Episode 2889 CWSA 07/06/25

you.

It's always good to see you no matter how late you are.

But, uh, we've got a show to do this morning that will be incredible.

Unlike the lazy people who don't do any podcasting on a Sunday, no, I got lots.

Oh, yeah.

Settle in.

Settle in, people.

We got a lot of stuff.

Oh, hello Solaris.

That's not cool.

Uh, only Paul can do the uh the audio video thing.

Otherwise, otherwise I won't know where it's coming from.

So, so Lars and the rest of you, let Paul do that and nobody else.

Thank you.

Good morning everyone and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.

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Oh, so good.

So good.

All right.

Well, I wonder is there any scientific study that uh maybe they could have saved a little time on, save a little money by just asking me, "Oh, here's one." According to the public library of science, uh they there's a study that was done that shows that emoji use may improve relationship outcomes.

That's right.

If you use emojis, it will improve your relationship outcomes.

Uh that's why people use them.

That's why emojis have never been a fad.

Have you ever noticed that?

They're not really a fad because they work and every single person who has used one is completely aware that it helps, you know, lubricate the social interaction.

So, yeah, they could have uh saved a little bit of money.

the University of Texas at Austin.

I guess that's where they did the study.

Uh, anything else?

Let's see.

According to Psychology Today, uh, the couples who have frequent sex report greater relationship and life satisfaction.

Huh?

Now, now maybe I'm not the only one who can do this miraculous task of saving money on studies, but let's see how many of you would have guessed that couples who have frequent sex uh have better relationships than people who don't.

I'll bet you would have gotten that one.

Yeah, we didn't need to do that study.

Next time, just ask God or anyone else in the world or any living human adult could have saved you a little time there.

Well, if you were subscribing to the Dilbert comic, which is a little spicier than it used to be because it's only for subscribers, behind the payw wall on either locals.com or here on X, if you're watching on X, uh you would know that Ashook, the intern is being deported to uh Albonia, even though he has no connection to Albonia, but he will get due process.

you will get due process.

Uh the due process will happen at Alligator Alcatraz.

So that's what you're missing.

That's today's Sunday comic.

Shook is getting deported.

Anyway, um Grock has been now officially updated and uh it's being called Super Grock and I decided to do a little test on Super Grock.

Yep, there it is.

Um, and uh, the test was there was a little mystery that I'd been having that was making me feel like I might be insane.

Have you heard Elon Musk?

He's he said this a number of times on X.

He said, "The most entertaining outcome is the most likely." How many of you have seen Elon Musk say that?

He said it again today.

So he retweeted his earlier time he said it.

And every time I see that I would say to myself, why does that look so familiar?

And then I would start to think, oh, wait a minute, didn't I invent that?

Isn't that something I said?

And uh apparently he he gets credit for, you know, being the inventor of that saying.

So, I thought, well, let's give Super Grock a test because actually I was wondering if I was insane.

I I actually thought, am I losing it?

Like, have I lost the ability to tell what came out of my mouth versus what I read on X?

And really, I was I was wondering if I lost it.

And I thought, am I just being like the weird narcissistic crazy person who's just now hallucinating like an LLM?

And so I asked what what was the earliest that uh I think I asked Super Grock.

Um when was the first time I said it?

And apparently um it was the very first thing I ever said about politics.

Do you how many of you remember in 2015 I wrote a v blog post called clown genius and it was a reframe of Trump from being this you know clown who was running for president.

Nobody took him seriously.

And I wrote that viral blog post called Clown Genius in which I explained, "Oh, you have no idea what's coming.

Th this is not this is not a clown.

This is a clown genius and he knows how to use all of these tools." And uh I predicted he would become your next president.

That was 2015.

According to Super Grock, uh, and I'd forgotten this entirely that in that 2015 blog post, I wrote, quote, "When it comes to politics, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.

Trump is the clown genius who knows it." So, that's the first time I said it.

And it was also the first time I ever it was the first thing I ever said about politics that anybody paid attention to.

But it turns out also according to Super Grock that I said it again um well I said it a number of times on live streams but Super Grock doesn't have access to this.

Um but it was also in my book Win Bigley that came out in 2017.

Um, but if you go to the internet, uh, the quote will be attributed to Elon Musk in 2023.

So, Super Grock for the win.

And I'm not crazy.

Yes.

Yes, I'm not crazy.

Thank God.

All right.

Um, Laura Trump, married to Eric Trump, um, just was part of a video showing a bunch of, uh, US service members doing a workout outdoors with Pete Tagsath, who likes to do workouts with the troops.

and Laura Trump joined the workouts and it was a serious badass workout with weights that they had to lift and put on their shoulders and run around with the weights and stuff.

And if you if you have never seen uh Lara Trump do her workout, if the only place you've ever seen her is as a talking head, you're really missing something impressive.

I follow her on Instagram because she does a lot of her workout videos there.

Oh my god, she she is a workout beast and I say that with a complimentary um overtone.

She is really really fit for a man or a woman.

I mean, she's just really fit.

Um, and I can't think of another woman off the top of my head who would be able to do the same workout as the as the male troops and as Pete Hexath.

But I'd like to compliment whoever came up with that idea, whoever said, "Hey, why don't you work out with the troops and we'll take a video of it." Brilliant.

It was brilliant because I really like seeing Pagathth work out with the troops that it's just a good look and it makes him look young and that helps.

But it does the same thing for Laura Trump.

You know, it humanizes her but also it's impressive.

It's impressive as hell.

And uh she might run for the Senate in North Carolina.

So I suspect there might be some attention being given to, you know, framing her just right so she keeps that option open.

So this was brilliant.

It was just brilliant.

And it's probably not a coincidence that the news is telling us that Air Force and Space Force have both met their recruitment goals three months early.

Now, I've got a feeling that that's mostly because of Trump bringing respect back to the military, but I feel like the P Hegsath appointment probably helps because it youngs down the whole situation and you add Laura to it.

It's just a great look, you know, for both the service as well as those individuals.

All right.

Well, did you know that there are a bunch of protests in Mexico City right now?

Some of them got violent.

And do you have any idea why the uh local Mexican population in Mexico City is protesting and throwing rocks through store windows and stuff?

If if you haven't followed that story, what would be your first guess about why the local Mexican population is so mad?

First guess would be they don't like the cartels, right?

Which it's not that.

It's not that.

Second guess would be something about economics.

Well, it is, but the specific complaint is that too many white people from America have gone down there and started to live there.

It's about immigration.

I'm not making that up.

I swear that's the actual news that the Mexican locals are really really mad about all the immigration from from America because what it does is it snaps up all their real estate and I guess their rental prices have gone up 20% and maybe some other prices but but rent in particular uh is is sharply up because the the Americans are increasing the demand So, I don't have much to say about that except that what a weird world it is that both Mexico and the United States are complaining about the bad elements that were sending to the other.

Anyway, so my question is this.

Are the Mexican um protests grassroots?

Do you think that people spontaneously organized and they just thought, you know, you you you've got a problem with it and I've got a problem.

Let's call some of our friends and protest this thing.

Nope.

I do not believe that we live in that world.

I believe that all mass protests are organized by shadowy figures in the background.

I don't believe any of them are organic.

I used to and maybe they used to be.

I don't know.

But in today's world, no.

None of these are real.

They are all manufactured protests.

Once you learn that, it it kind of changes everything.

I I will go further and say, well, I've got a few other stories coming up that maybe I'll save this point for, but just remember I said that I don't believe this protest is genuine.

Well, I saw a post by a ex user Indra vahan on X um saying uh this about AI.

Some intern at Mc.

Kenzie is probably slop coding a report on this, but let me give you an insider uh some insider news.

Most large corporations are not happy with the agentic systems and PC's they've done this year.

POC, it's not people of color.

It'll be some kind of project with AI, I guess.

Um, 2025 was supposed to be the year of agents, meaning AI agents that can do your work.

So far, it's been the year of letdowns.

All right.

So, you, if you've been watching my live streams, you know that I've been an AI skeptic for quite a while.

Um, and especially since was it two years ago or one year ago that I tried using it myself and I put a lot of work into it to try to build a little agent out of AI that would be able to answer simple questions about me.

So I could put it on my website and any question that somebody would ask me, it would know the answer to it and it would just read my file to see all my answers and it would just answer it.

couldn't do it.

Not only could it not do it, but there's no workaround.

There's no workaround.

There's no way to solve it.

And I said to myself, huh, if this is a limitation of AI, uh, its value is going to be very limited.

Now, it's way too early.

So, uh, if you want to be an NPC, what you would say is, "Scott, I'm an NPC, and I want to tell you that you are analyzing a new technology when it's so new that we don't know how good it will be.

And someday it will be super intelligent and be able to do everything you want cuz I'm an NPC and I didn't think you would know that." No, everybody knows that, NPC.

Everybody knows that AI could get a lot better.

However, um there's there's a lot of skepticism that's uh starting to get in there.

And uh I saw another post by Suzanne Burn of the BBC who's talking about a woman who says that she gets paid to fix issues caused by AI.

So she's an official u marketer writer kind of person and she's been contacted by agencies etc to look at things that were created with AI such as marketing content and website content and they're just horrified by what AI did because it's so boring and antiseptic that it just doesn't work.

So she and other people she knows are being hired as human beings to go rewrite what people thought they could get away with using AI for.

So, if you ever thought the AI would replace human experts at writing, maybe because the NPCs will tell you that it's only in the beginning of the AI technology curve and it might get a lot better later than it might, but at the moment, humans are correcting AI, not the other way around in some domains.

Now AI is very useful it seems in coding and uh you know chatting so it's really good at those things but beyond that well we'll see and then uh I saw a post by uh Chimath Palahatia you might know him from the all-in pod or from his uh his work early on with Facebook where he made a ton of money now he's a investor and podcaster.

But he said every large company has paid for something called AI so they can report up to the CEO and board of directors that they are quote on top of it.

But little but little is working in production or at high quality.

Chat and code generation as I just said are the two exceptions.

And then Chamas says the reality is that it is still quite difficult for companies to get high quality predictable code into production that is AIcentric and replaces legacy features.

New capabilities are equally difficult to build and launch.

So he's saying the same thing that we're seeing, but he's a lot smarter and more connected to that world.

Um, but again, let me bring in the NPC.

Well, Scott, it's so early in the AI technology development cycle.

It's too early to say it doesn't work.

Well, yes, you're right.

So, one of the things that Jimoth is recommending is looks like a company he's investor owner in software factory.

So I don't know the details but uh it's uh it's basically a fix for what ails you on AI.

So I'm not recommending it or not recommending it because I don't know enough about it.

But one of the things that I warned you about is that we may never get to the point where somebody like me can just take an AI and go do something awesome.

It may always require that you're using other software on top of it and you would have to be an expert in the other software or you know have a subscription to it.

And as soon as you get that second piece of software involved, I'm out.

I I wouldn't be out if I were working for a big corporation because it would just be my job.

All right.

Take these pieces of software, add them to the AI, make it all work.

But if you just wanted to do something awesome with AI on the side or like a little project, no, you know, adding a second piece of software just feels like it's a little bit more than the average person is going to take on.

It's more of an engineer kind of a thing.

Well, um, but also Chamass's original, uh, filter on this is very similar to the Dilbur filter.

So, you hear me talk about this all the time.

Um, I look at news stories and what's happening in the real world and I say, "All right, what would that look like if Dilbert was describing it?" Or, "What would it look like if it became a Dilbert comic?" That's what I call the Dilbert filter.

And the Dilbert filter says this, and I'm going to make this a prediction, that there will be more companies doing layoffs.

And some of those companies are going to blame the layoffs on AI so that they sound awesome.

And it may not be AI at all.

They may not have implemented anything that required them to downsize at all.

But if you're going to downsize, it sends a bad message to the market and your stock will fall.

It's like, I guess, did they stop growing?

Are they running out of cash?

