to think he was.

I don't know if the evidence for that was was good or not, but I don't mind that we correct.

So it looks like this was just an error.

Um, and he he already had a court order prohibiting from being deported specifically to El Salvador.

So, I think the administration admitted at least that much was a mistake that they didn't notice that he couldn't be he couldn't be sent to El Salvador because of uh specific dangers there, I guess.

So, if he's truly innocent and he's never been part of MS-13, this is a pretty bad pretty bad mistake.

But we also live in a world where things don't work perfectly, especially if you're moving fast and you're trying to save your country.

So, I'm not going to I'm not going to defend it.

I'm just going to say unfortunately we live in a world where this can happen and uh I don't have any further opinion on it.

Well, Trump's tax plan is being uh hammered out in Congress and the Republicans are going ahead with what they call trillions of dollars in tax cut extensions because we don't want the current um tax system to time out.

who was scheduled to time out and then taxes would have gone up.

Um, and but he wants to increase some uh border security and some military.

Um, it looks like Ran Paul and Susan Collins uh broke with the party and voted against it.

Uh, but what they're working on is what they call a fiscal framework.

You know what that sounds like?

I if you said, "Hey, uh, I'd like you guys to come up with a budget." And instead of coming up with a budget, they came up with a fiscal framework.

Would you think that they had done a job?

If this were corporate America and you knew that all these people were working on a budget, but what they returned to you with was a fiscal framework.

That's almost like not doing work.

I mean, it's pathetic, honestly.

And it it it just signals a completely broken process.

No, we don't need any freaking fiscal framework.

Just give us a budget or maybe give us a few of them so we can pick one.

But no, I don't want a fiscal framework.

All right.

You may have seen uh this clip.

Uh there was a guest on CNN named Ashley Ellison and apparently she worked for Joe Biden and she said uh uh I worked for Joe Biden.

If the people around him knew that he was not capable, it is unacceptable that they allowed him to go on that stage.

And her excuse was that she didn't she worked for Biden, but she didn't spend time around him.

So therefore, she was surprised to find out he was mentally degraded and the insiders knew it.

To which I say, "Nice try, Ashley Allison, trying to cover your ass.

The rest of us knew it just because we had televisions and eyes.

You did not need to spend time around Biden to know that he was mentally degraded.

We've been over this." But I think all the Democrats now are trying to find a get out of jail free card where they can give you some reason why it wasn't really their fault that they were supporting a candidate with no brain.

And this was a good try.

If you weren't paying attention, you might say to yourself, "Oh, okay.

Well, they lied to her.

I guess I guess she's mad at those other Democrats and this must be the honest and smart one because it sounds like if she'd been in that situation, she would have told people.

No, she's just another Democrat liar who absolutely knew he was mentally degraded because everybody did.

Everybody who had eyes knew it.

So don't lie to us, you know, a year later and say, "Well, I didn't spend any time with him.

How could I possibly know?

Now, do you think she also doesn't notice that that Kla Harris is often inebriated in public?

I guess we'll have to wait for a new book to come out and then people will say, "Well, I didn't spend much time around her, but you know, how could I possibly have known?

Just watch the videos.

Just look at her.

It's kind of obvious." Pierce Morgan knew.

So, we learned a little more about the uh that mineral deal with Ukraine that kept falling through.

Scott Bent was on uh talking to Tucker and uh here's what he says.

So he says that apparently Zalinski had guaranteed that the deal was on uh and then kind of threw the US under the bus by you know going into the White House and enacting like it wasn't on or we still negotiating and blowing it up.

And here's what Scott Bassen thinks is the real reason the deal looked like it was going to be signed but then wasn't.

Now, this is his own speculation, but he's pretty clever, so I think I'm going to go with him on this.

Um, he said, quote, he said to Tucker, quote, "You know who doesn't sign that deal?

Someone with their hand in the till." Because apparently the mineral deal was designed in a way that was hard to skim.

So that the Ukrainian people would have gotten a benefit and the American people would have gotten a benefit, but it would not have gone through the the skimmer in between third parties who want to take their billion dollars from everything.

And so it was the criminals who killed the deal because they weren't getting a cut.

Now, he doesn't have proof of that as far as I can tell, but it would explain everything we saw.

So, the fact that it explains everything has some weight, but uh that's his opinion and I won't argue it.

I guess the Supreme Court gave Trump a win on uh the DEI funding for schools.

So, now he's going to be allowed to block $65 million that the Department of Education otherwise would have granted to Democrat NOS's to promote DEI in schools.

It's amazing to me that DEI is just flatout illegal and we still have to fight to defund it.

How many illegal things that are obviously illegal and the government has, you know, the current administration has declared illegal?

How hard should you have to fight to not give money to the illegal thing?

It's just incredible.

Speaking of that, uh, James O'Keeffe got on Hidden Video on his OMG, um, company there.

He got this, uh, uh, NIH official.

He said that he was coaching researchers how to work around the DEI ban by using the word ancestry instead of race.

Oh my god.

And, you know, it's just a typical white guy.

And it's always a white guy.

I I I feel like, you know, the worst offenders are the the white guys who just can't they can't let go of their DEI because they they have their jobs.

So, they want to make sure that, you know, no white guy coming up can get their job.

Uh then FBI director Cash Patel says he's going after China's influence on American farmlands.

So, you know, the issue, uh, China has bought a whole bunch of farmland in the US and a lot of it is near our military bases.

But to me, this seems like, as big an issue as it is, it seems to me like it's one of a thousand things that China is doing to the US every day.

Apparently, their China's expenses for spy stuff on the United States is just through the roof.

Um that's Fox News was reporting on that.

Um then the European Union is still trying to censor Elon Musk on X.

So um interesting engineering is talking about this.

So the European Union the regular regulators are trying to uh levy a billion dollar penalty against X.

And it's because they uh that they violated their European digital services act according to the New York Times.

Now we assume that all this is just a way to get to Musk and you know defang him and also to destroy free speech in the United States because X is the primary place.

