Episode 2982 CWSA 10/08/25

Don't sneak up on me like that.

You know, it surprises me.

All right, your stocks look like they're kind of flat.

Not much happening today, so I guess we'll do a show.

How about that?

Yeah, it's a good idea.

Let me make sure I can see your comments here because that's what matters.

There we go.

I suppose we might have a cat visiting, but not yet.

You'll have to wait for that.

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All right, that was my last sip of the cup, but boy was it good.

So good.

Well, speaking of marijuana, um Mario Noel had some uh interesting posts that he surfaced on X.

The AP is talking about this one.

There's new 800 pound 800 person, not pound, uh 800 person study found that a cannabis-based drug slashed chronic lower back pain effectively with fewer side effects than opioids.

Do you believe that?

that uh THC, the the active component of marijuana, reduce back pain more than opioids.

Well, you know who they could have asked?

Me, cuz I have lower back pain and I have taken opioids on prescription, of course.

Uh and I have taken marijuana in large quantities.

Guess which one makes me feel better.

It's not even close.

It's not even close, people.

The the first of all, the marijuana you can take as much as you want, you know, as long as long long as you're not responsible for work or driving or kids or anything like that.

But, uh, you can you can just sort of say, "That didn't make a difference.

How about this?" Until at the very least, you're not caring about it as much, which might be the secret.

Might not.

It might not be the pain.

Maybe it's just the caring about the pain.

I don't know how you divide that.

But uh next time AP, you want a story?

Just ask me.

I can tell you.

Meanwhile, Spain is moving to legalize medical cannabis.

Um it's not passed yet, but I guess the Council of Ministers has approved it and it's on its way to getting passed.

But over in Germany, they're going the opposite direction.

So, Germany was one of the most liberal uh countries and they allowed uh I think total legal cannabis including you could just buy it online.

Now, what they're trying to walk back is the buying it online part I believe which uh I agree with.

I would agree with that.

As long as you can go to a dispensary and show your ID and as long as they have delivery service for people who need it for medical reasons but are not well I'm I'm a perfect example.

If I needed more medical marijuana, chances are I wouldn't want to drive the driving because you know if you have a medical problem you might be on other drugs that are bad for driving.

So delivery is pretty important.

Delivery is very important for the medical people.

Very important.

It's critical really.

Um, so I think that's a good move by Germany.

They tried it.

The online part was a problem.

So they're just walking back the problem part.

Good on you, Germany, for at least being a rational player.

Um, then uh I guess Sean Duffy was on Fox News.

the was it outnumbered or something whatever it was this morning and Sean Duffy uh was uh he's the head of transportation right and uh he said talking about legalizing marijuana he said quote I think it would be a huge mistake for the federal government to legalize it now um here's my take the argument his argument was that unlike alcohol where you can test somebody and find out if they were driving drunk, so you have something like a deterrent, a legal deterrent, which is good.

You know, you might still want alcohol to be legal.

Most people do, but uh wouldn't you like a little bit of deterrent against driving because that's deadly.

So that that makes sense.

But you can't quite get that deterrent with marijuana because people's individual responses are all over the place and there's no easy way to test to find out if a person is um had too much.

For example, somebody like me who's a lifelong adult user um you could you could just pack me with marijuana before it would have any effect on even sports.

I I can play tennis with as much marijuana as you want.

Now, now obviously tennis is a very difficult thing.

I don't recommend driving under marijuana, by the way.

Just to be clear, I don't recommend driving.

If you're under the influence, don't drive.

But it's not true that everybody's going to have the same amount of impairment.

So, it makes it a problem for deciding whether you should go to jail.

Are you really high or are you still better driver than most people over the age of 60 just because you're not over the age of 60?

So, you know, doesn't really work as a standard.

But I believe that's a terrible argument.

Um the good argument is that if you keep it illegal at a federal level, that sends a better message to teenagers.

Everybody agrees with that, right?

Imagine arguing with your teenager who says, "Uh, you know, it's totally legal, right?

Not for teenagers.

It under all conditions, it won't be legal for teenagers, but it would be easier for them to argue, hey, I'm 17.

You know, I I can start making my own decisions.

if it would be legal for me in two months after my birthday.

Are you telling me that I can't make that decision now two months before my birthday or whatever?

I don't know if it's 18 or 21.

But as an argument for keeping teenagers off it, it really helps if you can say it's illegal on any level.

It just really helps.

So from a parenting perspective, believe it or not, there might be some some real argument for keeping it illegal at a federal level while at the same time the state police say, "Ah, we're going to let it go." And maybe they would just, you know, turn the other way in terms of the federal charges.

Anyway, so I think uh Sean Duffy could improve that argument a little bit.

Um, did you know that if Jabba the Hut had an evil twin, that twin would probably be considered a frontr runner to be the next governor of California?

And the only reason I say that is because the only thing we could do that's dumber than what we're doing.

And then I saw a video of somebody called Katie Porter, who's apparently a frontr runner to be a the next Democrat candidate for governor.

And uh you're going to have to see the video of Katie Porter talking to a reporter.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Run away.

Uh I mean, it's just all bad.

And you know that thing about overweight people being jolly?

Well, guess we're gonna throw that out.

Yeah, she she looks like Prrisker in a wig.

But so that pretty much guarantees that she'll be the next governor, I think, because she Oh my god.

Anyway, um JD Vance posted what they're saying is his first Tik Tok video as VP.

The Hill is reporting on this and uh here's what he said.

I I want to just tell you what he said and then I'll give you my review of it.

He said, quote, now imagine him he's just standing full frontal from his knees up standing in front of some official thing with some flags desk I think.

And here's what he says.

This is his whole Tik Tok.

He says, "J Vance here.

just wanted to let you know that we are relaunching the VP's Tik Tok page.

And then he said, uh, I got a little lazy the last few months.

I was focused on the job of being VP.

Not enough on Tik Toks.

That's about to change.

So follow along.

He goes, we'll update y'all on what's going on in the White House, the business of state.

We'll update you on what's going on politically, maybe some sombrero memes here and there, but follow along and we'll look forward to connecting on Tik Tok.

See you then.

All right.

Now, here's what that doesn't sound like much, right?

Doesn't sound like there's much meat to that Tik Tok, but let me call your attention to this.

What were the odds that a uh an elected member of our government, any member of Congress, just think of anybody except Trump, right?

For this one, for this one purpose, imagine Trump is not part of the conversation.

He's the only one who's not part of the conversation.

Look at all the other politicians.

How many of them could have pulled this off?

None.

None.

There's not another politician that could have done what he did.

He was playful.

He showed that he understood the Tik Tok kind of vibe that if you're completely serious, you're doing it wrong.

Right?

If you're completely serious, you're doing it wrong.

But how well can a elected politician deliver some social media quality?

I'll say witicisms, not not outright jokes, but just witisms.

Who can do that?

And the answer is nobody.

Nobody.

JD Vance can do it.

If you don't realize how thin that target was, he just hit a target that was the size of the arrow and he did it effortlessly.

So he has just the right sensibility of when to mock something, when to mock himself gently, you know, without going too far in the self-deprecation.

I don't like the self-deprecation.

Um, but if you're wondering who has the right stuff to be the next president, boy, would you miss this if he didn't have it.

Do you know how much you would miss having a president who could deliver a you know I won't say a laugh line but it but at least oh that's pretty funny you know you you hit that target very rare he can do it all right I didn't love his suit the suit he was wearing I thought was a mistake so I'll give uh I'll give one negative uh if you're going to do a full body um image do a little more work on the suit.

He wears good suits just, you know, not that day.

Um, I think he had a Yeah, I won't say more than that.

Uh, the Trump administration is rumored per Forbes uh that they're thinking about maybe selling a portion of their gigantic uh student loan debt to a private market.

Why would they do that?

Now what that means is uh people owe the government I don't know uh $1.6 trillion for student loan debt.

The way anybody who h who owns the debt in other words the people who are supposed to be paid the way they can get rid of that debt is by selling the debt to somebody else who's in that right kind of business.

So in other words you say if you give us I'll just make up a number.

If you give us half a trillion dollars, we'll give you the ability to collect $1.6 trillion from these people who used to owe us, but now they'll owe you because we sold it to you.

So, they would have to deeply discount it for it to make sense at all.

Um, but you have to keep in mind that a private entity probably can't be as successful garnishing wages.

So, so debt is worth more to the government than it is to private individuals because the government can pretty much squeeze you until you pay.

Private companies, they can squeeze you a lot.

They can mess with your credit, etc., but probably can't force you to pay.

It's a little bit harder for a private entity.

So, that makes the value of the debt lower because what they would be buying would be worth lower.

And maybe private entities could be more aggressive in collecting.

Maybe they could be more innovative in how they handle the debt.

So, there's something there.

I I wouldn't I wouldn't say that this is necessarily a good idea.

Uh you'd have to know the details.

It's all in the details, but maybe.

I mean, it's within the realm of Yeah, maybe.

Um Eric Nolan of Sai Post is writing about a uh study.

They showed that uh public opinion shifts um your cardiovascular response during political talking.

