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Episodes Episode #2932

Episode 2932 CWSA 08/19/25

Episode #2932 Aug 19, 2025 53:09 23,707 views

Trump ends most wars, Zelensky wears a suit, lots more fun ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

Opening General Commentary

It's good to see you. There's Rub in the front. Grab a chair. Oh, you all look happy this morning. Good morning. Well, let's get our comments going and then we've got a show for you. Come on. Come on. Technology, you can do it. Oh, it's good to see all you happy people coming in. All right, there w…

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SimultaneousSip General Commentary

t time you've ever had. But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience to levels that no one can understand with their tiny shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mug or a glass or a tankard or a stein, a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your…

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NewsReaction Health & Biohacking

a challenge where you do 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, and you try to get it under five minutes. Do you think you could do that? 100 push-ups? I don't know. I think it might take me all day to do 100 push-ups. Five minutes. That's pretty impressive. So, 71-year-old RFK Jr. was showing the kids how to…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

y big city, but if you could arrest 300 people without trying that hard. Now, did they go to their homes because they knew that they should arrest them for something that they knew about, or did they actually observe 300 crimes in action? Don't you wonder which one it is? Did they just walk around a…

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MainContent Energy & Mood Management

crime. Well, here's a data point. I'm not sure I believe it. There's a study published in Nature Mental Health that said that globally suicide rates have fallen nearly 30% since the '90s. Do you believe that suicide rates are down 30% globally? And apparently it's not just in a few places that are…

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NewsReaction Media & Fake News

omebody. You could use a dating app. You could use social media. And you would at least feel connected to the real world. So that's my guess. Social media reduced people taking their own life. Just a guess. Well, you may have seen that MSNBC is changing its name, and boy are they getting mocked. Th…

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MainContent AI & Technology

he worst idea that any of us have ever seen. Now, if I could soften it a little bit, I will give you an observation that I've made because I've been involved in designing logos and catchphrases and stuff for most of my career. A lot of licensed stuff needs to have some kind of catchy name. So over…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

and ask yourself if that had not already existed and you were in a meeting and somebody pitched it, would you have said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one." And you will find that even the most famous and successful logos, you will look at them and you go, I would not have green lit that. So, nobod…

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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

't even need to learn to read. Well, I guess I'd have to read well enough to use the app, but that's about it. All right. So let's check in on Democrats, see what ridiculous things they're doing. Democrat Representative LaMonica McIver claims that his use of the phrase liberation day is secret code…

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NewsReaction Economics & Finance

room. Does that seem like the problem? Maybe it has something more to do with running Kamala Harris as your candidate. Was she the adult in the room? The drunken idiot. That was the adult in the room. Yeah, that's what it was. So I'm loving watching Democrats have no idea what they did wrong or wha…

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NewsReaction Economics & Finance

hy is it that Trump is doing so well? It's because he's picking policies and also people to implement them who are excellent and very popular. It's not really some kind of weird mystery. If Democrats simply did what Republicans are doing, pick popular things and promote them and get the right people…

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NewsReaction Media & Fake News

k Americans like pets. And what I mean by that is there's this horrible assumption that in order for black Americans to succeed, it is necessary for white Americans to act differently. And there's no sense that black Americans could just do their own thing like everybody else in the world. Why are t…

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NewsReaction Health & Biohacking

other people need me to succeed?" That's not really fair, is it? So anyway, that's my take is that you shouldn't treat other people as pets. You should assume that if they do the right things, they'll get the right outcomes like everybody else. Well, the Democrat party continues to collapse. So as…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

apse looks like. That's as collapsy as you can get. There's nothing left. Anyway, well, DOGE is claiming that their savings that they've already arranged for are going to be more than 200 billion. And that's just so far. So, that would be $1,300 per taxpayer. Really? Huh? So, the Epoch Times is rep…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

at we're gonna have any new great revelations because Congress is going to get some more Epstein files? I feel like they had some sense which of their files were useful and would make a difference and which weren't. I feel like it might be all we're going to see now is the worthless files and we'll…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

o he would know. And he was not exactly Trump's best friend, although often they were on the same side and the same team. But I kind of believe him. If Bill Barr says the files don't implicate Trump whatsoever, I kind of believe that. He also points out the obvious that if it did, that would already…

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MainContent Persuasion

more years, you might never die. I think I've been hearing that for 50 years. Meanwhile, the Texas Democrats who went rogue and left the state so that they wouldn't have to vote on the gerrymandering proposal in Texas, they have returned. And did they gain anything? And once again, we see that they…

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NewsReaction Persuasion

whether or not he can get it done. But he's already made you think about what it's like to have them all done. It's perfect technique. He also uses repetition. He just keeps saying, "Oh yeah, I think we can get this done. We got to get this done. We got to stop killing. We got to get it done." Repet…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

win because it would make a better story. Do you know what would make a great story with the ending of the Ukraine war? The great story would be that Trump came in office and ended all war everywhere on the planet. That's the best story. You can't get a better story. Now, given the power of that sto…

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MainContent Persuasion

a better story than that. So, if I had to predict, I don't think it'll happen soon necessarily, but yeah, he'll get it done. I guess Trump was caught on a hot mic talking to Macron and he said, quote, talking about Putin, he says, I think he wants to make a deal for me. You understand that? As craz…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

but you did it for me. Now, when I'm negotiating these sanctions and stuff like that, well, maybe I owe you one." So, I think it's more about Putin knowing that he wants to have the president of the United States owe him one. So, in that sense, he might be doing it for Trump. I guess Trump and Zele…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

you might have said to yourself, well, I have to admit those other countries don't seem to be respecting him. They should, but I don't think they are. Well, what do you think now? Now that you got all of Europe to come over on short notice, you've got Putin taking his phone calls and coming to Alask…

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

we've had more progress toward ending this war than in the past three and a half years. Now, I would debate whether there's progress because the only thing that matters is who gets what land and that's nowhere near settled. So, the fact that it's not settled and it doesn't look like it will be, I'm…

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NewsReaction Health & Biohacking

don't know where I guess that leaves out the European leaders but maybe they won't mind. I don't know. So that's coming. Trilateral. You're going to hear that word a lot. Trilateral. Well, Hamas has accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal from a bunch of Arab mediators. So, that's good news, right? No,…

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Tangent Economics & Finance

t does look to me like they're not going to save hostages if it would slow them down from completely depopulating and having command and control over Gaza forever. So I think the larger, you know I'm not in their heads so I can't read their minds but it does look like the larger goal is complete con…

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NewsReaction Climate & Environment

it taste right according to the Smithsonian magazine. And so we may have the first lab grown cultured fish. Now, here's the weird thing. I'm a pescatarian, so I eat fish. I don't love it. In fact, I don't really like any fish, but I eat them because protein. But even I'm grossed out by this lab grow…

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Tangent General Commentary

t want to have to prepare it. I'm going to buy a steak and then maybe I'll change my mind and not eat it. I haven't eaten steak, I don't know, 40 years. Long time. About 40 years, I guess. And I thought, well, I just won't tell anybody because then if I change my mind, I don't have to explain it. Bu…

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Closing General Commentary

s up and starts creating some excitement. Yeah. I'm watching Land Man with Billy Bob Thornton. If you haven't seen that show, Land Man, oh my god, is that well done. The acting, the casting, the writing, the concept, you know, of the people they put together for it. It's really good. It's like one…

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It's good to see you. There's Rub in the front. Grab a chair. Oh, you all look happy this morning. Good morning.

Well, let's get our comments going and then we've got a show for you. Come on. Come on. Technology, you can do it. Oh, it's good to see all you happy people coming in. All right, there we go. You should not take a minute to open a file. That's what I say.

Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and it's the best time you've ever had.

But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience to levels that no one can understand with their tiny shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mug or a glass or a tankard or a stein, a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip.

That's right. And it happens now.

Well, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth were kicking off their, I guess they're going to do a fitness tour. I don't know where they're going to go, but the two of them are super fit. And they've got some kind of a challenge where you do 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, and you try to get it under five minutes. Do you think you could do that? 100 push-ups? I don't know. I think it might take me all day to do 100 push-ups. Five minutes. That's pretty impressive.

So, 71-year-old RFK Jr. was showing the kids how to be fit. Quite impressive. So, I like that. I feel like it's not since when was the last time the federal government had a fitness thing. Was Trump didn't do it last time, right? And I don't think Biden did it. So, it's been a while.

Well, according to the Epoch Times, more than 300 people have been arrested so far in Washington DC as the federal crackdown on crime continues. 300 arrests. Doesn't that feel like a lot? You know, I realize that Washington DC is a pretty big city, but if you could arrest 300 people without trying that hard. Now, did they go to their homes because they knew that they should arrest them for something that they knew about, or did they actually observe 300 crimes in action? Don't you wonder which one it is? Did they just walk around and say, "Oh, there's another one. Well, pull them in. Well, there's another one." I don't really know, but 300 feels like a lot. So, good job on that.

I would say also it seems like the Democrats have given up on the idea that they can make anything of this. I feel like the public really, really likes a reduction in crime, as in everybody likes it. As in, even the Democrats, everybody seems to like less crime.

Well, here's a data point. I'm not sure I believe it. There's a study published in Nature Mental Health that said that globally suicide rates have fallen nearly 30% since the '90s. Do you believe that suicide rates are down 30% globally? And apparently it's not just in a few places that are making the difference. There's some kind of universal force that has greatly reduced suicide. Now, what would that be? I have my hypothesis. Since the change comes from 1990, I feel like it's the internet because one of the things that would cause you to take your own life besides being in pain would be if you didn't have anything going on and you had no connections in the world and you didn't have any source of dopamine. But as long as you have your phone and the internet, you can have some kind of connection. You could play a video game and chat with all the gamers. You could flirt with somebody. You could use a dating app. You could use social media. And you would at least feel connected to the real world. So that's my guess. Social media reduced people taking their own life. Just a guess.

Well, you may have seen that MSNBC is changing its name, and boy are they getting mocked. Their new name will be MS Now. So, it's my source for news, opinion, and world. Okay, first of all, that's stupid. My source for news, opinion, and world. Do you need to get a gallon of world? I know what it means to get news and I know what it means to consume someone's opinion. What does it mean to get some world? Man, I wouldn't mind getting some world right now. Wait, did I just make it dirty? It sounds totally dirty when you say it if you say it that way. Hey, you wouldn't mind giving me a little world, would you? Yeah, it's disgusting.

Anyway, so the first two letters, MS, this stands for my source. I don't know why that has to have a space between that and the rest of the letters. Doesn't make any sense to me, but it looks like Ms. Now. Apparently they're not going to have a mister now. So it's just going to be a women-run organization. Ms. Now. And everything I saw about it was people mocking the new logo and the new name and everybody's wondering, I wonder how much they paid to have somebody come up with the worst idea that any of us have ever seen.

Now, if I could soften it a little bit, I will give you an observation that I've made because I've been involved in designing logos and catchphrases and stuff for most of my career. A lot of licensed stuff needs to have some kind of catchy name. So over the Dilbert career, I've had to work with lots of people on various logos for licensed materials and stuff like that. And one of the things I learned is that there are no two people in the world who like the same logo or the same name. It's impossible. You can't find two people who will like the same logo or the same new name for a company. You just don't find it. You can get one person to like it, the person who suggests it, and then everybody else will be like, "No, that's not working." But here's an exercise that I recommend to all of you. Drive down the street and look at anybody's logo and anybody's phrase, you know, if they have some kind of marketing phrase and ask yourself if that had not already existed and you were in a meeting and somebody pitched it, would you have said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one." And you will find that even the most famous and successful logos, you will look at them and you go, I would not have green lit that. So, nobody's ever happy with logos and name changes.

Well, according to The Verge, there's a company called Grammarly that has now released nine different AI apps for various writing related things. But here are a few of them. They've got one that will provide feedback about what your instructor in college would like in your writing so that it can actually advise you how to write in a way that your specific instructor is going to like and give you an A. That's a pretty good app if it works. They also have a plagiarism checker to make sure that you didn't steal something. And they have an AI detector so they can tell, this would be more like for the teacher, they can tell if AI wrote your material. And then they've got AI agents to improve your writing, including the likely reader reaction to it. They've got a proofreader agent that provides inline writing suggestions. They've got a paraphrase agent that adjusts writing to suit specific tones, audiences, and styles. And they've got one for attribution.

