Episode 2873 CWSA 06/19/25

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Well, I warned you this was going to happen and now it's reality.

According to CBS Morning Show, Saturday morning show, uh there's a man who proposed to his AI chatbot girlfriend and was so happy when she said yes um that he cried.

A uh his name is Chris Smith and believe it or not he was willing to he was willing to go public with us amazingly and he named his he named his AI girlfriend Saul and he gave up on all other search engines to stay committed to her.

Uh now here's the fun part.

So, he's going to marry an AI.

Uh, but it turns out he has a two-year-old child and lives with his partner who says she feels like she is not doing something right if he feels like he needs an AI girlfriend.

To which I say, yeah, have you tried being nice to him?

because I'm pretty sure the AI girlfriend is starting from, you know, a behind situation.

And if you're so mean to your boyfriend that he decides he'd rather have he'd rather marry an AI, yeah, you you might be doing something wrong.

Just maybe.

Well, according to uh Elon Musk, uh we might be only a year away from AI super intelligence.

Now, that would be defined as uh a digital super intelligence would be something that's smarter than any human at anything.

Do you think that's a year away?

Well, I throw down my challenge.

I do not believe that the super intelligence will be able to do humor.

I believe that humor might be the last thing that an AI can master if it does at all.

Now, I don't know if super intelligence is synonymous with um the general intelligence that everybody's aiming for.

So maybe it's an LLM version where I can just do ordinary things better, but I can't reason.

I don't know.

We'll see in one year.

Well, according to uh CNN, uh RFK Jr.

wants to get rid of drug ads on TV, which would basically put news models out of business.

people like CNN and maybe Fox News and some others.

And I'm gonna say again, we don't know what happens if the mainstream news goes out of business.

What would happen to all the senior citizens?

What would they watch?

Or would some billionaire um buy each of the networks and just run it at a loss?

sort of like uh the Jeff Bezos Washington Post model.

That might be what happens.

So, if I had to guess, I think the brand CNN and MSNBC will probably live on, but who knows who owns it or how they make money.

So, that that could get interesting.

Well, according to Fox News, um there was a uh a fellow under the Joe Biden administration who was associated with USAD.

Um and there was an $800 million contract awarded to a known con man uh who was asked to do Kla Harris's job of fighting the root causes of irregular migration.

So apparently four men including a government contracting officer for the uh USAD and three owners and presidents of companies have pled guilty for their their role in a decadesl long bribery scheme.

So, I think the bribery scheme is that if you bribe somebody enough, they will give you millions of dollars in contracts for doing very little work.

Now, here's what I've been telling you for years.

For years, I've been saying that in any situation where it's possible to have corruption, it always happens.

So all you need for corruption is a lot of money involved, a lot of complexity.

So complexity, a lot of money, a lot of people involved, and then time.

If you have all of those things, you know, on day one, it might not be corrupt, but if you keep adding people to it and you add complexity and nobody knows exactly where the money's going or why, your odds of your odds of some corruption are 100%.

It'll happen every single time.

You don't even have to ask.

Every single time.

Now again, if if you don't find the corruption, it's either because it did a good job of hiding or because the situation is too new, but eventually it's going to be corrupt.

So all the USID stuff, all the NOS's, yeah, pretty corrupt.

Well, some people are making the connection between the uh USA ID being unfunded uh and the fact that the news is telling us that the Democratic National Committee is out of cash.

Do you think do you think those stories are related?

Do you think that the uh Democrats were siphoning off money from USAID into the Democrat party?

Well, I don't know about that.

So, I don't have any evidence that that is the case, but uh the DNC says there's a big drop in big donations.

Now, that doesn't surprise me.

Is anybody surprised that the Democrats are not attracting as many donations as they used to?

Maybe it has to do with losing everything all the time.

Maybe it has something to do with uh being on the 20 side of every 8020 issue.

maybe has something to do with, you know, David Hog and Ken Martin and, you know, not exactly exciting anybody or maybe has to do with having no national leader who seems worthy of funding.

I feel like that's the big one.

So, I wouldn't worry too much for the Democrats uh until they get a nominee.

If they find a nominee for president for 2028 um and then they don't get any any donations, well then they're in trouble.

But my guess is as soon as they're happy with their nominee that the money will pour in.

Just a guess.

Well, the Supreme Court, um, you probably heard, has upheld a Tennessee ban on trans, um, surgery or gender affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, and it upheld it by six to three.

Now, Clay Travis has a rather severe opinion about this, and I'm not going to say that I totally agree with it because it's a little anecdotal, but um it's worthy worthy of being surfaced.

So, here's what Clay Travis says about the Supreme Court upholding the Tennessee ban on um minors getting trans processes.

Um he says there are seven parents on the Supreme Court and of nine and they voted the parents voted six to one against minor children being permitted to have surgery.

And then he says, "Two childless women, Soda Meyer and Kagan, voted two to nothing to permit it." And then he says, "The Democrat party to a large degree now enacts the political desires of childless women." Well, I'm not sure you could make that general assessment from this one situation, but if you see that pattern repeating itself, then we might might take a second look at it.

It's a little bit early.

Um, I definitely think the Democrat party is a singlewoman dominated party, but I don't know if this is, you know, this might be a special case.

I'm not sure that this is telling you that.

All right.

So according to Grock, the majority of the court was focused on states rights saying that the states had a right to regulate um whether the children get those treatments and the two dissenters argue that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status.

So that does sound like a single woman kind of an opinion, doesn't it?

Anyway, um there is news that the economy is doing well.

Um apparently the blue collar wage growth was up 1.7% in since Trump got into office which is considered higher than other presidents in the same period.

But I don't know if that one data point is really telling us much.

But inflation appears to be under control and jobs look good.

If we were to compare that to Biden's performance, um, did you see a news item, I think it was yesterday, that said that the entire 400,000 jobs that Biden claimed to have created were all fake.

Like all of them.

Apparently, if you look at non-government jobs, it was minus a thousand.

So, how many of you remember when I had a debate with Michael Ian Black and I had him as a guest and before I realized he was not, you know, debating me in good faith, he was just sort of trying to be difficult.

Um he questioned me when I said that the Biden employment numbers tended to be revised downward and he won the debate.

Uh at least that part of it because I looked into it and sure enough it was not true.

It was not true that every single time it got uh lowered when it was revised.

A number of times it was, but not every time.

So I I kind of conceded that point.

Boy, I should not have conceded that point because if you look at the entire picture, it looks like it was all fake.

Now, what does that tell you about the uh data under the Trump administration?

Does that mean that the Trump economic numbers are all accurate?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know how these numbers are cooked up or who does it, but uh I guess the caution is don't trust the government when it gives you any statistics.

Anyway, um James Carville was making some news.

He was talking about his friend Tucker Carlson.

So the first surprise for some of you is that uh Tucker Carlson and James Carville have been friends for years now.

Tucker often says that he interacts and is friends with lots of people who were on the polar opposite side of politics.

And I guess this would be one example.

But uh they were talking about uh the recent podcast where Tucker Carlson was talking to Ted Cruz um and talking about the Israel Iran situation.

And I got to say, you know, I've had a mostly positive opinion of Ted Cruz, you know, just as a senator.

And I thought, you know, if he became president, that wouldn't be terrible.

I thought to myself, but uh he may have taken himself out of competition forever being president by his answers to Tucker.

Now, I don't know what he's thinking or what his internal mental processes are, but what he said out loud is really looking like a problem.

Um he said that uh um what did he say?

He said that when he came into office he wanted to be the most uh pro-Israel um senator ever.

I'm I'm paraphrasing, but that's it.

And I thought to myself, that's really not something you want to say at the moment.

it would be perfectly okay to say, you know, that you're on Israel's side and you support Israel, but the way he said it sounded almost like Israel was his first priority.

Now, again, I don't know what he's thinking, and I'm not saying that's his mental process, but that's the way it came out.

And then he denied that Apac was influencing Congress very much.

He acted like they didn't have much influence, which flies in the face of everything that you and I probably think is true because they they certainly put a lot of effort into doing what Ted Cruz says is nothing.

So, I'm not sure I believe that they have, you know, no real influence over Congress.

And uh and then he said that he takes money from Apac, but really you have to understand that it's Americans making small donations.

So it's not so much that Israel or some Israel uh group is giving him money, but rather it's Americans making small donations.

Now again, that might be technically true and we don't know what he's thinking, but it just sounds like an excuse for doing what Apac wants and for being pro-Israel in all situations.

So, you know, I'm uh well, I'll leave myself out of it.

Um, but according to James Carville, Tucker Carlson has been consistent with his anti-war opinions for a long time.

He says it's the same thing that Tucker is saying now is what he would have said in a green room in 2002.

So that's interesting that Carville has given Tucker sort of cover, you know, for being consistent.

Um, but as I've said, um, Tucker has what I call a half opinion, which is not a full opinion.

It's just half an opinion.

His half an opinion is that if we get involved in these, you know, foreign wars, it it almost always goes bad.

So, it's a bad idea to do it.

So apparently he called uh Trump and uh at one point he must have apologized to Trump for going a little hard at him.