So in other words, if they hook you up to sensors, they can determine that some political topics make your heartbeat and your your hands sweaty and basically your body has a aomic response.

Now let me ask you this.

What would be more useful in understanding the American public?

an opinion poll in which we already know that 25% of the people asked are going to have the wrong answer because they do on every poll and the other 75 didn't understand the question.

Right?

That's that's what an opinion poll is.

The if you say um can you uh give us your opinion on closing the government?

Well, people will have an opinion, but do you think they'll understand it?

that they want to close the border, but do they understand all the ins and outs of the policy?

You know, the the short term, the long term, not really.

So, opinion polls are a good, you know, pretty good gauge of what people are going to say.

You know, if you talk to them, they'll say those things and that's a good gauge of that.

But what about how they feel?

That's what this uh cardiovascular response is.

So this is not so much about this specific study making more general statement that if you could study how people feel like literally put sensors on their body so that they can't lie to you.

You're just reading their body directly then you would suddenly know all the right policies.

Not the logical policies but you would know what you could sell.

Now imagine, and by the way, I think that Trump understands this like nobody has ever understood it.

That's what it means to be able to read the room.

Reading the room is not listening to the words.

It's knowing how they feel.

That's what he does.

So, if you look at the top three issues for voters, often it'll be stuff like crime and uh the border and inflation, of course, but that's that affects everybody.

But don't you think that those are the same things that would show up on an automatic auton what is it?

Uh your cardiovascular and your other responses.

If I hook you up to something and you're having a tough time paying your bills and then I say, "How do you feel about inflation?" It doesn't matter what words come out of your mouth.

If if as soon as you hear inflation, you think, "I can't pay my bills.

Oh my god, what am I going to do?" And your body starts going crazy.

Now, you really know something.

I mean, you really really know something.

And likewise with the border.

If you show somebody pictures of, you know, non-citizens streaming over the border and say, "How do you feel about that?" I don't want to hear what words they use.

That would be a little bit interesting, but not really.

But if you tell me that if they see that picture, their heartbeat goes, "Oh my god, I'm under attack." Which it might.

For some people, it might feel like an attack.

It does feel like an attack.

It does.

Um, don't you think that opinion polls should at least be augmented by um smaller number of people checking people's automatic responses?

So, you know, my friend uh Carmen Simon who's uh in that line of business and that line of business means testing people's, you know, bodily responses to to different questions.

She doesn't do politics.

But because uh you know I'm very familiar with her work.

By the way, you should follow her on locals.

Carmen Simon, Dr.

Carmen Simon.

So she's usually doing you know corporate questions and things like that.

You know, if we do this versus that, how do you feel?

One of the things I learned years years ago when I worked in the user interface lab at Pacific Bell, now I was not one of the scientists working on testing people, but we're in the same small group.

So sometimes I'd get to sit in the room behind the, you know, behind the glass and watch somebody being tested.

So I learned I learned a lot about that process.

And the most surprising thing I learned is if you're testing whether people can use a user interface, what what do you think is the right number of people to test?

Let's compare that to an opinion poll where I don't know what the number is, but you probably want a thousand people.

Would you feel comfortable if you talk to a thousand people?

That would be a pretty good opinion poll, I think, nationally.

But if you're testing people for a user interface, how many do you have to test?

Do you have to test a thousand?

Nope.

Five, maybe one.

Because if that person says, "Ah, I'm looking all over this page and I don't see a button." And then you bring in the next person and they say, "Uh, I I don't see I don't even see the button." And then you bring in the third, fourth, and fifth, and they all say, "Uh, I don't know where the button is." You don't have to wonder if those five people are coincidentally messed up and they're the only ones who can't use your user interface.

You have guaranteed that it's unusable.

Four out of five, three out of five guarantees it's unusable.

You have to redo it.

So if you're looking at how people feel, and this is maybe the the analogy is not perfect.

I realize that.

But if you look at how people feel, we're way more similar in how we feel than in how we talk.

So if you get an opinion poll, people will be talking in all different ways, but the way they feel about it might just be one of two ways.

It either bothers you or doesn't bother you.

And that would be I mean that would just be amazing if you do that on every topic.

I think that's uh Trump's superpower is that he can feel how people feel somehow.

All right.

Uh there was a Nobel Prize awarded to uh the first mainland Chinese scientist and also a woman.

I think that's worth noting for China.

And uh she discovered uh artisan malaria cure.

Oh wow.

She saved millions of lives with a malaria cure.

Damn, that's pretty impressive.

But uh um instead of being impressed by the science, I'm going to impress you with a joke that somebody told about this topic.

This is one of the best jokes I've ever seen.

And uh it's by uh Mabobo Ya Naduki who may or may not be a real person.

I can't tell online but uh you have to listen to this joke.

So the article says that her name is Tu Yuyu to Yuyu and uh she won the Nobel Prize.

Now this of course is a you know a great honor uh you know we should be showing her maximum respect.

So her name is spelled two.

The first name is just tu and then the last name is just the word u put together twice.

Uu y o u yu.

And here's the joke from Mabogo.

Also, she is the most difficult person to sing happy birthday to.

Happy birthday to you.

You come on.

I think it had I think that joke had 16 million views when I checked this morning.

That's a quality joke.

That's a quality joke.

That's a That's a Nobel Prize joke right there.

I hate that the joke overshadowed her her accomplishment of quote saving millions of lives.

But yeah, saving millions of lives, that's cool, too.

That's cool, too.

But are we overlooking the quality of this joke?

Come on, people.

Let's be fair.

Anyway, um you want to hear the least surprising news of the day?

The news is all weird and funny and uh the today's show will be the best you ever saw.

Um, so remember I always say that all data is fake if it matters.

If it doesn't matter, you know, maybe it's maybe it's not fake, but if it matters, there's somebody whose job it is to make sure that you don't see the real the real stuff.

There's always somebody's job to make sure you don't see accurate data.

It used to be my job when I worked for a big corporation.

My job was to make sure people didn't see accurate data.

And you know, you don't think about it that you don't think of it that way at first, but you you soon realize, you know, that when you say, "Hey, I don't have good data for this branch bank or whatever that I was uh monitoring.

So, we should just leave out the data because we don't really have data for this one bank." And the boss would say, "Nah, just make something up and put it in there because I don't use the data anyway.

I just use it if it agrees with me." He actually told me that.

So, so given that context that all data is fake, if it matters, what do you think of the census data?

What would matter more than census data?

Maybe just the national elections, but census data is right up there, right?

Do you what what else would be like way toward the top of importance of data?

How about jobs data?

How about those jobs?

The jobs data we recently learned that was just totally made up.

One of one of the uh by far Oh, actually I'm not high, Irene.

I'm not high at all.

I will be after the show.

Um just it's worth mentioning that opinion.

I think the news is just genuinely funny today.

Uh, and I've been sort of laughing all day.

But on top of that, uh, I won't give you the long story, but the short story is this is the first pain-free day I've had since last December.

So, if you think I'm high on life, oh god, I am.

I didn't know that I could ever feel pain-free again.

Now, it won't last.

That's also a longer story.

It's probably just today, but I have rarely felt better than I feel right now.

Rarely my whole life.

Cuz you know, you feel better if you're coming off of something bad.

There there's nothing.

The the best meal I ever had in my life was after a week of dental work where I could only eat soft food.

And the first time I had like a piece of some pasta, I thought, "Oh my god.

Oh, what is this?

It's like God in my mouth.

So that's how I'm feeling right now.

So if I do seem unusually happy, you're right.

But not for marijuana.

And I don't drink.

So it's not it's not those two things.

Anyway, back to the Census Bureau.

If we know that all data is fake, if it matters, and the census matters more than just about anything, would you be surprised that there's a group called Center for Renewing America whose claim is that the census is not just flawed, but intentionally, intentionally flawed.

And I was thinking to myself, hm, how are they going to convince me of that?

because, you know, everything's political and you can't trust you can't really trust some, you know, entity you've never heard of suddenly making a, you know, big provocative claim.

You know, you want to you want to keep your powder dry, maybe see if anybody else is saying the same thing, listen to the argument, hear both sides.

Well, they didn't have to do that.

Uh, apparently the Census Bureau, according to the Center for Renewing America, has a quote secretive algorithm that only a handful of bureaucrats have access to.

It's called differential privacy to scramble block level data, hide citizenship status, and shift political power to non-citizens.

Okay, you had me at secretive algorithm.

Oh, but let us tell you more about why we know this data is not accurate.

No, stop.

Stop.

Did you not just say secret algorithm?

Yes, we did.

That's just the beginning of our argument.

Stop.

Stop.

Take the rest of the day off.

If you tell me that any part of the census has a secret algorithm, we're done here.

We're done here.

The census is I don't know how much but it's definitely How about those temperature calculations for climate change?

Huh?

Huh?

Do you think that they replaced all the thermometers that went out of service or were close to uh heat islands?

In other words, too close to things like airports that would heat them up too much.

No, they use their secretive algorithm to to estimate what the temperature would be if they had measured it.

So the climate change and apparently the census have always been complete Have always been.

So that was fun.

Now I know there's going to be another side to this story and the census people will say no no that's not true.