So, do you recognize the weak link in that process? So, you got a human being and they use apps to make sure that they've written something correctly. Doesn't it feel to you like the human being is the problem here? And if you just get rid of the human being entirely, then you'd have something. But the amount that the human does is just getting smaller and smaller. So what happens when people stop going to college or listening or figuring out how to write because they don't have to because AI is doing all the work for them? I feel like we're reaching a place where a whole bunch of people are going to decide that they don't even need to learn to read. Well, I guess I'd have to read well enough to use the app, but that's about it.

All right. So let's check in on Democrats, see what ridiculous things they're doing. Democrat Representative LaMonica McIver claims that his use of the phrase liberation day is secret code for white power. Liberation Day, the secret code for white power. So, this is one of your best Democrats here.

According to Fox News, the New Yorker writer who I guess recently had trashed Sydney Sweeney was discovered to have some anti-white posts on social media that included quote, "I hate white men." And made attacks on something called white capitalism. Okay, there's another Democrat.

And then Representative Ayanna Pressley, according to Breitbart News, she went on a rant about how Democrats should not become more moderate to restore their image. She wants them to fight harder. And she said, "Democrats were so busy, so focused on proving that we were the adults in the room when we forgot to demonstrate that we're the fighters in the room." So, that's a Democrat leader's take on what Democrats did wrong. They were trying too hard to be the adults in the room. Does that seem like the problem? Maybe it has something more to do with running Kamala Harris as your candidate. Was she the adult in the room? The drunken idiot. That was the adult in the room. Yeah, that's what it was.

So I'm loving watching Democrats have no idea what they did wrong or what to do later to change it. Absolutely no idea. They don't talk about the quality of their candidates. They don't talk about their policies. They don't talk about their ideas. They literally think that if they fought harder, whatever that is, whatever that is, fought harder, that everything will turn around. Now, as long as that's what they think, there isn't really much chance they're going to succeed because they're so far from the actual solution. Why is it that Trump is doing so well? It's because he's picking policies and also people to implement them who are excellent and very popular. It's not really some kind of weird mystery. If Democrats simply did what Republicans are doing, pick popular things and promote them and get the right people hired to implement, if you just did that, I believe that your reputation would be repaired quite quickly. Quite quickly.

Well, I've got an observation that I've been working on that might get me double cancelled, but I'm going to trot it out and see if it resonates with you. So, would you agree that Democrats and Republicans have a different approach to black America? I think you'd all agree with that, right? But my observation is that Democrats treat black Americans like pets. And what I mean by that is there's this horrible assumption that in order for black Americans to succeed, it is necessary for white Americans to act differently. And there's no sense that black Americans could just do their own thing like everybody else in the world. Why are they the only group that can't succeed unless white people do something differently? And Republicans, I believe, say everybody can succeed. You just have to do the things that successful people do. How about staying out of jail? How about paying attention in school or learning a trade and making sure that you're a productive, valuable member of society? That works pretty much every time. Every time.

So, I find myself almost revolted when I see Democrats treating black Americans like it's the only group that can't succeed without the white people doing something different. And you know, my opinion, what I found out when I got cancelled is that black Americans did not want any advice from white Americans. If we were going to invest, they would certainly talk about that, you know, if there's money involved, but they weren't looking for our good ideas. And I feel like I would agree with them, say, "Oh, how about I just shut up and leave you alone? How about I just stay out of it because you really don't need me to succeed when I imagine that other people need me to succeed?" That's not really fair, is it? So anyway, that's my take is that you shouldn't treat other people as pets. You should assume that if they do the right things, they'll get the right outcomes like everybody else.

Well, the Democrat party continues to collapse. So as you know, they have no policies anybody cares about and they have no leaders that are identifiable as leaders, but they also don't have much money. So apparently the Republicans, the RNC has raised five times more money than the DNC according to Newsmax. And it's $80 million compared to $15 million. So, Democrats, they literally don't have anything. So, they've got a bad reputation. They've got no ideas. They have no leaders. And now they have no money. That is what a collapse looks like. That's as collapsy as you can get. There's nothing left.

Anyway, well, DOGE is claiming that their savings that they've already arranged for are going to be more than 200 billion. And that's just so far. So, that would be $1,300 per taxpayer. Really? Huh? So, the Epoch Times is reporting on that. Now, I would remind you that whenever you're looking at this big data stuff, especially if money is involved, I'm not sure you can believe any of it. So, I'm not going to say that because I love DOGE, which I do, and I think that they're all there for the right reason, which I do, and they're all super qualified and capable, which they are. That's still not enough to assume that any number they produce is going to be reliable. That's a whole different deal. Nobody really can produce reliable numbers. It's almost not even a thing. But since DOGE is almost certainly directionally valuable, you know, as long as they're working on it and chewing away and cancelling contracts, I'm pretty sure it's working in the right direction. So, I don't need the exact numbers for that.

Well, according to Newsmax, Representative Comer is going to be in Congress talking to the, I guess the DOJ is going to start sharing the Epstein files with Congress. That would be Comer's oversight group. And what do you expect from that? Does anybody expect that we're gonna have any new great revelations because Congress is going to get some more Epstein files? I feel like they had some sense which of their files were useful and would make a difference and which weren't. I feel like it might be all we're going to see now is the worthless files and we'll just be pouring through them and saying, "Ah, where's the good stuff?" And there just won't be any good stuff.

We did hear that Bill Barr apparently has said that Trump was not implicated in the Epstein files. Now, he would have seen the Epstein files, so he would know. And he was not exactly Trump's best friend, although often they were on the same side and the same team. But I kind of believe him. If Bill Barr says the files don't implicate Trump whatsoever, I kind of believe that. He also points out the obvious that if it did, that would already be leaked because the Democrats had access to the same thing he had access to. And so that would be out.

I saw Mario Nawfal reporting on something coming out of the growth forge AI that there's this immunologist Daria Unutma Mazutmas. Anyway, he claims that if you survive the next 10 years, that you could gain an additional 50 years of life because in the next 10 years the AI and all would figure out how to solve all the big problems. What do you think about that? I feel like that would be a really really big problem. The only thing worse than not having enough babies is having a bunch of old people who refuse to die because they're going to use up all the resources, but they're not going to be working for the most part. So, this feels like really bad news. But I'm not buying it. Yeah, bookish girl, I agree with you. I'm not believing it. How long have we been hearing that? That if you could survive just 10 more years, you might never die. I think I've been hearing that for 50 years.

Meanwhile, the Texas Democrats who went rogue and left the state so that they wouldn't have to vote on the gerrymandering proposal in Texas, they have returned. And did they gain anything? And once again, we see that they didn't have any leaders because you can't name anybody who was associated with it, right? There's no leader. And they didn't have any ideas other than running away. That's not really an idea. And the only thing they got out of it was the theater. The fact that they put on a little play, a little skit, and then the news covered it, and then they did a little social media hits. It was pure theater, but it wasn't even useful theater because lots of times, especially when Trump does it, the theater is functional, like it's accomplishing something or it's drawing attention to something. What good did this do? Didn't it just make the Democrats look like losers? And maybe it made the fight bigger, but it kind of looks like the Republicans had the better hand because there are more Republican states that have not yet completely gerrymandered than there were Democrat states. So, they're not going to win in the long run. They didn't win anything in the short run. And the people who had to go to work every day said to themselves, "Aren't we paying them? I think we're paying them to show up. Maybe they should show up." So, that was a big fail for Democrats.

I saw on Fox News Steven Miller was estimating that in addition to the undercounting of the census between blue states and red, the 2020 census inclusion of illegal aliens gave Democrats 20 to 30 extra seats in Congress. Now, you could debate whether that was what the Constitution intended, but whether it intended it or not, it was a 20 to 30 seat difference. So, if that goes away, it's going to be tough to dislodge the Republicans from power.

I saw a post by Stephen A. Smith, who said that all of the recent Russian aggression came because of three Democrat presidents. Do you ever think about that? I've never thought about this. But here's what Stephen A. Smith points out. He said we ain't going to act like Trump caused this now. It's Democrats in office. He said it was Biden in office when Putin moved into Ukraine. So that's on Biden. It was Obama who was in charge when Russia invaded Crimea. So that's another Democrat. And he points out that Clinton was in office when he made a deal to disarm Ukraine. So Clinton disarms Ukraine and then Obama's in charge when Crimea is lost and then Biden's in charge when the rest of the country is under attack. Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine the Republicans wouldn't have done a better job.

Now, one of the things that I'm loving is that Trump says over and over again, "The war would have never happened if I'd been president." Now, I don't know that you could prove that, but it's a claim that is reasonable enough that if you hear it enough, you're going to think it's true. And he certainly says it enough, but now you're hearing other people repeating it. It's now becoming more common sense that if Trump had been in charge, it wouldn't have happened. And that's what the Stephen A. Smith post does. It kind of just turns it into common sense. When the Democrats are in charge, Putin gets aggressive because he knows there's a difference between the Republicans in charge and the Democrats, especially Trump.

Well, let's speak about Ukraine. As you know, there were seven major leaders of the European countries and that included NATO plus the European Union. So, they all showed up at the White House along with Zelensky. Now, the important things are that Zelensky wore a suit, but a weird looking suit with no neck tie, but still it made Trump happy that he had put some effort into it. And here's one of the persuasion tips about Trump that I've told you before, but the more examples you see, the more it will stick. Trump is the expert at making the biggest difference between making him happy and making him not happy. So when Zelensky didn't wear the right clothes the last time he visited, Trump made sure that he acted really unhappy. And then when Zelensky wears a respectful nice suit, Trump treats him well and laughs and says, "Yeah, you look great. You look amazing." So he doesn't just say, "All right, well that's better." He makes this really big gap between making him happy wearing a nice suit versus not making him happy. So that is persuasion lesson one. The biggest gap between making him happy and not making him happy. And he does that consistently. Does it really well, better than I've ever seen really for a leader.

But the question is, was any progress made? Well, I don't know if you'd call it progress, but some things happened. One is that Ukraine apparently is signing up to buy a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons from the US that would be paid for by Europe, I guess. And if that kept up, the US would very quickly make up all the money that has spent so far in Ukraine. It wouldn't take long. Now of course it wouldn't, you know, the weapons makers are not the taxpayers, but at least it would be coming back to the homeland. So, that's good. And a lot of that, I guess half of that is for drones. $50 billion for drone production. Wow, that's a lot.

There is a report that Putin has agreed that a United States could be part of a peace settlement or security guarantee. Now I'm not sure that Putin has really agreed to that or maybe there's some details we don't know about that. But would Putin really agree to a NATO like or a NATOish situation when his biggest problem is he doesn't want NATO there? Oh no. As long as you don't call it NATO and they don't pay any dues. Oh, that's fine. So, I'm having trouble believing that Putin would really agree to Americans having such a presence there that they were the security guarantee. Now, that doesn't mean that we would have troops on the ground, but it does mean that we would commit to respond if Russia went deeper into Ukraine. So, do you believe that Putin has said yes to that? That'd be a weird change. I'm gonna say I'm skeptical that Putin's okay with that. We'll see.

And I would still say that the best way to resolve the territories that are in dispute is with a referendum. But I'm going to add a little nuance to that. You don't have to have the referendum done right away. Suppose you said, "All right, Russia, we're going to have a referendum and then the people who live in these disputed territories. Only the residents will get to decide if Russia or Ukraine owns them." But and then you say, "But we don't have the right situation to do the referendum because there's too much, you know, war torn problems there." So, we're definitely going to do a referendum, but we're going to plan it for a year from now. So, we can stop fighting right away and then later separately, we will very peacefully decide through a referendum where this land goes, but it doesn't have to be right away. Now, what is Russia going to do? Are they going to say, "No, if the residents want to go to Ukraine, we're not going to let them." Well, that would not be consistent with how they tried to frame their involvement. You know, they tried to frame it like they're saving the residents, but it would allow us to do an end to the war even if that referendum never happened and it just kept getting pushed down the path.