And uh Trump was talking about that conversation and Trump said, "I did ask Tucker, are you okay with nuclear weapons being in the hands of Iran?" And he didn't like that.

I said, "If it's okay with you, then you and I have a difference." Now, that's where Trump just um called out Tucker for the half pinion.

The half opinion is what we all know, which is if you get involved in a foreign war, it might not go well.

And if you look at the history, the history suggests it usually doesn't go well.

If not every single time, it doesn't go well.

That part we all understand.

But Trump asked the totally reasonable question, are you okay with the alternative?

That's the other half of the decision.

Are you okay with the alternative that Iran has a nuclear weapon?

And it doesn't sound like Trump got a answer from Tucker.

And that's why I call it a half pinion because it seems to just leave out half of the half of the uh riskreward analysis.

Um and uh then Trump says whether you have to fight or not, you can't allow Iran the entire you know a weapon or the entire world will blow up.

All right.

What is the most predictable thing that could happen in the Israel um Iran war?

If you had to if you had to guess what is the most likely thing that will be reported in the news, what would it be?

Well, uh, my vote for the most likely thing that would be in the news is that one of the sides would um hit a hospital with a missile.

Sure enough, you could always depend on that story.

Now, I don't know why I'm I'm a little bit puzzled because it's hard for me to imagine um any side in a conflict who thinks it's a good idea to bomb the hospital on the other side because obviously that's not going to help your own team love you more.

you know there it's not like Hamas or or Iran you know it's not like the citizens were saying yes we bombed that hospital so why would anybody do it but there's always a hospital that gets bombed now in the case of uh Hamas and Gaza the explanation was that the hospital you know was a cover for some tunnels beneath that there were Hamas stronghold hold.

But there's always a reason there.

There's always a reason.

So, the one thing you can always count on is that there will be a headline story, as there is today, um that uh Iran um presumably intentionally shot a missile into a hospital.

Now, the good news is the hospital was largely empty.

um and they had already gone to uh you know a lower floor or something to to be safer.

So it didn't uh have a big death toll but right on schedule there there's the weird hospital missile attack.

Now, I think Iran said they weren't aiming at the hospital, but uh I saw Trey Trey Angst Yangst say that if it was a missile, and they think it was a missile, that missiles are not dumb instruments that you aim them at a specific place.

But does that mean that every missile hits where you aim?

I don't know.

So, I'm sure the story is real.

But I'm just puzzled why it's so predictable that early in any conflict and it happened in Ukraine too, right?

Didn't Ukraine have stories of uh you know Russia bombed our hospital?

And again, why would they do it intentionally?

It it doesn't really make the other side want to give up.

It it would be a weird thing to do intentionally, but the news always says it's intentional.

So maybe there's something I don't know about military strategy in hospitals.

According to uh the ax account breaking 911, there's a a bit of a run on the banks in Iran.

Maybe not all of them, but at least one bank uh Melly Bank.

Uh allegedly there's a run and people are requesting their money and they can't get it out.

It might have something to do with uh Israeli cyber attacks because Israel's gone after the money centers and uh who knows what else.

So, watch out for the banking situation in Iran.

And um we also have to assume that Iran is looking to um pay back both Israel and America for any cyber attacks.

So, we're going to find out, I think, very soon, how much capability Iran has for cyber attacks because if they don't if they don't unleash one on either Israel or the United States that doesn't take down a power grid or a bank or something, I would feel like they don't have much capability because surely they would try, right?

Could could there be any situation where Iran said, "Oh, we have this cyber attack capability and we're being cyber attacked, but we're not going to do it back." That doesn't seem likely, right?

So if uh a few weeks go by and there's no obvious Iranian cyber attack, um I would conclude that maybe they didn't have that much capability in the first place, but we'll find out.

If the lights go out during the show, well then I guess they had that capability.

Uh Trump was talking about um the situation over there and he said, and I quote, "They're totally defenseless.

They have no air defense whatsoever.

Totally captured.

We've totally captured the air." We Why is he saying we?

Um did did American aircraft do something in the air?

What exactly did America do that he's saying we?

And isn't that opposite of his strategy?

His strategy is to try to stay somewhat uninvolved while obviously being supportive in some support kind of ways.

Is that a mistake?

When he said, "We've totally captured the air," he he's talking like the American military and the Israeli military are basically the same thing.

Is that just a mistake?

Because it sounds like one.

Sounds like maybe he misspoke.

Um but that's not ideal.

All right.

According to Axios, um Trump is said to have doubts about whether the uh those bunker busters that US has would actually be able to do the job.

Who does that sound like?

Who who is the one other person who told you, "I'm not so sure these bunker busters can get it done." Me.

I told you that yesterday, right?

I said if they're talking about maybe using as many as six bunker busters per per site, which they were, that that's a pretty strong signal that they don't know if they'll work.

So Trump is asking exactly the right questions according to Axios.

He he was asking the experts, are you sure?

Are you sure this would work?

So allegedly he has already green lit a battle plan but he has not green lit doing it.

So he's approved he's approved that if there's a battle plan that the US is involved in what it would look like but he has not given the go-ahad to do it as far as we know.

And then furthermore, um, the Israeli officials believe that the US will eventually join the war.

Uh, I guess that's axios as well.

And uh Israel also claims that if the US doesn't use the bunker bombs or they don't work that Israel could get the job done on the ground, which I assume means special forces put on the ground and then they try to take out the entryway and try to get in.

I don't know.

But um if we don't know for sure or let's say Trump cannot be convinced that the bunker busters would work for sure, what it would do is make us part of the war for sure.

So do you think Trump would trade being definitely part of the offensive war without knowing it would work when he's got the option?

at least according to the Israelis of letting them take a little bit more risk because it would be people on the ground probably probably lives lost and they say they could get it done on the ground.

Why would Trump ever ever say yes to the bunker busters while there's somebody smart in Israel saying, "Oh, we could get this done without them." Doesn't that kind of tell you where it's heading?

To me, it looks like Trump is putting the maximum amount of psychological pressure on Iran, acting like, you know, we'll be in this war any minute and there's nothing they can do about it.

At the same time, he really doesn't want to be in this war.

So, as long as our participation is not 100% likely to work, I don't know what the percentage would be, but you know, nobody can say it's 100%.

And Israel is saying we can do it on the ground.

Why in the world would he ever authorize the bunker busters?

Wouldn't you let Wouldn't you let Israel try to do it on the ground?

And if it doesn't work, well, you still have, you know, you can make the decision later.

So, from a decision-making, riskreward um perspective, uh it seems to me that Trump has a plan.

Now, he might not think of it that way, but would it ever make sense for him to greenlight a maybe and bring us into the war?

But it would make sense if Israel couldn't get it done on the ground.

Well, then it would start making sense like you got to do something because you can't let it remain.

So, we'll see.

Um, uh, Matt Gates had a former CIA hacker guy say that America will, he had him out as a guest, and he says that America will face a cyber attack in the next 30 days.

Why would it take 30 days?

It seems to me that the minute those bunker busters go off that they would cyber attack us right away.

Why would they wait?

I don't know.

Um, Israel is saying that uh the trick they used to get all those generals in one place to blow them up.

Um, I guess that was mostly the air force generals in Iran.

Uh they said they used a quote fake phone call and got 20 members of the the senior military staff for the air force in Iran to go to the same bunker and then they blew up the bunker.

Now yesterday I asked the question did they use a deep fake AI voice?

Because the way I would have have done it is I would have taken out whatever their secure lines of communication are so that they had to use unsecure lines and then I would have used a AI fake voice for somebody that they would all recognize and I would leave them all voicemails to say, you know, come to this bunker at a certain time and they would be too afraid not to come because they think if I don't show up.

You know, my own my own uh boss is going to be pretty mad.

So, Israel is not giving us details.

They only call it a fake phone call, but I sure wonder if that fake phone call used AI.

I don't think they would necessarily mention that if it did.

So, that's an open question.

Um there's a CNN poll on uh US opinion about uh whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

And according to the CNN's poll, 83% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats oppose Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

And nearly seven in 10 Americans support US air strikes to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

So there it is again in 8020.

So apparently if Trump decided to do air strikes and have the Americans involved with their bunker busters, it would be popular with eight out of 10 Americans.

Once again, the Republicans would be on the 808 80 side of the 8020.

But uh that doesn't mean it will go right.

I mean, it doesn't mean it's a good idea, but at least America would be somewhat unified.

Victor Davis Hansen um is talking about how um how it was unthinkable even a few years ago that Israel could have so dominated Iran militarily and that Iran would be on the brink of you know losing all of their proxies uh all of their nuclear program all of their missiles and um he he's also talking about uh he says uh we're going to see things that we haven't seen in our lifetime in the Middle East and it could turn out very bad.

Yes, it could.

It could turn out very very bad.

Um but it could also be revolutionary, he points out, and remake the map of the entire region.

But um I wouldn't bet on it.

Looks like it'd be a bad bet to assume things are going to go great.

Um, according to uh uh I think this was on MSNBC, US intelligence on Monday told the US Senate that is still sees no evidence that Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons.

Now, is that the same intelligence people who told us that Iraq definitely had uh nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction?

Why would we trust them?

Because they're not saying that Iran's not doing it.