But I'll tell you, there's nothing more persuasive to me than somebody says they got a secret algorithm.

No other questions.

I have no other questions after I hear that phrase.

How about Obamacare?

Do you think that the data about Obamacare is pretty good?

Pretty clean.

the people who put it into uh put it into law, they had a good idea what was going to happen and they weren't surprised at all because things went just the way they estimated it would.

Obamacare, what do you think?

Well, according to economist Steven Moore, uh the real he posted on the real problem is that Obamacare was never actually affordable.

So apparently the Washington Post just uh according to Stephen just admitted what conservatives have been saying for 15 years.

Quote, this is from the Washington Post.

The real problem is that Obamacare was never actually affordable.

Thank you, Jeff Bezos.

You know, you wonder if Jeff Bezos was at all serious about making the at least the opinion part of the newspaper um closer to something that would show both sides or at least close to the middle or something.

I would say this is one of the best examples of him succeeding in that in that narrow aim that I've seen.

Can you believe that the Washington Post, you know, the big the biggest one of the biggest supporters of the Democrats would say this directly?

The problem was it was never a good idea economically.

And that, by the way, is the best reframe for Obamacare.

Here's the worst reframe.

You cheap, miserable, psychotic bastards want to cut that Obamacare and take away all the affordable health care for people.

What kind of monsters are you?

That would be the current frame.

Not so good.

Here's a better one.

The people who implemented it knew it would fail because it was never affordable.

And now we're just paying the cost of those people who lied to you for those many years.

That is completely true that the people who implemented it lied to you about what it would cost and uh they've been lying since then.

And that it was never affordable.

It's it's not a question of um are you willing to pay more?

That that's what it feels like.

Are you willing to pay more?

It's not really that.

It was unaffordable by its nature on day one and wasn't going to get better.

Now, I have complimented Obama for the way he implemented it flawed because he said out loud, and I appreciated the transparency at the time.

At the time, he said, "There are lots of problems with Obamacare." He didn't call it that, but he said uh if we don't get something in there, we won't have anything to correct.

I'm I'm paraphrasing.

That's not his exact words, but he did he did say directly that he would prefer to implement a flawed plan and then the markets try to adjust and you know get the price down etc.

So that wasn't the worst idea in the world.

Uh except that it under I think it underappreciated how incompetent Congress is.

If we had a competent Congress that operated let's say like a startup or like a private industry, then you could implement something bad, let's call it the original i.

Phone.

The original i.

Phone was a piece of garbage.

I mean it was just garbage.

But it was also Apple computer.

So by putting the first one out there, they they created a market amazingly against all odds and then they could work on it every year and then it could become an amazing an amazing piece of technology.

So it's not that unusual for a private entity to do what Obama did, implement the flawed version and that's the fastest way you get it fixed by, you know, raising its visibility.

So, but it didn't work.

It didn't work.

The government is not capable of doing what Apple is capable of doing, which is fast fixing things that are broken.

Once something becomes a, you know, a law or somebody in Congress is making money at it or, you know, their cronies are overcharging Obamacare and all the other things that happen.

Can't really fix it.

Can't really fix it.

So, what is Trump doing?

He's breaking it without having a solution.

Does that make sense?

Does it make sense to break it if you don't have a good replacement?

People depend on it.

He's just going to break it.

Well, probably it does make sense because again, the government is not Apple computer.

Keeping it flawed and fixing it would be great if we were Apple computer, but sometimes you just have to break it.

You gota you got to shake the box.

And it's going to cause all kinds of problems in the short run.

Do you know who has balls big enough to create all kinds of problems in the short run?

Cuz it's the only way to get to where we need to get affordable healthcare.

Trump.

Somebody who doesn't need to run again.

If if he were running for president again, might change how he approached it.

But he's got the balls.

He's got the mandate.

He's got the second term, he's got the right people, he can break this thing.

And the faster we can figure out some way to fix it because fixing it is the goal.

The goal is not breaking it.

The the goal is not just taking away those, you know, tax burdens.

The goal is to have a better healthcare.

He doesn't have that yet, but boy, can he shake a box.

However, there are some good things happening in healthcare that we'll talk about in a minute.

Bernie Sanders, uh, according to Breitbart News, is reporting on that.

He was in an interview recently and he said, uh, um, the Democrats will quote, quote, lose our leverage if they vote to resume the pay of air traffic controllers and service members.

So, talk about tonedeaf.

When when the government uh is shut down, who is suffering?

It's people who are at the lowest economic rung.

It's uh ordinary, you know, air traffic controllers and of course service people.

That's the most the most grotesque part of this is if service people are affected.

I mean, that's just grotesque.

But to refer to it as losing our leverage.

Talk about not being able to read a room.

Do you know how much we care about Democrat leverage when you can't pay your effing bills?

If you can't pay your bills, you just hate their guts from top to bottom.

And you probably don't even care who it was that that you know blocked the uh the payments.

You just freaking hate their freaking guts.

You imagine looking in your bank account and the money isn't there and and you know who it is.

It's Bernie.

And then Bernie says, "We don't want to lose our leverage." Well, you and your leverage, Bernie.

Why don't you take your leverage and shove it so far up your crinkled ass that it comes out your ears?

you and your leverage.

And by the way, it's not like I disagree with them.

I'm not disagreeing with the point.

I'm just saying if you do this to people and then you say out loud it's for your leverage.

You better fix that.

That is such a messaging mistake.

Imagine this clown being your president.

This is the opposite of reading a room, right?

How could you read a room worse than this?

Oh, what we need is some massive socialism and don't want to give up our leverage.

should certainly don't want to be paying those people in the military.

you.

you and your leverage.

All right.

According to Rasmmanson poll, um 49% uh of the people who were pled say that Democrats did the closing of the government for the benefit of illegal aliens.

Nearly half of voters agree with a top Trump administration figure on the reason for the current government shutdown.

49% so about half say that the Democrats shut it down to give free health care to illegal aliens.

So is the free health care to illegal aliens the reason the government is shut down?

Well, it's some of the reason, but but the Trump administration is totally dominating the the messaging and they have made people argue whether or not they're uh you know helping to pay illegal aliens.

I'm not even going to get into that argument.

It would be easy to argue that's not exactly technically what's going on, but it would be equally easy to argue that well, although it's not technically what's going on, it's exactly what's going on.

But I can see why technically you think it's not, but it's exactly what's going on.

And a lot of it has to do with who you call illegal.

If you're here on amnesty, is it illegal?

And then there's a question of if the hospitals are going to treat you either way, what's different?

The hospital's still going to treat you.

Uh but I guess you just wouldn't have the emergency room would still treat you, but uh you wouldn't have regular health care, which of course would be way better.

So, uh messaging wise, I'd have to give the win so far to Trump.

All right, here's a story about uh Galman amnesia.

Do all of you know that now?

I talk about it so much that most of my audience should recognize that.

Galman amnesia.

Quickly, Galman was a physicist who realized that when he read the paper and saw a story on his expertise, physics, he always knew the story was fake news.

But but as soon as he turned the page to let's say politics, he would read it like it was probably true.

And one day he thought, uh, I feel like I might be noticing a pattern here that whenever I know the truth of the story, the news is fake.

But whenever I don't know the truth behind the story, I just uncritically assume they got that one right.

And so he concluded that probably all the news is fake.

Would you like to see a real world example of galman amnesia?

Now, one of the benefits I think I think Bill Morris said exactly the same thing.

I'm going to say paraphrasing that if you're a public figure, you live gal man amnesia all day long, which is when you read stories about yourself or about something you're an expert on, you know it's fake news.

So if you're a celebrity, you've seen the fake news about yourself over and over and over and over and over again to the point where if you saw news about at least another celebrity, you would say probably not.

Probably there's context missing, etc.

So there was a story about me uh yesterday.

So there's an entity called the bull work.

The bull work.

So that's a publication.

I didn't realize that it wasn't just a Democrat publication.

Apparently, they're anti-Trumpers.

And uh one of the one of the principles there is uh Tim Miller, who I did not realize that before he was an anti-Trumper, he was uh uh Jeb Bush's communication director for Jeb Bush.

So imagine imagine if your prior job was Jeb Bush's communications director.

Oh, poor guy.

Let me summarize Jeb Bush's communication.

I'm I'm going to do a fast forward of Jeb Bush's speeches and things.

He said blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah fast forward blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then then that would go on for you know hundreds of hours.

Now let me quote uh Donald Trump totally ending the career of Jeb Bush with these words.

Jeb Bush is so low energy.

And we're done.

Imagine Imagine Imagine being the communication director and having your entire campaign taken out with one sentence.

Anyway, now I'm I'm making fun of Tim Miller only because of the the unfortunate career arc he has, but I have to admit I like him.

Uh I and I'd wondered why when he was on MSNBC and the the the shows I'm all primed to dislike.

I wondered why he always seemed like a reasonable guy.

Even even though he'd be a little anti-Trump, I'd think, well, he's not crazy like a lot of the people that MSNBC has on are just just bad crazy.

But he didn't seem crazy.

And I kept wondering how could this, you know, rational person who has a different opinion, but he's a rational person.

How, like, how is he part of the Democrats?