The other problem that Zelensky says is that the Ukrainian constitution doesn't allow him to trade land for peace. But it seems like that would be easy to get around. And the way to get around it would be to say it's no longer your territory. It would be one thing if he gave away land that he owned, but he doesn't own that land. You can't give away something that somebody already has. So, I feel like they could get around that constitution thing by saying, "All right, we already lost that land, so it's not ours to give away or not give away. It's already gone." And then you go from there. So, I feel like the constitutional thing you could just define it away basically.

Trump says according to Just the News that the Russia Ukraine war if he can get it solved is the last conflict he needs to resolve. Do you see the beauty of that statement? It's the last conflict he needs to resolve. The beauty of that is that he's making you think past the sale. The sale is whether or not he can get it done. But he's already made you think about what it's like to have them all done. It's perfect technique. He also uses repetition. He just keeps saying, "Oh yeah, I think we can get this done. We got to get this done. We got to stop killing. We got to get it done." Repetition really matters for persuasion. So he's got that right. So he's got the repetition and he's making us think past the ending of it. That's all good.

But here's the best part. Remember I always told you that reality follows the best story, the best story. So if you're watching a big, let's say, Super Bowl and there are two quarterbacks that are famous, one of them often has a better story. So it might be somebody, for example, who had been fired by the very team that they end up playing in the Super Bowl. Now, if that quarterback wins after being fired by the team that they're playing, well, that's a better story. So, it's more likely that that quarterback will win because it would make a better story. Do you know what would make a great story with the ending of the Ukraine war? The great story would be that Trump came in office and ended all war everywhere on the planet. That's the best story. You can't get a better story. Now, given the power of that story and knowing that, you know, wars all have to end. Eventually, they have to end. That is a really strong base because other people are going to have the same feeling. Wow, this is the last one he has to solve and then he's solved all wars on Earth. There must be other wars I don't know about. There's always a bunch of little ones going on. But it would make the best story if this president who got shot in a year, was impeached twice, has 34 felony counts, and was down and out, but came back against all odds. And he didn't just come back, he ended all war on earth. Is there a better story than that? No. No, there's not. There's nothing that would be a better story than that. So, if I had to predict, I don't think it'll happen soon necessarily, but yeah, he'll get it done.

I guess Trump was caught on a hot mic talking to Macron and he said, quote, talking about Putin, he says, I think he wants to make a deal for me. You understand that? As crazy as it sounds. Then Macron was just diplomatic and he said, "Uh, yeah, any deal would be great news." But what about that framing? Trump says that Putin wants to do it for him and that part of Putin's motivation might be to get this done for Trump. Does that sound real? I do believe Putin might have said something like that because that would be good persuasion too and he would know it would work on Trump. But I also think that another way to look at that is that Putin knows that if he does something for Trump, Trump's going to respond in kind. So, I do believe that Putin wants to get it done under the Trump administration because if he can do that, then he's got something that Trump will say, "All right, you know, you did that for me. Didn't have to do it the way you did it, but you did it for me. Now, when I'm negotiating these sanctions and stuff like that, well, maybe I owe you one." So, I think it's more about Putin knowing that he wants to have the president of the United States owe him one. So, in that sense, he might be doing it for Trump.

I guess Trump and Zelensky had some joking around in the Oval Office, not the Oval Office, but afterwards when they sit in those two chairs awkwardly. And Zelensky, as you know, cancelled Ukrainian elections because he was in the middle of a war. And Trump joked that he might follow Zelensky's lead and cancel the 2028 election. Now, I can't believe that Trump keeps doing this because he's just poking the Democrats and it's wild to watch. I wouldn't recommend it and I definitely wouldn't recommend any of you copy this technique, but Trump might be the only person in the world who could joke about this and just get away with it. If it makes them talk about this instead of other things, well, it's probably to his advantage. So, he just loves poking that bear.

Do you remember when all the smart people were saying that the other countries don't respect Trump in the first term especially? You remember that? And even if you liked Trump, you might have said to yourself, well, I have to admit those other countries don't seem to be respecting him. They should, but I don't think they are. Well, what do you think now? Now that you got all of Europe to come over on short notice, you've got Putin taking his phone calls and coming to Alaska and he's working on arguably the most important topic and he'll probably get it done eventually, maybe not right away, but when you saw the photos of the Oval Office with all the European leaders in there and Zelensky and Trump behind his desk and all the rest look like visitors who were in their chairs around the room, it's hard to imagine that the rest of the world has a negative opinion of him. I don't think they do. I think they're just going to pay their tariffs and hope he can end all war.

Anyway, and according to the Finland president, he said that in the past two weeks, we've had more progress toward ending this war than in the past three and a half years. Now, I would debate whether there's progress because the only thing that matters is who gets what land and that's nowhere near settled. So, the fact that it's not settled and it doesn't look like it will be, I'm not really sure there's any progress. But if they all feel like there's progress, this adds to that feeling that it's inevitable. What you would want is for Putin to feel that ending the war is inevitable and that there's progress toward making it happen because just putting him in that frame of mind is going to get him a lot closer to changing his mind if he needs to on any land. Same with Zelensky. So I guess the plan is that Zelensky and Putin will meet and if that goes well then Trump will meet with the two of them as a trilateral. I don't know where I guess that leaves out the European leaders but maybe they won't mind. I don't know. So that's coming. Trilateral. You're going to hear that word a lot. Trilateral.

Well, Hamas has accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal from a bunch of Arab mediators. So, that's good news, right? No, because there's no chance that Israel is going to accept it. So, Israel is not thinking about a ceasefire. They're thinking about relocating hundreds of thousands of people and controlling the 25% of Gaza that they have not yet completely controlled. So their take is that we want all the hostages back, but we're not going to do this ceasefire thing anymore. That's what it looks like. It looks like Israel's just decided they're going to end this even at the expense of their hostages. They won't say that out loud, of course, but it does look to me like they're not going to save hostages if it would slow them down from completely depopulating and having command and control over Gaza forever. So I think the larger, you know I'm not in their heads so I can't read their minds but it does look like the larger goal is complete control of Gaza even if it's not the ideal situation for getting back hostages but anyway I wouldn't expect anything to happen from that.

Well, the State Department has reportedly revoked 6,000 foreign student visas because these foreign students were accused, I'm reading this in Red State, accused of various crimes. So, some of it is overstaying, you know, just staying longer than their visa. But there are other law violations and some of them were promoting terroristic views. According to who? I don't know, whoever makes that decision, but 6,000. Can you believe that? 6,000 students are being shipped home for bad behavior. 6,000. That's a lot. Wow. I would guess their violations were not big ones. And I don't know what percentage of them are just student visa overstays. You know, that would be the lowest level of crime, I guess, would be overstaying a visa. But if you do, you got to go home.

Well, the FDA has green lit a new lab grown salmon. So, it's going to look like a salmon and maybe taste like it, but it will be made out of cells that they grew in a lab. And then they added some vegetable stuff to it and made it taste right according to the Smithsonian magazine. And so we may have the first lab grown cultured fish. Now, here's the weird thing. I'm a pescatarian, so I eat fish. I don't love it. In fact, I don't really like any fish, but I eat them because protein. But even I'm grossed out by this lab grown meat. You would think that I would be more grossed out by the thought of eating a dead animal or dead fish. But eating a dead fish, for whatever reason, feels more palatable than this lab grown franken fish monstrosity. But I'm sure it's fine.

So, here's a real story. Yesterday I said to myself, I'm not going to tell anybody, but I'm going to order a steak on DoorDash because I don't want to have to prepare it. I'm going to buy a steak and then maybe I'll change my mind and not eat it. I haven't eaten steak, I don't know, 40 years. Long time. About 40 years, I guess. And I thought, well, I just won't tell anybody because then if I change my mind, I don't have to explain it. But, you know, so I go to DoorDash and I start shopping for a steak. Do you know what a steak costs? Oh my god. The steaks locally were $54 just for the steak. If you wanted something on the side or a beverage. Well, that's more. And then you've got the delivery fee and then you got the tip. And I'm thinking to myself, am I really gonna pay, I don't know, $150 for a steak or whatever it was when you add everything in. Maybe $100 for a steak. And I actually changed my mind because if I liked it, I didn't want to spend $54 every time I ate. So, I'm doing okay financially. Like, I don't have any money problems. But even I wouldn't buy a $54 steak. Do any of you buy $54 steaks? Is it only because it was on DoorDash? Now, I understand that it would be cheaper if you buy your own cut of meat and cook it at home and stuff, but I had no idea that a steak was that expensive. Now, I knew the price was up, but my god, $54 for a steak. Incredible.

Well, Trump is going all Don Quixote on the windmills in New Jersey. Says they're not dependable and they raise electricity prices and he wants to get rid of windmills. Do you think that's another one of those 80/20? I don't know if it's 80/20, but I feel like most people, even if they're green, you know, they like green stuff, they probably think the windmills are not the best way to get there. So, I feel like Trump has yet again, save the whales, save the birds, you know, don't kill the whales, don't kill the birds, it's ugly, get rid of these windmills. So, I think he picked another winning topic as he does. A lot of you hate windmills. I know. I've heard from you.

All right. It's a slowish news day until Trump wakes up and starts creating some excitement. Yeah.

I'm watching Land Man with Billy Bob Thornton. If you haven't seen that show, Land Man, oh my god, is that well done. The acting, the casting, the writing, the concept, you know, of the people they put together for it. It's really good. It's like one of the best things you'll ever see. They do have at least two scenes where somebody's tied to a chair and tortured. I don't love that. But it was so good that I didn't turn it off because I have a rule. As soon as a movie puts somebody in a chair, ties them to a chair to torture them, as soon as that happens, I turn it off. And I will never watch the rest of that movie. But Land Man was so good, I was flexible on that rule.

All right. Land Man, I believe, is on Prime Video. Only Prime Video, I think. I'm not 100% sure. One of my biggest problems is I have a number of streaming services. Well, it's not my biggest problem, but pain in the ass. And I'll start watching something and I'll like it and then I'll never be able to find it again. Has anybody had that problem? I'll be like, "Was that on HBO Max?" Then you spend 10 minutes looking, it's not there. Okay, I think it was on Netflix. Spend 10 minutes looking and it's not and then you're like, "Okay, I've been here 20 minutes. I only had 20 minutes to watch the show. I'm done." It's so hard to find anything to watch, especially even if you've started it. Trying to navigate to the Paramount stuff from where you are. It's tough.

All right. I'm going to say hi to my beloved subscribers on Locals. The rest of you, I'm hoping to see you tomorrow, same time and same place for more fun. But right now, we'll update the stream if this works.

It's good to see you.

There's Rub in the front.

Grab a chair.

Oh, you all look happy this morning.

Good morning.

Well, let's get our comments going and then we got a show for you.

Come on.

Come on.

Technology, you can do it.

Oh, it's good to see all you happy people coming in.

H All right, there we go.

You should not take a minute to open a file.

That's what I say.

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

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Well, RFK Jr.

and Pete Ath were kicking off their uh I guess they're going to do a fitness tour.

I don't know where they're going to go, but the two of them are super fit.

And they've got some kind of a challenge where you do 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, and you try to get it under five minutes.

Do you think you could do that?

100 push-ups?

I don't know.

I think it might take me all day to do 100 push-ups.

Five minutes.

That's pretty impressive.

So, 71-year-old uh RFK Jr.

was showing the kids how to be fit.

Quite impressive.

So, I like that.

I I feel like it's not since when was the last time the uh federal government had a fitness uh thing was Trump didn't do it last time, right?

And I don't think Biden did it.

So, it's been a while.

Well, according to the Epic Times, um, more than 300 people have been arrested so far in Washington DC as the federal crackdown on crime continues.

300 arrests.

Doesn't that feel like a lot?

You know, I realize that Washington DC is a, you know, pretty big city, but if you could arrest 300 people without trying that hard.