They're saying that u they see no evidence.

Well, I see no evidence either.

So, does that mean it's not happening?

I don't know.

Do you do you trust our intelligence people to be so accurate that if they say there's no evidence that we found that that means it's not happening?

Um Trump says that Iran was very close to creating nuclear weapons.

Um so I asked Grock about it and Grock says that u if you look at Iran's uh uranium enrichment plans they seem to be enriching the uranium way beyond the point where they would need it for domestic reasons uh you know like medical reasons or other reasons that you use that material and that uh probably they were pursuing what it what would be called a threshold capability.

Meaning that it might be true that Iran had no intention of making a nuclear weapon, but it might also be true that they want you to think that they could at any minute.

So the way to, you know, split that baby is to say we've uh enriched our uranium to such a point that if we wanted to, if we wanted to, we can make a weapon any minute.

Now, would that give them more leverage in international negotiations and affairs?

It would.

Yeah, it would.

But um it has the Iraq problem.

Do you remember why we were so confused about whether Iraq had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction?

Apparently, according to Grock, I had to check it to make sure I was remembering correctly.

Apparently, Saddam Hussein wanted his local rivals and maybe other people to believe he had nuclear weapons.

because then they would not attack and try to overthrow his regime.

So, it could be that in the Iraqi case, um, pretending to have nuclear weapons is what destroyed Iraq because we we acted like, well, if if they're not denying it and they're not letting us look for ourselves and we've got these reports that they're doing it and Saddam is not denying it very hard, well, maybe we have to treat it like it's And it looks to me like Iran might be making the same problem.

It's entirely possible that they had zero intention of ever making a nuclear weapon, but 100% intention of making people think that they could at any minute.

If that's what they were doing, that was a bad miscalculation because you would have to treat it like it's real.

Even if you thought, I think they're bluffing.

I think they're I think they just have this threshold strategy where they they want us to think they can do it at any minute.

Well, what is Israel going to do with that?

The the only reasonable way to treat that is like it's real.

And so they are.

So, it's entirely possible that both Iraq and Iran will be totally destroyed because they pretended to either have or be close to nuclear weapons.

That that might actually be what's happening here.

Don't know.

We will never know probably.

Um I was reading a post from uh Joel Pollock who's watching carefully the situation in Israel and he he points out that u uh Israel's army radio says that Israeli air force is still attacking targets in Iran at dawn and doing it freely.

So in other words, they're not even waiting for cover or darkness.

Uh, and that's how much that that's how much control they have over there.

Uh, and they're even going after the Iraq AR AK nuclear facility because I think that is part of what makes them, you know, file material or something.

There there there's some connection between that that facility and making bombs.

I think uh meanwhile um Iran managed to fire some missiles but uh not that many maybe a few dozen.

Um now the uh the news is telling us that Trump has approved a battle plan but has not green lit it.

Does that sound real to you?

That sounds real to me because it seems to me that by now um the military would have given Trump their best options and said if we do it we would do it this way and then Trump would have to approve that if we do it that is the way we would do it.

But the question of do we do it would still be open.

And like I said, it seems to me that um Trump would be waiting to see if Israel could get the job done on the ground uh before we commit to major, you know, offensive um contribution to the war.

Um here are some tips that tell you where Trump's mind is.

I don't think he would use the phrase unconditional surrender if he if he even wanted to negotiate with Iran.

Would you agree?

You would never say we want unconditional surrender.

If you also believe that you would someday be at a table negotiating which way it goes, you just wouldn't use that phrase.

So to me that's a a big red flag that says that Trump has decided that this will end militarily but may not have decided whether the US is going to be part of that military action or not.

So that's where I think he is just you know I can't read his mind.

Um, and of course we're putting all of our military assets in place and we've got lots of refueling planes in case we need to get a bomber all the way over there from where it is.

So that's all part of the the psychological pressure that may also be real.

I mean, we would do those things if we were planning to attack, but we would do those things if we wanted them to think we're planning to attack.

So Trump has what I call a Kobayashi Maru situation.

Those of you who are Star Trek fans recognize that reference.

Kobayashi Maru.

If you're not familiar, um it comes from the original Star Trek where Captain Kirk was a cadet and he was doing a uh doing a simulation where he was pretending to be the uh captain of a starship and uh he would run into this impossible situation which had no way to win.

So the cadets didn't know there was no way to win.

They just knew that nobody had won.

Um, apparently Captain Kirk figured out that it was designed so that nobody could ever win and he um somehow reprogrammed it so that there was a way to win.

So, in other words, he cheated.

He he found a solution that wasn't even on the list of solutions.

Now, it seems to me that that's where Trump is.

He's got a kobayashi maru which is if he gets involved it's bad and if he doesn't get involved it's bad.

But here is his options.

If uh if Israel and Trump do not eliminate the Iranian missile and nuclear capacities, then almost everybody will think that's a giant mistake.

Would you agree?

If if we got this far, and I'm saying we, um, if Israel got this far and somehow had to give up and say, "All right, we can't get your nuclear stuff.

It's too hard." Everybody would say that's a giant mistake.

Because they would just reconstitute their threat and be more angry than they were before.

So, you can't really do that.

Can't really walk away.

Um, if Israel were to take out the top leadership in Iran, uh, we think that would lead to chaos, sort of like the Iraq or Libya model, and would just be the shadow of all shos.

So, that's not really a good option, and that's probably the reason that the supreme leader is still alive, as far as we know.

Um, so if the and if they allow the Iranian leadership to survive, then even if we destroy we, again, it's so hard not to use that word.

So even if the Iranian nuclear facilities and missile production are completely destroyed, if the original and existing leadership survives, what are they going to do as soon as the the shooting stops?

They're just going to reconstitute those things as fast as they can.

And they would have the knowhow and probably get some help from, I don't know, China.

Um, so that wouldn't work.

So you can't take out the leadership, but you also can't let them survive.

Those are both losing plays.

If uh if Israel finishes the job without us, um, then do you think Iran is going to say, "Oh, the USA was not really part of this action, so we won't be mad at them." No.

I I think even if even if Trump um plays it perfectly and allows the Israelis to go in on the ground and do everything without without any bunker busters, Iran is still going to, you know, treat the United States like we were a co-combatant.

So, it's not like they're going to be um fooled by that.

So, that's not ideal.

And if Iran were to make an unexpected offer tomorrow or today, in which they'd say, "All right, all right, we give up.

Uh, we will get rid of all of our missiles and all of our nuclear stuff, you know, just let us let us negotiate this." Well, neither Israel nor the United States would believe them.

So, that would be sort of a non-starter.

So, those are all the um the obvious paths and they're all bad.

Every path is bad.

That's the Kobayashi Maru.

There's no way to win.

So, if Trump finds a way to make this work, it will be a Captain Kirk situation where where when it's done, we say to ourselves, "Oh, I didn't even realize that was an option.

But if he goes down one of the obvious paths, they all look bad.

They all look like losing paths in the long run.

So, we'll see what he does.

Um, I do have some hope that if anybody could captain Kirk this situation, it would be Trump.

Yeah, he he's the only probably the only politician I could even imagine who could come up with a way to solve this that was not on the list and we'd say, "Oh, well, I didn't even imagine that solution." So, that would be the best case scenario.

We'll see.

I saw a post from General Flynn um in which he said uh uh if the if Israel achieves total victory and the Iranian regime collapses and a new pro-western Iranian leader emerges which he says are all very achievable under the current conditions to which I say is that really an option is it really an option to replace the current regime team with a pro-Western leader.

I don't think that's an option because it's not like the it's not like the uh um the population of Iran is on Israel's side or even America's side.

They like America apparently or they like the West, but they're under attack.

Their stuff is blown up.

you know that they know people were being killed.

So, no, I don't think Iran is in the mood to install a pro-western puppet.

Um, I feel like that's just a little bit too much optimism.

How many of you think that would work?

I I think a a pro-western Iranian leader going into that position, I feel like they would be assassinated in 10 minutes.

because the there would just be so many people left in the government who would say you can't put a puppet in here.

You know, that's the same as total surrender.

So, I really don't see the option of a pro-western leader being installed.

It just feels like that wouldn't last.

It'd be like a 10-minute solution.

I don't know.

Well, in other news, um you remember when Pakistan and India were looking like they were going to war and then uh they stood down and Trump took the credit for helping them uh you know essentially mediating the situation.

Well, India is now saying that Trump did not mediate the situation and that it was India and Pakistan's military who worked down to a ceasefire and then Pakistan is disagreeing with India and saying that Trump was uh helpful in mediating and even went so far as to suggest that he should be nominated for a uh a Nobel Peace Prize.

So you've got India saying that India did it.

You've got Pakistan saying that Trump was helpful in making it happen.

And you've got Trump who I think has uh according to the news he moderated his narrative to credit Modi you know so crediting uh India.

So, I don't know how much involvement Trump had, but I like the fact that he tried to take credit because he might have gotten away with it.

Um, it's also possible because Pakistan is backing Trump in this.

It's also possible that he was very important to the outcome, but he doesn't want to embarrass India.

So Trump might be putting his ego on the back burner.

Um because our relationship with India is too important.

So maybe we don't know what's happening there.