And now I learned that uh I think he's maybe a recent uh I don't know, independent, maybe.

I don't know what he is, but he's he's no longer a Republican.

He's an anti-Trumper.

So, he was on with Bill Crystal and they were showing a video of me.

So, when they showed a video of me, let's see if you can guess.

Do you think it included the full context so you can really see what I had to say?

How many people think that they showed the full context of my comments?

Of course not.

Do you think that taking it out of context completely reversed or at least, you know, maximally changed what I was saying?

Of course.

Of course.

And do you think that you would have necessarily noticed if you had not also had the pleasure of listening to me say it originally and then seeing what they did to it?

Would you have noticed?

Was there any way you could tell that context had been removed?

No.

But I could tell.

I could tell.

So this is GB and amnesia.

I knew what they left out.

But you didn't.

Unless you watched me.

A lot of you watch me.

So, here's what they uh what they included.

They included me um talking about how uh Trump was in my opinion he was authoritarian and a strong man.

And uh what I meant by that is that he he pushes every envelope.

He he kicks every door.

He does everything that he can get done.

Executive orders, he pushes around Israel if he can.

He's a bully.

And my argument was if you know your perfect form of government would be exactly that guy.

Now, here's the parts they left out, then I would never support him for a third term because the system would break down.

So if you don't leave the part where it's completely impractical to have any kind of a policy of, you know, trying to have or supporting an authoritarian strongman, you're completely missing the philosophical uh brilliance of my point.

The point is not that we should try to get that or that the next one should be that or that we should be glad we have it.

I'm just saying we do have it and it works great.

So, I'm not going to complain about something we do have and it works great.

But Trump is such a unique character that uh you're not going to there's no there's no hope you're going to get a second one, right?

It's not like you say, "Oh, let let's try to get another one who's who's that ballsy and that strong." Well, good luck.

Good luck with that.

you know, sort of a one-off.

So, I reposted it and said, you know, I'd never support it.

But what's funny is I don't know a single person who seriously thinks Trump should or would do a third term.

Do any of you?

I'm curious.

There'll always be there's always going to be some troll who says yes.

But seriously, how many of you, you're the, this is probably one of the most Trumpup supporting audiences in the whole world.

How many of you think it would be a good idea for the United States, no matter how much you love Trump?

How many think it would be a good idea at his age, especially to to break the entire system by running again?

All right, look at the comments.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

So, why does Trump keep teasing it?

Is he just testing the water?

It feels like it sometimes, but far more obvious than that is that he's trolling them.

So, every minute that uh Tim and Bill spend showing videos of me talking about Trump maybe maybe being a dictator.

Oh, they conflated it.

They conflated my saying that having the the strong man might be actually good for you.

They conflated that with me wanting him to have a third term, which is the opposite of my opinion.

All right?

So, when you conflate something with its opposite, you're not doing anything useful for anybody.

You're you're just making some content.

So, all of the time that they spent making that video and talking about it, followed by all the time that maybe they have to deal with the fact that now they're getting some blowback is all wasted anti-Trump time cuz we don't care.

We don't care that these two guys honestly believe that Trump might want to serve a third term when there's no way that's ever going to happen.

And then somebody tried to challenge me online and they said, "All right, all right." This is paraphrasing, too.

I go, "All right, so so Scott, uh, if you don't think you should have a third term, are are you going to agree that if he tries to have a third term, you're going to fight it?" And I I guess I thought that was a gotcha.

To which I said, "Yes, yes, that's exactly what I would do if he tried to have a third term." Seriously.

And there's nothing like that happening.

There's nothing like that happening.

But if it did happen, oh yeah.

Yeah.

I'd be standing on top of a building screaming, "Do not let this happen." Because that would be the end of the Constitution, the end of the whole, you know, American experiment.

No.

No way.

But do I like it that he trolls them and makes them suck up all their time not talking about anything useful?

Okay.

I kind of love that.

Kind of love it.

uh Alan Walton, who's one of the commenters in the comment thread on that topic, and he said uh talking about me, he said that I said 10 seconds after the clip ended that they would have major problems if Trump ran for a third term.

Now, if I may defend uh Tim Miller and Bill, well, Tim Miller mostly, if I may defend him, probably somebody sent him the clip.

Probably somebody sent him the clip.

I doubt he watched the entire clip and then decided to, you know, leave out the most critical part.

Why?

Because he used to be a Republican.

And like I said, he presents himself as a rational person.

Even if I disagree with his views, they seem rational.

And so I don't believe that, you know, if I'm a a reasonably good judge of character, do I think that Bill Crystal would have intentionally left out the clarifier?

Yes, I do.

Yes, I do.

I think Bill Crystal would have intentionally left out the clarifier so that he could do that creepy smile.

You know, that creepy Bill Crystal smile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think he's going to he's going to be Hitler and take over the movies.

Um but do I think that Tim Miller, who used to be Jeb Bush's guy, Jeb Bush also a perfectly reasonable person, low energy?

No, just kidding.

Um, I don't think he would have personally been okay with clipping off the most important part of the clip.

I think somebody sent it to him and maybe somebody he trusted and he went with it.

We all do that, by the way.

Uh, how many times have I shown a clip and then somebody said, "Uh, that was from six years ago, Scott." And I go, you know, and then I slink away to delete it.

So, if you're in this business, you make that mistake a lot.

Um, and I don't I don't really judge it.

You know, I I'm okay as long as it's done in a platform where the comments can, you know, add the context.

It's not a perfect world, right?

It's not a perfect world.

So, I'm not going to say Tim Miller should never make a mistake on a clip.

I'm not going to say that.

I make that same mistake twice a day.

uh for as long as it could be corrected.

Thank you Elon Musk.

And then uh commenter Ozarki Patrick Parish said also in that uh in that thread he said Trump is so authoritarian that he can't just open the government up on his authoritarian order, but he just he's just authoritarian enough to serve a third term.

Got it right.

He can't pass a budget by himself.

He can't put um he can't put the National Guard into a city by himself.

He has to obey the courts and is you know if you wanted to make the argument that he's not an authoritarian, you have all you have you have a lot of argument.

Um I use I use the term authoritarian a little different maybe than most people.

I think when some people say authoritarian, they say, "Oh, he's doing things for his own benefit, right?" But that's not really in the definition.

The definition is that the authoritarian has a strong focus on authority.

What's another word for authority?

The Constitution.

What's another word for authority?

The law.

The law.

What's another word for authority?

Uh, head of the military, defending the border.

So, when I see a authoritarian, I see somebody who's willing to uh kick every door, push every envelope, but but if the court says too far, he says, "All right, well, we'll try something else." That's exactly the kind of strong man authoritarian I want.

I want obey the law, obey the constitution, you know, don't take away my second amendment.

Is that authoritarian?

Because he's certainly strongly backing authority.

But unless he runs for a third term, it's not about him.

It's really not about him.

All right.

Um, I finally decided to follow a little bit this story about the eight senators whose phone records were monitored, not their conversations, but the actual who they called and when and how long they talked as part of Jack Smith's so-called Arctic Frost investigation.

So, I guess when January 6 was still buzzing, uh, Jack Smith was trying to figure out if Trump had planned the insurrection and was he talking to anybody that they could further investigate to find out if there had been conversations about an actual insurrection?

There had not.

Do you do you think that by now that if there had been any evidence that an insurrection had been planned on January 6, do you think we wouldn't have heard that by now?

Seriously, none.

Not a single conversation by anybody who mattered that they were planning an insurrection.

None.

Not a single one.

And it it is still And how many people were charged with the crime of insurrection?

None.

None.

Nobody.

Nobody was even uh what's the word?

Indicted.

You know how you can get the Supreme Court to indict a ham sandwich, right?

Nobody was even indicted.

Nobody's admitted it.

There's been no document.

There's been no whistleblower.

There's not even been a conversation with any normal person who attended January 6 to say, "Hey, do you have a minute?

Could you tell me what your intention was?" How many of them said, "Oh, our intention is to overthrow the election and put in Trump illegally." Not a single person had that intention.

Well, you know, it's a big crowd.

There might have been some crazies there, but the general crowd believed that the election had just been stolen right in front of them and were there to make sure there was time to check out their suspicions.

That's it.

But anyway, during the time back in the day, uh, Jack Smith was trying to figure out if he if Trump had been talking to anybody that they should find out more information about.

And that included people like Lindseay Graham, uh, Josh Holly, and, uh, Ron Johnson, and some others that you'd be less familiar with.

But let me tell you this.

If you if if what you're doing, Democrats, is pissing off Lindsey Graham, Josh Holly, and uh Ron Johnson, you got some trouble coming.

You You got trouble coming.

Those three guys don't take You know, maybe the other ones, too.

I just don't I'm not I'm less familiar with the other one, but those three guys, no, they don't take any So So the blowback's going to be pretty fierce.

And uh and so far Lindsey Graham has let them have it in public and we only just found this out.

Now legal experts are defending it um because they legally got subpoenas and they stayed within the bounds of the law.

Is that enough?

I don't know.

Um but they you eventually the case was dropped but only because Trump became president.