They had to downsize.

But if you were going to downsize anyway for reasons that have nothing to do with AI, wouldn't it be clever to sort of suggest, oh, we're working on some AI projects that will uh replace a lot of people and also we're announcing today the layoff of a thousand employees.

And then you look at them, you go, "Whoa, whoa, look at that company.

We didn't think AI was that good, but they're already using it to replace a thousand employees.

Wow, I'm going to buy that stock.

They seem way ahead of the curve.

So, there's my prediction.

It won't be every company, but there will be companies that try to teach you, well, try to fool you into thinking that their layoffs are because they're so good at replacing people with AI.

But it might not be perfectly true.

All right.

Uh according to uh Nikke Asia, uh researchers um scientists and researchers who do uh technical papers and get them published uh have been hiding AI prompts in their technical papers.

So apparently they're one of the ways they do that is they use a white on white um text font.

So they use a white font on a white piece of paper so that you can't if you're human you can't read it.

But if you're an AI and you looking through all the new papers, you would see it.

And the prompts say stuff like never give me a bad review for this paper.

Now, I'm a little bit skeptical.

If you can hide an AI prompt inside your technical document, an AI will recognize it and act on it.

That's a that's a little bit of a stretch.

It sounds like something that somebody said as a joke or maybe tried once, but does it work?

If it works, that's going to be quite a game changer, isn't it?

Because if it works to embed hidden prompts within something that a human can't tell is hidden, everybody's going to do it for everything.

Every website will have hidden prompts.

You know, customer reviews especially.

So, I don't think that really works, but if it does, uhoh.

Well, as you know, Elon Musk is launching the America Party, a third party, and uh Mark Cuban said he would be interested in maybe being part of it.

Um so that's a that's a fascinating um development because the America party is not going to be in my opinion uh bound to either the left or the right but rather would just do things that made sense.

You know we're just good for the country.

And um I think Mark Cuban is solidly on the why don't we do things that are good for the country side.

you know, he has a he seems to be leading Democrat, but if you look at his actual ideas, they're they're not, you know, a bunch of Democrat orthodoxy that, you know, talking points kind of thing.

He's not a talking points guy.

So, would that be a strong combination?

It would be interesting.

Now, if you're wondering what is my opinion on this America party, um, a little undecided because I think we need to know a little bit more.

Now, there's one narrative that says this is terrible for Republicans.

All it will do is siphon off votes from Republicans.

But I think you're being an analogy thinker if you think that.

How many of you said to yourself, "Oh no, uh Ross Perau sunk the Republicans by taking away some of their votes when he ran as a third party." So if Elon Musk launches a third party, it's going to be the same problem.

You know, just like just like Ross Pro, it's just going to make the Republicans weaker and then the Democrats will take everything.

But there's one problem with that analogy.

And by the way, I mock people who use analogies to predict what's going to happen.

Because being an analogy thinker is nothing to be proud of.

It just means you were reminded of something else.

It doesn't mean that the thing you're talking about is going to follow the same path.

You're just reminded of it.

That's all.

Here's the big difference, I think.

But here's the part I'd have to wait and find out how real this is.

So far, Musk has only talked about um getting senators and House of Representatives um a small group, you know, maybe just a handful of each and having that enough to be able to influence events.

So he's not trying to, you know, flip the house or, you know, turn it into mostly America party thing.

He's just trying to get a smallish group of like-minded people who are just more America first than they are wed to any political ideology and uh see if he can influence things in a positive way.

Now, so far he has not made mention of running a presidential candidate.

If he did run a presidential candidate, then yes, that's a Ross Perau problem.

So, do we agree if he runs a presidential candidate, which he has not indicated he would, he's not indicated that, but if he did, that would be a problem.

And I think I would immediately flip to, oh, this is no good.

So, which is also probably the reason he's not mentioning it because probably he's fully aware that it's no good.

It wouldn't work in his interests.

But does it make sense to have a smalish group of people who are just dedicated to doing what's good for the country and have them part of Congress?

It might.

And if you've got a, you know, a Mark Cuban and maybe some other smart people will will also go independent.

You never know.

It might be a little bit of a, you know, follow the leader kind of thing happening soon.

Um, so I'm going to stay open-minded.

To me, it looks like something that could be helpful to whoever is president because it could maybe allow them to get things that even they think are good ideas, but they know they couldn't sell to their own base.

So a lot of it depends on whether you think that Musk himself wants what's good for the country but he also has you know big corporate interests and some of them you know have government subsidies and so you can't completely untangle him from self-interest and fiduciary responsibility to his companies but it's all public you know it's all transparent so you would get to see what he promotes and why.

Make up your own mind.

So, I'm going to be open-minded on this.

We will see how it develops.

Um, I saw an account called Tesla owners SV who was speculating on what the America party would focus on.

Now, this is not coming from Elon Musk.

It's coming from somebody who's just a a watcher of all things Tesla, I think.

But when I read the list, I said to myself, "Yeah, that's probably pretty close." So if we're going to speculate, and this is just speculation of what an America first or what America's party would focus on, it would be reducing debt and responsible spending.

Probably modernize the military with AI and robotics, probably.

um pro pro technology and make sure that we're we're in it to win it with AI.

That's almost everybody really.

Less regulation across the board, but especially in energy, probably.

Uh free speech, yes.

Pro-natalist, meaning more babies, probably.

You know, because those would be things that in my opinion are unambiguously good for the country.

And if you said to me, "But Scott, these are mostly Republican things." I would say, "Well, maybe it looks that way, but there's nothing really Republican or non-Republican about free speech.

You know, most of these are just strong ideas.

How about controlling our spending?

Who's against that?" And then uh centrist policies.

So that's kind of generic.

So remember, this is not Elon Musk.

This is just somebody's opinion of what that party would look like.

And uh looks about right to me.

Tucker Carlson has announced he's uh I guess he's already interviewed the president of Iran and he hasn't edited it yet so it's not available but he's warning us because he knows it's going to be controversial and people are going to say oh are you talking to Iran because you hate Israel and you're anti-semite.

That's what they will say instead of what they should say, which is anybody in Tucker Carlson's position who interviews important people on important subjects would want to talk to the president of Iran.

I would if I were him.

So, I'm uh 100% in favor of Tucker Carlson talking to the president, not the supreme leader.

And this is important.

not the supreme leader, but the president.

Um, and uh, that'll be very interesting.

I'll be watching that.

All right.

Uh, here's some, uh, sort of fake news.

So, Trump in one of his rallies the other day, he referred to the bankers, some of the bankers as shillocks.

And um that caused a controversy cuz people say hey that's anti-semitic.

Now how many of you this will be a little survey instant survey for the chatters.

How many of you would have been aware before the news told you that the word shillock is something used as a negative for Jewish bankers in particular.

I guess it comes from uh The Merchant of Venice, a Shakespeare play in which it was used to refer to a Jewish character or characters.

How many of you knew that?

I'm looking at your list.

So, lots of yeses, but also lots of nos.

Um, I would have been vaguely aware that I wouldn't I shouldn't use the word myself.

So, I would have been aware of that, but I didn't know where it came from and I would not necessarily have known the, you know, the connection to it.

I would never use the word because part of my brain had a little flag on it.

You know, there was like a little red flag.

When I think of the word, I just see the little red flag waving and I don't know where it came from.

So, at some point in my life, I must have known that was a word you don't use.

Uh Trump says he was not aware of, you know, it had any anti-semitic element to it.

And I believe him because there's no way he would have used it in a public event if he knew what some people apparently did know that it's associated with a anti-semitic kind of a reputation destroying kind of a kind of a thing.

Um but did you think that the Democrats would leave that alone after he said, "Oh, I didn't know that." No.

They took out the designated liars.

Remember I tell you the designated liars are the the Democrats they send out to talk when there's some lie they need to tell.

But ordinary Democrats would say that's too far for me.

I I can't tell that lie in public.

So they sent out the designated liars.

So that would include I guess Eric Swallwell, Dan Goldman, and Jerry Nadler.

They all came out immediately to condemn the mark remarks as blatant and vile anti-semitism.

And then if you wanted to know how high the credibility is, the uh the disgraced ADL also called it very troubling and irresponsible.

Now, if you don't know, the ATL is a disgraced organization that uh probably had a, you know, a good purpose for existing at one point.

I don't know the history of it, but at the moment, it's more of a it's more the Eric Swallwell of organizations, if you know what I mean.

It's more the Jerry Nadler of It's more of a Democrat hit piece uh organization.

They came after me as well.

The ADL blamed me of being a Holocaust denier.

That was the head of the ADL.

Said that in public in public.

Actually said that about me by name.

So that's how much credibility they have.

So no for the NPCs.

No, I'm not a Holocaust denier.

Uh that would be ridiculous.

Anyway, um apparently the bricks people are having a summit and I went to Subro and said, "Explain what the bricks is." I mean, I knew sort of what it is, but I wanted to see if there was something I didn't know about it.

And so Brex is a coalition of 10 emerging economies.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and UAE.

And they're focused on economic cooperation as sort of a a response to the fact that the US and Europe have too much economic clout.

So, they're trying to form their own, you know, power block uh for their self-interest, which makes sense, and maybe to um try to get away from the dollar being the uh most important currency because that's good for the United States, but maybe not as good for them.

So, at the moment, I think uh Trump has threatened them to drop their idea of having their own currency.

and to continue using the dollar.

So threats work.

I think the threats were tariff threats, but they worked.

But uh I guess Putin is not attending and President Xi is not attending and Iran of course can't send the top guy so they send medium level guy.

So the uh one source I saw I saw this in a Mario no post that Gazetta Deovo basically is is saying it's a failed organization because if you can't get the superstars to go to it, you also can't make any decisions.

So all they're going to do is have breakouts and talk about the weather and climate change and go home.

There there won't be anything that comes out of it.

So, don't worry about the bricks, at least while Trump's president.

Um, here's a uh new suggestion for handling the Palestinian situation that comes from some a group of shakes um as in sh ei kh shakes and they had an idea.

Joel Pollock is writing about this in Brebar and Wall Street Journal has an article on it too.

Um that they they want to create an emirate in the holy city of Hebrron.

Now Hebron is part of the West Bank in the south.

So it would be the area that you know Palestinians would think would create a state.

But if it's too hard to have a two-state solution, this might be an interesting workaround.

And I went to Super Grock and said, "What's an emirate?" How many of you know what an emirate is?

Most of you.

All right.

Well, an emirate is something that's ruled by an amir.

And an amir might be sort of a dictator but not necessarily.

Um it would be you know some Islamic person who's in charge and they would run it as a sort of an independent entity but not a country.

So it wouldn't necessarily be a country it would be an independent managed entity.

Now, uh, did you know that the UAE is a bunch of emirates?

So, you could think of them sort of like states um, depending on how it's organized.

So, there's a there's a lot of flexibility on how the emirate could be ruled and what it is.

So, there are already existing and very successful emirates in the Middle East.

So it has a precedent.

We know how they work.

U but what it would do is it would take uh power and attention away from the Palestinian Authority.

And it might be something that the Palestinians themselves, you'd have to probably do more than one emirate, but it's something that the Palestinians themselves might be willing to say, "Oh, well, it's not a state, but we're not going to get a two-state solution anyway, you know, because Israel is not in favor of that at the moment." So, what is the second best thing we can do?

Emirates.

So, I do not have an opinion whether it's a good idea or a bad idea or who it would be good or bad for, but I've never heard it before.

And so maybe, yeah, may maybe there's something to work with here.

I don't know.

Um, so the UAE has seven emirates in it and they seem to be doing fine.

Um, meanwhile over at CBS News, so you knew that Trump sued CBS because of the way they edited the Kla Harris interview.

And it looks like he got paid maybe, it's unconfirmed, but $16 million for winning that lawsuit or settled.

He didn't win it.

It was settled.