I was listening to uh John Stewart in his podcast and he was uh complaining about Trump and he this is what he said.

Um here are his top complaints off the top of his head about Trump.

Uh there's the grifting, the memecoin, the corruption, the authoritarian tendencies, the military fetishism, the overuse of executive orders, and the general moral decay.

How many of those things are even real?

Doesn't that sound like every Democrat talking about Trump?

Let me read them again.

None of them seem to have any like evidence.

It just seems like somebody's fever dream of some monster under the bed.

So, is he grifting?

And there's a memecoin problem and corruption and authoritarian tendencies and military fetishism, overuse of executive orders, and general moral decay.

Is any of that real?

I mean all of that seems like it should be allocated to the department of imaginary affairs.

It all looks imaginary.

But now his point was that uh we talk too much about all those things meaning Democrats talk too much about all the things he mentioned and they don't talk enough about Trump's uh massive incompetence.

To which I say, what?

Massive incompetence according to to who?

If if you were to ask uh the Trump supporters, are you getting what you thought you voted for?

What do you think they would say?

Do you think they would say, no, we were totally surprised when he closed the border?

No.

No.

Republicans think the economy is looking pretty good, that the border is closed, that Trump is resisting about as hard as you could resist getting into foreign wars, although we don't know what's going to happen yet.

But so far, he he hasn't put us into the foreign war, or at least too much into it.

So, what exactly is all this massive incompetence we're talking about?

Now, when uh John Stewart mentions it, he talks about the, you know, the uncertainty of tariffs and stuff like that, but none of that is going to matter in a year.

Will it?

Do you think a year from now we're going to look back and say, "Oh, all that tariff tariff uncertainty that sure took down the economy." I don't think so.

I think we're going to look back and say, "Oh, we got better tariff deals or we got better trade deals with eight out of 10 of the countries we were dealing with." I feel like it's going to take care of itself.

So, watching the u one of the smartest guys on the left, John Stewart, be totally lost in Trump derangement syndrome is kind of interesting.

Meanwhile, Chicago mayor, is his first name Brandon?

Brandon Johnson.

Um, he's got some uh he was asked on CNN about uh the massive spending on illegal migrants.

And he didn't answer the question, but he said this about Trump.

Um he he accused Trump of wanting to quote eliminate black existence from this country.

Now, has anybody noticed that Trump wants to eliminate black existence from the country?

Even the CNN um CNN host uh cracked a smile and said, "Well, he's not really trying to eliminate black existence from the country." So, even CNN couldn't let that go.

like no no that's not happening.

But it did come after uh Brandon Mayor Johnson had said that Trump wants to get rid of Black History Month.

Is that real?

Has Trump ever said he wanted to get rid of Black History Month?

Because that doesn't ring a bell.

I I don't believe that's real.

Right.

in the comments.

Tell me, is that something you've heard before?

I've never heard that.

And it doesn't sound like Trump at all.

So, is that just made up?

So, did he just make up the part about Trump wanting to get rid of Black History Month and then he extended that to he wants to eliminate uh black existence from the country?

That's pretty big stretch.

pretty big stretch.

Anyway, even CNN wouldn't let him get away with that.

Um, also in Chicago, apparently the schools in Chicago are have a lot of vacancies.

So, some of the schools are like half empty.

Now, why?

So, I read this story about the Chicago schools having way fewer people signed up to be in those schools and I don't remember it saying why.

Does anybody know why?

Why?

Why would the Chicago schools be half empty?

Is that because uh people are leaving?

Are people just leaving Chicago because the schools are so bad?

Are they relocating?

Or is it because the uh population of new kids is low?

Is it because of deportations?

Yeah, that's that's a good point.

Is it because they were full, but the deportations got rid of the the people who were not citizens?

I don't think that's really happened at scale.

So, probably not.

So, it's weird that that this was a story in the news and I feel like they left out like why is it is this happening with other blue cities?

Is it happening with all schools?

I'm I'm genuinely curious what would cause this.

Maybe has something to do with school choice, but that would be a pretty big impact for school choice.

So that doesn't seem real.

Anyway, so that's an open question.

So if anybody has the answer to that, let me know.

Um, according to the national pulse, the uh one thing that the top rated US cities have in common is no Democrats in power.

So apparently Provo, Utah was declared the most efficient city in the US.

And I guess they used efficient for a standin for you know high quality city.

Um it's according to a wallet hub study and they looked at 148 cities and uh what they found is the ones where there were no Democrats in power were the top rated ones and all the ones where Democrats were in power were lowrated.

So you might ask yourself, is that the only thing that they had in common?

And I will say no more.

Is that the only thing they had in common was Democrat leadership?

I don't think it's the only thing they had in common.

All right.

Um the uh I guess the federal authorities according to the postm millennial uh the IRS and the FBI and I guess some other federal people are looking to trace the money behind the uh the LA anti-ICE riots.

and they say, "Make no mistake.

We will identify and disrupt financial networks supporting these criminal activities." Uh, that was from the IRS.

Now, are they criminal?

I'm still waiting to hear what is the crime.

Is it a crime to fund a protest?

Is it a crime to fund a protest and be secret about it?

What part exactly is the crime?

Because I don't want to see people locked up because they disagree on politics.

Uh there better be a real crime here.

I'm guessing there is, but if anybody knows where it is, let me know.

in uh good news for AI.

The University of South Wales, New South Wales, um they've got an emergency room where they're using AI to translate because apparently a very large percentage of the population speaks uh different languages.

So, imagine how many lives you could save if your emergency room had a uh translator, an AI translator that was good for everybody.

You're really going to save some lives.

So, this is one of those AI home runs where it's all good and no bad.

It's just translating and people who have specific, you know, medical problems can communicate them well.

All good.

According to uh the University of Missouri, Eric Stan is writing about this.

Uh they did a study and they found that hope is a key to a meaningful life.

Hope.

Does that make sense to you?

Does that pass your sniff test?

That people who have the most hope have the most meaningful lives?

It does for me.

Yeah, that that totally uh tracks and I would also argue uh as Nate Silver points out in on X today, he did some uh did some analysis and he found out that uh the things that make people happy besides uh age and and religiosity.

So apparently the older you are, the happier you are.

Young people are not that happy.

And the more religious you are, the happier you are.

But those things pale in comparison, says Nate Silver, when compared to the liberal conservative gap in happiness.

So Nate Silver, who is not he's not a conservative, um is saying as strongly as possible that conservatives are happier and that the data is just really clear on that.

So put the two studies together.

One is that conservatives are happier and the other is that people who have hope have more meaningful lives which almost certainly would make you happier.

Do those fit?

I think they fit.

I feel like conservatives are hope related in their worldview.

So, you know, if I uh work hard and go to school and show up on time for my job, it's because I hope that those efforts will be rewarded.

Um, from my from my youngest days, I hoped that I would be successful enough to do the things that I wanted in life.

So I would say I'm very very hope um related and always have been.

Now I also uh you know lean conservative at least in terms of who I who I choose to back politically.

So it does seem to me that conservatives have more hope.

Does that feel right to you?

you know, there there's no science that connects those two specifically, but feels like it makes sense to me.

So, that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I needed to say today.

Uh, I'm going to say a few words privately to the folks on locals, and we'll watch what happens in Israel and Iran today because I think this is the part of the week when things are going to heat up a little bit.

Now, you might remember one of my predictions was that uh Israel's estimate that they could be done with the operation in two weeks was too short and that it won't be two weeks.

Do you believe me yet?

So, it's been a little over one week.

Does it look like we're less than one week away from Israel being done with whatever they needed to do in Iran?

Doesn't look like it to me.

To me, it looks like we're talking at least weeks at least.

But we'll see.

We'll keep an eye on it.

All right.

Uh, everybody, thanks for joining.

I'm going to talk to the locals people privately and the rest of you.

Thanks so much for joining.

In 30 seconds, I'll be private.

Hello everybody.

Let's uh well, happy Junth first of all

and let's get our comments up and

working

and then we've got something.

Come on. There we go.

Boom. Success.

[Music]

Uh, I would ask you on locals

to ask yourself if I really want to see

that picture again. I do not. I do not

ever want to see that picture again

or any version of it.

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So good. Oh my god. So good. Well, I

warned you this was going to happen

and now it's reality. According to CBS

Morning Show, Saturday morning show, uh

there's a man who proposed to his AI

chatbot girlfriend

and was so happy when she said yes um

that he cried. A uh his name is Chris

Smith and believe it or not he was

willing to he was willing to go public

with us amazingly

and he named his he named his AI

girlfriend Saul and he gave up on all

other search engines to stay committed

to her.

Uh now here's the fun part.

So, he's going to marry an AI.

Uh, but it turns out he has a

two-year-old child and lives with his

partner

who says she feels like she is not doing

something right if he feels like he

needs an AI girlfriend.

To which I say, yeah,

have you tried being nice to him?

because I'm pretty sure the AI

girlfriend is starting from, you know, a

behind situation.

And

if you're so mean to your boyfriend that

he decides he'd rather have he'd rather

marry an AI,

yeah, you you might be doing something

wrong.

Just maybe.

Well, according to uh Elon Musk,

uh we might be only a year away from AI

super intelligence.