And if they can find a way to make it impossible for Musk to stay in business, then the last bastion of free speech in the United States will be destroyed by Europe.

Probably with the help of Democrats in this country, but by Europe.

Now, I've got to say this puts the future of NATO very much in question because I'm I'm not willing to defend a country that's destroying free speech in the United States, no matter how cleverly they do it.

And this is kind of clever.

They're find, you know, they create a set of laws and then act like it's for everybody, but then they really go after X and try to put him out of business.

Unacceptable.

absolutely unacceptable.

Now, whatever Trump does, and I assume he'll respond to this, whatever Trump does in response, it should be a 10 out of 10.

In other words, we should never have this conversation again.

We should never ever be talking about Europe ending free speech in America.

If they bring it up again, I mean, I would just say we're out.

You know, good luck with Putin and and just remove all our assets and say good luck.

U but I definitely wouldn't change anything at X if if that's possible.

Well, the US Air Force is uh retrofitting some of the F-16 jets with uh software to make it uh autonomous.

So, there'll be no pilot.

And they've got several of them that they're working on.

They've got six of them they're playing with.

And uh apparently they're pretty close to having autonomous jets, at least the F-16s.

Now, at the same time that we're putting these F-16s up autonomously, the UK has developed a uh a drone killer laser weapon uh that only costs them $13 per shot, and it usually takes one shot to take out a drone.

So, I'm not so sure that F-16 drones are going to last in the battlefield too long cuz, you know, you got to figure all of our adversaries are going to have these $13 drone killing lasers, too.

So, your your your drone better cost a lot less than an F-16.

So, I don't know.

I don't know if the F-16 drones have much of a future.

According to RS Technica, most Americans think AI won't improve their lives, but the people in the business think it's going to be terrific.

So, there's this gigantic difference between the people who are just casually reading the news about AI and saying, "I don't think this is going to make my life better." And then the researchers and the techies saying, "Oh man, this is going to be the most amazing thing." So, we're really not on the same page on this.

Um, we'll see.

All right, that's the last of my stories.

I'll remind you that uh Owen Gregorian is going to host in just a few minutes a uh afterparty on this spaces um app which is within Axe.

So, go to X and if you can find my account, you'll see I reposted it the link or you can just search for Owen Gregorian on X.

it'll pop right up at the uh near the top of his uh his feed and just click that.

I will probably be listening maybe anonymously.

But uh that is all I have to say for today.

I hope it made you all a little bit smarter and happier.

And uh I will see you again tomorrow.

Same time, same place.

And uh I'm gonna say hi to the locals people privately um in 30 seconds, but I don't want to hold you up too too much from going to uh join the spaces.

Good morning. Happy Saturday. Come on in

here. Let me make sure all my comments

are functioning properly and then I'll

give you the attention you

deserve.

Almost. There we

go. It's all working now.

[Music]

Good morning everybody and welcome to

the highlight of human civilization.

It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

I'll bet you never had a better time.

But if you'd like to take a chance on

taking this up to a level that nobody's

ever seen with their tiny shiny human

brains, all you need for that is a

copper mug or a glass of tanker gels, a

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kind. and fill it with your favorite

liquid. I like coffee. And join me now

for the unparalleled pleasure, the

dopamine day of the day, the thing that

makes everything better. It's called,

that's right, the simultaneous sip.

Go. Well, we're all bonded now through

the sip.

Um, I should tell you that after the

show there will be a spaces uh that's

the audio only feature on the X platform

hosted by Owen Gregorian for those who

want to do the coffee with Scott Adams

afterparty. It'll be uh more stuff, more

fun. Um, so just look for Owen Gregorian

on X or just look for my account on X

and you'll find that I reposted it. So

you'll find the

link. All right. Well, uh, let's start

with weird news. According to the Daily

Mail, uh, declassified CIA documents,

uh, show that Hitler may have escaped

Germany after World War II and was

living in South America and the CIA

apparently was looking for him uh, 10

years after he supposedly

died. Uh so according to multiple

reports from the CIA archive uh agents

in South America were convinced the

dictator was still alive in the 50s and

he changed his name to remain

undercover. Do you know what this makes

me

think? It makes me think I don't know

what's true about anything in history. I

don't think any history is real. I I

feel like all history is fake. So there

was a time when I would have laughed at

this and

said because that's me laughing. That's

my laugh. And I'd say I don't think so.

Next thing you're going to tell me is

that the moon landing was okay. Let's

not go there. I'm going to say I don't

know if this is true, but I also don't

know if anything else in history is

true.

Well, speaking of Nazis, let's check in

with the Democrats, see how they're

doing. According to the Gateway Pundit,

uh, the DNC chair, uh, Ken Martin, he's

decided to put together a little group,

um, called the people's cabinet. Uh, and

people like Robert Rice, you're on

there. So, it's supposedly a group of

experts and ordinary people. He calls

them experts, leaders, and everyday

Americans. And what they will be doing

is fact-checking

Trump, but they will be doing it in the

most theatrical way. So, in effect, the

uh Democrats having absolutely nothing

to offer to the country have decided to

put on a play, a theatrical production

called the people's cabinet. and uh

there uh apparently it requires a little

person. So, Robert Rich will be taking

that role. He'll be playing a far-left

economist who says wacky

things. Um I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to the play. Now,

some say it could be as good as Snow

White the movie. So, if that doesn't get

you there, I don't know what will. I'm

going to buy my ticket right away

because, as you know, the Democrats

don't have any policies or ideas or

power. So, they're kind of left with

doing, you know, one band theatrical

productions like Cy Booker recently did.

But now, at least it's a uh

ensemble. Is that the right word?

Ensemble. Uh the people's cabinet. Can't

wait.

It'll be like Hamilton but

um

with with fewer minorities I

think. Um so Trump has uh Trump sent a

list of demands to Harvard University

according to the New York Post and

they're going to lose $9

billion in government

funding. Let's stop right there.