Now, did they go to their homes because they knew that they should arrest them for something that they knew about, or did they actually observe 300 crimes in action?

Don't you wonder which one it is?

Did they just walk around and say, "Oh, there's another one." Well, pull them in.

Well, there's another one.

don't really know, but 300 feels like a lot.

So, good job on that.

I would say also it seems like the Democrats have given up on the idea that they can make anything of this.

I feel like the public really, really likes a reduction in crime, as in everybody likes it.

As in, even the Democrats, everybody seems to like less crime.

Well, here's a uh data point.

I'm not sure I believe it.

There's a study published in Nature Mental Health that said that globally suicide rates have fallen nearly 30%.

The '9s.

Do you believe that suicide rates are down 30% globally?

And it apparently it's, you know, not just in a few places that are making the difference.

there's some kind of universal force that has greatly reduced suicide.

Now, what would that be?

I have my hypothesis.

Um, since the change comes from 1990, I feel like it's the internet because one of the things that would cause you to take your own life besides being in pain would be if you didn't have anything going on and you had no connections in the world and you didn't have a any source of dopamine.

But as long as you have your phone and the internet, you can have some kind of connection.

You could play a video game and chat with all the gamers.

You could flirt with somebody.

You could use a dating app.

You could use social media.

And you would at least feel they were connected to the real world.

So that's my guess.

Social media reduced uh people taking their own life.

Just a guess.

Well, you may have seen that uh MSNBC um is changing his name, and boy are they getting mocked.

Their new name will be um and there's a space after one letter there.

MS space now.

So, it's my source for news, opinion, and world.

Okay, first of all, that's stupid.

Uh my source for news, opinion, and world.

Um, do you need to get a gallon of world?

I know what it means to get news and I know what it means to consume someone's opinion.

What does it mean to get some world?

Man, I wouldn't mind getting some world right now.

Wait, did I just make it dirty?

It sounds totally dirty when you say it if you say it that way.

Hey, you wouldn't mind giving me a little world, would you?

Yeah, it's disgusting.

Anyway, so so the first two letters, MS, this stands for my source.

I don't know why that has to have a space between that and the rest of the the rest of the letters.

Doesn't make any sense to me, but it looks like Miz now MS as in Miz.

Um, apparently they're not going to have a mister now.

So it's just going to be a womenrun organization.

Miz now.

Um, and everything I saw about it was people mocking the new logo and the new name and everybody's wondering, I wonder how much they paid to have somebody come up with the worst idea that any of us have ever seen.

Now, if I could soften it a little bit, I will uh give you an observation that I've made because I've I've been involved in designing logos and catchphrases and stuff for most of my career.

A lot of licensed stuff needs to have some kind of catchy name and you know there.

So over the Dilbert career, I've had to work with lots of people on various logos for um you know, licensed materials and stuff like that.

And one of the things I learned is that there are no two people in the world who like the same logo or the same name.

It's impossible.

You can't find two people who will like the same logo or the same new name for a company.

just don't find it.

You can get one person to like it, the person who suggests it, and then everybody else will be like, "No, that's that's not working." But here's an exercise that I recommend to all of you.

drive down the street and look at anybody's logo and anybody's phrase, you know, if they have some kind of marketing phrase and ask yourself if that had not already existed and you were in a meeting and somebody pitched it, would you have said, "Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that that's a good one." And you will find that even the most famous and successful logos, you will look at them and you go, I want to I would not have green lit that.

So, nobody's ever happy with logos and name changes.

Well, according to The Verge, there's a company called Grammarly that has now released nine different AI apps for various writing related things.

But here are a few of them.

Um, let's see.

They've got one that will uh can provide feedback um about what your instructor in college would like in your writing so that it can actually advise you how to write in a way that your specific instructor is going to like and give you an A.

That's a pretty good app if it works.

Um, they also have a let's see, they have a plagiarism checker to make sure that uh you didn't steal something.

And uh they have an AI detector so they can tell this would be more like for the teacher.

They can tell if AI wrote your material.

So that's one.

Um, and then they've got um AI agents to improve your writing, uh, including the likely reader reaction to it.

They've got a proofreader agent that provides inline writing suggestions.

They've got a paraphrase agent that adjusts writing to suit specific tones, audiences, and styles.

Uh, and they've they've got one for attribution.

So, do you do you recognize the weak link in that process?

So, you got a human being and they use apps to make sure that they've written something correctly.

Doesn't it feel to you like the human being is the problem here?

And if you just get rid of the human being entirely, then you'd have something.

But but the amount that the human does is just getting smaller and smaller.

So what happens when people stop going to college or listening or figuring out how to write because they don't have to because AI is doing all the work for them?

I feel like we're reaching a place where a whole bunch of people are going to decide that they don't even need to learn to read.

Well, I guess I'd have to read well enough to use the app, but that's about it.

All right.

Um, so let's uh check in on Democrats, see what ridiculous things they're doing.

Uh, Democrat Representative L Monica Macyver.

Um, she uh claims that his use of the phrase liberation day is secret code for white power.

Liberation Day, the secret code for white power.

So, this is one of your one of your best Democrats here.

Uh, according to Fox News, the New Yorker writer um who had best I guess recently had trashed Sydney Sweeney um was discovered to have some anti-white posts on social media that included quote, "I hate white men." And made attacks on something called white capitalism.

Okay, there's another Democrat.

And then uh Representative uh Ayanna Presley, according to Breitbart News, um she went on a rant about how uh Democrats should not become more moderate to restore their uh image.

Um she wants them to fight harder.

and she said, "Democrats were so busy, so focused on proving that we were the adults in the room when we forgot to demonstrate that we're the fighters in the room." So, that's a uh Democrat leaders take on what Democrats did wrong.

They were trying too hard to be the adults in the room.

Does that seem like the problem?

maybe has something more to do with running uh Kla Harris as your candidate.

Was she the adult in the room?

The drunken idiot.

That was the adult in the room.

Yeah, that's what it was.

Um so I'm loving watching Democrats have no idea what they did wrong or what to do later to change it.

absolutely no idea.

They don't talk about the quality of their candidates.

They don't talk about their policies.

They don't talk about their ideas.

They literally think that if they if they fought harder, whatever that is, whatever that is, fought harder, that everything will turn around.

Now, as long as that's what they think, there isn't really much chance they're going to succeed cuz they're so far from the actual active solution.

Why?

Why is it that Trump is doing so well?

It's because he's picking policies and also people to implement them who are excellent and very popular.

It's not really some kind of weird mystery.

If Democrats simply did what Republicans are doing, pick popular things and and promote them and get the right people hired to implement.

If you just did that, I believe that your reputation would be repaired quite quickly.

Quite quickly.

Well, I I've got an observation that I've been working on that might get me double cancelled, but I'm going to trot it out.

see if it I want to see if it uh resonates with you.

So, would you agree that Democrats and Republicans have a different approach to black America?

I think you'd all agree with that, right?

But my observation is that Democrats treat black Americans like pets.

And what I mean by that is there there's this horrible assumption that in order for black Americans to succeed, it is necessary for white Americans to act differently.

And there's there's no sense that black Americans could just do their own thing like everybody else in the world.

Why are they the only group that can't succeed unless white people do something differently?

And Republicans, I believe, say everybody can succeed.

You just have to do the things that successful people do.

How about staying out of jail?

How about paying attention in school or learning a trade and uh making sure that you're a productive, valuable member of society?

That works pretty much every time.

Every time.

So, um I I find myself almost revolted when I see Democrats treating black Americans like it's the only group that can't succeed without the white people doing something different.

And uh you know, my opinion, I what I found out when I got cancelled is that uh black Americans did not want any advice from white Americans.

if we were going to invest, they would certainly talk about that, you know, if there's money involved, but they weren't looking for our good ideas.

And um I feel like I would agree with them, say, "Oh, how about I just shut up and leave you alone?

How about I just stay out of it because you really don't need me to when I imagine that other people need me to succeed?" That's not really fair, is it?

Um, so anyway, that's my take is that you shouldn't treat other people as pets.

You should assume that if they do the right things, they'll get the right outcomes like everybody else.

Um, well, the uh Democrat party continues to collapse.

Um, so as you know, they have no policies anybody cares about and they have no leaders that are identifiable as leaders, but they also don't have much money.

So apparently the Republicans, the RNC has raised five times more money than the DNC according to Newsmax.

And it's $80 million compared to 15.

So, Democrats, they literally don't have anything.

So, they've got a bad reputation.

They've got no ideas.

They have no leaders.

And now they have no money.

That is what a collapse looks like.

That's as collapsy as you can get.

There's nothing left.

Anyway, well, Doge is claiming that their savings that they've already uh um they've already arranged for are are going to be more than 200 billion.

And that's just so far.

So, that would be $1,300 per taxpayer.

Really?

Huh?

So, Epoch, the Epic Times is reporting on that.

Now, I would remind you that whenever you're looking at this big data stuff, especially if money is involved, I'm not sure you can believe any of it.

So, I'm not going to say that because I love Doge, which I do, and I think that they're all there for the right reason, which I do, and they're all super qualified and capable, which they are.

That's still not enough to assume that any number they produce is going to be reliable.

That that's a whole different deal.

Nobody really can produce reliable numbers.

It's almost not even a thing.

But um since Doge is almost certainly directionally valuable, you know, as long as they're working on it and chewing away and cancelling contracts, I'm pretty sure it's working in the right direction.

So, I don't need the exact numbers for that.

Well, according to Newsmax, Representative Comr is going to be uh in Congress talking to the Oh, I guess the DOJ is going to start sharing the Epstein files with Congress.

That would be Comr's oversight group.

And what do you expect from that?

Does anybody expect that we're gonna have any new great revelations because Congress is going to get some more Epstein files?

I feel like they had some sense which of their files were useful and would make a difference and which weren't.

I feel like it might be a all we're going to see now is the worthless files and we'll just be pouring through them and saying, "Ah, where's the good stuff?" And there just won't be any good stuff.

We did hear that Bill Barr apparently has said that Trump was not implicated in the Epstein files.

Now, he would have seen the Epstein files, so he would know.

And he was not exactly Trump's best friend, although often they were on the same side and the same team.

But, uh, I I kind of believe him.

If Bill Barr says the files don't implicate Trump whatsoever, I kind of believe that.

He also points out the obvious that if it did, uh, that would already be leaked because the Democrats had access to the same thing he had access to.

And so that would be cool.

Uh, I saw Mario Noel reporting on something coming out of the growth forge AI that uh there's this immunologist uh Daria Unutma Mazutmas.

Anyway, um he claims that if you survive the next 10 years, uh that you could gain an additional 50 years of life because in the next 10 years the AI and all would figure out how to solve all the big problems.

Um what do you think about that?

I feel like that would be a really really big problem.

The only thing worse than not having enough babies is having a bunch of old people who refuse to die because they're going to use up all the resources, but they're not they're not going to be working for the most part.

So, this feels like really bad news.

Um, but I'm not buying it.

Yeah, bookish girl, I agree with you.

I'm not believing it.

How How long have we been hearing that?

that if you could survive just 10 more years, you might never die.

I think I've been hearing that for 50 years.

Meanwhile, the Texas Democrats who were went rogue and left the state so that they wouldn't have to vote on the gerrymandering proposal in Texas.

Um, they have returned.

And did they gain anything?

And once again, we see that they didn't have any leaders because you can't name anybody who was associated with it, right?

There's no leader.

And they didn't have any ideas other than running away.

That's not really an idea.

And the only thing they got out of it was the theater.

the the fact that they put on a little play, a little skit, and then the news covered it, and then they did a little social media hits.

It was pure theater, but it wasn't even useful theater because lots of times, especially when Trump does it, the theater is functional, like it's accomplishing something or it's drawing attention to something.

What good did this do?

Didn't it just make the Democrats look like losers?

and and and maybe it made the fight bigger, but it kind of looks like the Republicans had the better hand because there are more Democrat there more Republican states that have not yet completely gerrymandered than there were Democrat states.

So, they're not going to win in the long run.