So, I'm going to say that uh maybe that's not a technical violation of law, but boy does it sound bad.

All right, let's talk about healthcare.

Wall Street Journal is writing a story about Don Jr.

being uh recently put on the board I think in February of a company that's trying to sell um pharmaceutical meds mostly but say mostly focusing on generics directly to customers and Don John Don Jr.

and others are going to be meeting with big pharma people sometime soon and trying to get that.

All right.

So, uh it's called Blink RX and uh they would be competing with uh Mark Cuban's company that does a similar but there are some differences called cost plus Drugs.

Now, I went to Grock.

I spent a lot of time on Grock today because all the stories needed more context than I could find in the news.

But uh I wanted to ask you what's the difference between this uh cost plus drugs that Mark Cuban's already rolled out and blink RX that is in some state of being rolled out.

I don't know how much Wall Street Journal is writing about that.

Uh in both cases you uh depending on the drug, it's not every drug, but uh both of them have a emphasis on generics because those are places you can save some money.

But um apparently uh yeah, apparently you can save money on uh even some drugs that have insured co-pays.

So, in the case of Mark Cuban's company, cost plus drugs, um they can sometimes even beat the co-pay, not not just the cost of the drug, but if you have insurance and there's a copay, they can sometimes beat the entire cost of the copay.

I don't know how often that happens, but that'd be damn impressive.

Anyway, um so my point is that they both seem to be in the in the market for cutting out the middleman so that big pharma doesn't have to go through these middleman entities that have you know big big markups etc.

Um so want some good news.

So here's some good news.

The good news is these are serious companies.

You know, one has the clout to bring in all the big pharma CEOs and the other one is Mark Cuban who has all all the clout in the world and they're going to be it looks like competing against each other.

Now, um I I don't know enough about either company to know what the competitive, you know, matchup would be and but I would encourage you to look into it.

And it turns out that there's a tool for allowing you to find the lowcost way to get your drug.

And I believe that tool would include both Mark Cuban's uh company cost plus drugs as well as this Blink RX that Don Jr.

is getting involved with.

So uh the tool is called and there are other ones like it.

I don't know what they are but good RX.

So it's all one word good RX.

So Google that if you're looking for a cheaper place to get your drugs, especially the generics.

So the good news is very capable people are competing on a very important topic.

See this is why we need billionaires.

Do you ever say to yourself, I wish we could, you know, get rid of all those billionaires who are distorting the system.

If you didn't have a billionaire, we wouldn't be going to Mars.

We wouldn't have an electric car.

We wouldn't have a neurolink.

And we wouldn't have a cost plus drugs.

And we probably wouldn't have a uh whatever this other one is, right?

This is all billionaire stuff.

You know, I I felt a little bit of this when I got a little bit rich.

You know, I'm nowhere near billionaire status, of course, but even just getting a little bit rich, you you automatically feel this weight to do something for the world, like payback, right?

So you So that's why I did the dill burrito.

I tried to make a food that was more nutritious.

It's why I do a lot of things.

But um imagine being a billionaire.

Like imagine the pressure you would feel if you didn't feel like you were doing enough for the world.

And I believe that this is very much drives some of our best innovations.

I know you can have some complaints about Bill Gates.

There's something more complicated going on there and I don't know what it is.

But if you're looking at, you know, who is it who's taking a stab at lowering our pharma costs, it's some rich people.

It's rich people.

Anyway, Ran Paul has introduced his own budget reduction plan for the government.

He wants to cut six cents from every dollar the government spends.

And he says if we did that, we could balance the budget in five years.

Now, here's what I like about this.

First of all, I like Ran Paul in general.

Uh I just love that he's part of Congress, and I love that he's a noisy part of Congress.

don't always agree with him.

But that's not really the test.

The test is not whether I always agree with him.

The test is is he additive.

He is additive as hell.

Even when he doesn't get his way, he he always extends the argument.

He makes you think about it a little bit more clearly.

He always adds some context.

And he seems to be always on the side of the public.

Seems like it.

I mean, I can't read his mind.

you maybe everybody has his secret evil thoughts or something, but it doesn't look like it.

It looks like he's literally just on our side.

Now, would this work?

Um, well, he'll never get Congress to act on it because we don't have a Congress that can do smart hard things.

They can do smart things sometimes.

uh they could do hard things other times, but they can't seem to put the two of them together that that they need to do something that's smart but also hard.

You know, otherwise if they could do that, the budget would already be balanced.

But it's by design, they're unable to do that because they will lose their jobs.

As soon as somebody said, "Well, let's do something good for the public.

uh you know, we hate it, but we're going to have to cut these prices or cut these uh expenses.

They'd get fired.

They wouldn't get reelected.

So, we have a system that by its design can't solve problems that are both smart and hard.

That's why you need a billionaire occasionally because they can do that.

What can Elon Musk do that the government can't do?

He can solve a problem that's smart and hard and we're watching him do it every day.

Anyway, um here's what I love about the way Rand Paul presented this.

Instead of saying cut 6%, which sometimes could sound like a lot, depending on the domain, 6% would be a lot.

If you if you lost 6% in the stock market, it feel like a lot.

If you had to pay 6% interest rate on a mortgage, it would feel like a lot.

But what if it's six cents?

six cents.

Remember, I always tell you that if somebody tells you the dollar amount without the percentage or the percentage without the dollar amount, it's always propaganda.

It's at least persuasion.

So, because I like grandpa, I'm not going to call this propaganda.

I'll call it persuasion.

It's kind of clever to call it six cents.

Doesn't that sound like less?

6% feels like it reminds you of other 6% things that would be too expensive.

But if somebody said uh uh here you can buy this item, whatever it is, it wouldn't matter if it's a piece of candy or an automobile.

If they said it's 6 cents, you would say, "Oh, you mean like nothing?

You mean like it's is basically zero?" So, it's a very clever way to um to put it.

I don't think you'll get support in Congress.

All right.

Did I tell you that today's news is all fun?

Okay.

If you haven't seen Pam Bondi uh testifying before Congress, I guess yesterday, and responding to Adam Schiff and then to Richard Blumenthal, do yourself a treat.

Now, I don't know that this is true.

I'm going to add a little speculation here, but I think it's true.

It looks to me like the top administration people have decided that if they have to testify in front of uh pencil neck Adam Schiff that they're not going to be take any of it seriously and they're going to spend the entire time that Schiff has insulting him personally and never stopping, never answering the question, just insulting him personally while it's on CNN and MSNBC until he runs out of time and Pam Bondi did that to both Adam Schiff and then a little bit less but also some to Richard Blumenthal and I thought to myself as long as she's only doing it to the designated liars you know your Swallwells your shifts your your Rascins you and I think I'd throw Blumenthal on there too as long as she's only doing it to the bad players please do more of this I I want to see this all day long.

I want CNN to say, you know, we're not even going to bother covering it because all it is going to be is Pam Bondi screaming insults over Adam Schiff, begging for to get his time back.

I loved it.

I I did not think that there would be any meaningful way you could respond to being sat in front of the TV cameras and then allowing the politician to say, "I demand my time back so I can insult you." Is it true that you ran over a child?

Well, no, I didn't.

It's my time.

It's my time, but I didn't really run over a child.

Shut up.

It's my time.

It's my time.

And and then just say a bunch more I can't put up with that for another minute.

But watching Pam Bondi literally just sitting there trying to think of new insults and then yelling her insults so you couldn't ignore them.

Oh my god, I loved it.

I loved it.

It's like it's it's like Scott Jennings on uh on steroids or something.

you know how much we like Scott Jennings because he always has that you know calm measured you know wellthoughtout response to the craziness but see but seeing somebody who is a smart you know thinking person you know highlevel executive very serious made it to the you know highest levels of government seeing that person realize that the situation itself is so absurd that the funniest thing she can do is just insult him to his face on TV for as long as she can get away with it.

A+.

Pam Bondi, I have never loved you more.

That was just A+.

More, please.

I don't know if anybody else will be able to match that.

That was just really good work.

Well, the Illinois uh it looks like oh Texas uh National Guard has arrived in a training camp I guess in Illinois and they will be deploy deployed soon but again the news is all funny.

So there's a photograph ABC ran it on on Axe of the uh supposed Texas National Guard troops getting off a truck in Illinois.

And if you haven't seen the picture, you really have to because they're all they're all obese.

Now, I don't know if all National Guard people in Texas are obese, but there were like six of them in the front of the picture who were clearly obese, you know, all decked out in their their military outfits.

And uh I just thought to myself, uh paging uh Pete Hegsth, Pete Hegsth, uh could you show up and maybe uh lead some lead some jumping jacks?

I can't believe that that picture got released.

They they look so not ready for war, but luckily it's not a war.

Anyway, um all right, let me talk about uh the persuasion view on uh all the sending the National Guard into cities.

All right, so there are two ways to look at this.

So there there are definitely two sides of this.

On one hand, it does look quote authoritarian for the federal government to be sending troops to cities.

Would you agree?

Now, I mean, you don't have to you don't have to disagree with sending the troops.

I'm just asking you a very narrow question.

Would you not agree that the Democrats are trying to create this authoritarian wrap on Trump that sending uh unformed officers and especially people with masks on and stuff, it plays it plays into their um into their model.