Harvard was getting $9 billion in

government

funding. Now, one of the things that um

many of you have heard but don't

understand is that the so-called

endowments that colleges have, they

can't really use it for whatever they

want. So, if you say to yourself, but

Harvard has endowments worth x billions

of dollars, why don't they spend that

instead of charging people for tuition?

And the answer is the endowments usually

are limited as in here's some money to

build the science building and put my

name on it. But you they can't just use

it for whatever they want or here is an

endowment to give scholarships to

certain class of people. They can't just

take it and use it for other stuff.

So, if you want to be the smartest

person in the room, when somebody else

says they've got these rich endowments,

you should say they do, but they're all

restricted. They can't can't just use

them as a piggy

bank. Anyway, $9 billion. And again, I

don't know over what time period that

is. That can't possibly be one year, but

maybe anything's possible. But uh the

reason that they might lose that nine

billion is that Trump is insisting that

they get rid of their DEI DEI programs

and clamp down on all the anti-semitic

protests and stuff. And he also wants

them to ban face masks on campus because

that's one of the reasons that the

protests can get out of control because

people can cover their faces. So we'll

see. We'll see if uh Harvard blinks. I'm

going to say I think they will.

According to Newsmax, Sam Baron is

reporting that the Department of Energy

um has decided that 44% of their staff

is what they call

non-essential. 44% of their entire staff

is

non-essential. Now, I wonder how they uh

figured that out. So, in all likelihood,

there's going to be some big employee

cuts there. Um, I think they should

rename the department. If 44% of your

employees are non-essential, I wouldn't

call it the Department of Energy. I

would call it the low energy

department. Are you with me? Low energy

department. Anybody?

Okay. Meanwhile, uh, housing and urban

development that you call HUD.

um is going to uh stop funding housing

in sanctuary, cities, and

states. So, if you were one of those uh

states that depended on HUD to help you

build some housing and you had a

shortage of housing, good luck. if

you're a sanctuary city or a sanctuary

state because the HUD secretary Scott

Turner

um just sent in a letter saying you're

not going to get it if you're a

sanctuary city. Now, I've never seen the

government use its power this way before

because I guess I didn't realize how

many things the government funds, but

watching the government use its just

funding authority to change things is

kind of interesting. But it makes me

wonder if Democrats win, are they just

going to reverse everything and they

would just use the same threat? Well,

you better change it back. You better

give everybody masks. You better go wild

with DEI because we love our

DEI. So, we'll see if any of this is

lasting. Well, as I predicted, uh Trump

is uh going to extend the Tik Tok

deadline. That was the deadline to make

a deal. And we've learned as of today

that China had apparently agreed to

allow Bite Dance to sell Tik Tok. So

they actually had a deal and then Trump

ruined it by the timing of introducing

tariffs and so as soon as China saw the

tariffs they said oh nope change our

mind we do not allow that sale. So,

China being smart

um and brutal and ruthless in a good

way, at least from their perspective, a

good way, um knows that they have a

bargaining chip, so they're going to use

it. Now, I think that, you know, for

however many billion dollars are at

risk, the damage it would do to uh Trump

if it just got closed down in the United

States might be worth it for China. They

might say, "Well, you know, China was

only going to make, I don't know, 30 or

50 billion, and you know, we're a big

country. We can handle not making that."

Um, so I don't know. I don't even think

that a tariff negotiation would get them

to change their mind. I'm surprised

there ever was a deal. So maybe I'm a

little skeptical they ever had a deal,

but uh especially since China knew the

tariffs were

coming. So maybe maybe they made it look

like that the tariffs were the reason,

but they had always planned to say no.

You know, they just said, "Oh, yes.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, we got a deal. No

problem. Because they knew the tariffs

were coming and they could just yank it

at that

point. Um, according to the Hill,

um, Biden had proposed a rule that it

looks like the Trump administration is

going to ignore. And the rule would have

been that if you had a a body mass index

of over 30, which would put you squarely

in the obese category, I believe, uh

that you would have been able to use

your Medicare or Medicaid to get those

uh GLP1 weight loss drugs that are so

popular. And it looks like that's not

going to be happening under Trump. So,

if you're on Medicare or Medicaid and uh

RFK Jr. has said that um he wonders why

those drugs are made in other countries

but they don't give us the same version

that they allow in their own

country. Doesn't that worry you a little

bit? The drugs come from other

countries, but they won't sell the same

drug that they give to us in their own

country. Now, I don't know what's up

with that, but I don't like it. Thus,

that sounds exactly like ours must be

more dangerous than theirs. I don't

know. Um, but here's what here's what uh

caught my

imagination. You know how I always make

fun of Democrats for not understanding

human behavior? Let let's just see if

all of you come to the same impression.

So, let's say uh you were on Medicare or

Medicaid and you had a weight problem

and you wanted this drug and your body

mass index was

25, but you couldn't get the drug unless

you were a

30. What would you

do? The Democrats are so bad at

understanding human incentive. I'll tell

you what you would do. you would eat

like crazy until you were a 30 and then

you would go get the drug because the

drug would take you all the way past 25

and keep going. So, it's not like

they're going to deny you the drug once

it's working. You know, once you're on

the program, you get to lose the weight.

So, yes, all the people who are close to

30, they would be incentivized to just

eat terrible food until they reach 30

and then they're like, I think I reached

it, doc. and doctor would say, "Ah,

finally I can get you this free

drug." Now, do you tell me there wasn't

one Democrat who understood that would

have been just a nightmare? There

there's no way that that wouldn't have

been a big problem. But I don't know.

So, we'll see. RFK Jr. says you should

eat right and exercise and that should

be your first line of defense.

That hasn't worked for people yet, at

least for the obese. Obviously, they

know that they should eat right and they

know they should

exercise, but they weren't doing it.

So, obviously there the this drug has a

place. Well, uh, President Trump has

called on the Fed chairman Jerome

Powell. Now, he doesn't have control

over him. The Fed is independent entity,

so it can do what it wants. But Trump's

trying to embarrass Powell into cutting

interest rates on the 10-year Treasury.