They didn't win anything in the short run.

And the people who had to go to work every day said to themselves, "Um, aren't we paying them?

I think we're paying them to show up.

Maybe they should show up." So, that was a big fail for Democrats.

Um, I saw on uh Fox News Steven Miller was estimating that uh in addition to the underounting of the census uh between blue states and red, the 2020 census inclusion of illegal aliens gave Democrats 20 to 30 extra seats in Congress.

Now, you could debate whether that was what the Constitution intended, but uh whether it intended it or not, it was a 20 to 30 seat difference.

So, if that goes away, um it's going to be tough to dislodge the Republicans from power.

Um I saw a post by Stephen A.

Smith, who said that all of the recent Russian aggression came because of three Democrat presidents.

Do you ever think about that?

I've never thought about this.

But here's what Stephen A.

Smith points out.

He said u uh he said uh we ain't going to act like Trump caused this now.

It's Democrats in office.

He said it was Biden in office when when Putin moved into Ukraine.

So that's on Biden.

It was uh Obama was in charge when Russia invaded Crimea.

So that's another Democrat.

And he points out that Clinton was in office uh when he made a deal to disarm Ukraine.

So Clinton disarms Ukraine and then Obama's in charge when Crimea is lost and then Biden's in charge when when the rest of the country is under attack.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine the Republicans wouldn't have done a better job.

Now, one of the things that I'm loving is that Trump Trump says over and over again, "The war would have never happened if I'd been president." Now, I don't know that you could prove that, but it's it's a claim that is reasonable enough that if you hear it enough, you're going to think it's true.

and he certainly says it enough, but now you're hearing other people repeating it.

It's now becoming more uh common sense that if Trump had been in charge, it wouldn't have happened.

And that's what uh the Stephen A.

Smith uh post um does.

It it kind of just turns it into well, I mean, you could look for yourself common sense.

When the Democrats are in charge, uh, Putin gets aggressive because he knows there's a difference between the Republicans in charge and the Democrats, especially Trump.

Well, let's speak about Ukraine.

As you know, the uh there were seven major leaders of the European countries and that included NATO plus the European Union.

So, they all showed up uh at the White House along with Zilinski.

Now, the important things are that Silinski wore a suit, but a weird looking suit with no neck tie, but still um it made Trump happy that he had put some effort into it.

And here's one of the persuasion tips about Trump that I've told you before, but the more examples you see, the mortal mortal stick.

Trump is the expert at making the biggest difference between making him happy and making him not happy.

So when Zalinski didn't wear the right clothes the last time he visited, Trump made sure that he acted really unhappy.

And then when Zalinski wears, you know, respectful nice suit, um Trump treats him well and laughs and said, "Yeah, that's you look great.

You look amazing." So he doesn't just say, "All right, well that's better." There he makes this really big uh gap between making him happy wearing a nice suit versus not making him happy.

So that is persuasion lesson one.

The biggest gap between making him happy and not making him happy.

And he does that consistently.

does it really well, better than I've ever seen really for a leader.

And but the question is, was any progress made?

Well, I don't know if you'd call it progress, but some things happened.

Um, one is that uh Ukraine apparently is signing up to buy a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons from the US that would be paid for by Europe, I guess.

And um if if that kept up, the US would very quickly make up all the money that has spent so far in Ukraine.

It wouldn't take long.

Um, now of course it wouldn't, you know, the the weapons makers are not the taxpayers, but at least it' be coming back to the homeland.

Um, so that's good.

And a lot of that, I guess half of that is for drones.

$50 billion for drone production.

Wow, that's a lot.

Um there is a there is a report that Putin has agreed that a United States um could be part of a uh peace settlement or security guarantee.

Now I'm not sure that Putin has really agreed to that or maybe there's some details we don't know about that.

But um would Putin really agree to a NATO like or a NATOish situation when his biggest problem is he doesn't want NATO there?

Oh no.

As long as you don't call in NATO and they don't pay any dues.

Oh, that's fine.

So, I'm having trouble believing that that Putin would really agree to Americans having such a presence there that they were the security guarantee.

Now, that doesn't mean that we would have troops on the ground, but it does mean that we would commit to respond if Russia went deeper into Ukraine.

So, do you believe that Putin has said yes to that?

That'd be a weird change.

I'm I'm gonna say I'm skeptical that Putin's okay with that.

We'll see.

And I would uh I would still say that the best way to resolve the territories that are in dispute is with a referendum.

But I'm going to add a little nuance to that.

You don't have to have the referendum done right away.

Suppose you said, "All right, Russia, we're going to have a referendum and then the people who live in these disputed territories.

Only the residents will get to decide if Russia or Ukraine um owns them." But and then you say, "But we don't have the right situation to do the referendum because there's too much, you know, war torn problems there." So, we're definitely going to do a referendum, but we're going to plan it for a year from now.

So, we can stop fighting right away and then later separately, we will very peacefully decide through a referendum where this land goes, but it doesn't have to be right away.

Now, what is Russia going to do?

Are they going to say, "No, if the residents want to go to Ukraine, we're not going to let them." Well, that would not be consistent with how they tried to frame their involvement.

You know, they they tried to frame it like they're saving the residents, but it would allow us to do an end to the war even if that referendum never happened and it just kept getting pushed down the, you know, pushed down the the path.

The other problem that Zalinski says is that the uh Ukrainian constitution doesn't allow him to trade land for peace.

But it seems like that would be easy to get around.

And the way to get around it would be to say it's no longer your territory.

It would be one thing if he gave away land that he owned, but he doesn't own that land.

You can't give away something that somebody already has.

So, I feel like they could get around that constitution thing by saying, "All right, we already lost that land, so it's not it's not ours to give away or not give away.

It's already gone." And then you go from there.

So, I feel like the constitutional thing you could just define it away basically.

Um Trump says according to just the news that the Russia Ukraine war if he can get it solved is the last conflict he needs to resolve.

Do you see the beauty of that statement?

It's the last conflict he needs to resolve.

The beauty of that is that he's making you think past the sale.

The sale is whether or not he can get it done.

But he's already made you think about what it's like to have them all done.

It's it's perfect technique.

He also uses repetition.

Uh he just keeps saying, "Oh yeah, I think we can get this done.

We got to get this done.

We got to stop killing.

We got it to get it done." Repetition really matters for for persuasion.

So he's got that right.

So he's got the repetition and he's making us think past the ending of it.

That's all good.

But here's the best part.

Remember I always told you that reality follows the best story, the best story.

So if you're watching a big, let's say, Super Bowl and there are two uh quarterbacks that are famous, one of them often has a better story.

So it might be somebody, for example, who had been fired by the very team that they end up playing in the Super Bowl.

Now, if that quarterback wins after being fired by the team that they're playing, well, that's a better story.

So, it's more likely that that quarterback will win because it would make a better story.

Do you know what would make a great story with the ending of the uh Ukraine war?

The great story would be that Trump came in office and ended all war everywhere in the planet.

That's the best story.

You can't get a better story.

Now, given the power of that story and knowing that, you know, wars all have to end.

Eventually, they have to end.

Um, that is a really strong base because other people are going to have the same feeling.

Wow, this is the last one he has to solve and then he's solved all wars on Earth.

There must be other wars I don't know about.

There's always a, you know, a bunch of little ones going on.

Um, but it would make the best story if this president who got shot in a year, was impeached twice, has 34 felony counts, and was down and out, but came back against all odds.

And he didn't just come back, he ended all war on earth.

Is there a better story than that?

No.

No, there's not.

There's nothing that would be a better story than that.

So, if I had to predict, I don't think it'll happen soon necessarily, but yeah, he'll get it done.

Um, I guess Trump was caught on a hot mic talking to Mcronone and he said, quote, um, talking about Putin, he says, I think he wants to make a deal for me.

You understand that?

as cra as crazy as it sounds.

Then Mcronone was just diplomatic and he said, "Uh, yeah, any any deal would be great news." Um, but what about what about that framing?

Trump says that Putin wants to do it for him and that and that part of Putin's motivation might be to get this done for Trump.

Does that sound real?

I do believe Putin might have said something like that because that would be good persuasion too and he would know it would work on Trump.

Um, but I also think that another way to look at that is that Putin knows that if he does something for Trump, Trump's going to respond in kind.

So, I do believe that Putin wants to get it done under the Trump administration because if he can do that, then he's got something that Trump will say, "All right, you know, you did that for me.

Didn't have to do it the way you did it, but you did it for me.

Now, when I'm negotiating these sanctions and stuff like that, well, maybe I owe you one." So, I think it's more about Putin knowing that he wants to have the president of the United States owe him one.

Um, so in that sense, he might be doing it for Trump.

Um, let's see.

I guess, uh, Trump and Zilinski had some, uh, joking around in the Oval Office, not the Oval Office, but afterwards when they sit in those two chairs awkwardly.

Um, and Zalinski, as you know, cancelled Ukrainian elections because he was in the middle of a war.

And uh Trump joked that he might follow Zilinski's lead and cancel the 2028 election.

Now, I can't believe that Trump keeps doing this cuz he's just poking the Democrats and it's it's wild to watch.

I wouldn't recommend it and I definitely wouldn't recommend any of you copy this technique, but Trump might be the only person in the world who could joke about this and just get away with it.

If it makes them talk about this instead of other things, well, it's probably to his advantage.

So, he just loves poking that bear.

Um, do you remember when all the smart people were saying that the other countries don't respect Trump in the first the first term especially?

You remember that?

And even if you liked Trump, you might have said to yourself, well, I have to admit those other countries don't seem to be respecting them.

They should, but I don't think they are.

Well, what do you think now?

Now that you got all of Europe to come over on short notice, you've got Putin taking his phone calls and coming to Alaska and he's working on arguably the most important topic and he'll probably get it done eventually, maybe not right away, but when you saw the uh the photos of the Oval Office with all the European leaders in there and Zalinski and Trump beyond his desk and all the rest look like visitors who were in their chairs around the Um, it's hard to imagine that the rest of the world has a negative opinion of him.

I don't think they do.

I think they're just going to pay their tariffs and hope he can end all war.

Anyway, and according to the Finland president, um, he said that in the past two weeks, we've had more progress toward ending this war than in the past three and a half years.

Now, I would I would debate whether there's progress because the only thing that matters is who gets what land and that's nowhere near settled.

So, the fact that it's not settled and it doesn't look like it will be, I'm not really sure there's any progress.

But, if they all feel like there's progress, um this adds to that feeling that it's inevitable.

What you would want is for Putin to feel that ending the war is inevitable and that there's progress toward making it happen because just putting him in that frame of mind uh is going to get him a lot closer to changing his mind if he needs to uh on any land.

Same with Zilinski.

So I guess the plan is that Zalinski and Putin will meet and if that goes well then Trump will meet with the two of them as a trilateral.

I don't know where I guess that leaves out the European leaders but maybe they won't mind.

I don't know.

So that's coming.

Trilateral.

You're going to hear that word a lot.

Trilateral.

Well, Hamas has accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal from a bunch of Arab mediators.

Um, so that's good news, right?

No, because Israel's there's no chance that Israel is going to accept it.

So, Israel is not thinking about a ceasefire.

They're thinking about relocating hundreds of thousands of people and uh controlling the 25% of Gaza that they have not yet completely controlled.

So their take is that we want all the hostages back, but we're not going to do this ceasefire thing anymore.

That's what it looks like.

It looks like Israel's just decided they're going to end this even at the expense of their hostages.

Um, they won't say that out loud, of course, but it does look to me like they're not going to save hostages if it would slow them down from completely depopulating and uh having a command and control over a Gaza forever.

So I think the larger just you know I'm not in their heads so I can't read their minds but it does look like the larger goal is a complete control of Gaza even if even if it's not the ideal situation for getting back hostages but anyway I wouldn't expect anything to happen from that.

Well, the State Department has reportedly revoked 6,000 foreign student uh visas because these foreign students were accused I'm reading this in red state um accused of uh various crimes.

So, some of it is overstaying, you know, just staying longer than their visa.