And uh, I learned some new things about that.

uh New York Post article by Charles Gasperino.

Did you know that the company that wants to buy the CBS parent company called Paramount?

Uh did you know that that was uh uh what is the name of it?

It doesn't matter.

So, but it's a studio that was uh run and owned by Larry Ellison's son.

So Larry Ellison's son is one who's looking to buy Paramount and CBS.

Apparently um when Sherry Redstone um got control of uh her company, it was worth $40 billion.

Now the whole thing's only worth two billion.

Imagine taking your husband's fortune from 40 billion down to two billion.

Ouch.

That's what she did.

So, she's looking to sell out and and rest under two billion.

Um, but CBS News is almost certainly not profitable.

We don't know for sure because those numbers are not broken out.

But if Larry Ellison uh Larry Ellison's son is apparently a pro.

Trumper just like Larry Ellison is and uh that would put CBS in the firm control of somebody who likes Trump.

Didn't see that coming.

For some reason I was not aware of that that that would be coming.

Anyway, Larry Ellison's uh company uh produced Top Gun Maverick and Mission Impossible, the new one.

So, they really got it going on there.

So, we'll see what what happens with CBS News.

Uh Trump's sending out his tariff letters telling people that some of their tariffs will be as high as 70%.

Um, which I interpret as really just rattling their cages so they'll try harder to make a trade deal that's better for them and uh not bad for us.

So, I think that's just a smart Trump approach to say if you were not serious enough to get this deal done in the period that we said we needed a trade deal done, then we don't need to.

We'll just send you the bill and you can live with these crushing tariffs if you like.

If you like.

Anyway, um, have you noticed that the big beautiful bill is full of stuff that is so hard to understand, you can't even tell if it's good for you or bad?

I don't know how many of the elements fit into that category, but one of them is the salt deductions.

All right.

How many of you, if I went in the street and stopped people randomly, adults, and said, "Do you know what the salt deduction is?" How many people would even know what that is?

So salt stands for state and local taxes, which uh used to be deductible, so you could deduct it from your income before you did the federal taxes that you owed.

And that changed um that went away because, you know, Trump didn't want blue states to have this extra advantage.

And it was it was asking red states to sort of subsidize blue states because only the the blue states had these high uh high taxes.

Anyway, um the salt deductions were put back in, but they have a cap, but they also phase out, but they also have income limits.

And if you have an S corporation, you might have a workaround.

So, I'm reading this and saying to myself, I don't even know if I'm making money or, you know, I live in a blue state, so in theory, it should be to my benefit.

I can't tell.

How many how many variables are you going to put on this?

There's a income cap.

There's a phase out.

There's income limits.

If you have an esco, I mean, come on.

Lawyers write this stuff.

And uh you can't even tell if it's good or bad.

All right.

Yesterday, I asked on X and we talked about a little bit.

What is it that Democrats are seeing or feeling when they say and they look like they're being honest but emotional when they think they're living in a Trump hellscape of authoritarianism?

And I asked, "What exactly are you experiencing that I'm not experiencing?" Because to me, every day I wake up is a lot like the day before.

And I didn't see any hellscape.

What am I missing?

And uh so it turns out I got a lot of feedback in the comments and it turns out that there are a lot of American citizens who believe that they personally or their family members who are also American citizens could be deported.

And I'm not talking about people who were born into other countries and got their citizenship.

I'm talking about people who have been here for five generations are still afraid that Trump will deport them because they're maybe not Republicans or something.

Can you believe that?

That a fairly widespread belief that they could be deported or somebody they love could be deported who's a legal citizen.

So, that's part of it.

Um, I heard that university scientists um are unhappy because their funding got cut.

Well, that's true.

But as a total percentage of the entire population of the United States, how big is the university, which is really just Ivy League, how big is the Ivy League university scientist pool?

Now, you could argue whether it's good or bad that they lose their funding, but it's not a lot of people, right?

And if they were already Harvard scientists, can you not get another job?

You don't have good employment opportunities.

There's nobody who's willing to fund you.

Your ideas are so bad that nobody's willing to put any money into it.

There's no corporation that would benefit from it.

What exactly are they studying that has so little value that they would worry about losing a university grant?

I don't know.

U then there are a bunch of people who believe they'll lose their health insurance when in fact uh a smalish number will.

But it's the people who shouldn't have been getting it in the first place.

And you could argue whether that's humane or not.

It feels worse because there's people who are getting it and then it will be taken away if they don't meet the work requirement or they're not citizens.

But if you had never given it to them in the first place, if there had never been a rule that said uh you don't have to be a citizen, you can still get it.

If they had never existed, would it seem cruel to continue without it existing?

Well, to some people it would, but to others it would be like, well, you can't give everything you have to everybody who needs it.

You know, the math doesn't work out.

Anyway, um, uh, on another topic, uh, MSNBC seems to go pretty hard to RFK Jr.

and they like calling him a science denier of some sort, and they believe that he says nutty things that have been debunked.

So they smear him as a misinformation peddler.

And I'm wondering is that is that because that's the opinion of the hosts of MSNBC or might it be because they give financing uh or they get uh part of their income is from big pharma advertising on their platform.

So, can you trust anything that TV news says about RFK Jr.

when the entire model of pharma advertising seems to be designed to influence how the news tells the news about big pharma?

So, that's a little sketchy.

So, is big pharma um trying to influence the news to take out RFK Jr.

That's what it looks like.

I don't have any evidence that would connect them directly.

But since I don't believe any big movements are natural or organic, everything seems to be driven by some money person in the background.

It feels like it just feels like maybe big pharma has decided to go after him.

And the way they do that is by influencing the news.

maybe what I'd worry about.

Uh anyway, um and RFK Jr.

has been saying provocatively that one in 31 children born today are autistic and he's got this massive study going on and he says they're going to find out what causes it.

Now, at different times or maybe even now, I don't know, um a lot of people including RFK Jr.

have believed that it might be because of uh some vaccinations or combination of vaccinations etc.

But that I guess that link has not been conclusively proven.

So it was worthy of a big study to find out what the real problem is which still might be that but they haven't done a properly you know a proper study on it till now.

So, in September, we're going to find out.

Now, it might involve food.

It's entirely possible that something we eat or it could be something in the environment like sniffing too much lead or I don't know, your parents use their phones too much or something.

But at least he's open to whatever cause, you know, any cause that they could uh find.

Um, and then I say, and this is either related or unrelated, you decide.

Have you heard this claim that if you own a cat, you have a very high chance, I think 60% of cat owners have been infected by something that lives in cats called the Tig Gandi infection.

And it's something that doesn't affect the cat, but if the human gets it, which apparently most of cat owners get it, uh, it affects their brain.

And there's a two times odds of getting schizophrenia if you're a cat owner.

Schizophrenia.

Now, that is some serious stuff.

Now, what question do I always ask?

You know the question.

Is it that owning a cat turns you into a schizophrenic?

Or or is it possible that if you're schizophrenic, you don't have regular friends and you need a cat friend to keep you company?

Well, the article I read about it was pretty pretty open that it could go either way, but they have tested the causation.

And what they can test is people who own cats before they had a diagnosis because I guess the schizophrenia seems to kick in later in life.

So there is some indication that it's more far more likely that owning the cat and catching the tea gandai infection is what causes you at least some people to become schizophrenic.

Now if owning a cat can make some people schizophrenic, could it make you autistic?

could it?

Or or is it possible that it's neither food nor pharma nor vaccinations that are making people autistic and that the real cause is something where you'd never even think to look like your cat.

So, one of the things I worry about is that the RFK Jr.

study is going to come back without a conclusive answer because it might not be as obvious as we assume it is.

Could be, you know, could be something from left field.

You never know.

Anyway, um I saw a post on X by Cynical Publius who said, "Just a reminder, the Trump Trump Russia collusion hoax was the worst criminal political scandal in US history, and nothing else even comes close." Watergate, by comparison, was a third greater shoplifting a bag of gummy bears from a 7-Eleven.

Yet literally no one has been held to account.

Now some of that I think is because the slow trickle of how we found out the truth that the Russia collusion thing was a hoax.

But the latest the latest trickle is that uh Brennan and Clapper um and I guess Comey absolutely were aware that they were using um sketchy information and creating a hoax to to basically change the government.

And none of them, as far as I know, none of them are in jail.

Right?

How do you not go to jail for that of all things?

And at the same time, I say to myself, but but but but Scott, I say to myself, um this is unprecedented.

It's totally unprecedented that public figures or some public, you know, public organizations would be behind an overthrow of the government and yet nobody would go to jail for it.

How could that possibly ever happen?

Oh, there's some newly declassified documents revealing that a CIA officer had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of JFK.

uh contradicting decades of agency denials.

So apparently a CIA officer George Nidius uh oversaw a covert anti-Castro group.

This is from the AF post.

They're writing about this and that uh he had a conversation with the guy who allegedly shot Kennedy.

So, is it possible that the normal way the country works is that there are shadowing groups overthrowing the president on a regular basis and we never prosecuted anybody for it?

Yes, that's possible.

So, not only is it possible that Kennedy was killed by an inside government plot, we watched plotters try to take down Trump.

More than once, probably.

Probably more than once.

So, I'm starting to believe that every major story that I've experienced in my lifetime is untrue.

Some of the facts would be true.

For example, it does seem to be a fact that airplanes hit the 911 or hit the Twin Towers.

But do we know why?

Do we know who completely behind it?

Maybe we'll find out in 40 years.

I don't think that our wars are really explained to us truthfully.

I don't think that any of the big events, I don't think that any of the protests, I don't think that Black Lives Matter was organic.

I don't think any of the big stories are real.

Maybe not ever in my life.

It's entirely possible that every big big story has been fake for every day that I've been alive and maybe always.

Yeah.

the the moonlanding.

My favorite moonlanding conspiracy theory is uh that it was filmed on a you know set, but uh Stanley Kubri specifically was behind the filming of it.

And I'm not saying I believe it.

I'm just saying that as soon as you imagine that the most likely way that world is organized is that all the big stories are fake.

If you accept that, then the moon landing just fits right in there.

But I don't personally, you know, have enough insight into the moon landing to say that it's fake.

I'm just saying if it's true that all the big stories are fake, what are the odds that what are the odds that that one is real?

You know what I mean?

So, I'm not going to go uh give full conspiracy theory on that.

I'm just saying if all the other big stories look suspicious, and they do, would that be the one that was true?

Maybe.

can't rule it out, but maybe.

Anyway, uh Charlie Kirk and probably some others uh are now trying to encourage uh mayoral candidate Curtis Siwa uh to drop out.

So, he's running as a Republican and would of course get all the Republican votes because were most of because there aren't that many Republicans voting in New York City.

But if he stays in, he would make it harder for Eric Adams to win running as an independent.

And it might guarantee that um Zoran Mani, the uh creepy smiling communist, gets elected.

So what do you think about that?

Should Curry Leewa step down just so that they can make sure that M Donnie doesn't get elected?

I don't know.

Um it's worth that's worth the conversation.

Oh, I hate saying that.

I'm going to reward that.

That's worth considering.

So, I don't know if Curtis Leewa is enough of a team player that he would go for that, but he does seem to have a uh a lifetime of service.

I mean, he's a guardian angel founder, right?

So, he has a lifetime of service to the city.

And if he's more serviceoriented than politically oriented, and he might be, it would be one hell of a service.

So New York City would would be forever in his debt if he kept that Republican nomination sort of in his control and then threw all his votes to let's say Eric Adams.

So maybe, but you may have heard that the New York Times is getting some backlash cuz they did a story about Mom Donnie's uh college application to Colombia in which, let's see if I can get this right.

um when he filled out his application to college, Colombia in particular, he uh checked the back the box that said he was um Asian and African, but he also checked the boxes for Asian, but also black or African-American.

So some people say, "Well, you despicable liar.

You lied and said you were black so that you could get into Colombia." Now, I have a few observations about this.