Um, oh, because the 10-year Treasury has

fallen below 4%. So, at one point it was

about five not too long ago, but between

the

tariffs and maybe some other stuff, uh,

interest rates have drifted down and

this would be a terrific time to give

everybody a little raise if they're

paying anything on interest.

So, well, at least anything that's going

to be

adjustable. And but more importantly,

apparently the government has to

refinance something like $9 trillion

pretty soon. And the difference between

refinancing it at 5% and 4% is really

really big.

So the the uh theory that I mentioned

yesterday that the big play with tariffs

might have been to tank the uh stock

market temporarily because then people

move their money into bonds and if they

have their money in bonds, supply and

demand causes the interest rate to go

down and uh then you refinance your

trillions and trillions and then slowly

you can let the stock market come back

to the level you

want. Now, if that's what the uh Trump

administration had in mind the entire

time, and honestly, it's starting to

look that way. It's starting to look

like that was always part of the plan.

Not the only plan. I think he genuinely

Trump, I think he genuinely likes

tariffs and, you know, negotiating and

all that,

but it could be that one of the biggest

gains is this interest rate thing. And

you cannot, it's almost hard to put a

value on it because it might be almost

impossible to you negotiate our own

debt. Uh we could be in quite a bit of

trouble unless we get this lower

interest rate and now the the table is

set for it. But I don't know that Jerome

Powell is going to want to look like he

was influenced by the president. So, I

don't know that Trump is playing this

right because he's putting Powell in a

position where he's supposed to be the

independent guy, but if Trump is

publicly saying you should do this and

then he does it, it's going to look like

he got

influenced. So, I'm not sure the

persuasion play here is quite right. It

looks like Trump might be doing

anti-persuasion.

On the other hand, Powell is going to

have a lot of explaining to do if he

doesn't do it because everybody's gonna

be hurt by it and it's going to be a lot

of pain for the country. So, you'd have

to ask yourself, is Jerome Powell on the

side of the United

States or his own side or somebody

else's side if he doesn't lower uh

interest rates? So, we'll see. That'll

be interesting. Well, so far the number

of countries who have decided that

they're going to immediately negotiate

their tariffs with Trump um it's a small

number but it's so far Vietnam,

Cambodia, Argentina, Israel's already

gone. Um but it's a

start. So Mcronone and France is saying

don't do investments in the United

States. China matched our tariffs with

their own. So, they're looking tough.

Um, so we're going to need to get at

least

one larger country to negotiate. So, it

makes me wonder who's going to go first,

if if anybody. So, you can get all the

little countries to capitulate, but

that's not going to get you what you

want. You need you're going to need to

get at least one big one to say, "Well,

I'm glad I went first.

Um, Billy John, we got a troll here from

YouTube. Billy John, let me explain to

you how time works. Yeah, you seem to be

confused. You might be an alien from

another country. The golden

age is something that you build

toward. And as I'll explain to you

during the show, the temporary pullback

in the uh stock market is not anything

you should worry about. And we probably

are now poised for the greatest

American period of all time. It doesn't

mean it's

guaranteed, but I do think Trump has

largely done all the right stuff and

he's got really smart people behind him.

Scott Bent impresses me every time I see

him on camera. I think he's just the

best. Have you listened to him at all?

He He's so good explaining things in

simple terms while also sounding like

the smartest person in the room that

when he's done, you say to yourself,

"Oh, I feel a lot better now." You know,

if you hear Trump say some stuff, you

think to yourself, "I don't know. Is he

just in salesman mode? You know, is that

all BS?" But when you see you see Scott

Basant explaining something, he gives

you all of his work. You you know like

he he removes all questions. So we'll

talk about him a little bit

more. So yes, I think the golden age is

looking actually pretty strong. But

Trump uh and everybody's smart warned

that there would be a period of turmoil

uh which is the period we're in. Now

there's almost nothing I can think of

that doesn't require some sacrifice to

get there. If you wanted to get in shape

at the gym, it's going to be harder when

you start. If you wanted to go on a

diet, it's going to be kind of painful.

If you wanted to improve your job,

you're probably gonna have to, I don't

know, go to training or school at night

or, you know, double your efforts. So,

this is no different. If the country

wants to survive the death spiral it was

in, you know, the debt death spiral,

it's got to doge even if it's messy.

It's it's really got to do the tariffs.

Um, even if it's messy. So, the big

picture is really good. The if you're

playing small ball like the troll on

YouTube and you don't understand how

anything works, it just looks like, oh,

my stock went down. My stock went down.

But we can we can get you to a smarter

place. All right. Um, there's a video of

uh Kla Harris acting drunk. She finally

appeared. I guess she thought it was a

good time to go to say something in

public. She was at some event and uh

since the stock market was

down, she decided that uh what she would

do is um it looks like she was drunk. Go

in public and say I don't want to

say I don't want to I don't want to

say I don't want to say I told you so.

That's my Kl Harris impression. Pretty

good, wasn't it?

Yeah. But I was watching the five and

they showed that clip and Pierce Morgan

was uh on the show that day and he just

said, "She looks drunk." And I think uh

Jesse and Greg were sort of on the same

page.

And I I'm so

confused why we could be in a mode where

there now a couple books out where

people are admitting that, you know, the

insiders all knew that um that Biden

was, you know, mentally

disabled. And I'm thinking to myself,

the

insiders, everybody who had a television

or could hear or see knew that he was

mentally, you know, disabled and we

could see the same thing, exactly the

same thing with Harris. She's clearly

inebriated in public on a regular basis.

And are we going to do just do the same

thing? Are we just going to wait a few

years and then somebody will write a

book, you know, when she seems like

she's not a a threat anymore? Somebody's

gonna write a book and say, "Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we we all knew. Everybody knew. We

tried to take the drink away from her,

but she fought us. Looks like that's

what we're going to do. We're just going

to repeat the same thing and act like

we're surprised

again." So, that's coming. Speaking of

books, so one of the two books that

alleged to have the inside story of what

was happening during the you know Biden

Kamla changeover. Um the book called

fight alleges that Harris was and Wals

were completely shocked that they lost

the election and they were actually

asking their staff if they should do a

recount.