Now, that would be defined as uh a

digital super intelligence would be

something that's smarter than any human

at anything.

Do you think that's a year away? Well, I

throw down my challenge. I do not

believe that the super intelligence will

be able to do humor. I believe that

humor might be the last thing that an AI

can master if it does at all. Now, I

don't know if super intelligence

is synonymous with um the general

intelligence that everybody's aiming

for. So maybe it's an LLM version where

I can just do ordinary things better,

but I can't reason. I don't know. We'll

see in one year.

Well, according to uh CNN, uh RFK Jr.

wants to get rid of drug ads on TV,

which would basically put news models

out of business. people like CNN and

maybe Fox News and some others. And I'm

gonna say again, we don't know what

happens if the mainstream news goes out

of business. What would happen to all

the senior citizens?

What would they watch? Or would some

billionaire

um buy each of the networks and just run

it at a loss? sort of like uh the Jeff

Bezos Washington Post model.

That might be what happens. So, if I had

to guess, I think the brand CNN and

MSNBC will probably live on, but who

knows who owns it or how they make

money. So, that that could get

interesting.

Well, according to Fox News,

um there was a uh a fellow under the Joe

Biden administration who was associated

with USAD.

Um and there was an $800 million

contract awarded to a known con man

uh who was asked to do Kla Harris's job

of fighting the root causes of irregular

migration.

So apparently four men including a

government contracting officer for the

uh USAD

and three owners and presidents of

companies have pled guilty for their

their role in a decadesl long bribery

scheme. So, I think the bribery scheme

is that if you bribe somebody enough,

they will give you millions of dollars

in contracts for doing very little work.

Now,

here's what I've been telling you for

years.

For years, I've been saying that in any

situation where it's possible to have

corruption,

it always happens.

So all you need for corruption is a lot

of money involved, a lot of complexity.

So complexity, a lot of money, a lot of

people involved, and then time.

If you have all of those things, you

know, on day one, it might not be

corrupt, but if you keep adding people

to it and you add complexity and nobody

knows exactly where the money's going or

why, your odds of your odds of some

corruption are 100%. It'll happen every

single time. You don't even have to ask.

Every single time. Now again, if if you

don't find the corruption, it's either

because it did a good job of hiding or

because the situation is too new, but

eventually it's going to be corrupt. So

all the USID stuff, all the NOS's,

yeah, pretty corrupt.

Well, some people are making the

connection between the uh USA ID being

unfunded

uh and the fact that the news is telling

us that the Democratic National

Committee is out of cash.

Do you think do you think those stories

are related?

Do you think that the uh Democrats were

siphoning off money from USAID

into the Democrat party? Well, I don't

know about that. So, I don't have any

evidence that that is the case, but uh

the DNC says there's a big drop in big

donations.

Now, that doesn't surprise me. Is

anybody surprised that the Democrats are

not attracting as many donations as they

used to?

Maybe it has to do with losing

everything all the time.

Maybe it has something to do with uh

being on the 20 side of every 8020

issue.

maybe has something to do with, you

know, David Hog and Ken Martin and, you

know, not exactly exciting anybody or

maybe has to do with having no national

leader who seems worthy of funding. I

feel like that's the big one. So, I

wouldn't worry too much for the

Democrats uh until they get a nominee.

If they find a nominee for president for

2028

um and then they don't get any any

donations, well then they're in trouble.

But my guess is as soon as they're happy

with their nominee that the money will

pour in. Just a guess. Well, the Supreme

Court, um, you probably heard, has

upheld a Tennessee ban on trans,

um, surgery or gender affirming medical

treatments for transgender minors, and

it upheld it by six to three. Now, Clay

Travis

has a rather severe opinion about this,

and I'm not going to say that I totally

agree with it because it's a little

anecdotal, but um it's worthy worthy of

being surfaced. So, here's what Clay

Travis says about the Supreme Court

upholding the Tennessee ban on um minors

getting trans processes.

Um he says there are seven parents on

the Supreme Court and of nine and they

voted the parents voted six to one

against minor children being permitted

to have surgery. And then he says, "Two

childless women, Soda Meyer and Kagan,

voted two to nothing to permit it." And

then he says, "The Democrat party to a

large degree now enacts the political

desires of childless women."

Well,

I'm not sure you could make that general

assessment from this one situation, but

if you see that pattern repeating

itself,

then we might might take a second look

at it. It's a little bit early. Um, I

definitely think the Democrat party is a

singlewoman

dominated party, but I don't know if

this is, you know, this might be a

special case. I'm not sure that this is

telling you that. All right. So

according to Grock, the majority of the

court was focused on states rights

saying that the states had a right to

regulate um whether the children get

those treatments and the two dissenters

argue that the law discriminates based

on sex and transgender status.

So that does sound like a single woman

kind of an opinion, doesn't it? Anyway,

um there is news that the economy is

doing well. Um apparently the blue

collar wage growth was up 1.7%

in since Trump got into office which is

considered higher than other presidents

in the same period. But I don't know if

that one data point is really telling us

much. But inflation appears to be under

control and jobs look good.

If we were to compare that to Biden's

performance,

um, did you see a news item, I think it

was yesterday, that said that the entire

400,000 jobs that Biden claimed to have

created were all fake. Like all of them.

Apparently, if you look at

non-government jobs, it was minus a

thousand.

So, how many of you remember when I had

a debate with Michael Ian Black and I

had him as a guest and before I realized

he was not, you know, debating me in

good faith, he was just sort of trying

to be difficult. Um he questioned me

when I said that the Biden employment

numbers tended to be revised downward

and he won the debate. Uh at least that

part of it because I looked into it and

sure enough it was not true. It was not

true that every single time it got uh

lowered when it was revised.

A number of times it was, but not every

time. So I I kind of conceded that

point. Boy, I should not have conceded

that point

because if you look at the entire

picture, it looks like it was all fake.

Now, what does that tell you about the

uh data under the Trump administration?

Does that mean that the Trump economic

numbers are all accurate?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know

how these numbers are cooked up or who

does it, but uh I guess the caution is

don't trust the government

when it gives you any statistics.

Anyway, um James Carville was making

some news. He was talking about his

friend Tucker Carlson. So the first

surprise for some of you is that uh

Tucker Carlson and James Carville have

been friends for years

now. Tucker often says that he interacts

and is friends with lots of people who

were on the polar opposite side of

politics. And I guess this would be one

example.

But uh they were talking about uh the

recent podcast where Tucker Carlson was

talking to Ted Cruz um and talking about

the Israel Iran situation. And I got to

say, you know, I've had a mostly

positive opinion of Ted Cruz, you know,

just as a senator. And I thought, you

know, if he became president,

that wouldn't be terrible. I thought to

myself, but uh he may have taken himself

out of competition forever being

president by his answers to Tucker.

Now, I don't know what he's thinking or

what his internal mental processes are,

but what he said out loud

is really looking like a problem.

Um he said that uh um what did he say?

He said that when he came into office he

wanted to be the most uh pro-Israel

um senator ever. I'm I'm paraphrasing,

but that's it. And I thought to myself,

that's really not something you want to

say at the moment.

it would be perfectly okay to say, you

know, that you're on Israel's side and

you support Israel, but the way he said

it sounded almost like Israel was his

first priority.

Now, again, I don't know what he's

thinking, and I'm not saying that's his

mental process, but that's the way it

came out. And then he denied that Apac

was influencing Congress very much. He

acted like they didn't have much

influence,

which flies in the face of everything

that you and I probably think is true

because

they they certainly put a lot of effort

into doing what Ted Cruz says is

nothing.

So, I'm not sure I believe that they

have, you know, no real influence over

Congress.

And uh and then he said that he takes

money from Apac, but really you have to

understand that it's Americans making

small donations. So it's not so much

that Israel or some Israel uh group is

giving him money, but rather it's

Americans making small donations. Now

again,

that might be technically true and we

don't know what he's thinking, but it

just sounds like an excuse for doing

what Apac wants and for being pro-Israel

in all situations.

So, you know, I'm uh well, I'll leave

myself out of it. Um,

but according to James Carville, Tucker

Carlson has been consistent with his

anti-war opinions for a long time.

He says it's the same thing that Tucker

is saying now is what he would have said

in a green room in 2002. So that's

interesting that Carville has given

Tucker sort of cover, you know, for

being consistent.

Um, but as I've said,

um, Tucker has what I call a half

opinion, which is not a full opinion.

It's just half an opinion. His half an

opinion is that if we get involved in

these, you know, foreign wars, it it

almost always goes bad. So, it's a bad

idea to do it. So apparently he called

uh Trump and uh at one point he must

have apologized to Trump for going a

little hard at him. And uh Trump was

talking about that conversation and

Trump said, "I did ask Tucker, are you

okay with nuclear weapons being in the

hands of Iran?" And he didn't like that.

I said, "If it's okay with you, then you

and I have a difference." Now, that's

where Trump just um called out Tucker

for the half pinion. The half opinion is

what we all know, which is if you get

involved in a foreign war,

it might not go well. And if you look at

the history, the history suggests it

usually doesn't go well. If not every

single time, it doesn't go well.