Uh but there other law violations and some of them were fermenting terroristic views.

Um according to who?

I don't know, whoever makes that decision, but 6,000.

Can you believe that?

6,000 students are being shipped home for bad behavior.

6,000.

That's a lot.

Wow.

I would guess their their violations were not big ones.

And I don't know what percentage of them are just student visa overstays.

You know, that would be the the lowest level of crime, I guess, would be over a staying visa.

But if you do, you got to go home.

Well, the FDA has green lit a new lab grown salmon.

So, it's going to look like a salmon and maybe taste like it, but it will be made out of cells that they grew in a lab.

And then they added some vegetable stuff to it and made it taste right.

according to the Smithsonian magazine.

Um, and so we may have the uh the first lab grown cultured fish.

Now, here's the weird thing.

I'm a pescatarian, so I eat fish.

Um, I don't love it.

In fact, I don't really like any fish, but I eat them because protein.

Um, but even I'm grossed out by this lab grown meat.

You would think that I would be more grossed out by the thought of eating a dead animal or dead fish.

But eating a dead fish, for whatever reason, feels more palatable than this lab grown franken fish monstrosity.

But I'm sure it's fine.

So, here's a real story.

Um, yesterday I said to myself, I'm not going to tell anybody, but I'm going to order a steak on Door Dash because I don't want to have to prepare it.

I'm going to buy a steak and then you may maybe I'll change my mind and not eat it.

I haven't eaten steak, I don't know, 40 years.

Long time.

About 40 years, I guess.

and and I thought, well, I just won't tell anybody because then if I change my mind, I don't have to explain it.

But, you know, so I go to Door Dash and I start shopping for a steak.

Do you know what a steak costs?

Oh my god.

The the steaks locally were $54 just for the steak.

if you wanted something on the side or a beverage.

Well, that's more.

And then you've got the delivery fee and then you got the tip.

And I'm thinking to myself, am I really gonna pay, I don't know, $150 for a steak or whatever it was when I you add everything in.

Maybe $100 for a steak.

And I actually changed my mind because if I liked it, I didn't want to spend $54 every time I ate.

So, I'm doing okay financially.

Like, I don't have any, you know, money problems.

But even I wouldn't buy a $54 steak.

Do any of you buy $54 steaks?

Is it only because it was on Door Dash?

Now, I understand that it would be cheaper if you buy your own cut of meat and cook it at home and stuff, but I had no idea that a steak was that expensive.

Now, I knew the price was up, but my god, $54 for a steak.

Incredible.

Well, Trump is uh uh going all Don Keyod on the uh windmills in New Jersey.

Says they're not dependable and they raise electricity prices and he wants to get rid of windmills.

Do you think that's another one of those 8020?

I don't know if it's 8020, but I feel like most people, even if they're green, you know, they like green stuff, they probably think the windmills are not the best way to get there.

So, I feel like Trump has yet again save the whales, save the birds, you know, don't kill the whales, don't kill the birds, it's ugly, get rid of these windmills.

So, I think he picked another winning winning topic as he does.

A lot of you hate windmills.

I know.

I've heard from you.

All right.

It's a uh slowish news day until Trump wakes up and starts creating some uh some excitement.

Yeah.

I'm watching Land Man with Billy Bob Thornton.

If you haven't seen that show, Land Man, oh my god, is that well done.

The acting, the casting, the the writing, the the concept, you know, of the people they put together for their It's really good.

It's like one of the best things you'll ever see.

They do have at least two scenes where somebody's tied to a chair and tortured.

I don't love that.

But it was so good that I didn't turn it off because I have a rule.

As soon as a movie puts somebody in a chair, ties them to a chair to torture them, as soon as that happens, I turned it off.

And I will never watch the rest of that movie.

But Land Man was so good, I uh I was flexible on that rule.

All right.

Uh Land Man, I believe, is on Prime Video.

only Prime Video, I think.

I'm not 100% sure.

One of my biggest problems is I have a number of streaming services.

Uh, well, it's not my biggest problem, but pain in the ass.

And I'll start watching something and I'll like it and then I'll never be able to find it again.

Has anybody had that problem?

I'll be like, "Uh, was that on HBO Max?" Then you spend 10 minutes looking, it's not okay.

I think it was on Netflix.

Spend 10 minutes looking and it's not and you then you're like, "Okay, I've been here 20 minutes.

I only had 20 minutes to watch the show.

I'm done." Um, all right.

It's so hard to find anything to watch, especially even if you've started it.

Yeah.

trying to navigate to the Paramount um stuff from from where you are.

It's tough.

All right.

Uh I'm going to say hi to my beloved subscribers on locals.

The rest of you, I'm hoping to see you tomorrow, same time and same place for more fun.

But right now, we'll update the stream.

If this works.

It's good to see you. There's Rub in the

front. Grab a chair. Oh, you all look

happy this morning. Good morning.

Well, let's get our comments going and

then we got a show for you.

Come on. Come on. Technology, you can do

it.

Oh, it's good to see all you happy

people coming in.

H All right, there we go. You should not

take a minute to open a file. That's

what I say.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

the highlight of human civilization.

It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

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And join me now for the unparalleled

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sublime.

Well, RFK Jr. and Pete Ath were kicking

off their uh I guess they're going to do

a fitness tour.

I don't know where they're going to go,

but the two of them are super fit. And

they've got some kind of a challenge

where you do 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups,

and you try to get it under five

minutes. Do you think you could do that?

100 push-ups?

I don't know. I think it might take me

all day to do 100 push-ups. Five

minutes. That's pretty impressive.

So, 71-year-old uh RFK Jr. was showing

the kids how to be fit. Quite

impressive. So, I like that. I I feel

like it's not since when was the last

time the uh federal government had a

fitness uh thing

was

Trump didn't do it last time, right? And

I don't think Biden did it. So, it's

been a while.

Well, according to the Epic Times, um,

more than 300 people have been arrested

so far in Washington DC as the federal

crackdown on crime continues. 300

arrests.

Doesn't that feel like a lot?

You know, I realize that Washington DC

is a, you know, pretty big city, but if

you could arrest 300 people without

trying that hard. Now, did they go to

their homes because they knew that they

should arrest them for something that

they knew about, or did they actually

observe 300 crimes in action?

Don't you wonder which one it is? Did

they just walk around and say, "Oh,

there's another one." Well, pull them

in. Well, there's another one. don't

really know, but 300 feels like a lot.

So, good job on that. I would say also

it seems like the Democrats have given

up on the idea that they can make

anything of this. I feel like the public

really, really likes a reduction in

crime,

as in everybody likes it. As in, even

the Democrats, everybody seems to like

less crime.

Well, here's a uh data point. I'm not

sure I believe it. There's a study

published in Nature Mental Health that

said that globally suicide rates have

fallen nearly 30%.

The '9s. Do you believe that suicide

rates are down 30% globally? And it

apparently it's, you know, not just in a

few places that are making the

difference. there's some kind of

universal

force that has greatly reduced suicide.

Now, what would that be? I have my

hypothesis.

Um, since the change comes from 1990,

I feel like it's the internet

because one of the things that would

cause you to take your own life besides

being in pain would be if you didn't

have anything going on and you had no

connections in the world and you didn't

have a any source of dopamine. But as

long as you have your phone and the

internet, you can have some kind of

connection. You could play a video game

and chat with all the gamers. You could

flirt with somebody. You could use a

dating app. You could use social media.

And you would at least feel they were

connected to the real world.

So that's my guess. Social media reduced

uh people taking their own life. Just a

guess.

Well, you may have seen that uh MSNBC

um is changing his name, and boy are

they getting mocked. Their new name will

be um and there's a space after one

letter there. MS space now. So, it's my

source for news, opinion, and world.

Okay, first of all, that's stupid. Uh my

source for news, opinion, and world.

Um, do you need to get a gallon of

world? I know what it means to get news

and I know what it means to consume

someone's opinion. What does it mean to

get some world? Man, I wouldn't mind

getting some world right now. Wait, did

I just make it dirty? It sounds totally

dirty when you say it if you say it that

way. Hey, you wouldn't mind giving me a

little world, would you?

Yeah, it's disgusting. Anyway, so so the

first two letters, MS, this stands for

my source. I don't know why that has to

have a space between that and the rest

of the the rest of the letters. Doesn't

make any sense to me, but it looks like

Miz now

MS as in Miz.

Um, apparently they're not going to have

a mister now. So it's just going to be a

womenrun organization. Miz now.

Um, and everything I saw about it was

people mocking the new logo and the new

name and everybody's wondering, I wonder

how much they paid to have somebody come

up with the worst idea that any of us

have ever seen. Now, if I could soften

it a little bit, I will uh give you an

observation that I've made because I've

I've been involved in designing logos

and catchphrases and stuff for most of

my career. A lot of licensed stuff needs

to have some kind of catchy name and you

know there. So over the Dilbert career,

I've had to work with lots of people on

various logos for um you know, licensed

materials and stuff like that. And one

of the things I learned is that there

are no two people in the world who like

the same logo or the same name.

It's impossible. You can't find two

people who will like the same logo or

the same new name for a company. just

don't find it. You can get one person to

like it, the person who suggests it, and

then everybody else will be like, "No,

that's that's not working." But here's

an exercise that I recommend to all of

you. drive down the street and look at

anybody's logo and anybody's phrase, you

know, if they have some kind of

marketing phrase and ask yourself if

that had not already existed and you

were in a meeting and somebody pitched

it, would you have said, "Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that that's a good one." And you

will find that even the most famous and

successful logos, you will look at them

and you go, I want to I would not have

green lit that.

So, nobody's ever happy with logos and

name changes.

Well, according to The Verge, there's a

company called Grammarly

that has now released nine different AI

apps for various writing related things.

But here are a few of them. Um, let's

see. They've got one that will uh can

provide feedback

um about what your instructor in college

would like in your writing so that it

can actually advise you how to write in

a way that your specific instructor is

going to like and give you an A. That's

a pretty good app if it works. Um, they

also have a let's see, they have a

plagiarism checker to make sure that uh

you didn't steal something. And uh they

have an AI detector so they can tell

this would be more like for the teacher.

They can tell if AI wrote your material.

So that's one. Um,

and then they've got um AI agents to

improve your writing,

uh, including the likely reader reaction

to it. They've got a proofreader agent

that provides inline writing

suggestions. They've got a paraphrase

agent that adjusts writing to suit

specific tones, audiences, and styles.

Uh, and they've they've got one for

attribution.

So,

do you do you recognize the weak link in

that process? So, you got a human being

and they use apps to make sure that

they've written something correctly.

Doesn't it feel to you like the human

being is the problem here? And if you

just get rid of the human being

entirely,

then you'd have something.

But but the amount that the human does

is just getting smaller and smaller.

So what happens when people stop going

to college or listening or figuring out

how to write because they don't have to

because AI is doing all the work for

them? I feel like we're reaching a place

where a whole bunch of people are going

to decide that they don't even need to

learn to read. Well, I guess I'd have to

read well enough to use the app, but

that's about it.

All right. Um,

so let's uh check in on Democrats, see

what ridiculous things they're doing.

Uh, Democrat Representative L Monica

Macyver.

Um, she uh claims that his use of the

phrase liberation day is secret code for

white power.

Liberation Day, the secret code for

white power.

So, this is one of your one of your best

Democrats here.

Uh, according to Fox News, the New

Yorker writer um who had best I guess

recently had trashed Sydney Sweeney um

was discovered to have some anti-white

posts on social media that included

quote, "I hate white men." And made

attacks on something called white

capitalism.

Okay, there's another Democrat. And then

uh Representative uh Ayanna Presley,

according to Breitbart News, um she went

on a rant about how uh Democrats should

not become more moderate to restore

their uh image. Um she wants them to

fight harder.

and she said, "Democrats were so busy,

so focused on proving that we were the

adults in the room when we forgot to

demonstrate that we're the fighters in

the room."

So, that's a uh Democrat leaders take on

what Democrats did wrong. They were

trying too hard to be the adults in the

room.