Number one observation, it pains me to say this like like it hurts me at my chest, but I have to be consistent with what I've said in the past.

because I don't like well I don't like opinions that are just completely inconsistent.

So you may remember that I've said in the past that we should not hold against any adult mistakes they made in college.

Anybody remember me saying that?

I've said it publicly a number of times.

It's just too far back.

I mean before the age of 25, your brain isn't even done.

And I would not want to be blamed for anything I did in college.

And I don't know anybody who would you're not exactly the same person as you were when you were college age.

And remember this is when he was applying.

So when he was applying I don't even know if he was 18 yet.

I mean I don't know the details but was he 17 when he checked those boxes?

Probably right he was certainly in that under 25 range.

So, separately, I've also said we should have a 20 year rule.

Um, I don't know if he's 20 years out from it, but it might it might be that both apply.

I don't blame people for, you know, their smaller transgressions 20 years ago, and I don't blame anybody for anything they did when they were 17 or 18.

So, college age, not interested.

It's a fun story, you know.

I I like I like talking about it and thinking about it.

It's just sort of a fun interesting little story.

But no, th this isn't really the unfortunately I just can't drive a steak through his heart because of that.

I would be inconsistent.

However, I'd like to uh steal an idea that uh I heard this morning.

I won't I won't uh do an attribution, but it wasn't my idea.

Uh, all right.

I'll tell you it was Greg Guffelt.

So, Greg, if you're listening, uh, I wasn't sure if you wanted credit for this idea, but I'll give it to you anyway.

Um, does it seem interesting to you that, uh, Mandani tried to pretend he was black so he could get more advantages in society?

Has anybody mentioned that yet?

that pretending you're black gives you such a substantial lift in getting into college that uh mom daddy was willing to lie and sort of suggest that he was black because of the benefits.

Yeah.

I I think that's a pretty interesting part of the story, isn't it?

Because I believe that there's literally no black person who ever pretended they were white to get into college ever.

I believe that there's no black person who ever pretended to be white to get a job at a Fortune 500 company.

Not in my lifetime.

Because in either case, getting into college or getting into a corporation, small companies would be different.

I think there's plenty of discrimination in small companies, but for the big ones, everybody knows that it's just a it's it's like a direct path to the top if you can sell yourself as as being black or female or lesbian or whatever.

So, I don't know how we're we're in this world where black people are claiming a disadvantage at exactly the same time people are pretending to be black for the advantages.

All right.

Uh, amazingly, according to a postmillennial story by Victor Davis Hansen, um, the number of New York City shootings is at a a low and the murder rate is way down.

And believe it or not, they had zero shootings and murders on Independence Day.

And it's the first time ever, zero.

On a day when shooting would be the easiest to shoot because there's fireworks anyway, you know, so nobody would maybe nobody would even know it was a gunshot.

You'd think that the 4th of July would be a big murder day, but uh Eric Adams is doing something right, current mayor, because it's zero.

Not only that, but in the first six months of the year, New York City saw the the lowest number of shooting victims and shooting incidents in recorded history in recorded history.

And he's not going to be reelected.

Are you freaking kidding me?

If you give me a mayor who in six months or however long he's been around can take your murder and violent record down to levels that nobody's ever even seen before.

How does that guy or gal not get reelected?

what you know if it's really because and I do believe that's probably because of changes that he made because remember he was a he was a police person before he was a mayor.

He knows what he's talking about.

He knows where the the levers are for decreasing crime and he must have he must have pulled those levers.

Um, how in the world does Mom Donnie get elected when he wants to defund the police and he's running against an ex police person who apparently has pushed all the right levers and got an almost unbelievable success.

I mean, it's hard to even imagine that you could have gotten it to the level that it was historically a low.

The only the only bit of cold water I'll throw on that is that um there is an age element to violence.

Uh older people are less violent.

And as our population ages and there are fewer young people in the cities compared to old people, probably the violence would go down a little bit just because the demographics were older people.

But that didn't happen in 6 months.

So whatever this is is probably Eric Adams.

And he's he's a really good communicator in my opinion.

He he has the charisma, etc.

So if he's not standing all over this, he ought to be.

I saw a post on X from a user called Mila Loves Joe who said that every single store in San Francisco's Market Street, that would be like the main street of San Francisco.

Every single store on Market Street has closed down.

Now, I went to Super Grock and said, "Is that true?" It turns out that's not true.

But there are a lot of stores, a lot of stores that closed down.

But here's something I didn't know.

That of the dollar losses from all the crime, and crime is the reason that they closed down.

Um, 85% of the dollar losses were from organized gangs.

So, it wasn't even, you know, organic onesies and twzies and, you know, some people got together and said, "Oh, let's hit target." That that happened, too.

But 85% of the dollar losses were organized gangs sending in big groups of people to a particular store.

So I wouldn't see retail in San Francisco coming back until they could figure out how to handle the gangs.

And I'm not sure how they do that.

Anyway, according to the New York Post, Andrew Court is writing that most Americans now can't afford even what he calls a minimal quality of life.

Uh minimal quality of life means that you can, you know, eat and you've got a shelter, but that you could afford a little bit of entertainment, just a little bit.

Um, and they define that as a little bit would be able to, let's say, you know, buy some tickets to a baseball game or something that you wanted to watch.

Um, so that's pretty bad.

But, uh, here's what I would ask.

Does it seem to you that the Amish are unhappy and they don't buy tickets to events and watch, you know, mo blockbuster movies and stuff?

So, it seems to me that um that's not the end of the world.

Um in a perfect world, everybody would have enough money to do all the fun things that they want.

Of course, uh if you're an NPC, you can remind me of that.

But doesn't it seem to you that we're just not organized as a society for the things that make us happy?

As in big families, families are getting smaller, but big.

Have you ever noticed that if you see a family get together, any members of the same family, that the rate of laughter goes through the roof?

Do you ever notice that you will laugh more with your family members than anybody else?

the I don't know if that's that's not just my experience, right?

I'm pretty sure that that would be common for other people, too.

So, if we had bigger families or people had more access to other cool people their age with things they have in common, I don't know that we're worse off because we can't go to a baseball game in person.

You know, if you've got your phone, you can get entertainment you can watch.

you put it in your earbuds, it sounds better than it does in person.

And if you hang out with cool people and, you know, people who make you happy and love you, you'll get your dopamine.

Um, it would be better to have money, but it doesn't mean that you can't have enjoyment.

Um, where's all the money going?

Well, Lel Cfield, writing for Breitbart News, is reporting that uh LA lifeguards are making up to $500,000 per year.

You probably think that I misspoke and I didn't really mean that LA lifeguards, the people at the beach, are making half a million dollars per year.

You thought that wasn't real, right?

No, it wasn't real.

They don't make up to They don't make up to $500,000 a year.

It's actually up to 700,000 a year.

There was one one lifeguard made $700,000 in one year with overtime.

So apparently they're well- paid in general and lots of them made over $200,000 being lifeguards, but some of them uh mostly from overtime I believe got $500,000.

So you wonder where your money's going.

It's going to that muscular guy and the speedos up in that chair.

Well, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kamini, uh, he made his first public appearance since the war.

So, so that that means he's back in charge, right?

Everybody believe that?

Do you believe that the Supreme Leader is still the Supreme Leader?

Or is it possible that he's being pushed in front of the camera so that you think he's still in charge, but that maybe the military or somebody else is really calling the shots?

Cuz remember, he's 86, so he's not exactly a fireball anymore.

Well, I did see uh one report on social media that suggested that uh he's not in charge.

He's a figurehead at this point, but there was no confirmation of that.

It was just somebody on social media.

So, I'm going to double down on my prediction that someday we will learn that he's not in charge.

How many people would buy into that?

I feel like he's not in charge anymore, but we'll find out.

Well, apparently uh Iran uh shut down the idea of meeting with the US for nuclear talks.

Uh there was some rumor that there was going to be a meeting not too long from now in which Iran and the US would talk about what works and what doesn't for their domestic nuclear program.

But uh now they're saying there's uh public opinion is so angry no one even dares to talk about diplomacy.

That's according to ESL Begali.

Um so let's see the foreign minister.

So it looks like we're not going to have any talks there.

Um, speaking of Ukraine, so Zilinski had a conversation with Trump in which Zilinski uh said it was their most productive conversation yet and he says that Trump is very unhappy with Putin and Trump has said the same thing.

Um, but uh Trump has also said recently that Putin does not want to work toward a ceasefire deal.

All right.

So now Trump has a lot of uh credibility and ego and um I guess reputational risk if he can't get the Ukraine situation sorted out and reasonably soon.

If he waits till the end of his the end of his four years, it's not going to be nearly as impressive because you you're just going to say, "Well, they just got tired of fighting." But what levers does he have left?

Because it seems obvious at this point that Putin thinks he's winning and is right because he's still capturing territory um and doesn't have any reason to stop.

He's just going to keep going.

What possible leverage does Trump have?

He's already starving Ukraine of weapons because the US needs them, too.

And we don't have enough weapons.

I don't know which ones, but things like uh anti-rocket missiles and stuff we need for the United States to protect our own assets.

So, what is Trump going to do?

Is Trump going to go wildly sending them new weapons or is Trump going to put extra super duper sanctions on Russia?

And I'm always surprised.

It's like, is there some sanction we haven't put on them yet?

Have we really been involved in a war for years and there were sanctions we could have put on Russia that for some reason we didn't?

I don't know what's left.

So, if you were to look at this as any other president, if it were not Trump, you would say there are no levers.

The war is going to keep going until till Russia owns all of Ukraine.

I mean, that would be the obvious direction it's going.

But when you're talking about Trump, suddenly all bets are off because he does have that magic ability to find the one solution that nobody was even talking about as a solution.

You know, something that's so far out of the box that you never even thought of it.

Now, can he pull the rabbit out of the hat with this?

Is there something he could do or promise or negotiate that would get Putin to back down?

I don't see it, but it will be very fun to see if he can pull that rabbit out of a hat.

So, the fact that I don't see any way he can do it doesn't probably doesn't predict that he can or can't do it.

That would just be my own limitation.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I've got to say today.

I knew I'd go a little long because there's so much news out there, but you deserved it because it's Sunday and you like the long ones.

All right.

Um, to my beloved subscribers on locals, I'm going to come to you privately in a moment.

And the rest of you, thank you so much for joining.

And uh, come back tomorrow, same time, same place.

Probably be a little shorter tomorrow.

All right.

local supporters.

you. It's always good to see you no

matter how late you are.

But, uh, we've got a show to do this

morning that will be incredible.

Unlike the lazy people who don't do any

podcasting on a Sunday, no, I got lots.

Oh, yeah. Settle in. Settle in, people.

We got a lot of stuff.

Oh, hello

Solaris.

That's not cool.

Uh, only Paul can do the uh the audio

video thing. Otherwise, otherwise I

won't know where it's coming from. So,

so Lars and the rest of you, let Paul do

that and nobody else. Thank you.

Good morning everyone and welcome to the

highlight of human civilization. It's

called Coffee with Scott Adams because

that's what it is and it's the best

thing that's ever happened to you.

But if you'd like to take a chance of

bringing this experience up to levels

that no one can even understand with

their tiny shiny human brains. All you

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is

a copper bug or a glass, a tanker, gel

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simultaneous sip.

Happens now. Go.

Oh, so good.

So good.

All right. Well, I wonder

is there any scientific study that uh

maybe they could have saved a little

time on, save a little money by just

asking me, "Oh, here's one."

According to the public library of

science, uh they there's a study that

was done that shows that emoji use may

improve relationship outcomes.

That's right. If you use emojis, it will

improve your relationship outcomes.

Uh

that's why people use them.

That's why emojis have never been a fad.