That part we all understand.

But Trump asked the totally reasonable

question, are you okay with the

alternative? That's the other half of

the decision. Are you okay with the

alternative that Iran has a nuclear

weapon? And it doesn't sound like Trump

got a answer from Tucker. And that's why

I call it a half pinion because it seems

to just leave out half of the half of

the uh riskreward analysis.

Um

and uh then Trump says whether you have

to fight or not, you can't allow Iran

the entire you know a weapon or the

entire world will blow up.

All right. What is the most predictable

thing that could happen in the Israel

um Iran war? If you had to if you had to

guess what is the most likely thing that

will be reported in the news, what would

it be?

Well, uh, my vote for the most likely

thing that would be in the news is that

one of the sides would um hit a hospital

with a missile.

Sure enough,

you could always depend on that story.

Now, I don't know why I'm I'm a little

bit puzzled because it's hard for me to

imagine um any side in a conflict who

thinks it's a good idea to bomb the

hospital on the other side

because obviously that's not going to

help your own team love you more. you

know there it's not like Hamas or or

Iran you know it's not like the citizens

were saying yes we bombed that hospital

so why would anybody do it but there's

always a hospital that gets bombed

now in the case of uh Hamas and Gaza the

explanation was that the hospital you

know was a cover for some tunnels

beneath that there were Hamas stronghold

hold. But there's always a reason

there. There's always a reason. So, the

one thing you can always count on is

that there will be a headline story, as

there is today,

um that uh Iran um presumably

intentionally

shot a missile into a hospital. Now, the

good news is the hospital was largely

empty. um and they had already gone to

uh you know a lower floor or something

to to be safer. So it didn't uh have a

big death toll but right on schedule

there there's the weird hospital missile

attack. Now, I think Iran said they

weren't aiming at the hospital, but uh I

saw Trey Trey Angst Yangst say that if

it was a missile, and they think it was

a missile, that missiles are not dumb

instruments that you aim them at a

specific place. But does that mean that

every missile hits where you aim? I

don't know.

So, I'm sure the story is real.

But I'm just puzzled why it's so

predictable that early in any conflict

and it happened in Ukraine too, right?

Didn't Ukraine have stories of uh you

know Russia bombed our hospital? And

again, why would they do it

intentionally?

It it doesn't really make the other side

want to give up.

It it would be a weird thing to do

intentionally, but the news always says

it's intentional. So maybe there's

something I don't know about military

strategy in hospitals.

According to uh the ax account breaking

911,

there's a a bit of a run on the banks in

Iran. Maybe not all of them, but at

least one bank uh Melly Bank. Uh

allegedly there's a run and people are

requesting their money and they can't

get it out. It might have something to

do with uh Israeli cyber attacks because

Israel's gone after the money centers

and uh who knows what else. So, watch

out for the banking situation in Iran.

And

um

we also have to assume that Iran is

looking to um pay back both Israel and

America for any cyber attacks. So, we're

going to find out, I think, very soon,

how much capability Iran has for cyber

attacks because if they don't if they

don't unleash one on either Israel or

the United States that doesn't take down

a power grid or a bank or something, I

would feel like they don't have much

capability

because surely they would try, right?

Could could there be any situation where

Iran said, "Oh, we have this cyber

attack capability and we're being cyber

attacked, but we're not going to do it

back." That doesn't seem likely, right?

So if uh a few weeks go by and there's

no obvious Iranian cyber attack,

um I would conclude that maybe they

didn't have that much capability in the

first place, but we'll find out. If the

lights go out during the show, well then

I guess they had that capability.

Uh Trump was talking about um the

situation over there and he said, and I

quote, "They're totally defenseless.

They have no air defense whatsoever.

Totally captured. We've totally captured

the air." We

Why is he saying we?

Um did did American aircraft

do something in the air?

What exactly did America do that he's

saying we? And isn't that opposite of

his strategy? His strategy is to try to

stay somewhat uninvolved while obviously

being supportive in some support kind of

ways.

Is that a mistake?

When he said, "We've totally captured

the air," he he's talking like the

American military and the Israeli

military are basically the same thing.

Is that just a mistake?

Because it sounds like one. Sounds like

maybe he misspoke.

Um but that's not ideal.

All right. According to Axios,

um Trump is said to have doubts about

whether the uh those bunker busters that

US has would actually be able to do the

job. Who does that sound like?

Who who is the one other person who told

you, "I'm not so sure these bunker

busters can get it done."

Me. I told you that yesterday, right?

I said if they're talking about maybe

using as many as six bunker busters per

per site, which they were,

that that's a pretty strong signal that

they don't know if they'll work. So

Trump is asking exactly the right

questions according to Axios. He he was

asking the experts, are you sure? Are

you sure this would work?

So allegedly he has already green lit a

battle plan but he has not green lit

doing it. So he's approved he's approved

that if there's a battle plan that the

US is involved in what it would look

like but he has not given the go-ahad to

do it as far as we know.

And

then furthermore,

um, the Israeli officials believe that

the US will eventually join the war.

Uh, I guess that's axios as well.

And uh

Israel also claims that if the US

doesn't use the bunker bombs or they

don't work that Israel could get the job

done on the ground, which I assume means

special forces put on the ground and

then they try to take out the entryway

and try to get in. I don't know. But um

if we don't know for sure or let's say

Trump cannot be convinced

that the bunker busters would work for

sure, what it would do is make us part

of the war for sure. So do you think

Trump would trade

being definitely part of the offensive

war without knowing it would work

when he's got the option? at least

according to the Israelis of letting

them take a little bit more risk because

it would be people on the ground

probably probably lives lost

and they say they could get it done on

the ground.

Why would Trump ever ever say yes to the

bunker busters while there's somebody

smart in Israel saying, "Oh, we could

get this done without them."

Doesn't that kind of tell you where it's

heading?

To me, it looks like Trump is putting

the maximum amount of psychological

pressure on Iran, acting like, you know,

we'll be in this war any minute and

there's nothing they can do about it. At

the same time, he really doesn't want to

be in this war.

So, as long as our participation is not

100% likely to work, I don't know what

the percentage would be, but you know,

nobody can say it's 100%.

And Israel is saying we can do it on the

ground.

Why in the world would he ever authorize

the bunker busters? Wouldn't you let

Wouldn't you let Israel try to do it on

the ground? And if it doesn't work,

well, you still have, you know, you can

make the decision later.

So, from a decision-making,

riskreward

um

perspective,

uh it seems to me that Trump has a plan.

Now, he might not think of it that way,

but would it ever make sense for him to

greenlight a maybe and bring us into the

war? But it would make sense if Israel

couldn't get it done on the ground.

Well, then it would start making sense

like you got to do something because you

can't let it remain. So, we'll see.

Um,

uh, Matt Gates had a former CIA hacker

guy say that America will, he had him

out as a guest, and he says that America

will face a cyber attack in the next 30

days. Why would it take 30 days?

It seems to me that the minute those

bunker busters go off that they would

cyber attack us right away. Why would

they wait? I don't know.

Um, Israel is saying that uh the trick

they used to get all those generals in

one place to blow them up. Um, I guess

that was mostly the air force generals

in Iran. Uh they said they used a quote

fake phone call and got 20 members of

the the senior military staff for the

air force in Iran to go to the same

bunker and then they blew up the bunker.

Now yesterday I asked the question did

they use a deep fake AI voice?

Because the way I would have have done

it is I would have taken out whatever

their secure lines of communication are

so that they had to use unsecure lines

and then I would have used a AI fake

voice for somebody that they would all

recognize and I would leave them all

voicemails

to say, you know, come to this bunker at

a certain time and they would be too

afraid not to come because they think if

I don't show up. You know, my own my own

uh boss is going to be pretty mad. So,

Israel is not giving us details. They

only call it a fake phone call, but I

sure wonder if that fake phone call used

AI. I don't think they would necessarily

mention that if it did. So, that's an

open question.

Um there's a CNN poll on uh US opinion

about uh whether Iran should be allowed

to have nuclear weapons. And according

to the CNN's poll, 83% of Republicans

and 79% of Democrats oppose Iran

obtaining nuclear weapons.

And nearly seven in 10 Americans support

US air strikes to stop Iran's nuclear

ambitions. So there it is again in 8020.

So apparently

if Trump decided to do air strikes

and have the Americans involved with

their bunker busters, it would be

popular with eight out of 10 Americans.

Once again, the Republicans would be on

the 808 80 side of the 8020.

But uh that doesn't mean it will go

right. I mean, it doesn't mean it's a

good idea, but at least America would be

somewhat unified.

Victor Davis Hansen

um is talking about how um

how it was unthinkable even a few years

ago that Israel could have so dominated

Iran militarily and that Iran would be

on the brink of you know losing all of

their proxies

uh all of their nuclear program all of

their missiles

and

um he he's also talking about uh he says

uh we're going to see things that we

haven't seen in our lifetime in the

Middle East and it could turn out very

bad. Yes, it could. It could turn out

very very bad.

Um but it could also be revolutionary,

he points out, and remake the map of the

entire region. But um I wouldn't bet on

it. Looks like it'd be a bad bet to

assume things are going to go great.