Does that seem like the problem?

maybe has something more to do with

running uh

Kla Harris as your candidate. Was she

the adult in the room? The drunken

idiot. That was the adult in the room.

Yeah, that's what it was. Um so

I'm loving watching Democrats have no

idea what they did wrong or what to do

later to change it. absolutely no idea.

They don't talk about the quality of

their candidates. They don't talk about

their policies. They don't talk about

their ideas. They literally think that

if they if they fought harder, whatever

that is, whatever that is, fought

harder, that everything will turn

around. Now, as long as that's what they

think, there isn't really much chance

they're going to succeed cuz they're so

far from the actual active solution.

Why? Why is it that Trump is doing so

well?

It's because he's picking policies and

also people to implement them who are

excellent and very popular. It's not

really some kind of weird mystery.

If Democrats simply did what Republicans

are doing, pick popular things and and

promote them and get the right people

hired to implement. If you just did

that,

I believe that your reputation would be

repaired quite quickly. Quite quickly.

Well,

I I've got an observation that I've been

working on that might get me double

cancelled, but I'm going to trot it out.

see if it I want to see if it uh

resonates with you. So, would you agree

that Democrats and Republicans have a

different approach to black America? I

think you'd all agree with that, right?

But my observation is that Democrats

treat black Americans like pets.

And what I mean by that is there there's

this horrible assumption that in order

for black Americans to succeed,

it is necessary for white Americans to

act differently.

And there's there's no sense that black

Americans could just do their own thing

like everybody else in the world. Why

are they the only group that can't

succeed unless white people do something

differently?

And Republicans,

I believe, say everybody can succeed.

You just have to do the things that

successful people do. How about staying

out of jail? How about paying attention

in school or learning a trade and uh

making sure that you're a productive,

valuable member of society?

That works pretty much every time. Every

time.

So, um I I find myself

almost revolted when I see Democrats

treating black Americans like it's the

only group that can't succeed without

the white people doing something

different. And uh you know, my opinion,

I what I found out when I got cancelled

is that uh black Americans did not want

any advice from white Americans. if we

were going to invest, they would

certainly talk about that, you know, if

there's money involved, but they weren't

looking for our good ideas.

And um I feel like I would agree with

them, say, "Oh, how about I just shut up

and leave you alone? How about I just

stay out of it because you really don't

need me to when I imagine that other

people need me to succeed?" That's not

really fair, is it? Um, so anyway,

that's my take is that you shouldn't

treat other people as pets. You should

assume that if they do the right things,

they'll get the right outcomes like

everybody else.

Um, well, the uh Democrat party

continues to collapse.

Um, so as you know, they have no

policies anybody cares about and they

have no leaders that are identifiable as

leaders, but they also don't have much

money. So apparently the Republicans,

the RNC has raised five times more money

than the DNC according to Newsmax.

And it's $80 million compared to 15.

So,

Democrats, they literally don't have

anything. So, they've got a bad

reputation. They've got no ideas. They

have no leaders. And now they have no

money.

That is what a collapse looks like.

That's as collapsy as you can get.

There's nothing left.

Anyway, well, Doge is claiming that

their savings that they've already uh um

they've already arranged for are are

going to be more than 200 billion. And

that's just so far. So, that would be

$1,300 per taxpayer. Really? Huh? So,

Epoch, the Epic Times is reporting on

that. Now, I would remind you

that whenever you're looking at this big

data stuff, especially if money is

involved, I'm not sure you can believe

any of it. So, I'm not going to say that

because I love Doge, which I do, and I

think that they're all there for the

right reason, which I do, and they're

all super qualified and capable, which

they are. That's still not enough to

assume that any number they produce is

going to be reliable.

That that's a whole different deal.

Nobody really can produce reliable

numbers.

It's almost not even a thing. But um

since Doge is almost certainly

directionally

valuable, you know, as long as they're

working on it and chewing away and

cancelling contracts, I'm pretty sure

it's working in the right direction.

So, I don't need the exact numbers for

that.

Well, according to Newsmax,

Representative Comr is going to be uh in

Congress talking to the Oh, I guess the

DOJ is going to start sharing the

Epstein files with Congress. That would

be Comr's oversight group. And what do

you expect from that?

Does anybody expect that we're gonna

have any new great revelations

because Congress is going to get some

more Epstein files? I feel like they had

some sense which of their files were

useful and would make a difference and

which weren't. I feel like it might be a

all we're going to see now is the

worthless files and we'll just be

pouring through them and saying, "Ah,

where's the good stuff?" And there just

won't be any good stuff.

We did hear that Bill Barr apparently

has said that Trump was not implicated

in the Epstein files. Now, he would have

seen the Epstein files, so he would

know. And he was not exactly Trump's

best friend, although often they were on

the same side and the same team. But,

uh, I I kind of believe him. If Bill

Barr says the files don't implicate

Trump whatsoever, I kind of believe

that. He also points out the obvious

that if it did, uh, that would already

be leaked because the Democrats had

access to the same thing he had access

to.

And

so that would be cool.

Uh, I saw Mario Noel reporting on

something coming out of the growth forge

AI that uh there's this immunologist

uh Daria Unutma Mazutmas.

Anyway, um he claims that if you survive

the next 10 years, uh that you could

gain an additional 50 years of life

because in the next 10 years the AI and

all would figure out how to solve all

the big problems. Um

what do you think about that? I feel

like that would be a really really big

problem.

The only thing worse than not having

enough babies is having a bunch of old

people who refuse to die because they're

going to use up all the resources, but

they're not they're not going to be

working for the most part. So, this

feels like really bad news.

Um, but I'm not buying it. Yeah, bookish

girl, I agree with you. I'm not

believing it. How How long have we been

hearing that? that if you could survive

just 10 more years, you might never die.

I think I've been hearing that for 50

years.

Meanwhile, the Texas Democrats who were

went rogue and left the state so that

they wouldn't have to vote on the

gerrymandering proposal in Texas. Um,

they have returned.

And did they gain anything?

And once again, we see that they didn't

have any leaders because you can't name

anybody who was associated with it,

right? There's no leader. And they

didn't have any ideas other than running

away. That's not really an idea. And

the only thing they got out of it was

the theater. the the fact that they put

on a little play, a little skit, and

then the news covered it, and then they

did a little social media hits. It was

pure theater, but it wasn't even useful

theater because lots of times,

especially when Trump does it, the

theater is functional, like it's

accomplishing something or it's drawing

attention to something. What good did

this do? Didn't it just make the

Democrats look like losers?

and and and maybe it made the fight

bigger,

but it kind of looks like the

Republicans had the better hand because

there are more Democrat there more

Republican states that have not yet

completely gerrymandered than there were

Democrat states. So, they're not going

to win in the long run. They didn't win

anything in the short run. And the

people who had to go to work every day

said to themselves, "Um, aren't we

paying them? I think we're paying them

to show up. Maybe they should show up."

So, that was a big fail for Democrats.

Um, I saw on uh Fox News Steven Miller

was estimating that uh in addition to

the underounting of the census

uh between blue states and red, the 2020

census inclusion of illegal aliens gave

Democrats 20 to 30 extra seats in

Congress. Now, you could debate whether

that was what the Constitution intended,

but uh whether it intended it or not, it

was a 20 to 30 seat difference. So, if

that goes away,

um it's going to be tough to dislodge

the Republicans from power.

Um

I saw a post by Stephen A. Smith,

who said that all of the recent Russian

aggression came because of three

Democrat presidents.

Do you ever think about that? I've never

thought about this. But here's what

Stephen A. Smith points out. He said u

uh

he said uh we ain't going to act like

Trump caused this now. It's Democrats in

office. He said it was Biden in office

when when Putin moved into Ukraine. So

that's on Biden. It was uh Obama was in

charge when Russia invaded Crimea. So

that's another Democrat. And he points

out that Clinton was in office uh when

he made a deal to disarm Ukraine.

So Clinton disarms Ukraine

and then Obama's in charge when Crimea

is lost and then Biden's in charge when

when the rest of the country is under

attack.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine

the Republicans wouldn't have done a

better job. Now, one of the things that

I'm loving is that Trump Trump says over

and over again, "The war would have

never happened if I'd been president."

Now, I don't know that you could prove

that,

but it's it's a claim that is reasonable

enough that if you hear it enough,

you're going to think it's true. and he

certainly says it enough, but now you're

hearing other people repeating it. It's

now becoming more uh common sense that

if Trump had been in charge, it wouldn't

have happened. And that's what uh the

Stephen A. Smith uh post um does. It it

kind of just turns it into well, I mean,

you could look for yourself common

sense. When the Democrats are in charge,

uh, Putin gets aggressive because he

knows there's a difference between the

Republicans in charge and the Democrats,

especially Trump.

Well, let's speak about Ukraine. As you

know, the uh there were seven major

leaders of the European countries and

that included NATO plus the European

Union.

So, they all showed up uh at the White

House along with Zilinski.

Now, the important things are that

Silinski wore a suit, but a weird

looking suit with no neck tie, but still

um it made Trump happy that he had put

some effort into it. And here's one of

the persuasion tips about Trump that

I've told you before, but the more

examples you see, the mortal mortal

stick. Trump is the expert at making the

biggest difference between making him

happy and making him not happy. So when

Zalinski didn't wear the right clothes

the last time he visited, Trump made

sure that he acted really unhappy. And

then when Zalinski wears, you know,

respectful nice suit, um Trump treats

him well and laughs and said, "Yeah,

that's you look great. You look

amazing." So he doesn't just say, "All

right, well that's better." There he

makes this really big uh gap between

making him happy wearing a nice suit

versus not making him happy. So that is

persuasion

lesson one. The biggest gap between

making him happy and not making him

happy. And he does that consistently.

does it really well, better than I've

ever seen really for a leader.

And but the question is, was any

progress made? Well, I don't know if

you'd call it progress, but some things

happened. Um,

one is that uh Ukraine

apparently is signing up to buy a

hundred billion dollars worth of weapons

from the US that would be paid for by

Europe, I guess. And

um if if that kept up, the US would very

quickly make up all the money that has

spent so far in Ukraine. It wouldn't

take long.

Um, now of course it wouldn't, you know,

the the weapons makers are not the

taxpayers, but at least it' be coming

back to the homeland. Um, so that's

good.

And

a lot of that, I guess half of that is

for drones. $50 billion for drone

production. Wow, that's a lot. Um

there is a there is a report that Putin

has agreed that a United States um could

be part of a uh peace settlement or

security guarantee.

Now I'm not sure that Putin has really

agreed to that or maybe there's some

details we don't know about that. But um

would Putin really agree to a NATO like

or a NATOish situation when his biggest

problem is he doesn't want NATO there?

Oh no. As long as you don't call in NATO

and they don't pay any dues. Oh, that's

fine.

So, I'm having trouble believing that

that Putin would really agree to

Americans having such a presence there

that they were the security guarantee.

Now, that doesn't mean that we would

have troops on the ground, but it does

mean that we would commit to respond if

Russia went deeper into Ukraine.

So, do you believe that Putin has said

yes to that? That'd be a weird change.

I'm I'm gonna say I'm skeptical that

Putin's okay with that. We'll see.

And I would uh I would still say that

the best way to resolve the territories

that are in dispute is with a

referendum. But I'm going to add a

little nuance to that. You don't have to

have the referendum done right away.

Suppose you said, "All right, Russia,

we're going to have a referendum and

then the people who live in these

disputed territories. Only the residents

will get to decide if Russia or Ukraine

um owns them." But and then you say,

"But we don't have the right situation

to do the referendum because there's too

much, you know, war torn problems

there." So, we're definitely going to do

a referendum, but we're going to plan it

for a year from now. So, we can stop

fighting right away and then later

separately, we will very peacefully

decide through a referendum where this

land goes, but it doesn't have to be

right away.

Now, what is Russia going to do? Are

they going to say, "No, if the residents

want to go to Ukraine, we're not going

to let them." Well, that would not be

consistent with how they tried to frame

their involvement. You know, they they

tried to frame it like they're saving

the residents,

but it would allow us to do an end to

the war even if that referendum never

happened and it just kept getting pushed

down the, you know, pushed down the the

path.