Right?

Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

Don't get me wrong.

doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but I often refer to Trump as what I call anensive president, meaning that damn, he's getting stuff done, but he's going to leave a little breakage because it's usually the only way he can get anything done.

So, this is in the category of a little bit of breakage because it it gives them something to focus on.

Oh, the authoritarian authoritarian.

And it works a little bit.

I would say it works.

I would say they've convinced their base quite a bit of it that oh this is authoritarian.

It's the next step before Hitler comes in.

Right.

So on one hand uh it supports their fake messaging about authoritarian and and it also supports their fake paid protests which apparently are going to happen today.

So you'll see some more fake paid performers uh protesting.

So that all fits into the Democrat model a little bit.

And if there was nothing else to say, it would look like Democrats are winning on this topic, winning politically.

But let me give you the other side, which is more with less obvious.

So the the less obvious part is the fun part.

So on the pro Trump side of this argument, persuasion-wise, the imagery um is telling us that Democrat leaders have left you to die, have left you to die at the hands of criminals and cartel members and the only person who's trying to save your freaking life is Trump with the National Guard.

So Trump has the um the strong imagery of sending in the the cavalry, sending in the rescue squad.

So if he can frame this successfully, and it sounds, you know, based on Rasmus, it sounds like he has he if he can frame this as saving the the poor, downtrodden, especially low-income and almost always minority population.

if he can say, "I'm sending these people in to save you because your leaders have left you to die at the hands of criminals and cartels." Let me say that sentence again.

I'm sending in the the National Guard because your local leaders have left you to die at the hands of the criminals and the cartels.

Now, is that exactly true?

Have they left you to die?

Well, no.

I mean, they have police and it's certainly not their intention for you to die.

But feel how strong that is.

Your leaders are leaving you to die.

I'm sending somebody to save your life.

Do you feel that?

Now, remember I was mentioning earlier Dr.

Carmen Simon and her and her experiments where she can put sensors on your body and find out how you're responding to different messages.

How do you think you would respond to that message?

Your leaders are leaving you to die at the hands of criminals and cartels.

I'm I'm sending in the military to stop them.

I feel like that's just a dead winner.

I shouldn't say dead, but um I believe that Trump has once again correctly read the room.

I believe that when people answer polls, they answer it with words.

In other words, they they've got a point of view that matches their team and that's been put into words by other people.

And then if you're asked your opinion, you'll look at the words and you'll you'll say, "What words do I have that you know is the answer to that opinion?" But you'll be you'll be dealing on the word level, also known as the policy level, the word level.

Trump is dealing on the stay alive level.

Stay alive.

Live.

Don't be stabbed by a bad guy.

Are those similar?

Do you think the people who are dealing on the word level, even though those words do play through into polls, which would make it look like it's a closer a closer debate than it really is on the visceral physical level, this is a blowout.

It's an absolute blowout.

But it won't be until after it works that 80% of the the country will see it was a blowout.

But you can't beat I'm going to keep you alive.

You can't beat that.

How do you beat that?

And by the way, it's close enough to true because everybody feels that, you know, the impact of crime.

Everybody feels it.

Um, so it hits exactly what you're thinking and feeling in the strongest possible way.

Uh, so I think Trump's got the uh the leverage, as we say.

Here's something else Trump said being funny.

Uh he was talking to uh Carney from uh Canada and uh separately he said Democrats have no leader.

They remind me of Somalia.

Okay, that's just so perfect.

They remind me of Somalia.

How am I not going to quote that?

I mean, seriously, Democrats have no leader.

They remind me of Somalia.

If you take out the Somalia part, would I quote it?

No, of course I wouldn't.

It would just be sort of an ordinary statement.

You know, I say it, you say it, we all say they don't have a leader.

The news says it.

It wouldn't be anything.

But as soon as he adds, they reminded me of Somalia.

part of your brain goes and then it like it burrows in and it and it uh persuasion wise it becomes an association that you can't lose.

Will I ever forget ever for the rest of my life?

Will I ever forget that Trump compared the Democrats with no leaders to Somalia?

No, I won't forget that for the rest of my life.

Well, the rest of my life might not be that long, but uh the rest of you, you might remember it, too.

And then he had another witism.

You had to see this one to see uh how well he pulled it off, but that uh so Mark Carney is sitting in that official chair that the leaders always sit in next to the president, you know, so the two of them are facing out on these chairs.

Fox News is reporting on this.

Um, so Mark Garnney is talking and then the the part that's hard to explain unless you see the video, which is worth saying, uh, is that Trump interrupted him.

All right, so it's it's hard to tell his story with an interruption in it, but he interrupted him.

And so Mark Carney starts out by saying, "Uh, this is in many respects the most important." Trump interrupts him and he finishes his sentence with the merger of Canada and the United States.

So Carney laughed like genuinely laughs and you know he said no oh no not that the uh the people attending all laughed.

They all laughed and you know how people always say that Trump never laughs.

He was totally laughing like he doesn't do haha you know he doesn't laugh like I do but he was laughing.

He had a he had a smile wrapped around his face.

He knew he pulled it off.

So, you know, he was happy about it, I'm sure.

But, um, I don't know if I told you this story, but it reminds me of a of a joke I heard from Jared.

And I wondered I wondered if there's any influence there that that with jokes there, there are only about a hundred jokes in the world and everything else is just changed in the names of the people in the joke.

So, it makes me wonder if uh if Trump would expose this.

And I may have told this story before, but I'll tell it again.

So, in 2018 when I was invited to meet with Trump just cuz it was summer and he was he was just meeting with some supporters, nothing important.

And I was waiting in the outer the waiting area to be allowed into the Oval Office.

And uh Jared comes walking by through the outer office on the way to work.

and uh he was with another gentleman and I guess he recognized me from I don't know probably the podcast and so he so he makes a point to stop and introduce himself but of course he introduces the person that he's with as well uh so he introduces himself and he says this is soand so he's the finance minister of Mexico and he's here to pay for the wall now the finance minister belly laughs Jared laughs.

I belly laugh because it was a great line.

Like that the humor depends not just how clever you are, but where you say it and in front of whom.

If you do the right joke in the right audience in the right time, it's magic.

And that that was kind of magic.

It was just brilliant.

But doesn't that remind you of uh a little bit of uh Trump's joke to to try to infer that uh you know your your other party from the other country is totally on board but you're just joking about it now.

Is Trump also serious about the possibility of merging with Canada?

I say yes.

I would say yes.

And it's not the worst idea in the world.

Uh I think it would be hugely difficult and it would be you know it would come with its own risks and everything else but I I think sorry cats and keyboards are a bad combination.

Um, but I think that turning that into a joke and then turning his relationship with very contentious into two dudes joking.

It was brilliant.

It's one of the things that Trump does better than anybody.

If you're doing what he likes, he's going to go at you as hard as anybody can go.

I talk about this all the time.

It's great persuasion.

If you don't do what he likes, he goes after you hard.

you if you're at the moment doing things he likes and I guess he was getting along with candid at the moment.

You know, he makes a joke, he slaps him on the leg, they have a laugh, now he's his best friend.

And he and he he praised Carney like more than more than I've seen him praise other people.

I mean, he he genuinely he genuinely seems to respect Carney's, you know, judgment and and skill.

So, that's all good news for us and Canada.

We'll see where that goes.

Meanwhile, over in Hungary, they're passing a lifetime tax exemption to mothers of three.

So, if you have three kids, you just don't pay taxes.

Now, what do you think of that idea?

Is there anything missing in that story?

What is it that's obviously missing in this story?

And I had to go to Grock to get the context.

Well, the obvious thing that's missing is what is the base tax rate in Hungary to begin with?

If the tax rate was 1%, it's nothing.

If the tax rate was like America, you know, up to 50%.

Oh my god.

I mean, that would be gigantic policy.

Turns out that Hungary, according to Grock, uh their tax rate is uh 15% for just everything, income, investments, just 155.

So, it's a lot easier to go from 15 down to zero for a special class of people, mothers, who are adding to the economy.

That's a lot easier than going from rich people paying 50% um to well, we'll let you get away with none.

How about none?

You just have an extra kid.

Do do you know how fast I would have three children if it meant I paid no taxes?

It would take me uh nine months.

If if I could pay no taxes in the United States, because remember, I pay half of my income in taxes, if I could take that to zero, I could find three women.

Wait, no, it wouldn't work with three women.

You'd have to have one woman with three babies.

Okay.

It would take me 27 months plus a little uh recovery time.

But yeah, I I would have I would have three kids I didn't plan on having to save a gigantic amount of money.

Yeah, as long as I didn't have to be too active in the raising of them.

I'm not good at that.

Um and I won't last long, but you know, lots of reasons.

All right.

Uh I know I'm going super long.

Do you mind?

I can go a little bit longer.

Okay.

I'm having so much fun today.

You don't have to listen to it all.

All right.

Uh there was some rumors about Charlie Kirk sending some text messages that were kind of negative on his view of how much bullying he was getting from pro-Israel sources.

Some people didn't think that was necessarily a real text and might have been fake, but apparently that's been confirmed that it's real.