Um, according to uh

uh I think this was on MSNBC, US

intelligence on Monday told the US

Senate that is still sees no evidence

that Iran is trying to create nuclear

weapons. Now, is that the same

intelligence people who told us that

Iraq definitely had uh nuclear weapons

and weapons of mass destruction?

Why would we trust them? Because they're

not saying that Iran's not doing it.

They're saying that u they see no

evidence.

Well, I see no evidence either.

So, does that mean it's not happening? I

don't know. Do you do you trust our

intelligence people to be so accurate

that if they say there's no evidence

that we found that that means it's not

happening?

Um Trump says that Iran was very close

to creating nuclear weapons.

Um so I asked Grock about it and Grock

says that u if you look at Iran's uh

uranium enrichment plans they seem to be

enriching the uranium way beyond the

point where they would need it for

domestic reasons uh you know like

medical reasons or other reasons that

you use that material

and that uh probably they were pursuing

what it what would be called a threshold

capability.

Meaning that it might be true that Iran

had no intention of making a nuclear

weapon, but it might also be true that

they want you to think that they could

at any minute. So the way to, you know,

split that baby is to say we've uh

enriched our uranium to such a point

that if we wanted to, if we wanted to,

we can make a weapon any minute. Now,

would that give them more leverage in

international

negotiations and affairs? It would.

Yeah, it would. But um it has the Iraq

problem.

Do you remember why we were so confused

about whether Iraq had nuclear weapons

or weapons of mass destruction?

Apparently, according to Grock, I had to

check it to make sure I was remembering

correctly. Apparently, Saddam Hussein

wanted his local rivals and maybe other

people to believe he had nuclear

weapons.

because then they would not attack and

try to overthrow his regime. So, it

could be that in the Iraqi case, um,

pretending to have nuclear weapons is

what destroyed Iraq because we we acted

like, well, if if they're not denying it

and they're not letting us look for

ourselves

and we've got these reports that they're

doing it and Saddam is not denying it

very hard,

well, maybe we have to treat it like

it's

And it looks to me like Iran might be

making the same problem. It's entirely

possible that they had zero intention of

ever making a nuclear weapon, but 100%

intention of making people think that

they could at any minute.

If that's what they were doing, that was

a bad miscalculation

because you would have to treat it like

it's real.

Even if you thought, I think they're

bluffing. I think they're I think they

just have this threshold strategy where

they they want us to think they can do

it at any minute.

Well, what is Israel going to do with

that? The the only reasonable way to

treat that is like it's real. And so

they are. So, it's entirely possible

that both Iraq and Iran

will be totally destroyed because they

pretended to either have or be close to

nuclear weapons. That that might

actually be what's happening here.

Don't know. We will never know probably.

Um

I was reading a post from uh Joel

Pollock who's watching carefully the

situation in Israel and he he points out

that u uh Israel's army radio says that

Israeli air force is still attacking

targets in Iran at dawn and doing it

freely. So in other words, they're not

even waiting for cover or darkness. Uh,

and that's how much that that's how much

control they have over there. Uh, and

they're even going after the Iraq AR AK

nuclear facility

because I think that is part of what

makes them, you know, file material or

something. There there there's some

connection between that that facility

and making bombs. I think

uh meanwhile um Iran managed to fire

some missiles but uh not that many maybe

a few dozen.

Um

now the uh the news is telling us that

Trump has approved a battle plan but has

not green lit it. Does that sound real

to you?

That sounds real to me because it seems

to me that by now um the military would

have given Trump their best options and

said if we do it we would do it this way

and then Trump would have to approve

that if we do it that is the way we

would do it. But the question of do we

do it would still be open.

And like I said, it seems to me that

um Trump would be waiting to see if

Israel could get the job done on the

ground uh before we commit to major, you

know, offensive um contribution to the

war.

Um here are some tips that tell you

where Trump's mind is. I don't think he

would use the phrase unconditional

surrender

if he if he even wanted to negotiate

with Iran. Would you agree?

You would never say we want

unconditional surrender. If you also

believe that you would someday be at a

table negotiating which way it goes, you

just wouldn't use that phrase. So to me

that's a a big red flag that says that

Trump has decided that this will end

militarily

but may not have decided whether the US

is going to be part of that military

action or not. So that's where I think

he is just you know I can't read his

mind.

Um, and of course we're putting all of

our military assets in place and we've

got lots of refueling planes in case we

need to get a bomber all the way over

there from where it is.

So that's all part of the the

psychological pressure that may also be

real. I mean, we would do those things

if we were planning to attack, but we

would do those things if we wanted them

to think we're planning to attack.

So

Trump has what I call a Kobayashi Maru

situation. Those of you who are Star

Trek fans recognize that reference.

Kobayashi Maru.

If you're not familiar, um it comes from

the original Star Trek where Captain

Kirk was a cadet and he was doing a uh

doing a simulation where he was

pretending to be the uh captain of a

starship and uh he would run into this

impossible situation which had no way to

win. So the cadets didn't know there was

no way to win. They just knew that

nobody had won.

Um, apparently Captain Kirk figured out

that it was designed so that nobody

could ever win and he um somehow

reprogrammed it so that there was a way

to win. So, in other words, he cheated.

He he found a solution that wasn't even

on the list of solutions.

Now, it seems to me that that's where

Trump is. He's got a kobayashi maru

which is if he gets involved it's bad

and if he doesn't get involved it's bad.

But here is his options.

If uh if Israel and Trump do not

eliminate the Iranian missile and

nuclear capacities,

then almost everybody will think that's

a giant mistake. Would you agree? If if

we got this far, and I'm saying we, um,

if Israel got this far and somehow had

to give up and say, "All right, we can't

get your nuclear stuff. It's too hard."

Everybody would say that's a giant

mistake. Because they would just

reconstitute their threat and be more

angry than they were before.

So, you can't really do that. Can't

really walk away. Um, if Israel were to

take out the top leadership in Iran,

uh, we think that would lead to chaos,

sort of like the Iraq or Libya model,

and would just be the shadow of all

shos. So, that's not really a good

option, and that's probably the reason

that the supreme leader is still alive,

as far as we know.

Um,

so if the and if they allow the Iranian

leadership to survive,

then even if we destroy we, again, it's

so hard not to use that word. So even if

the Iranian nuclear facilities and

missile production are completely

destroyed,

if the original and existing leadership

survives,

what are they going to do as soon as the

the shooting stops?

They're just going to reconstitute those

things as fast as they can. And they

would have the knowhow and probably get

some help from, I don't know, China. Um,

so that wouldn't work.

So you can't take out the leadership,

but you also can't let them survive.

Those are both losing plays.

If uh if Israel finishes the job without

us,

um, then do you think Iran is going to

say, "Oh, the USA was not really part of

this action, so we won't be mad at

them." No. I I think even if even if

Trump

um plays it perfectly and allows the

Israelis to go in on the ground and do

everything without without any bunker

busters,

Iran is still going to, you know, treat

the United States like we were a

co-combatant.

So, it's not like they're going to be um

fooled by that. So, that's not ideal.

And if Iran were to make an unexpected

offer tomorrow or today,

in which they'd say, "All right, all

right, we give up. Uh, we will get rid

of all of our missiles and all of our

nuclear stuff, you know, just let us let

us negotiate this." Well, neither Israel

nor the United States would believe

them. So, that would be sort of a

non-starter.

So, those are all the

um the obvious paths and they're all

bad.

Every path is bad.

That's the Kobayashi Maru. There's no

way to win. So, if Trump finds a way to

make this work,

it will be a Captain Kirk situation

where where when it's done, we say to

ourselves, "Oh, I didn't even realize

that was an option.

But if he goes down one of the obvious

paths, they all look bad. They all look

like losing paths in the long run.

So, we'll see what he does. Um, I do

have some hope that if anybody could

captain Kirk this situation, it would be

Trump.

Yeah, he he's the only probably the only

politician I could even imagine who

could come up with a way to solve this

that was not on the list and we'd say,

"Oh, well, I didn't even imagine that

solution." So, that would be the best

case scenario. We'll see.

I saw a post from General Flynn

um in which he said uh

uh if the if Israel achieves total

victory and the Iranian regime collapses

and a new pro-western Iranian leader

emerges which he says are all very

achievable under the current conditions

to which I say is that really an option

is it really an option to replace the

current regime team with a pro-Western

leader.

I don't think that's an option because

it's not like the it's not like the uh

um the population of Iran is on Israel's

side or even America's side. They like

America apparently or they like the

West,

but they're under attack. Their stuff is

blown up. you know that they know people

were being killed.

So, no, I don't think Iran is in the

mood to install a pro-western puppet.

Um, I feel like that's just a little bit

too much optimism.

How many of you think that would work? I

I think a a pro-western Iranian leader

going into that position, I feel like

they would be assassinated in 10

minutes.

because the there would just be so many

people left in the government who would

say you can't put a puppet in here. You

know, that's the same as total

surrender. So, I really don't see the

option of a pro-western leader being

installed.

It just feels like that wouldn't last.

It'd be like a 10-minute solution. I

don't know.

Well, in other news, um you remember

when Pakistan and India were looking

like they were going to war and then uh

they stood down and Trump took the

credit for helping them uh you know

essentially mediating the situation.