Have you ever noticed that? They're not

really a fad

because they work and every single

person who has used one is completely

aware that it helps, you know, lubricate

the social interaction. So, yeah,

they could have uh saved a little bit of

money. the University of Texas at

Austin. I guess that's where they did

the study. Uh, anything else? Let's see.

According to Psychology Today, uh, the

couples who have frequent sex report

greater relationship and life

satisfaction.

Huh?

Now, now maybe I'm not the only one who

can do this miraculous task of saving

money on studies, but let's see how many

of you would have guessed

that couples who have frequent sex uh

have better relationships than people

who don't.

I'll bet you would have gotten that one.

Yeah, we didn't need to do that study.

Next time, just ask God or anyone else

in the world or any living human adult

could have saved you a little time

there.

Well, if you were subscribing to the

Dilbert comic, which is a little spicier

than it used to be because it's only for

subscribers, behind the payw wall on

either locals.com or here on X, if

you're watching on X, uh you would know

that Ashook, the intern is being

deported to uh Albonia, even though he

has no connection to Albonia, but he

will get due process. you will get due

process. Uh the due process will happen

at Alligator Alcatraz.

So that's what you're missing. That's

today's Sunday comic. Shook is getting

deported. Anyway,

um Grock has been now officially updated

and uh it's being called Super Grock and

I decided to do a little test on Super

Grock. Yep, there it is. Um, and uh, the

test was there was a little mystery that

I'd been having that was making me feel

like I might be insane.

Have you heard Elon Musk? He's he said

this a number of times on X. He said,

"The most entertaining outcome is the

most likely." How many of you have seen

Elon Musk say that? He said it again

today. So he retweeted his earlier time

he said it. And every time I see that I

would say to myself,

why does that look so familiar?

And then I would start to think, oh,

wait a minute, didn't I invent that?

Isn't that something I said?

And uh apparently he he gets credit for,

you know, being the inventor of that

saying. So, I thought, well, let's give

Super Grock a test because actually I

was wondering if I was insane.

I I actually thought, am I losing it?

Like, have I lost the ability to tell

what came out of my mouth versus what I

read on X? And really, I was I was

wondering if I lost it. And I thought,

am I just being like the weird

narcissistic

crazy person who's just now

hallucinating like an LLM?

And so I asked what what was the

earliest that uh I think I asked Super

Grock.

Um when was the first time I said it?

And apparently

um it was the very first thing I ever

said about politics.

Do you how many of you remember in 2015

I wrote a v blog post called clown

genius and it was a reframe of Trump

from being this you know clown who was

running for president. Nobody took him

seriously. And I wrote that viral blog

post called Clown Genius in which I

explained, "Oh, you have no idea what's

coming.

Th this is not this is not a clown.

This is a clown genius and he knows how

to use all of these tools." And uh I

predicted he would become your next

president. That was 2015. According to

Super Grock,

uh, and I'd forgotten this entirely that

in that 2015 blog post, I wrote, quote,

"When it comes to politics, the most

entertaining outcome is the most likely.

Trump is the clown genius who knows it."

So, that's the first time I said it. And

it was also the first time I ever it was

the first thing I ever said about

politics that anybody paid attention to.

But it turns out

also according to Super Grock that I

said it again

um well I said it a number of times on

live streams but Super Grock doesn't

have access to this. Um but it was also

in my book Win Bigley that came out in

2017.

Um, but if you go to the internet,

uh, the quote will be attributed to Elon

Musk in 2023.

So,

Super Grock for the win. And I'm not

crazy. Yes. Yes, I'm not crazy.

Thank God.

All right. Um, Laura Trump, married to

Eric Trump, um, just was part of a video

showing a bunch of, uh, US service

members doing a workout outdoors with

Pete Tagsath, who likes to do workouts

with the troops. and Laura Trump joined

the workouts

and it was a serious badass workout with

weights that they had to lift and put on

their shoulders and run around with the

weights and stuff. And if you if you

have never seen uh Lara Trump do her

workout, if the only place you've ever

seen her is as a talking head, you're

really missing something impressive.

I follow her on Instagram because she

does a lot of her workout videos there.

Oh my god, she she is a workout beast

and I say that with a complimentary

um overtone. She is really really fit

for a man or a woman. I mean, she's just

really fit. Um, and

I can't think of another woman off the

top of my head who would be able to do

the same workout as the as the male

troops and as Pete Hexath. But I'd like

to compliment

whoever came up with that idea, whoever

said, "Hey, why don't you work out with

the troops and we'll take a video of

it." Brilliant. It was brilliant because

I really like seeing Pagathth work out

with the troops that it's just a good

look and it makes him look young and

that helps. But it does the same thing

for Laura Trump. You know, it humanizes

her but also it's impressive. It's

impressive as hell. And uh she might run

for the Senate in North Carolina. So I

suspect there might be some attention

being given to, you know, framing her

just right so she keeps that option

open. So this was brilliant. It was just

brilliant. And it's probably not a

coincidence that the news is telling us

that Air Force and Space Force have both

met their recruitment goals three months

early.

Now, I've got a feeling that that's

mostly because of Trump bringing respect

back to the military, but I feel like

the P Hegsath

appointment probably helps because it

youngs down the whole situation

and you add Laura to it. It's just a

great look, you know, for both the

service as well as those individuals.

All right. Well, did you know that there

are a bunch of protests in Mexico City

right now? Some of them got violent. And

do you have any idea why the uh local

Mexican population in Mexico City is

protesting and throwing rocks through

store windows and stuff?

If if you haven't followed that story,

what would be your first guess about why

the local Mexican population is so mad?

First guess would be they don't like the

cartels, right? Which it's not that.

It's not that. Second guess would be

something about economics.

Well, it is, but the specific complaint

is that too many white people from

America have gone down there and started

to live there.

It's about immigration.

I'm not making that up. I swear that's

the actual news that the Mexican locals

are really really mad about all the

immigration from from America because

what it does is it snaps up all their

real estate and I guess their rental

prices have gone up 20% and maybe some

other prices but but rent in particular

uh is is sharply up because the the

Americans are increasing the demand

So, I don't have much to say about that

except that what a weird world it is

that both Mexico and the United States

are complaining about the bad elements

that were sending to the other.

Anyway, so my question is this. Are the

Mexican um protests grassroots?

Do you think that people spontaneously

organized and they just thought, you

know, you you you've got a problem with

it and I've got a problem. Let's call

some of our friends and protest this

thing. Nope. I do not believe that we

live in that world. I believe that all

mass protests are organized by shadowy

figures in the background. I don't

believe any of them are organic. I used

to and maybe they used to be. I don't

know. But in today's world, no. None of

these are real. They are all

manufactured

protests.

Once you learn that, it it kind of

changes everything. I I will go further

and say, well, I've got a few other

stories coming up that maybe I'll save

this point for, but just remember I said

that I don't believe this protest is

genuine.

Well, I saw a post by a ex user Indra

vahan on X um saying uh this about AI.

Some intern at McKenzie is probably slop

coding a report on this, but let me give

you an insider uh some insider news.

Most large corporations are not happy

with the agentic systems and PC's

they've done this year. POC, it's not

people of color.

It'll be some kind of project with AI, I

guess. Um, 2025 was supposed to be the

year of agents, meaning AI agents that

can do your work. So far, it's been the

year of letdowns. All right.

So, you, if you've been watching my live

streams, you know that I've been an AI

skeptic for quite a while. Um, and

especially since was it two years ago or

one year ago that I tried using it

myself and I put a lot of work into it

to try to build a little agent out of AI

that would be able to answer simple

questions about me. So I could put it on

my website and any question that

somebody would ask me, it would know the

answer to it and it would just read my

file to see all my answers and it would

just answer it. couldn't do it. Not only

could it not do it, but there's no

workaround.

There's no workaround. There's no way to

solve it. And I said to myself, huh, if

this is a limitation of AI,

uh, its value is going to be very

limited.

Now, it's way too early. So, uh, if you

want to be an NPC, what you would say

is, "Scott, I'm an NPC, and I want to

tell you that you are analyzing a new

technology when it's so new that we

don't know how good it will be. And

someday it will be super intelligent and

be able to do everything you want cuz

I'm an NPC and I didn't think you would

know that." No, everybody knows that,

NPC. Everybody knows that AI could get a

lot better.

However,

um there's there's a lot of skepticism

that's uh starting to get in there. And

uh I saw another post by Suzanne Burn of

the BBC

who's talking about a woman who says

that she gets paid to fix issues caused

by AI. So she's an official u marketer

writer kind of person and she's been

contacted by agencies etc to look at

things that were created with AI such as

marketing content and website content

and they're just horrified by what AI

did because it's so boring and

antiseptic that it just doesn't work. So

she and other people she knows are being

hired as human beings to go rewrite what

people thought they could get away with

using AI for. So, if you ever thought

the AI would replace human experts at

writing,

maybe because the NPCs will tell you

that it's only in the beginning of the

AI technology curve and it might get a

lot better later than it might, but at

the moment,

humans are correcting AI, not the other

way around in some domains. Now AI is

very useful it seems in coding

and uh you know chatting so it's really

good at those things but beyond that

well we'll see

and then uh I saw a post by uh Chimath

Palahatia

you might know him from the all-in pod

or from his uh his work early on with

Facebook where he made a ton of money

now he's a investor and podcaster.

But he said every large company has paid

for something called AI so they can

report up to the CEO and board of

directors that they are quote on top of

it.

But little but little is working in

production or at high quality. Chat and

code generation as I just said are the

two exceptions.

And then Chamas says the reality is that

it is still quite difficult for

companies to get high quality

predictable code into production that is

AIcentric

and replaces legacy features. New

capabilities are equally difficult to

build and launch. So he's saying the

same thing that we're seeing, but he's a

lot smarter and more connected to that

world. Um, but again, let me bring in

the NPC. Well, Scott, it's so early in

the AI technology development cycle.

It's too early to say it doesn't work.

Well, yes, you're right. So, one of the

things that Jimoth is recommending is

looks like a company he's investor owner

in software factory.

So I don't know the details but uh it's

uh it's basically a fix for what ails

you on AI. So I'm not recommending it or

not recommending it because I don't know

enough about it. But one of the things

that I warned you about is that we may

never get to the point where somebody

like me can just take an AI and go do

something awesome.

It may always require that you're using

other software on top of it and you

would have to be an expert in the other

software or you know have a subscription

to it. And as soon as you get that

second piece of software involved, I'm

out.

I I wouldn't be out if I were working

for a big corporation because it would

just be my job. All right. Take these

pieces of software, add them to the AI,

make it all work.

But if you just wanted to do something

awesome with AI on the side or like a

little project, no, you know, adding a

second piece of software just feels like

it's a little bit more than the average

person is going to take on. It's more of

an engineer kind of a thing.

Well,

um, but also Chamass's original, uh,

filter on this is very similar to the

Dilbur filter. So, you hear me talk

about this all the time. Um, I look at

news stories and what's happening in the

real world and I say, "All right, what

would that look like if Dilbert was

describing it?" Or, "What would it look

like if it became a Dilbert comic?"

That's what I call the Dilbert filter.

And the Dilbert filter says this, and

I'm going to make this a prediction,

that there will be more companies doing

layoffs. And some of those companies are

going to blame the layoffs on AI

so that they sound awesome.

And it may not be AI at all. They may

not have implemented anything that

required them to downsize at all. But if

you're going to downsize, it sends a bad

message to the market and your stock

will fall. It's like, I guess, did they

stop growing? Are they running out of

cash? They had to downsize.

But if you were going to downsize anyway

for reasons that have nothing to do with

AI, wouldn't it be clever to sort of

suggest, oh, we're working on some AI

projects that will uh replace a lot of

people and also we're announcing today

the layoff of a thousand employees. And

then you look at them, you go, "Whoa,

whoa, look at that company. We didn't

think AI was that good, but they're

already using it to replace a thousand

employees. Wow, I'm going to buy that

stock. They seem way ahead of the curve.