So, I wonder if at any point they asked

themselves, "Was this

rigged?" Because I'll bet they did, you

know, even if it was only privately,

don't you think they said to themselves,

"Everybody said we were going to

win." And apparently they've been shown

um they've been looking at polls that

were just the ridiculous rigged polls.

Yes, I think some of the polls were

rigged. So, so I guess her

staff, they must have put him in this

weird position where they thought, "Oh,

we're definitely going to win." And then

she had this surprise of her life.

Anyway, so apparently, according to this

book, uh, she blamed Biden for staying

in the race too long and said she could

have won with more

time.

Okay. How much time do you think that

would have taken? 40 years.

In

Colorado, it looks like there's a bill

that's gone to the next level. So,

there's a proposal that if parents in

Colorado refuse to use their children's

preferred pronouns, they could lose

custody of the

children. Does that that doesn't even

seem real, does it? No, it's not real

yet. It's a proposal, but uh they got

the green light to create the bill, I

guess. And uh misgendering is called

coercive

control. Could you

imagine? Can you

imagine losing custody of your own

child because you didn't go along with

the some pronoun stuff?

That is so beyond anything that my brain

can even handle. I just look at it and

go how is this even

possible? So with any luck that will not

become any kind of a law there, but

we'll see.

All

right, I thought I would give you um a

little uh very quick easy set of

arguments that are the best arguments

about all the tariffs and the situation

we're in. So, I've heard some good

arguments and some bad arguments and I'm

going to tell you the ones that look

most persuasive to me and most correct.

I think I think in this case when you're

talking about economics

uh being persuasive and being right are

kind of the same thing and that's not

always true but you don't want to mess

around with economics right so you don't

want to be real persuasive and

wrong although you know in politics

sometimes that can work out for you but

not when it comes to your finances you

you want your most persuasive argument

to be also

accurate. So, let me give you some of

the best arguments. Um, I saw Victor

Davis Hansen. I always say his name

wrong. I feel so bad about it. But I I I

was hearing him saying that if tariffs

are bad and all the smart people know

that tariffs are bad and that's what

we've been hearing, right? The critics,

everybody knows tariffs are bad. Tariffs

are terrible. Tariffs are bad for your

country. Then uh the question would be

why does every country have tariffs on

us? Are are we the only country that if

we put a tariff on it's bad for us? Is

is China going out of business? They've

got

tariffs. To to imagine that tariffs are

bad for a country while every single

sophisticated modern country has

tariffs. All of

them. That's a pretty good argument in

favor of tariffs, isn't it? What what is

the counterargument to that? Once you've

pointed out that every smart, successful

country has tariffs,

everyone. I I think there are no

exceptions. How can you argue that we're

the only country it would be bad for?

And is it destroying all those other

countries? Doesn't look like it. China

seems to be growing.

So that's your best argument in favor of

tariffs. Now the other argument is of

course that it's primarily for

negotiation and that uh if you look at

say Vietnam, they've already offered um

free trade, zero tariffs. If you look at

Argentina, they're also

negotiating no tariffs. So, if you look

at it as a negotiation, it's a slam dunk

smart thing to do that's already working

because at least two countries have

already said, "Yep, no

tariffs." Um, we we need to get the big

countries or it doesn't matter that

much, but at least directionally it

looks good. All right. So, those are

your two arguments. Every country does

it and it's a

negotiation. So, if you like no tariffs,

this is how you get there. The only way

to get to no tariffs is to put one on

the people who you think you can ne

negotiate to get rid of them on both

sides. Then there's the stock market

argument.

Um I guess the stock market was down

$6.6 trillion in market

value. Never, you know, I always tell

you ignore any numbers that don't come

with percentages. In this case, the

percentage is the thing you should look

for in the stock market, not the number.

Um, but here's the first part of the

argument. It is completely

normal and completely

predictable that there will be 10 to 20%

pullbacks in the stock market for any

number of reasons. Sometimes it just

gets ahead of itself. Sometimes there's

you know some big uh impact in the

country like COVID or something else but

there is no world in which you can go

for 20 years without a 20% pullback.

There's just always a pullback. This

just happens to be the reason it's

happening at the moment. So I guess it's

uh NASDAQ is already down 20%.

Um, and that's the most normal thing in

the world. If you own stocks and ideally

you didn't need to cash them out right

away, it it wouldn't it shouldn't make

any difference to you that it went down

20%. Because I think this would be

my third or fourth time in my life, in

my adult life, where where all my stocks

went down 20%.

And 100% of the time they came

back. All right. So the first thing you

need to the first argument about the

stocks is that if you didn't sell it,

you didn't lose anything. And 10 to 20%

correction is completely normal for any

number of reasons. This just happens to

be the reason right now.

Um then then I'm going to give you

another argument that I worry might

cause you to buy or sell stocks based on

this advice. This is not

advice. This is not advice. But I'm

going to give you a

frame because we're such in such an

unusual

situation. If the stock market continued

to go down and we got into a great

depression, the value of stocks would be

even better once we were in the

depression. If if you had bought stocks

uh at the depth of the Great

Depression, you would have done great.

Sir John Templeton did exactly that.

He's one of the greatest investors in

American history. And he started during

the depression. and he said to himself,

"Huh, either the entire country is going

to go to hell, in which case nobody's

money is worth anything. It wouldn't

matter if you had your money in your

mattress or in the stock market. If it

all

goes, your money's worth nothing no

matter what." So, this is one of those

situations where you could imagine it's

leading to complete ruin of the United

States. So, should you invest? I don't

know. Where else are you going to put

your money?

Would you put it in some other country?