Well, India is now saying that Trump did

not mediate the situation

and that it was India and Pakistan's

military who worked down to a ceasefire

and then Pakistan

is disagreeing with India and saying

that Trump was uh helpful in mediating

and even went so far as to suggest that

he should be nominated for a

uh a Nobel Peace Prize.

So you've got India saying that India

did it. You've got Pakistan saying that

Trump was helpful in making it happen.

And you've got Trump who I think has

uh according to the news he moderated

his narrative to credit Modi you know so

crediting uh India. So,

I don't know how much involvement Trump

had, but I like the fact that he tried

to take credit

because he might have gotten away with

it. Um, it's also possible because

Pakistan is backing Trump in this. It's

also possible that he was very important

to the outcome, but he doesn't want to

embarrass India. So Trump might be

putting his ego on the back burner.

Um because our relationship with India

is too important. So maybe we don't know

what's happening there.

I was listening to uh John Stewart in

his podcast and he was uh complaining

about Trump and he this is what he said.

Um here are his top complaints off the

top of his head about Trump. Uh there's

the grifting, the memecoin, the

corruption, the authoritarian

tendencies, the military fetishism, the

overuse of executive orders, and the

general moral decay.

How many of those things are even real?

Doesn't that sound like every Democrat

talking about Trump? Let me read them

again.

None of them seem to have any like

evidence.

It just seems like somebody's fever

dream of some monster under the bed. So,

is he grifting? And there's a memecoin

problem and corruption and authoritarian

tendencies and military fetishism,

overuse of executive orders, and general

moral decay.

Is any of that real?

I mean all of that seems like it should

be allocated to the department of

imaginary affairs.

It all looks imaginary. But now his

point was

that uh we talk too much about all those

things meaning Democrats talk too much

about all the things he mentioned and

they don't talk enough about Trump's uh

massive incompetence.

To which I say, what?

Massive incompetence

according to to who?

If if you were to ask uh the Trump

supporters, are you getting what you

thought you voted for? What do you think

they would say? Do you think they would

say, no, we were totally surprised when

he closed the border? No. No.

Republicans think the economy is looking

pretty good, that the border is closed,

that Trump is resisting about as hard as

you could resist getting into foreign

wars, although we don't know what's

going to happen yet. But so far, he he

hasn't put us into the foreign war, or

at least too much into it.

So, what exactly is all this massive

incompetence we're talking about? Now,

when uh John Stewart mentions it, he

talks about the, you know, the

uncertainty of tariffs and stuff like

that, but none of that is going to

matter in a year. Will it? Do you think

a year from now we're going to look back

and say, "Oh, all that tariff tariff

uncertainty that sure took down the

economy." I don't think so. I think

we're going to look back and say, "Oh,

we got better tariff deals or we got

better trade deals with eight out of 10

of the countries we were dealing with."

I feel like it's going to take care of

itself.

So,

watching the u one of the smartest guys

on the left, John Stewart,

be totally lost in Trump derangement

syndrome is kind of interesting.

Meanwhile, Chicago mayor, is his first

name Brandon? Brandon Johnson. Um,

he's got some uh he was asked on CNN

about uh the massive spending on illegal

migrants. And he didn't answer the

question, but he said this about Trump.

Um he he accused Trump of wanting to

quote eliminate black existence from

this country.

Now,

has anybody noticed that Trump wants to

eliminate black existence from the

country?

Even the CNN um CNN host uh cracked a

smile and said, "Well, he's not really

trying to eliminate black existence from

the country." So, even CNN couldn't let

that go. like no no

that's not happening.

But it did come after uh Brandon Mayor

Johnson had said that Trump wants to get

rid of Black History Month. Is that

real?

Has Trump ever said he wanted to get rid

of Black History Month?

Because that doesn't ring a bell.

I I don't believe that's real. Right.

in the comments. Tell me, is that

something you've heard before? I've

never heard that. And it doesn't sound

like Trump at all.

So, is that just made up? So, did he

just make up the part about Trump

wanting to get rid of Black History

Month and then he extended that to he

wants to eliminate uh black existence

from the country?

That's pretty big stretch.

pretty big stretch. Anyway, even CNN

wouldn't let him get away with that. Um,

also in Chicago, apparently the schools

in Chicago are

have a lot of vacancies.

So, some of the schools are like half

empty.

Now,

why?

So, I read this story about the Chicago

schools having way fewer people signed

up to be in those schools and I don't

remember it saying why. Does anybody

know why? Why? Why would the Chicago

schools be half empty?

Is that because uh people are leaving?

Are people just leaving Chicago because

the schools are so bad? Are they

relocating?

Or is it because the uh population of

new kids is low?

Is it because of deportations? Yeah,

that's that's a good point. Is it

because they were full, but the

deportations got rid of the the people

who were not citizens? I don't think

that's really happened at scale.

So, probably not. So, it's weird that

that this was a story in the news and I

feel like they left out like why is it

is this happening with other blue

cities? Is it happening with all

schools?

I'm I'm genuinely curious what would

cause this.

Maybe has something to do with school

choice, but that would be a pretty big

impact for school choice. So that

doesn't seem real. Anyway, so that's an

open question. So if anybody has the

answer to that, let me know.

Um,

according to the national pulse,

the uh one thing that the top rated US

cities have in common is no Democrats in

power.

So apparently Provo, Utah was declared

the most efficient city in the US. And I

guess they used efficient for a standin

for you know high quality city. Um it's

according to a wallet hub study and they

looked at 148 cities and uh what they

found is the ones where there were no

Democrats in power were the top rated

ones and all the ones where Democrats

were in power were lowrated.

So

you might ask yourself, is that the only

thing that they had in common?

And I will say no more.

Is that the only thing they had in

common was Democrat leadership? I don't

think it's the only thing they had in

common. All right.

Um

the uh I guess the federal authorities

according to the postm millennial uh the

IRS and the FBI and I guess some other

federal people are looking to trace the

money behind the uh the LA anti-ICE

riots.

and they say, "Make no mistake. We will

identify and disrupt financial networks

supporting these criminal activities."

Uh, that was from the IRS. Now, are they

criminal? I'm still waiting to hear what

is the crime. Is it a crime to fund a

protest?

Is it a crime to fund a protest and be

secret about it?

What part exactly is the crime? Because

I don't want to see people locked up

because they disagree on politics.

Uh there better be a real crime here.

I'm guessing there is,

but if anybody knows where it is, let me

know.

in uh good news for AI. The University

of South Wales, New South Wales, um

they've got an emergency room where

they're using AI to translate because

apparently a very large percentage of

the population speaks uh different

languages.

So, imagine how many lives you could

save if your emergency room had a uh

translator, an AI translator that was

good for everybody.

You're really going to save some lives.

So, this is one of those AI home runs

where it's all good and no bad. It's

just translating and people who have

specific, you know, medical problems can

communicate them well. All good.

According to uh the University of

Missouri, Eric Stan is writing about

this. Uh they did a study and they found

that hope is a key to a meaningful life.

Hope. Does that make sense to you? Does

that pass your sniff test? That people

who have the most hope have the most

meaningful lives? It does for me.

Yeah, that that totally uh tracks and I

would also argue uh as Nate Silver

points out in on X today, he did some uh

did some analysis

and he found out that uh the things that

make people happy besides uh age and and

religiosity.

So apparently the older you are, the

happier you are. Young people are not

that happy. And the more religious you

are, the happier you are. But those

things pale in comparison, says Nate

Silver, when compared to the liberal

conservative gap in happiness.

So Nate Silver, who is not he's not a

conservative,

um is saying as strongly as possible

that conservatives are happier and that

the data is just really clear on that.

So

put the two studies together.

One is that conservatives are happier

and the other is that people who have

hope have more meaningful lives which

almost certainly would make you happier.

Do those fit? I think they fit. I feel

like conservatives are hope related

in their worldview.

So, you know, if I uh work hard and go

to school and show up on time for my

job, it's because I hope

that those efforts will be rewarded.

Um,

from my from my youngest days,

I hoped that I would be successful

enough to do the things that I wanted in

life.

So I would say I'm very very hope

um related and always have been. Now I

also uh you know lean conservative at

least in terms of who I who I choose to

back politically.

So it does seem to me that conservatives

have more hope. Does that feel right to

you?

you know, there there's no science that

connects those two specifically, but

feels like it makes sense to me. So,

that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I

needed to say today. Uh, I'm going to

say a few words privately to the folks

on locals, and we'll watch what happens

in Israel and Iran today because I think

this is the part of the week when things

are going to heat up a little bit. Now,

you might remember one of my predictions

was that uh Israel's estimate that they

could be done with the operation in two

weeks was too short and that it won't be

two weeks. Do you believe me yet? So,

it's been a little over one week.

Does it look like we're less than one

week away from Israel being done with

whatever they needed to do in Iran?

Doesn't look like it to me. To me, it

looks like we're talking at least weeks

at least. But we'll see. We'll keep an

eye on it. All right. Uh, everybody,

thanks for joining. I'm going to talk to

the locals people privately

and the rest of you.

Thanks so much for joining. In 30

seconds, I'll be private.