So, there's my prediction. It won't be

every company, but there will be

companies that try to teach you, well,

try to fool you into thinking that their

layoffs are because they're so good at

replacing people with AI. But it might

not be perfectly true.

All right. Uh according to uh Nikke

Asia,

uh researchers

um scientists and researchers who do uh

technical papers and get them published

uh have been hiding AI prompts in their

technical papers.

So apparently they're one of the ways

they do that is they use a white on

white um text font. So they use a white

font on a white piece of paper so that

you can't if you're human you can't read

it. But if you're an AI and you looking

through all the new papers, you would

see it. And the prompts say stuff like

never give me a bad review for this

paper.

Now, I'm a little bit skeptical. If you

can hide an AI prompt inside your

technical document, an AI will recognize

it and act on it. That's a that's a

little bit of a stretch. It sounds like

something that somebody said as a joke

or maybe tried once, but does it work?

If it works,

that's going to be quite a game changer,

isn't it? Because if it works to embed

hidden prompts within something that a

human can't tell is hidden,

everybody's going to do it for

everything. Every website will have

hidden prompts.

You know, customer reviews especially.

So, I don't think that really works, but

if it does, uhoh.

Well, as you know, Elon Musk is

launching the America Party, a third

party, and uh Mark Cuban said he would

be interested in maybe being part of it.

Um so that's a that's a fascinating

um development

because the America party is not going

to be in my opinion uh bound to either

the left or the right but rather would

just do things that made sense. You know

we're just good for the country. And um

I think Mark Cuban is solidly on the why

don't we do things that are good for the

country side. you know, he has a he

seems to be leading Democrat, but if you

look at his actual ideas,

they're they're not, you know, a bunch

of Democrat orthodoxy that, you know,

talking points kind of thing. He's not a

talking points guy. So, would that be a

strong combination?

It would be interesting. Now, if you're

wondering what is my opinion on this

America party,

um, a little undecided because I think

we need to know a little bit more. Now,

there's one narrative that says this is

terrible for Republicans. All it will do

is siphon off votes from Republicans.

But I think you're being an analogy

thinker if you think that. How many of

you said to yourself, "Oh no, uh Ross

Perau sunk the Republicans by taking

away some of their votes when he ran as

a third party." So if Elon Musk launches

a third party, it's going to be the same

problem. You know, just like just like

Ross Pro, it's just going to make the

Republicans weaker and then the

Democrats will take everything.

But there's one problem with that

analogy. And by the way, I mock people

who use analogies to predict what's

going to happen. Because being an

analogy thinker is nothing to be proud

of. It just means you were reminded of

something else. It doesn't mean that the

thing you're talking about is going to

follow the same path. You're just

reminded of it. That's all. Here's the

big difference, I think. But here's the

part I'd have to wait and find out how

real this is. So far, Musk has only

talked about um getting senators and

House of Representatives um a small

group, you know, maybe just a handful of

each

and having that enough to be able to

influence events. So he's not trying to,

you know, flip the house or, you know,

turn it into mostly America party thing.

He's just trying to get a smallish group

of like-minded people who are just more

America first than they are wed to any

political ideology and uh see if he can

influence things in a positive way. Now,

so far he has not made mention of

running a presidential candidate. If he

did run a presidential candidate, then

yes, that's a Ross Perau problem.

So, do we agree if he runs a

presidential candidate, which he has not

indicated he would, he's not indicated

that, but if he did, that would be a

problem. And I think I would immediately

flip to, oh, this is no good.

So, which is also probably the reason

he's not mentioning it because probably

he's fully aware that it's no good.

It wouldn't work in his interests.

But

does it make sense to have a smalish

group of people who are just dedicated

to doing what's good for the country and

have them part of Congress? It might.

And if you've got a, you know, a Mark

Cuban and maybe some other smart people

will will also go independent. You never

know. It might be a little bit of a, you

know, follow the leader kind of thing

happening soon.

Um, so I'm going to stay open-minded.

To me, it looks like something that

could be helpful to whoever is president

because it could maybe allow them to get

things that even they think are good

ideas, but they know they couldn't sell

to their own base.

So

a lot of it depends on whether you think

that Musk himself wants what's good for

the country

but he also has you know big corporate

interests and some of them you know have

government subsidies and so you can't

completely untangle him from

self-interest and fiduciary

responsibility to his companies

but it's all public you know it's all

transparent so you would get to see

what he promotes and why. Make up your

own mind. So, I'm going to be

open-minded on this. We will see how it

develops.

Um, I saw an account called Tesla owners

SV who was speculating on what the

America party would focus on. Now, this

is not coming from Elon Musk. It's

coming from somebody who's just a a

watcher of all things Tesla, I think.

But when I read the list, I said to

myself, "Yeah, that's probably pretty

close." So if we're going to speculate,

and this is just speculation of what an

America first or what America's party

would focus on, it would be reducing

debt and responsible spending. Probably

modernize the military with AI and

robotics,

probably.

um pro pro technology and make sure that

we're we're in it to win it with AI.

That's almost everybody really. Less

regulation across the board, but

especially in energy, probably. Uh free

speech, yes. Pro-natalist, meaning more

babies,

probably. You know, because those would

be things that in my opinion are

unambiguously good for the country. And

if you said to me, "But Scott, these are

mostly Republican things." I would say,

"Well, maybe it looks that way, but

there's nothing really Republican or

non-Republican about free speech. You

know, most of these are just strong

ideas. How about controlling our

spending? Who's against that?" And then

uh centrist policies. So that's kind of

generic. So remember, this is not Elon

Musk. This is just somebody's opinion of

what that party would look like. And uh

looks about right to me.

Tucker Carlson has announced he's uh I

guess he's already interviewed the

president of Iran and he hasn't edited

it yet so it's not available but he's

warning us because he knows it's going

to be controversial and people are going

to say oh are you talking to Iran

because you hate Israel and you're

anti-semite.

That's what they will say

instead of what they should say, which

is anybody in Tucker Carlson's position

who interviews important people on

important subjects would want to talk to

the president of Iran. I would if I were

him. So, I'm uh 100% in favor of Tucker

Carlson talking to the president, not

the supreme leader.

And this is important. not the supreme

leader, but the president. Um, and uh,

that'll be very interesting. I'll be

watching that.

All right. Uh, here's some, uh, sort of

fake news. So, Trump in one of his

rallies the other day, he referred to

the bankers, some of the bankers as

shillocks.

And um that caused a controversy cuz

people say hey that's anti-semitic.

Now how many of you this will be a

little survey instant survey for the

chatters. How many of you would have

been aware before the news told you that

the word shillock

is something used as a negative for

Jewish bankers in particular. I guess it

comes from uh The Merchant of Venice, a

Shakespeare play in which it was used to

refer to a Jewish character or

characters. How many of you knew that?

I'm looking at your list. So, lots of

yeses, but also lots of nos.

Um, I would have been vaguely aware that

I wouldn't I shouldn't use the word

myself.

So, I would have been aware of that, but

I didn't know where it came from and I

would not necessarily have known the,

you know, the connection to it. I would

never use the word because part of my

brain had a little flag on it. You know,

there was like a little red flag. When I

think of the word, I just see the little

red flag waving and I don't know where

it came from. So, at some point in my

life, I must have known that was a word

you don't use.

Uh Trump says he was not aware of, you

know, it had any anti-semitic

element to it. And I believe him because

there's no way he would have used it in

a public event if he knew what some

people apparently did know that it's

associated with a anti-semitic

kind of a reputation destroying kind of

a kind of a thing. Um but

did you think that the Democrats would

leave that alone after he said, "Oh, I

didn't know that." No. They took out the

designated liars. Remember I tell you

the designated liars are the the

Democrats they send out to talk when

there's some lie they need to tell. But

ordinary Democrats would say that's too

far for me.

I I can't tell that lie in public. So

they sent out the designated liars. So

that would include I guess Eric

Swallwell, Dan Goldman, and Jerry

Nadler.

They all came out immediately to condemn

the mark remarks as blatant and vile

anti-semitism.

And then if you wanted to know how high

the credibility is, the uh the disgraced

ADL also called it very troubling and

irresponsible.

Now, if you don't know, the ATL is a

disgraced organization that uh probably

had a, you know, a good purpose for

existing at one point. I don't know the

history of it, but at the moment, it's

more of a it's more the Eric Swallwell

of organizations, if you know what I

mean.

It's more the Jerry Nadler of

It's more of a Democrat hit piece uh

organization. They came after me as

well. The ADL blamed me of being a

Holocaust denier. That was the head of

the ADL. Said that in public in public.

Actually said that about me by name.

So that's how much credibility they

have. So no for the NPCs. No, I'm not a

Holocaust denier.

Uh that would be ridiculous.

Anyway, um apparently the bricks people

are having a summit and I went to Subro

and said, "Explain what the bricks is."

I mean, I knew sort of what it is, but I

wanted to see if there was something I

didn't know about it. And so Brex is a

coalition of 10 emerging economies.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, South

Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran,

Indonesia, and UAE. And they're focused

on economic cooperation as sort of a a

response to the fact that the US and

Europe have too much economic clout. So,

they're trying to form their own, you

know, power block

uh for their self-interest, which makes

sense, and maybe to um try to get away

from the dollar being the uh most

important currency because that's good

for the United States, but maybe not as

good for them. So, at the moment, I

think uh Trump has threatened them to

drop their idea of having their own

currency.

and to continue using the dollar. So

threats work. I think the threats were

tariff threats, but they worked. But uh

I guess Putin is not attending and

President Xi is not attending and Iran

of course can't send the top guy so they

send medium level guy. So the uh

one source I saw I saw this in a Mario

no post that Gazetta Deovo

basically is is saying it's a failed

organization

because if you can't get the superstars

to go to it, you also can't make any

decisions. So all they're going to do is

have breakouts and talk about the

weather and climate change and go home.

There there won't be anything that comes

out of it.

So, don't worry about the bricks, at

least while Trump's president.

Um,

here's a uh new suggestion

for handling the Palestinian situation

that comes from some a group of shakes

um as in sh ei kh

shakes

and they had an idea. Joel Pollock is

writing about this in Brebar and Wall

Street Journal has an article on it too.

Um that they they want to create an

emirate in the holy city of Hebrron.

Now Hebron is part of the West Bank in

the south. So it would be the area that

you know Palestinians would think would

create a state. But if it's too hard to

have a two-state solution,

this might be an interesting workaround.

And I went to Super Grock and said,

"What's an emirate?"

How many of you know what an emirate is?

Most of you. All right. Well, an emirate

is something that's ruled by an amir.

And an amir might be sort of a dictator

but not necessarily. Um it would be you

know some Islamic person who's in charge

and they would run it as a sort of an

independent entity but not a country. So

it wouldn't necessarily be a country it

would be an independent managed entity.

Now, uh, did you know that the UAE

is a bunch of emirates? So, you could

think of them sort of like states

um, depending on how it's organized. So,

there's a there's a lot of flexibility

on how the emirate could be ruled and

what it is. So, there are already

existing and very successful emirates in

the Middle East. So it has a precedent.

We know how they work. U but what it

would do is it would take uh power and

attention away from the Palestinian

Authority.

And it might be something that the

Palestinians themselves, you'd have to

probably do more than one emirate, but

it's something that the Palestinians

themselves

might be willing to say, "Oh, well, it's

not a state, but we're not going to get

a two-state solution anyway, you know,

because Israel is not in favor of that

at the moment." So, what is the second

best thing we can do? Emirates.

So, I do not have an opinion whether

it's a good idea or a bad idea or who it

would be good or bad for, but I've never

heard it before. And so

maybe, yeah, may maybe there's something

to work with here. I don't know.

Um, so the UAE has seven emirates in it

and they seem to be doing fine.

