Episode 2932 CWSA 08/19/25
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.
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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →'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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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,…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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.
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 beings, all you need for that is a copper mug or a glass of tanker shells or Stein, a canteen jugger 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.
Go 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.
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
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 beings, all you need for
that is a copper mug or a glass of
tanker shells or Stein, a canteen jugger
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. Go
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.