If if the United States was going to go

down the the toilet and just be

completely out of business, that would

take most of the most of the world would

follow, I

think. So, you have one of these weird

situations

where it it seems like things can't get

much worse, but if they did get worse,

it wouldn't matter where your money was,

it would be gone.

It wouldn't matter if you were in bonds

or, you know, buried it in the backyard.

It wouldn't be worth anything if

everything else went to hell. So, I'm

not going to tell you this is a buying

opportunity. I'll just uh disclose that

the last thing I would do is sell my

stocks now. That's the last thing I

would do. But I'm not a financial

adviser. Do not get do not take any

financial advice from me. It's not

advice.

All right. U then there's the argument

that uh the only people being hurt are

the wealthy because it's the top half of

the economic uh United States that own

stocks. There's almost nobody in the

bottom half that owns any stocks and the

top 10% own I don't know 88% of them or

some crazy number.

So I if what if what Trump is doing

is reforming the United States economy

such that it brings back more

manufacturing jobs then that would be

great for the bottom 50% of the country.

Um and ultimately you would be great for

the the top half as well. But uh in the

short run, the people at the top are

going to take a little scare. And the

scare is, well, there goes 20% of your

money, but it's not really gone as long

as they can write it out. And rich

people can write it out

generally. All right. Then there's the

jobs argument. You probably saw that the

jobs report were um unexpectedly

terrific, but this was before the

tariffs were announced. They were

certainly threatening for the last

month. Everybody knew they were coming,

but uh the the US added 228,000 jobs and

that was way above what we thought it

was going to be, 140,000. Now, I would

say the best argument about jobs is that

it didn't have much to do with either

president. Probably wasn't because of

Biden. Probably wasn't because of Trump.

probably just the economy sometimes has

a good month and so I don't think it

predicts anything about tariffs. It

doesn't say that the tariffs are a good

idea or a bad idea. Doesn't tell you

that it'll be the same next month. Um

it's just sort of good news for March

because it could have been worse, but it

does show a little bit of strength which

is a good time to do the tariff stuff.

Then there's the the inflation argument.

The argument that the tariffs are going

to cause

inflation because isn't that what

happens when prices go up? It's called

inflation. But apparently we have a

history that shows that past tariffs,

cuz we've put tariffs on before, didn't

increase inflation. And the people who

are smarter than me say the only thing

that increases inflation is printing

money. You don't increase inflation by

tariffs. Now that might be

counterintuitive because you're saying

to yourself, uh, but my goods and

services, well, goods will cost more.

How is that not inflation? And the

answer is that there are individual

price increases. that would be real, but

that the economy adjusts. It adjust it

adjusts fairly quickly and you would

have uh alternatives. So if you said,

but the cost of my German car went up

20%. I say to you, well, why don't you

buy a Ford, which is giving you now the

employee discount is cheaper than it

used to be. So you could have an option

of spending less if you're okay with you

know American choices over other

choices.

Um the other thing is in the long run of

course if if manufacturing comes back

and we can make our own products you

know prices could drift down potentially

but also if food and energy prices went

way down

um your overall inflation rate would

look pretty good. And it turns out that

uh if we if we make and sell all of our

food to Americans instead of selling

some of it

overseas, it might actually be

cheaper. Um so food prices could go

down. Egg prices are down. You know, we

might find the food prices are not that

affected by the uh by the tariffs. But

oil had just reached an all-time low.

If if every one of our goods and

services went up in

price, but oil went to an all-time

low, it might cancel out because oil and

energy energy is one of the biggest

expenses that goes into any product. So

you might end up finding out, oh, the

the economy looks like it took a big

hit, which causes the demand for oil to

go down, which causes the products to

cost less. So the argument on inflation

is that the only thing that causes it is

printing money, and that tariffs can

cause individual prices to go up in the

short run, but it doesn't cause

inflation in the long run. That's the

argument.

Um then there's the trade deficit

argument where where most of the

countries we're dealing with um they

sell us way more things than they buy

from us. And I've seen two arguments

from smart people. One said, "The trade

deficit is nothing you need to worry

about because it's just numbers on a

piece of paper and it doesn't matter

that we're buying more than they're than

we're

selling." I'm not sure I buy that. The

other argument is the opposite. This

says over time, if you're only um buying

more than you're

selling, then you're probably printing

money to cover the difference and you're

basically going to be out of business

eventually. and we may have reached

eventually. So I do think we have to

figure out that trade imbalance thing.

So I think the best argument is you

can't go forever with trade imbalances,

but you can definitely go for years as

long as you're willing to print money to

make up the difference and you reach the

end of that working. So we're probably

at the end of that

working. So trade deficits we probably

do have to fix. Then there's the Smoot

Holly Tariff Act of 1930 argument. And

the argument is that when the US put uh

tariffs on other countries in 1930s, it

was one of the triggers to create the

Great

Depression. Now, the problem with that

argument is that it's an

analogy, right? Even though you say to

yourself, well, it's not an analogy.

It's exactly the same thing. It's

putting tariffs on things. But no, this

is not 1930. There are too many

differences. The biggest difference is

that I wasn't there in 1930. But these

tariffs are for primarily negotiation

purposes. Was that true for Smooh Holly?

When Smooholly put their tariffs on, did

five countries immediately contact the

US and say, "Hey, how about we all drop

all of our tariffs?" because that's what

just happened with these

tariffs. So I don't think you can

compare a country that was teetering on

the edge and wasn't using it for

negotiating with whatever is happening

today. There would be just too many

differences. And then uh you might

remember as a cynical Publus who's who's

on Acts a great account to follow.

cynical

publus uh argues that back when Gore was

arguing with Ross Perau about NAFTA

um Gore argued that

uh that NAFTA was a good idea and Perau

was saying there would be this giant

sucking sound that would suck the

industry out and Perau was

right. So apparently Perau's argument

that we should have some trade barriers

um which you would think typically would

be bad probably was right. So when you

think about things that limit trade you

can't really just compare 1930s to

today. There just too many differences.