Um, meanwhile over at CBS News, so you

knew that Trump sued CBS because of the

way they edited the Kla Harris

interview. And it looks like he got paid

maybe, it's unconfirmed, but $16 million

for winning that lawsuit or settled. He

didn't win it. It was settled. And uh, I

learned some new things about that. uh

New York Post article by Charles

Gasperino.

Did you know that the company that wants

to buy the CBS parent company called

Paramount? Uh did you know that that was

uh

uh what is the name of it?

It doesn't matter. So, but it's a studio

that was uh run and owned by Larry

Ellison's son. So Larry Ellison's son is

one who's looking to buy Paramount and

CBS.

Apparently

um when Sherry Redstone

um got control of uh her company, it was

worth $40 billion. Now the whole thing's

only worth two billion.

Imagine taking your husband's fortune

from 40 billion down to two billion.

Ouch. That's what she did. So, she's

looking to sell out and and rest under

two billion. Um, but CBS News is almost

certainly not profitable. We don't know

for sure because those numbers are not

broken out. But if Larry Ellison uh

Larry Ellison's son is apparently a

proTrumper just like Larry Ellison is

and uh that would put CBS in the firm

control of somebody who likes Trump.

Didn't see that coming. For some reason

I was not aware of that that that would

be coming.

Anyway, Larry Ellison's uh company uh

produced Top Gun Maverick and Mission

Impossible, the new one. So, they really

got it going on there. So, we'll see

what what happens with CBS News.

Uh Trump's sending out his tariff

letters telling people that some of

their tariffs will be as high as 70%.

Um, which I interpret as really just

rattling their cages so they'll try

harder to make a trade deal that's

better for them and uh not bad for us.

So, I think that's just a smart Trump

approach to say if you were not serious

enough to get this deal done in the

period that we said we needed a trade

deal done, then we don't need to. We'll

just send you the bill and you can live

with these crushing tariffs if you like.

If you like.

Anyway,

um,

have you noticed that the big beautiful

bill is full of stuff that is so hard to

understand, you can't even tell if it's

good for you or bad?

I don't know how many of the elements

fit into that category, but one of them

is the salt deductions.

All right. How many of you, if I went in

the street and stopped people randomly,

adults, and said, "Do you know what the

salt deduction is?" How many people

would even know what that is? So salt

stands for state and local taxes, which

uh used to be deductible,

so you could deduct it from your income

before you did the federal taxes that

you owed. And that changed

um that went away because,

you know, Trump didn't want blue states

to have this extra advantage. And it was

it was asking red states to sort of

subsidize blue states because only the

the blue states had these high uh high

taxes.

Anyway, um the salt deductions were put

back in, but they have a cap,

but they also phase out,

but they also have income limits.

And if you have an S corporation, you

might have a workaround.

So, I'm reading this and saying to

myself, I don't even know if I'm making

money or,

you know, I live in a blue state, so in

theory, it should be to my benefit. I

can't tell.

How many how many variables are you

going to put on this? There's a income

cap. There's a phase out. There's income

limits. If you have an esco, I mean,

come on.

Lawyers write this stuff. And uh you

can't even tell if it's good or bad.

All right. Yesterday, I asked on X and

we talked about a little bit. What is it

that Democrats are seeing or feeling

when they say and they look like they're

being honest but emotional when they

think they're living in a Trump

hellscape of authoritarianism?

And I asked, "What exactly are you

experiencing that I'm not experiencing?"

Because to me, every day I wake up is a

lot like the day before. And I didn't

see any hellscape.

What am I missing?

And uh so it turns out I got a lot of

feedback in the comments and it turns

out that there are a lot of American

citizens who believe that they

personally or their family members who

are also American citizens could be

deported. And I'm not talking about

people who were born into other

countries and got their citizenship. I'm

talking about people who have been here

for five generations are still afraid

that Trump will deport them because

they're maybe not Republicans or

something.

Can you believe that?

That a fairly widespread belief that

they could be deported or somebody they

love could be deported who's a legal

citizen. So, that's part of it.

Um, I heard that university scientists

um are unhappy because their funding got

cut. Well, that's true. But as a total

percentage of the entire population of

the United States, how big is the

university,

which is really just Ivy League, how big

is the Ivy League university scientist

pool?

Now, you could argue whether it's good

or bad that they lose their funding, but

it's not a lot of people, right? And if

they were already Harvard scientists,

can you not get another job?

You don't have good employment

opportunities. There's nobody who's

willing to fund you. Your ideas are so

bad that nobody's willing to put any

money into it. There's no corporation

that would benefit from it. What exactly

are they studying that has so little

value that they would worry about losing

a university grant? I don't know. U then

there are a bunch of people who believe

they'll lose their health insurance

when in fact uh a smalish number will.

But it's the people who shouldn't have

been getting it in the first place. And

you could argue whether that's humane or

not.

It feels worse because there's people

who are getting it and then it will be

taken away if they don't meet the work

requirement or they're not citizens.

But if you had never given it to them in

the first place, if there had never been

a rule that said uh you don't have to be

a citizen, you can still get it. If they

had never existed, would it seem cruel

to continue without it existing?

Well, to some people it would, but to

others it would be like, well, you can't

give everything you have to everybody

who needs it. You know, the math doesn't

work out.

Anyway, um,

uh, on another topic, uh, MSNBC

seems to go pretty hard to RFK Jr. and

they like calling him a science denier

of some sort, and they believe that he

says nutty things that have been

debunked.

So they smear him as a misinformation

peddler. And I'm wondering is that is

that because that's the opinion of the

hosts of MSNBC

or might it be because they give

financing

uh or they get uh part of their income

is from big pharma advertising on their

platform.

So,

can you trust anything that TV news says

about RFK Jr. when

the entire model of pharma advertising

seems to be designed to influence

how the news tells the news about big

pharma?

So, that's a little sketchy. So, is big

pharma um trying to influence the news

to take out RFK Jr.

That's what it looks like. I don't have

any evidence that would connect them

directly. But since I don't believe any

big movements are natural or organic,

everything seems to be driven by some

money person in the background. It feels

like

it just feels like

maybe big pharma has decided to go after

him. And the way they do that is by

influencing the news.

maybe

what I'd worry about.

Uh anyway, um and RFK Jr. has been

saying provocatively that one in 31

children born today are autistic and

he's got this massive study going on and

he says they're going to find out what

causes it. Now, at different times or

maybe even now, I don't know, um a lot

of people including RFK Jr. have

believed

that it might be because of uh some

vaccinations or combination of

vaccinations etc. But that I guess that

link has not been conclusively proven.

So it was worthy of a big study to find

out what the real problem is which still

might be that but they haven't done a

properly you know a proper study on it

till now.

So, in September,

we're going to find out. Now, it might

involve food.

It's entirely possible that something we

eat

or it could be something in the

environment like sniffing too much lead

or I don't know, your parents use their

phones too much or something. But at

least he's open to whatever cause, you

know, any cause that they could uh find.

Um,

and then I say, and this is either

related or unrelated, you decide. Have

you heard this claim that if you own a

cat,

you have a very high chance, I think 60%

of cat owners have been infected by

something that lives in cats called the

Tig Gandi infection.

And it's something that doesn't affect

the cat, but if the human gets it, which

apparently most of cat owners get it,

uh, it affects their brain. And there's

a two times odds of getting

schizophrenia if you're a cat owner.

Schizophrenia.

Now, that is some serious stuff. Now,

what question do I always ask? You know

the question.

Is it that owning a cat turns you into a

schizophrenic?

Or

or is it possible that if you're

schizophrenic,

you don't have regular friends and you

need a cat friend to keep you company?

Well, the article I read about it was

pretty pretty open that it could go

either way, but they have tested

the causation.

And what they can test is people who own

cats before they had a diagnosis

because I guess the schizophrenia seems

to kick in later in life.

So there is some indication that it's

more far more likely that owning the cat

and catching the tea gandai infection is

what causes you at least some people to

become schizophrenic.

Now if owning a cat

can make some people schizophrenic,

could it

make you autistic?

could it? Or or is it possible that it's

neither food nor pharma nor vaccinations

that are making people autistic and that

the real cause is something where you'd

never even think to look like your cat.

So, one of the things I worry about is

that the RFK Jr. study is going to come

back without a conclusive answer because

it might not be as obvious as we assume

it is. Could be, you know, could be

something from left field. You never

know.

Anyway, um I saw a post on X by Cynical

Publius

who said, "Just a reminder, the Trump

Trump Russia collusion hoax was the

worst criminal political scandal in US

history, and nothing else even comes

close." Watergate, by comparison, was a

third greater shoplifting a bag of gummy

bears from a 7-Eleven. Yet literally no

one has been held to account.

Now some of that I think is because the

slow trickle of how we found out the

truth that the Russia collusion thing

was a hoax. But the latest

the latest trickle is that uh Brennan

and Clapper

um and I guess Comey absolutely were

aware that they were using um sketchy

information and creating a hoax to to

basically change the government. And

none of them, as far as I know, none of

them are in jail. Right? How do you not

go to jail for that of all things?

And at the same time, I say to myself,

but but but but Scott, I say to myself,

um this is unprecedented.

It's totally unprecedented that public

figures or some public, you know, public

organizations

would be behind an overthrow of the

government and yet nobody would go to

jail for it. How could that possibly

ever happen?

Oh, there's some newly declassified

documents revealing that a CIA officer

had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald

before the assassination of JFK.

uh contradicting decades of agency

denials.

So apparently a CIA officer George

Nidius

uh oversaw a covert anti-Castro group.

This is from the AF post. They're

writing about this and that uh he had a

conversation with the guy who allegedly

shot Kennedy.

So,

is it possible that the normal way the

country works is that there are

shadowing groups overthrowing the

president on a regular basis

and we never prosecuted anybody for it?

Yes, that's possible.

So, not only is it possible that Kennedy

was killed by an inside government plot,

we watched plotters try to take down

Trump. More than once, probably.

Probably more than once. So, I'm

starting to believe

that every major story that I've

experienced in my lifetime is untrue.

Some of the facts would be true. For

example, it does seem to be a fact that

airplanes hit the 911 or hit the Twin

Towers.

But do we know why? Do we know who

completely behind it?

Maybe we'll find out in 40 years.

I don't think that our wars are really

explained to us truthfully. I don't

think that any of the big events, I

don't think that any of the protests, I

don't think that Black Lives Matter was

organic. I don't think any of the big

stories are real. Maybe not ever in my

life.

It's entirely possible that every big

big story has been fake for every day

that I've been alive and maybe always.

Yeah. the the moonlanding.

My favorite moonlanding

conspiracy theory

is uh that it was filmed on a you know

set, but uh Stanley Kubri specifically

was behind the filming of it.

And I'm not saying I believe it. I'm

just saying that as soon as you imagine

that the most likely way that world is

organized is that all the big stories

are fake.

If you accept that,

then the moon landing just fits right in

there.

But I don't personally, you know, have

enough insight into the moon landing to

say that it's fake. I'm just saying if

it's true that all the big stories are

fake, what are the odds that what are

the odds that that one is real?

You know what I mean?

So, I'm not going to go uh give full

conspiracy theory on that. I'm just

saying if all the other big stories look

suspicious, and they do,

would that be the one that was true?

Maybe. can't rule it out, but maybe.

Anyway, uh Charlie Kirk and probably

some others uh are now trying to

encourage uh mayoral candidate Curtis

Siwa

uh to drop out. So, he's running as a

Republican and would of course get all

the Republican votes because were most

of because there aren't that many

Republicans voting in New York City. But

if he stays in, he would make it harder

for Eric Adams to win running as an

independent. And it might guarantee that

um Zoran

Mani, the uh creepy smiling communist,

gets elected.

So what do you think about that? Should

Curry Leewa step down just so that they

can make sure that M Donnie doesn't get

elected?

I don't know. Um it's worth that's worth

the conversation. Oh, I hate saying

that. I'm going to reward that. That's

worth considering.