So, one of the TPUs guys I think confirmed it.

So, Candace Owens had it and here's what the message said.

Um, so Charlie Kirk said in a message, I think it was a group message.

Um, just lost another huge Jewish donor, 2 million a year because we won't cancel Tucker uh for the TPUSA event.

And then he says, uh, I'm thinking of inviting Candace.

Now, those are connected thoughts because, uh, both Tucker and Candice are accused of being, uh, anti-Israel.

So, if he got if he lost $2 million because he won't cancel Tucker, it looks like he was going to double down and invite Candace.

Sort of a big FU to the people bullying him.

So then one some other member uh didn't like that I guess.

And then Charlie went on to explain uh Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes.

Okay, that's probably something you don't want to say in public.

Um and then it says, I cannot and will not be bullied like this.

Now let me explain.

He's not saying all Jewish people are like the stereotypes.

He's saying that the Jewish donors, the ones he's dealing with, are acting like the worst stereotypes.

I I probably wouldn't have said that.

That that feels like a little unnecessarily provocative, but also probably completely accurate, meaning that he dealt with these donors.

I didn't.

Uh I have no reason to think he's a liar.

So if he says my honest my honest reaction to this is why are you acting like the worst stereotypes and I'm I'm out.

Seems fair.

Um and then he says quote leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.

Wow.

So now the accusations um which I do not believe.

Let me let me say up front and then I'll say it one more when one more time when I'm done.

I don't think Israel put a hit on Charlie Kirk.

I do not think there's any chance that Israel put on a hit on Charlie Kirk.

There was a reason.

They had a good reason because if Charlie Kirk turned against Israel, he did have enough clout in the United States and the United States is vital.

I believe Israel would say to their survival, they would feel an existential threat by the fact that he said directly, I'm going to leave the pro-Israel cause.

Did they have did Israel have a an incentive to murder him?

Yes.

Yes.

Let me say it again.

I do not believe Israel had anything to do with killing him.

Here's why.

The bigger existential threat would be caught doing it.

And we always catch everybody.

We're in a world where you kind of do catch everybody if you care enough.

Do you think that Netanyahu, as smart as he is strategically, and even if you hate him, even if you think he's a monster, he is a genius?

Like actual like the literal kind of genius, strategically genius.

Um, again, I don't agree with everything he does.

That's not the point.

But do you think somebody as smart as Netanyahu would take any chance of permanently ruining the US as an ally?

And and I think the chance would be at the very least 25%.

Like even if even if Mossad came to him and said, "Look, we got a plan to take out this critic and it's really important to Israel that we do take him out, but um I think we can get the risk down to 25% of getting caught." You think you'd take that?

Nope.

Nope.

Not a smart person.

No smart person in the world would take that.

How about And especially let's add to the fact that they knew each other.

They knew each other.

How hard is it to do a hit on somebody you know personally?

That's got to be pretty hard.

I mean, you have to be pretty cold to do that.

I'm sure leaders do it, but it's pretty tough.

So, if you look at it from the point of view that Netanyahu is not a there's no chance that they there's no chance that he would have green lit this and there's no chance that Msad would have done it on their own.

So, I'm going to say again, there's no chance, in my opinion, that Israel was involved in a hit on a beloved American um person who if they got caught, even one or two% chance of getting caught, is the end of Israel.

I mean, that wouldn't just be a hard week.

I mean, that could very well be the end of Israel.

Um, if they pissed us off that much and got caught, I mean, it's not like we don't have contentious things and they spy on us.

I'm sure we spy on them.

They they try to bully us.

We try to bully them back.

I mean, that all that stuff seems more like normal countries, you know, pursuing what's good for their country.

I don't hate all of that.

It's more like the the give and take you expect.

But if they had, if they had, and they didn't, in my opinion, they didn't.

But if they had, biggest mistake Israel would have ever made in its entire history, bar none.

So, no, I don't think they would do that.

Well, and finally, an update on the what I call the robot energy war.

You call it the Ukraine Russia war, but it's really now robots fighting energy resources.

And allegedly, now this is according to Pravda, so we can't automatically trust it, but they say that a Ukrainian drone hit a cooling tower, a nuclear power plant cooling tower in the c in the city of Nova Rosen.

I think I nailed it.

Nova, Rosen.

Uh, so so it put a hole in the cooling tower, but we don't see any bad stuff escaping yet, but it might.

Do you think that uh do you think the Ukraine would attack a cooling tower on a nuclear?

I feel like that would be a mistake because if they if they declare open war on nuclear facilities in Russia, Russia is going to take out all the nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

Um but if they take out the energy resources, the other energy resources like oil and gas, they might be able to take out enough of that that Russia gets flexible about peace before they've destroyed 100% of the energy in Ukraine.

So maybe that's the bet.

I don't know.

So it feels like there's at least some possibility that was a mistake or maybe fake news.

Could be fake news, but it also could just be a mistake.

It'd be a weird mistake.

I mean, hard to imagine it would be a mistake.

All right, that's all I have for today.

Um, I'm not going to say anything to the locals people today.

I got a had a good chat with them before the show.

Um, so I'm just going to end because we ran late.

Thank you everybody for staying so long.

I hope you had as much fun as I did.

This is one of the most fun I've ever had doing the uh podcast.

And uh we'll see you again tomorrow.

Same time, same place.

Don't sneak up on me like that. You

know, it surprises me.

All right, your stocks look like they're

kind of flat. Not much happening today,

so I guess we'll do a show. How about

that? Yeah, it's a good idea.

Let me make sure I can see your comments

here because that's what matters. There

we go.

[Music]

I suppose we might have a cat visiting,

but not yet. You'll have to wait for

that.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

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All right, that was my last sip of the

cup,

but boy was it good.

So good. Well, speaking of marijuana,

um Mario Noel had some uh interesting

posts that he surfaced on X. The AP is

talking about this one. There's new 800

pound 800 person, not pound, uh 800

person study found that a cannabis-based

drug slashed chronic lower back pain

effectively with fewer side effects than

opioids.

Do you believe that? that uh THC, the

the active component of marijuana,

reduce back pain more than opioids.

Well, you know who they could have

asked?

Me,

cuz I have lower back pain and I have

taken opioids on prescription, of

course. Uh and I have taken marijuana in

large quantities. Guess which one makes

me feel better. It's not even close.

It's not even close, people.

The the first of all, the marijuana you

can take as much as you want, you know,

as long as long long as you're not

responsible for work or driving or kids

or anything like that. But, uh, you can

you can just sort of say, "That didn't

make a difference. How about this?"

Until at the very least, you're not

caring about it as much, which might be

the secret. Might not. It might not be

the pain. Maybe it's just the caring

about the pain. I don't know how you

divide that. But uh next time AP, you

want a story? Just ask me. I can tell

you.

Meanwhile, Spain is moving to legalize

medical cannabis. Um it's not passed

yet, but I guess the Council of

Ministers has approved it and it's on

its way to getting passed. But over in

Germany, they're going the opposite

direction. So, Germany was one of the

most liberal uh countries and they

allowed uh I think total legal cannabis

including you could just buy it online.

Now, what they're trying to walk back is

the buying it online part I believe

which uh I agree with. I would agree

with that. As long as you can go to a

dispensary and show your ID and as long

as they have delivery service for people

who need it for medical reasons but are

not well I'm I'm a perfect example. If I

needed more medical marijuana, chances

are I wouldn't want to drive

the driving because you know if you have

a medical problem you might be on other

drugs that are bad for driving. So

delivery is pretty important. Delivery

is very important for the medical

people. Very important. It's critical

really. Um, so I think that's a good

move by Germany. They tried it. The

online part was a problem. So they're

just walking back the problem part. Good

on you, Germany, for at least being a

rational player.

Um,

then uh I guess Sean Duffy was on Fox

News. the was it outnumbered or

something whatever it was this morning

and Sean Duffy uh was uh he's the head

of transportation right and uh he said

talking about legalizing marijuana he

said quote I think it would be a huge

mistake for the federal government to

legalize it now

um here's my take

the argument his argument was that

unlike alcohol where you can test

somebody and find out if they were

driving drunk, so you have something

like a deterrent, a legal deterrent,

which is good. You know, you might still

want alcohol to be legal. Most people

do, but uh wouldn't you like a little

bit of deterrent against driving because

that's deadly. So that that makes sense.

But you can't quite get that deterrent

with marijuana because people's

individual

responses are all over the place and

there's no easy way to test to find out

if a person is um had too much. For

example, somebody like me who's a

lifelong adult user um you could you

could just pack me with marijuana before

it would have any effect on even sports.

I I can play tennis with as much

marijuana as you want. Now, now

obviously tennis is a very difficult

thing. I don't recommend driving under

marijuana, by the way. Just to be clear,

I don't recommend driving. If you're

under the influence, don't drive. But

it's not true that everybody's going to

have the same amount of impairment. So,

it makes it a problem for deciding

whether you should go to jail. Are you

really high or are you still better

driver than most people over the age of

60 just because you're not over the age

of 60? So, you know, doesn't really work

as a standard. But I believe that's a

terrible argument.