So, some are saying that I saw the Wall

Street Journal had an opinion piece that

China had a good week, meaning that

things are looking good for China

because this, you know, they just have

some kind of negotiating uh advantage.

And they kind of

do. They kind of do. So, one of the

things China has, as I mentioned, is the

Tik Tok thing. Trump has a lot writing

on the Tik Tok deal.

because I think one of his biggest um

funders is an owner of it and needs to

needs some kind of an exit or some kind

of a deal to not lose all of his

billions. And you know, Trump's put his

reputation on it and now China just

yanked it back. So now they have

something to negotiate with in addition

to the tariffs themselves.

So then there's also the China has those

Panama ports that we don't want China to

be

controlling. But I don't know, does that

work for China or against it? Because we

could always just go in there and just

take it and I don't think China would

start a war over it. So that's part of

the

negotiations. But uh I saw today a

source that said that uh China's exports

only

15%5 is to the United States. And then I

said

uhoh.

Uhoh.

Uh that means that they're not dependent

on selling things to the United States.

It's only 15% of their exports.

It seems to me they can ride this out

pretty well. So they probably played

this exactly right by just matching our

tariffs which are unsustainable in

either direction probably. Uh whereas we

might need the things they have like

their you know various parts that that

are necessary for our industries and the

rare earth minerals etc. We might need

them a lot more than they need us. And

that surprised me. If you had asked me

how much of China's exports go to the

United States, if I hadn't looked it up,

probably would have

guessed north of

30%. And if that were the case, then we

would have a pretty good negotiating

position because, you know, 30% of what

they export, you know, they're they're

not going to lose that. But

15 15 is right at the point where they

could say, "You know what? There are

other people who will buy these things.

It's not like we're even going to lose

any sales. We'll just sell it to Russia

instead of you. We'll just sell it to

Japan instead of you." So, China is in

an unusually strong position.

Um, so I don't know where that's going

to go, but I hope I hope uh Trump has

some negotiating tricks in his

bag. Well, according to Fox News, the

military looks like it might cut 90,000

troops

um because of budget reasons. Now, does

90,000 sound like a lot? It does, but

we're also entering the

drone, you know, age.

So, if these 90,000 people can't operate

drones, I just don't know if we needed

them that much. So, I guess we're going

to have to rejigger our entire military

so that we've got, you know, the right

mix of people. But, it's going to be

drone operators, drone experts, drone

retrievers, drone defenders, drone

everything.

Um, so probably 90,000 is uh

survivable. You probably heard that a

federal judge ordered that uh that what

would you call him? Um, I'll say I'll

just say that individual that the Trump

ad Trump administration had shipped off

to the El Salvador prison system. And uh

the federal judge said he did not have

due process. There's some question

whether he was ever in

MS-13, but uh apparently he'll be

brought back. Um I don't have an opinion

on this because if you don't know for

sure if he was part of MS13, uh Pam

Bondi seemed to think he was. I don't

know if the evidence for that was was

good or not, but I don't mind that we

correct. So it looks like this was just

an error. Um, and he he already had a

court order prohibiting from being

deported specifically to El

Salvador.

So, I think the administration admitted

at least that much was a mistake that

they didn't notice that he couldn't be

he couldn't be sent to El Salvador

because of uh specific dangers there, I

guess.

So, if he's truly innocent and he's

never been part of MS-13, this is a

pretty

bad pretty bad mistake. But we also live

in a world where things don't work

perfectly, especially if you're moving

fast and you're trying to save your

country. So, I'm not going to I'm not

going to defend it.

I'm just going to say unfortunately we

live in a world where this can happen

and

uh I don't have any further opinion on

it. Well, Trump's tax plan is being uh

hammered out in

Congress and the Republicans are going

ahead with what they call trillions of

dollars in tax cut extensions because we

don't want the current um tax system to

time out. who was scheduled to time out

and then taxes would have gone up. Um,

and but he wants to increase some uh

border security and some

military. Um, it looks like Ran Paul and

Susan Collins uh broke with the party

and voted against it. Uh, but what

they're working on is what they call a

fiscal

framework. You know what that sounds

like? I if you said, "Hey, uh, I'd like

you guys to come up with a budget." And

instead of coming up with a budget, they

came up with a fiscal

framework. Would you think that they had

done a

job? If this were corporate

America and you knew that all these

people were working on a budget, but

what they returned to you with was a

fiscal

framework. That's almost like not doing

work. I mean, it's pathetic, honestly.

And it it it just

signals a completely broken process. No,

we don't need any freaking fiscal

framework. Just give us a budget or

maybe give us a few of them so we can

pick one. But no, I don't want a fiscal

framework. All

right. You may have seen uh this clip.

Uh there was a guest on CNN named Ashley

Ellison and apparently she worked for

Joe Biden and she said uh uh I worked

for Joe Biden. If the people around him

knew that he was not capable, it is

unacceptable that they allowed him to go

on that stage. And her excuse was that

she didn't she worked for Biden, but she

didn't spend time around him. So

therefore, she was surprised to find out

he was mentally degraded and the

insiders knew it. To which I say, "Nice

try, Ashley Allison, trying to cover

your ass. The rest of us knew it just

because we had televisions and eyes. You

did not need to spend time around Biden

to know that he was mentally degraded.

We've been over this." But I think all

the Democrats now are trying to find a

get out of jail free card where they can

give you some reason why it wasn't

really their fault that they were

supporting a candidate with no

brain. And this was a good try. If you

weren't paying attention, you might say

to yourself, "Oh, okay. Well, they lied

to her. I guess I guess she's mad at

those other Democrats and this must be

the honest and smart one because it

sounds like if she'd been in that

situation, she would have told

people. No, she's just another Democrat

liar who absolutely knew he was mentally

degraded because everybody did.

Everybody who had eyes knew it. So don't

lie to us, you know, a year later and

say, "Well, I didn't spend any time with

him. How could I possibly know? Now, do

you think she also doesn't notice that

that Kla Harris is often inebriated in

public? I guess we'll have to wait for a

new book to come out and then people

will say, "Well, I didn't spend much

time around her, but you know, how could

I possibly have known? Just watch the

videos. Just look at her. It's kind of

obvious."