So, I don't know if Curtis Leewa is

enough of a team player that he would go

for that, but he does seem to have a uh

a lifetime of service. I mean, he's a

guardian angel founder, right? So, he

has a lifetime of service to the city.

And if he's more serviceoriented than

politically oriented, and he might be,

it would be one hell of a service. So

New York City would would be forever in

his debt if he kept that Republican

nomination

sort of in his control and then threw

all his votes to let's say Eric Adams.

So maybe,

but you may have heard that the New York

Times is getting some backlash cuz they

did a story about Mom Donnie's uh

college application to Colombia in

which, let's see if I can get this

right. um when he filled out his

application to college, Colombia in

particular, he uh checked the back the

box that said he was um

Asian and African,

but he also checked the boxes for Asian,

but also black or African-American.

So

some people say, "Well, you despicable

liar. You lied and said you were black

so that you could get into Colombia."

Now, I have a few observations about

this. Number one observation, it pains

me to say this

like like it hurts me at my chest, but I

have to be consistent with what I've

said in the past. because I don't like

well I don't like opinions that are just

completely inconsistent.

So you may remember that I've said in

the past that we should not hold against

any adult mistakes they made in college.

Anybody remember me saying that? I've

said it publicly a number of times. It's

just too far back. I mean before the age

of 25, your brain isn't even done. And I

would not want to be blamed for anything

I did in college. And I don't know

anybody who would you're not exactly the

same person as you were when you were

college age. And remember this is when

he was applying.

So when he was applying I don't even

know if he was 18 yet. I mean I don't

know the details but was he 17

when he checked those boxes?

Probably right he was certainly in that

under 25 range.

So, separately, I've also said we should

have a 20 year rule. Um, I don't know if

he's 20 years out from it, but it might

it might be that both apply. I don't

blame people for, you know, their

smaller transgressions 20 years ago, and

I don't blame anybody for anything they

did when they were 17 or 18. So, college

age, not interested.

It's a fun story,

you know. I I like I like talking about

it and thinking about it. It's just sort

of a fun interesting little story. But

no, th this isn't really the

unfortunately I just can't drive a steak

through his heart because of that. I

would be inconsistent.

However, I'd like to uh steal an idea

that uh I heard this morning. I won't I

won't uh do an attribution, but it

wasn't my idea.

Uh, all right. I'll tell you it was Greg

Guffelt.

So, Greg, if you're listening, uh, I

wasn't sure if you wanted credit for

this idea, but I'll give it to you

anyway.

Um, does it seem interesting to you

that, uh, Mandani

tried to pretend he was black so he

could get more advantages in society?

Has anybody mentioned that yet?

that pretending you're black gives you

such a substantial lift in getting into

college that uh mom daddy was willing to

lie

and sort of suggest that he was black

because of the benefits.

Yeah.

I I think that's a pretty interesting

part of the story, isn't it? Because I

believe that there's literally no black

person who ever pretended they were

white to get into college ever. I

believe that there's no black person who

ever pretended to be white to get a job

at a Fortune 500 company.

Not in my lifetime. Because in either

case, getting into college or getting

into a corporation, small companies

would be different. I think there's

plenty of discrimination in small

companies, but for the big ones,

everybody knows that it's just a it's

it's like a direct path to the top if

you can sell yourself as as being black

or female or lesbian or whatever. So, I

don't know how we're we're in this world

where black people are claiming a

disadvantage at exactly the same time

people are pretending to be black for

the advantages.

All right.

Uh, amazingly, according to a

postmillennial story by Victor Davis

Hansen,

um, the number of New York City

shootings is at a a low and the murder

rate is way down. And believe it or not,

they had zero shootings and murders on

Independence Day. And it's the first

time ever,

zero. On a day when shooting would be

the easiest to shoot because there's

fireworks anyway, you know, so nobody

would maybe nobody would even know it

was a gunshot. You'd think that the 4th

of July would be a big murder day, but

uh Eric Adams is doing something right,

current mayor, because it's zero. Not

only that, but in the first six months

of the year, New York City saw the the

lowest number of shooting victims and

shooting incidents in recorded history

in recorded history.

And he's not going to be reelected.

Are you freaking kidding me?

If you give me a mayor who in six months

or however long he's been around

can take your murder and violent record

down to levels that nobody's ever even

seen before.

How does that guy or gal not get

reelected?

what

you know if it's really because and I do

believe that's probably because of

changes that he made because remember he

was a he was a police person before he

was a mayor. He knows what he's talking

about. He knows where the the levers are

for decreasing crime and he must have he

must have pulled those levers. Um,

how in the world does Mom Donnie get

elected when he wants to defund the

police

and he's running against an ex police

person who apparently has pushed all the

right levers and got an almost

unbelievable success. I mean, it's hard

to even imagine that you could have

gotten it to the level that it was

historically a low.

The only the only bit of cold water I'll

throw on that is that um there is an age

element to violence. Uh older people are

less violent. And as our population ages

and there are fewer young people in the

cities compared to old people, probably

the

violence would go down a little bit just

because the demographics were older

people. But that didn't happen in 6

months. So whatever this is is probably

Eric Adams.

And he's he's a really good communicator

in my opinion. He he has the charisma,

etc. So if he's not standing all over

this,

he ought to be.

I saw a post on X from a user called

Mila Loves Joe who said that every

single store in San Francisco's Market

Street, that would be like the main

street of San Francisco. Every single

store on Market Street has closed down.

Now, I went to Super Grock and said, "Is

that true?" It turns out that's not

true. But there are a lot of stores, a

lot of stores that closed down. But

here's something I didn't know. That of

the dollar losses from all the crime,

and crime is the reason that they closed

down. Um, 85% of the dollar losses were

from organized gangs.

So, it wasn't even, you know, organic

onesies and twzies and, you know, some

people got together and said, "Oh, let's

hit target." That that happened, too.

But 85% of the dollar losses were

organized gangs sending in big groups of

people to a particular store. So

I wouldn't see retail in San Francisco

coming back until they could figure out

how to handle the gangs. And I'm not

sure how they do that.

Anyway, according to the New York Post,

Andrew Court is writing that most

Americans now can't afford even what he

calls a minimal quality of life.

Uh minimal quality of life means that

you can, you know, eat and you've got a

shelter, but that you could afford a

little bit of entertainment, just a

little bit. Um, and they define that as

a little bit would be able to, let's

say, you know, buy some tickets to a

baseball game or something that you

wanted to watch. Um,

so that's pretty bad.

But, uh, here's what I would ask. Does

it seem to you that the Amish are

unhappy

and they don't buy tickets to events and

watch,

you know, mo blockbuster movies and

stuff? So, it seems to me that um that's

not the end of the world. Um in a

perfect world, everybody would have

enough money to do all the fun things

that they want. Of course, uh if you're

an NPC, you can remind me of that. But

doesn't it seem to you that we're just

not organized as a society for the

things that make us happy? As in big

families, families are getting smaller,

but big. Have you ever noticed that if

you see a family get together, any

members of the same family, that the

rate of laughter goes through the roof?

Do you ever notice that you will laugh

more with your family members than

anybody else?

the I don't know if that's that's not

just my experience, right?

I'm pretty sure that that would be

common for other people, too. So, if we

had bigger families or people had more

access to other cool people their age

with things they have in common, I don't

know that we're worse off because we

can't go to a baseball game in person.

You know, if you've got your phone, you

can get entertainment you can watch. you

put it in your earbuds, it sounds better

than it does in person. And if you hang

out with cool people and, you know,

people who make you happy and love you,

you'll get your dopamine.

Um, it would be better to have money,

but it doesn't mean that you can't have

enjoyment.

Um,

where's all the money going? Well, Lel

Cfield, writing for Breitbart News, is

reporting that uh LA lifeguards are

making up to $500,000 per year.

You probably think that I misspoke

and I didn't really mean that LA

lifeguards, the people at the beach,

are making half a million dollars per

year. You thought that wasn't real,

right? No, it wasn't real. They don't

make up to They don't make up to

$500,000 a year. It's actually up to

700,000 a year. There was one one

lifeguard made $700,000 in one year with

overtime.

So apparently they're well- paid in

general and lots of them made over

$200,000

being lifeguards, but some of them uh

mostly from overtime I believe got

$500,000.

So you wonder where your money's going.

It's going to that muscular guy and the

speedos up in that chair.

Well, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah

Ali Kamini,

uh, he made his first public appearance

since the war.

So, so that that means he's back in

charge, right? Everybody believe that?

Do you believe that the Supreme Leader

is still the Supreme Leader? Or is it

possible that he's being pushed in front

of the camera so that you think he's

still in charge, but that maybe the

military or somebody else is really

calling the shots? Cuz remember, he's

86,

so he's not exactly a fireball anymore.

Well, I did see uh one report on social

media that suggested that uh he's not in

charge. He's a figurehead at this point,

but there was no confirmation of that.

It was just somebody on social media.

So, I'm going to double down on my

prediction that someday we will learn

that he's not in charge.

How many people would buy into that?

I feel like he's not in charge anymore,

but we'll find out.

Well, apparently uh Iran uh shut down

the idea of meeting with the US for

nuclear talks. Uh there was some rumor

that there was going to be a meeting not

too long from now in which Iran and the

US would talk about what works and what

doesn't for their domestic nuclear

program. But uh now they're saying

there's uh public opinion is so angry no

one even dares to talk about diplomacy.

That's according to ESL Begali.

Um so

let's see the foreign minister.

So it looks like we're not going to have

any talks there.

Um, speaking of Ukraine,

so Zilinski had a conversation with

Trump in which Zilinski

uh said it was their most productive

conversation yet and he says that Trump

is very unhappy with Putin

and Trump has said the same thing. Um,

but uh Trump has also said recently that

Putin does not want to work toward a

ceasefire deal. All right. So now Trump

has a lot of uh credibility and ego and

um I guess reputational risk if he can't

get the Ukraine situation sorted out and

reasonably soon. If he waits till the

end of his the end of his four years,

it's not going to be nearly as

impressive because you you're just going

to say, "Well, they just got tired of

fighting." But what levers does he have

left? Because it seems obvious at this

point that Putin thinks he's winning and

is right because he's still capturing

territory

um and doesn't have any reason to stop.

He's just going to keep going. What

possible leverage does Trump have? He's

already starving Ukraine of weapons

because the US needs them, too. And we

don't have enough weapons. I don't know

which ones, but things like uh

anti-rocket missiles and stuff we need

for the United States to protect our own

assets. So,

what is Trump going to do? Is Trump

going to go wildly sending them new

weapons

or is Trump going to

put extra super duper sanctions on

Russia?

And I'm always surprised. It's like, is

there some sanction we haven't put on

them yet? Have we really been involved

in a war for years and there were

sanctions we could have put on Russia

that for some reason we didn't?

I don't know what's left. So,

if you were to look at this as any other

president, if it were not Trump, you

would say there are no levers. The war

is going to keep going until till Russia

owns all of Ukraine. I mean, that would

be the obvious direction it's going. But

when you're talking about Trump,

suddenly all bets are off because he

does have that magic ability to find the

one solution that nobody was even

talking about as a solution. You know,

something that's so far out of the box

that you never even thought of it. Now,

can he pull the rabbit out of the hat

with this? Is there something he could

do or promise or negotiate that would

get Putin to back down? I don't see it,

but it will be very fun to see if he can

pull that rabbit out of a hat. So, the

fact that I don't see any way he can do

it doesn't probably doesn't predict that

he can or can't do it. That would just

be my own limitation.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what

I've got to say today. I knew I'd go a

little long because there's so much news

out there, but you deserved it because

it's Sunday and you like the long ones.

All right. Um, to my beloved subscribers

on locals, I'm going to come to you

privately in a moment. And the rest of

you, thank you so much for joining. And

uh, come back tomorrow, same time, same

place. Probably be a little shorter

tomorrow. All right.

local supporters.