The other problem that Zalinski says is

that the uh Ukrainian constitution

doesn't allow him to trade land for

peace. But it seems like that would be

easy to get around. And the way to get

around it would be to say it's no longer

your territory.

It would be one thing if he gave away

land that he owned, but he doesn't own

that land. You can't give away something

that somebody already has.

So, I feel like they could get around

that constitution thing by saying, "All

right, we already lost that land, so

it's not it's not ours to give away or

not give away. It's already gone." And

then you go from there. So, I feel like

the constitutional thing you could just

define it away basically.

Um Trump says according to just the news

that the Russia Ukraine war if he can

get it solved is the last conflict he

needs to resolve.

Do you see the beauty of that statement?

It's the last conflict he needs to

resolve. The beauty of that is that he's

making you think past the sale. The sale

is whether or not he can get it done.

But he's already made you think about

what it's like to have them all done.

It's it's perfect technique.

He also uses repetition.

Uh he just keeps saying, "Oh yeah, I

think we can get this done. We got to

get this done. We got to stop killing.

We got it to get it done." Repetition

really matters for for persuasion. So

he's got that right. So he's got the

repetition and he's making us think past

the ending of it. That's all good. But

here's the best part. Remember I always

told you that reality follows the best

story,

the best story. So if you're watching a

big, let's say, Super Bowl and there are

two uh quarterbacks that are famous, one

of them often has a better story. So it

might be somebody, for example, who had

been fired by the very team that they

end up playing in the Super Bowl. Now,

if that quarterback wins after being

fired by the team that they're playing,

well, that's a better story. So, it's

more likely that that quarterback will

win because it would make a better

story.

Do you know what would make a great

story with the ending of the uh Ukraine

war? The great story would be that Trump

came in office and ended all war

everywhere in the planet.

That's the best story. You can't get a

better story.

Now, given the power of that story and

knowing that, you know, wars all have to

end. Eventually, they have to end. Um,

that is a really strong base because

other people are going to have the same

feeling. Wow, this is the last one he

has to solve and then he's solved all

wars on Earth. There must be other wars

I don't know about. There's always a,

you know, a bunch of little ones going

on. Um, but it would make the best story

if this president who got shot in a

year, was impeached twice, has 34 felony

counts, and was down and out, but came

back against all odds. And he didn't

just come back,

he ended all war on earth.

Is there a better story than that?

No. No, there's not. There's nothing

that would be a better story than that.

So, if I had to predict, I don't think

it'll happen soon necessarily, but yeah,

he'll get it done.

Um, I guess Trump was caught on a hot

mic talking to Mcronone

and he said, quote, um, talking about

Putin, he says, I think he wants to make

a deal for me. You understand that? as

cra as crazy as it sounds. Then Mcronone

was just diplomatic and he said, "Uh,

yeah, any any deal would be great news."

Um, but what about what about that

framing? Trump says that Putin wants to

do it for him

and that and that part of Putin's

motivation

might be to get this done for Trump.

Does that sound real?

I do believe Putin might have said

something like that because that would

be good persuasion too and he would know

it would work on Trump. Um,

but I also think that another way to

look at that is that Putin knows that if

he does something for Trump, Trump's

going to respond in kind.

So, I do believe that Putin wants to get

it done under the Trump administration

because if he can do that, then he's got

something that Trump will say, "All

right, you know, you did that for me.

Didn't have to do it the way you did it,

but you did it for me. Now, when I'm

negotiating these sanctions and stuff

like that, well, maybe I owe you one."

So, I think it's more about Putin

knowing that he wants to have the

president of the United States owe him

one.

Um, so in that sense, he might be doing

it for Trump.

Um, let's see. I guess, uh, Trump and

Zilinski had some, uh, joking around in

the Oval Office, not the Oval Office,

but afterwards when they sit in those

two chairs awkwardly. Um, and Zalinski,

as you know, cancelled Ukrainian

elections because he was in the middle

of a war. And uh Trump joked that he

might follow Zilinski's lead and cancel

the 2028 election.

Now, I can't believe that Trump keeps

doing this cuz he's just poking the

Democrats and it's it's wild to watch.

I wouldn't recommend it and I definitely

wouldn't recommend any of you copy this

technique, but Trump might be the only

person in the world who could joke about

this and just get away with it. If it

makes them talk about this instead of

other things, well, it's probably to his

advantage.

So, he just loves poking that bear.

Um,

do you remember

when all the smart people were saying

that the other countries don't respect

Trump in the first the first term

especially? You remember that?

And even if you liked Trump, you might

have said to yourself, well, I have to

admit those other countries don't seem

to be respecting them. They should, but

I don't think they are. Well, what do

you think now? Now that you got all of

Europe to come over on short notice,

you've got Putin taking his phone calls

and coming to Alaska and he's working on

arguably the most important topic and

he'll probably get it done eventually,

maybe not right away,

but when you saw the uh the photos of

the Oval Office with all the European

leaders in there and Zalinski and Trump

beyond his desk and all the rest look

like visitors who were in their chairs

around the

Um, it's hard to imagine that the rest

of the world has a negative opinion of

him. I don't think they do. I think

they're just going to pay their tariffs

and hope he can end all war.

Anyway,

and according to the Finland president,

um, he said that in the past two weeks,

we've had more progress toward ending

this war than in the past three and a

half years. Now, I would I would debate

whether there's progress because the

only thing that matters is who gets what

land and that's nowhere near settled.

So,

the fact that it's not settled and it

doesn't look like it will be, I'm not

really sure there's any progress. But,

if they all feel like there's progress,

um this adds to that feeling that it's

inevitable.

What you would want is for Putin to feel

that ending the war is inevitable and

that there's progress toward making it

happen because just putting him in that

frame of mind

uh is going to get him a lot closer to

changing his mind if he needs to uh on

any land. Same with Zilinski.

So I guess the plan is that Zalinski and

Putin will meet and if that goes well

then Trump will meet with the two of

them as a trilateral. I don't know where

I guess that leaves out the European

leaders but maybe they won't mind. I

don't know.

So that's coming.

Trilateral. You're going to hear that

word a lot. Trilateral.

Well, Hamas has accepted a Gaza

ceasefire proposal from a bunch of Arab

mediators.

Um, so that's good news, right?

No, because Israel's there's no chance

that Israel is going to accept it. So,

Israel is not thinking about a

ceasefire. They're thinking about

relocating hundreds of thousands of

people and uh controlling the 25% of

Gaza that they have not yet completely

controlled. So

their take is that we want all the

hostages back, but we're not going to do

this ceasefire thing anymore. That's

what it looks like. It looks like

Israel's just decided they're going to

end this even at the expense of their

hostages. Um, they won't say that out

loud, of course, but it does look to me

like they're not going to save hostages

if it would slow them down from

completely depopulating and uh having a

command and control over a Gaza forever.

So I think the larger

just you know I'm not in their heads so

I can't read their minds but it does

look like the larger

goal is a complete control of Gaza even

if even if it's not the ideal situation

for getting back hostages

but anyway I wouldn't expect anything to

happen from that.

Well, the State Department has

reportedly revoked 6,000 foreign student

uh visas because these foreign students

were accused I'm reading this in red

state um accused of uh various crimes.

So, some of it is overstaying, you know,

just staying longer than their visa. Uh

but there other law violations and some

of them were fermenting terroristic

views.

Um according to who? I don't know,

whoever makes that decision, but 6,000.

Can you believe that? 6,000 students are

being shipped home for bad behavior.

6,000.

That's a lot. Wow. I would guess their

their violations were not big ones. And

I don't know what percentage of them are

just student visa overstays. You know,

that would be the the lowest level of

crime, I guess, would be over a staying

visa.

But if you do, you got to go home. Well,

the FDA has green lit a new lab grown

salmon. So, it's going to look like a

salmon and maybe taste like it, but it

will be made out of cells that they grew

in a lab. And then they added some

vegetable stuff to it and made it taste

right. according to the Smithsonian

magazine.

Um, and so we may have the uh the first

lab grown cultured fish.

Now, here's the weird thing. I'm a

pescatarian, so I eat fish. Um, I don't

love it. In fact, I don't really like

any fish, but I eat them because

protein. Um,

but even I'm grossed out by this lab

grown meat. You would think that I would

be more grossed out by the thought of

eating a dead animal

or dead fish. But eating a dead fish,

for whatever reason, feels more

palatable than this lab grown franken

fish monstrosity. But I'm sure it's

fine.

So, here's a real story.

Um, yesterday I said to myself, I'm not

going to tell anybody, but I'm going to

order a steak on Door Dash because I

don't want to have to prepare it. I'm

going to buy a steak and then you may

maybe I'll change my mind and not eat

it. I haven't eaten steak, I don't know,

40 years. Long time. About 40 years, I

guess. and and I thought, well, I just

won't tell anybody because then if I

change my mind, I don't have to explain

it. But, you know, so I go to Door Dash

and I start shopping for a steak.

Do you know what a steak costs?

Oh my god.

The the steaks locally were $54

just for the steak. if you wanted

something on the side or a beverage.

Well, that's more. And then you've got

the delivery fee and then you got the

tip. And I'm thinking to myself, am I

really gonna pay, I don't know, $150 for

a steak or whatever it was when I you

add everything in. Maybe $100 for a

steak. And I actually changed my mind

because if I liked it, I didn't want to

spend $54 every time I ate.

So, I'm doing okay financially. Like, I

don't have any, you know, money

problems.

But even I wouldn't buy a $54 steak.

Do any of you buy $54 steaks?

Is it only because it was on Door Dash?

Now, I understand that it would be

cheaper if you buy your own cut of meat

and cook it at home and stuff, but I had

no idea that a steak was that expensive.

Now, I knew the price was up, but my

god, $54 for a steak. Incredible.

Well, Trump is uh uh going all Don Keyod

on the uh windmills in New Jersey. Says

they're not dependable and they raise

electricity prices and he wants to get

rid of windmills.

Do you think that's another one of those

8020? I don't know if it's 8020, but I

feel like most people, even if they're

green, you know, they like green stuff,

they probably think the windmills are

not the best way to get there. So, I

feel like Trump has yet again save the

whales, save the birds, you know, don't

kill the whales, don't kill the birds,

it's ugly, get rid of these windmills.

So, I think he picked another winning

winning topic as he does.

A lot of you hate windmills. I know.

I've heard from you.

All right.

It's a uh slowish news day until Trump

wakes up and starts creating some uh

some excitement.

Yeah. I'm watching Land Man with Billy

Bob Thornton. If you haven't seen that

show, Land Man, oh my god, is that well

done. The acting, the casting, the the

writing, the the concept, you know, of

the people they put together for their

It's really good. It's like one of the

best things you'll ever see.

They do have at least two scenes where

somebody's tied to a chair and tortured.

I don't love that. But it was so good

that I didn't turn it off because I have

a rule. As soon as a movie puts somebody

in a chair, ties them to a chair to

torture them, as soon as that happens, I

turned it off. And I will never watch

the rest of that movie. But Land Man was

so good, I uh I was flexible on that

rule.

All right. Uh Land Man, I believe, is on

Prime Video.

only Prime Video, I think. I'm not 100%

sure.

One of my biggest problems is I have a

number of streaming services. Uh, well,

it's not my biggest problem, but pain in

the ass. And I'll start watching

something and I'll like it and then I'll

never be able to find it again.

Has anybody had that problem? I'll be

like, "Uh, was that on HBO Max?" Then

you spend 10 minutes looking, it's not

okay. I think it was on Netflix. Spend

10 minutes looking and it's not and you

then you're like, "Okay, I've been here

20 minutes. I only had 20 minutes to

watch the show. I'm done."

Um, all right.

It's so hard to find anything to watch,

especially even if you've started it.

Yeah. trying to navigate to the

Paramount

um stuff from from where you are. It's

tough.

All right. Uh I'm going to say hi to my

beloved subscribers on locals. The rest

of you, I'm hoping to see you tomorrow,

same time and same place for more fun.

But right now, we'll update the stream.

If this works.