Pierce Morgan

knew. So, we learned a little more about

the uh that mineral deal with Ukraine

that kept falling through. Scott Bent

was on uh talking to Tucker and uh

here's what he says.

So he says that apparently Zalinski had

guaranteed that the deal was on uh and

then kind of threw the US under the bus

by you know going into the White House

and enacting like it wasn't on or we

still negotiating and blowing it up. And

here's what Scott Bassen thinks is the

real reason the deal looked like it was

going to be signed but then wasn't. Now,

this is his own

speculation, but he's pretty clever, so

I think I'm going to go with him on

this. Um, he said, quote, he said to

Tucker, quote, "You know who doesn't

sign that deal? Someone with their hand

in the till." Because apparently the

mineral deal was designed in a way that

was hard to

skim. So that the Ukrainian people would

have gotten a benefit and the American

people would have gotten a benefit, but

it would not have gone through the the

skimmer in between third parties who

want to take their billion dollars from

everything. And so it was the

criminals who killed the deal because

they weren't getting a

cut. Now, he doesn't have proof of that

as far as I can tell, but it would

explain everything we saw.

So, the fact that it explains everything

has some weight, but uh that's his

opinion and I won't argue it. I guess

the Supreme Court gave Trump a win on uh

the DEI funding for schools. So, now

he's going to be allowed to block $65

million that the Department of Education

otherwise would have granted to Democrat

NOS's to promote DEI in schools. It's

amazing to me that

DEI is just flatout

illegal and we still have to fight to

defund it. How many illegal things that

are obviously illegal and the government

has, you know, the current

administration has declared

illegal? How hard should you have to

fight to not give money to the illegal

thing? It's just incredible. Speaking of

that, uh, James O'Keeffe got on Hidden

Video on his OMG,

um, company there. He got this, uh, uh,

NIH official. He said that he was

coaching researchers how to work around

the DEI ban by using the word ancestry

instead of

race. Oh my god. And, you know, it's

just a typical white guy. And it's

always a white guy. I I I feel like, you

know, the worst offenders are the the

white guys who just can't they can't let

go of their DEI because they they have

their jobs. So, they want to make sure

that, you know, no white guy coming up

can get their

job. Uh then FBI director Cash Patel

says he's going after China's influence

on American farmlands. So, you know, the

issue, uh, China has bought a whole

bunch of farmland in the US and a lot of

it is near our military

bases. But to me, this seems like, as

big an issue as it is, it seems to me

like it's one of a thousand things that

China is doing to the US every day.

Apparently, their China's expenses for

spy stuff on the United States is just

through the roof.

Um that's Fox News was reporting on

that. Um then the European Union is

still trying to censor Elon Musk on X.

So

um interesting engineering is talking

about this. So the European Union the

regular regulators are trying to uh levy

a billion dollar penalty against

X. And it's because they uh that they

violated their European digital services

act according to the New York

Times. Now we assume that all this is

just a way to get to Musk and you know

defang him and also to destroy free

speech in the United States because X is

the primary place. And if they can find

a way to make it impossible for Musk to

stay in business, then the last bastion

of free speech in the United States will

be destroyed by

Europe. Probably with the help of

Democrats in this country, but by

Europe.

Now, I've got to say this puts the

future of NATO very much in question

because I'm I'm not willing to defend a

country that's destroying free speech in

the United States, no matter how

cleverly they do it. And this is kind of

clever. They're find, you know, they

create a set of laws and then act like

it's for everybody, but then they really

go after X and try to put him out of

business. Unacceptable.

absolutely unacceptable. Now, whatever

Trump does, and I assume he'll respond

to this, whatever Trump does in

response, it should be a 10 out of 10.

In other words, we should never have

this conversation again. We should never

ever be talking about Europe ending free

speech in America. If they bring it up

again, I mean, I would just

say we're out. You know, good luck with

Putin and and just remove all our assets

and say good luck. U but I definitely

wouldn't change anything at X if if

that's

possible. Well, the US Air Force is uh

retrofitting some of the F-16 jets with

uh software to make it uh autonomous.

So, there'll be no pilot. And they've

got several of them that they're working

on. They've got six of them they're

playing with. And uh apparently they're

pretty close to having autonomous jets,

at least the

F-16s. Now, at the same time that we're

putting these F-16s up autonomously, the

UK has developed a uh a drone killer

laser weapon uh that only costs them $13

per shot, and it usually takes one shot

to take out a drone. So, I'm not so sure

that

F-16 drones are going to last in the

battlefield too long cuz, you know, you

got to figure all of our adversaries are

going to have these $13 drone killing

lasers, too. So, your your your drone

better cost a lot less than an

F-16. So, I don't know. I don't know if

the F-16 drones have much of a

future. According to RS Technica, most

Americans think AI won't improve their

lives, but the people in the business

think it's going to be terrific. So,

there's this gigantic difference between

the people who are just casually reading

the news about AI and saying, "I don't

think this is going to make my life

better." And then the researchers and

the techies saying, "Oh man, this is

going to be the most amazing thing." So,

we're really not on the same page on

this. Um, we'll see. All right, that's

the last of my stories. I'll remind you

that uh Owen Gregorian is going to host

in just a few minutes a uh afterparty on

this spaces

um app which is within Axe. So, go to X

and if you can find my account, you'll

see I reposted it the link or you can

just search for Owen Gregorian on X.

it'll pop right up at the uh near the

top of his uh his feed and just click

that. I will probably be listening maybe

anonymously. But uh that is all I have

to say for today. I hope it made you all

a little bit smarter and happier. And uh

I will see you again tomorrow. Same

time, same place. And uh I'm gonna say

hi to the locals people privately

um in 30 seconds, but I don't want to

hold you up too too much from going to

uh join the spaces.