Um the good argument is that if you keep

it illegal at a federal level,

that sends a better message to

teenagers. Everybody agrees with that,

right? Imagine arguing with your

teenager who says, "Uh, you know, it's

totally legal, right? Not for teenagers.

It under all conditions, it won't be

legal for teenagers, but it would be

easier for them to argue, hey, I'm 17.

You know, I I can start making my own

decisions. if it would be legal for me

in two months after my birthday. Are you

telling me that I can't make that

decision now two months before my

birthday or whatever? I don't know if

it's 18 or 21. But as an argument for

keeping teenagers off it, it really

helps if you can say it's illegal on any

level. It just really helps. So from a

parenting perspective,

believe it or not, there might be some

some real argument for keeping it

illegal at a federal level while at the

same time the state police say, "Ah,

we're going to let it go." And maybe

they would just, you know, turn the

other way in terms of the federal

charges.

Anyway, so I think uh Sean Duffy could

improve that argument a little bit.

Um, did you know that if Jabba the Hut

had an evil twin, that twin would

probably be considered a frontr runner

to be the next governor of California?

And the only reason I say that is

because the only thing we could do

that's dumber than what we're doing. And

then I saw a video of somebody called

Katie Porter,

who's apparently a frontr runner to be a

the next Democrat candidate for

governor. And uh you're going to have to

see the video of Katie Porter talking to

a reporter.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

Run away.

Uh

I mean, it's just all bad. And you know

that thing about overweight people being

jolly? Well,

guess we're gonna throw that out.

Yeah, she she looks like Prrisker in a

wig. But so that pretty much guarantees

that she'll be the next governor, I

think, because she Oh my god. Anyway, um

JD Vance posted what they're saying is

his first Tik Tok video as VP. The Hill

is reporting on this and uh

here's what he said. I I want to just

tell you what he said and then I'll give

you my review of it. He said, quote, now

imagine him he's just standing full

frontal from his knees up standing in

front of some official thing with some

flags desk I think. And here's what he

says. This is his whole Tik Tok. He

says, "J Vance here. just wanted to let

you know that we are relaunching the

VP's Tik Tok page. And then he said, uh,

I got a little lazy the last few months.

I was focused on the job of being VP.

Not enough on Tik Toks. That's about to

change.

So follow along. He goes, we'll update

y'all on what's going on in the White

House, the business of state. We'll

update you on what's going on

politically, maybe some sombrero memes

here and there, but follow along and

we'll look forward to connecting on Tik

Tok. See you then. All right. Now,

here's what that doesn't sound like

much, right? Doesn't sound like there's

much meat to that Tik Tok, but let me

call your attention to this. What were

the odds that a uh an elected member of

our government, any member of Congress,

just think of anybody except Trump,

right? For this one, for this one

purpose, imagine Trump is not part of

the conversation. He's the only one

who's not part of the conversation. Look

at all the other politicians. How many

of them could have pulled this off?

None. None. There's not another

politician that could have done what he

did. He was playful. He showed that he

understood the Tik Tok

kind of vibe that if you're completely

serious, you're doing it wrong. Right?

If you're completely serious, you're

doing it wrong. But how well can a

elected politician

deliver some

social media quality?

I'll say witicisms, not not outright

jokes, but just witisms. Who can do

that? And the answer is nobody. Nobody.

JD Vance can do it. If you don't realize

how thin that target was, he just hit a

target that was the size of the arrow

and he did it effortlessly.

So he has just the right sensibility of

when to mock something, when to mock

himself gently, you know, without going

too far in the self-deprecation. I don't

like the self-deprecation.

Um, but if you're wondering who has the

right stuff to be the next president,

boy, would you miss this if he didn't

have it. Do you know how much you would

miss having a president who could

deliver a you know I won't say a laugh

line but it but at least oh that's

pretty funny you know you you hit that

target very rare he can do it

all right I didn't love his suit the

suit he was wearing I thought was a

mistake

so I'll give uh I'll give one negative

uh if you're going to do a full body

um image

do a little more work on the suit.

He wears good suits just, you know, not

that day.

Um,

I think he had a Yeah, I won't say more

than that. Uh, the Trump administration

is rumored per Forbes uh that they're

thinking about maybe selling a portion

of their gigantic

uh student loan debt to a private

market.

Why would they do that? Now what that

means is uh people owe the government I

don't know uh $1.6 trillion for student

loan debt. The way anybody who h who

owns the debt in other words the people

who are supposed to be paid the way they

can get rid of that debt is by selling

the debt to somebody else who's in that

right kind of business. So in other

words you say if you give us I'll just

make up a number. If you give us half a

trillion dollars,

we'll give you the ability to collect

$1.6 trillion from these people who used

to owe us, but now they'll owe you

because we sold it to you. So, they

would have to deeply discount it for it

to make sense

at all. Um,

but you have to keep in mind that a

private entity

probably can't be as successful

garnishing wages.

So, so debt is worth more to the

government than it is to private

individuals because the government can

pretty much squeeze you until you pay.

Private companies, they can squeeze you

a lot. They can mess with your credit,

etc., but probably can't force you to

pay. It's a little bit harder for a

private entity. So, that makes the value

of the debt lower because what they

would be buying would be worth lower.

And maybe private entities could be more

aggressive in collecting. Maybe they

could be more innovative in how they

handle the debt. So, there's something

there. I I wouldn't I wouldn't say that

this is necessarily a good idea. Uh

you'd have to know the details. It's all

in the details, but maybe. I mean, it's

within the realm of Yeah, maybe.

Um Eric Nolan of Sai Post is writing

about a uh study. They showed that uh

public opinion shifts

um your cardiovascular response during

political talking.

So in other words, if they hook you up

to sensors, they can determine that some

political topics make your heartbeat and

your your hands sweaty and basically

your body has a aomic response.

Now let me ask you this. What would be

more useful in understanding the

American public? an opinion poll in

which we already know that 25% of the

people asked are going to have the wrong

answer because they do on every poll and

the other 75 didn't understand the

question.

Right? That's that's what an opinion

poll is. The if you say um can you uh

give us your opinion on closing the

government? Well, people will have an

opinion, but do you think they'll

understand it?

that they want to close the border, but

do they understand all the ins and outs

of the policy? You know, the the short

term, the long term, not really. So,

opinion polls are a good, you know,

pretty good gauge of what people are

going to say.

You know, if you talk to them, they'll

say those things and that's a good gauge

of that. But what about how they feel?

That's what this uh cardiovascular

response is. So this is not so much

about

this specific study making more general

statement that if you could study how

people feel like literally put sensors

on their body so that they can't lie to

you. You're just reading their body

directly then you would suddenly know

all the right policies.

Not the logical policies but you would

know what you could sell. Now imagine,

and by the way, I think that Trump

understands this like nobody has ever

understood it. That's what it means to

be able to read the room. Reading the

room is not listening to the words.

It's knowing how they feel. That's what

he does. So, if you look at the top

three issues for voters, often it'll be

stuff like crime and uh the border

and inflation, of course, but that's

that affects everybody.

But don't you think that those are the

same things that would show up on an

automatic auton what is it? Uh your

cardiovascular and your other responses.

If I hook you up to something and you're

having a tough time paying your bills

and then I say, "How do you feel about

inflation?"

It doesn't matter what words come out of

your mouth. If if as soon as you hear

inflation, you think, "I can't pay my

bills. Oh my god, what am I going to

do?" And your body starts going crazy.

Now, you really know something. I mean,

you really really know something. And

likewise with the border. If you show

somebody pictures of, you know,

non-citizens streaming over the border

and say, "How do you feel about that?"

I don't want to hear what words they

use. That would be a little bit

interesting, but not really. But if you

tell me that if they see that picture,

their heartbeat goes,

"Oh my god, I'm under attack." Which it

might. For some people, it might feel

like an attack. It does feel like an

attack. It does. Um, don't you think

that opinion polls should at least be

augmented by um smaller number of people

checking people's automatic responses?

So, you know, my friend uh Carmen Simon

who's uh in that line of business

and that line of business means testing

people's, you know, bodily responses to

to different questions. She doesn't do

politics.

But because uh you know I'm very

familiar with her work. By the way, you

should follow her on locals. Carmen

Simon, Dr. Carmen Simon. So she's

usually doing you know corporate

questions and things like that. You

know, if we do this versus that, how do

you feel? One of the things I learned

years years ago when I worked in the

user interface lab at Pacific Bell, now

I was not one of the scientists working

on testing people, but we're in the same

small group. So sometimes I'd get to sit

in the room behind the, you know, behind

the glass and watch somebody being

tested. So I learned I learned a lot

about that process. And the most

surprising thing I learned is if you're

testing whether people can use a user

interface,

what what do you think is the right

number of people to test? Let's compare

that to an opinion poll where I don't

know what the number is, but you

probably want a thousand people.

Would you feel comfortable if you talk

to a thousand people? That would be a

pretty good opinion poll, I think,

nationally. But if you're testing people

for a user interface, how many do you

have to test? Do you have to test a

thousand?

Nope.

Five,

maybe one.

Because if that person says, "Ah, I'm

looking all over this page and I don't

see a button." And then you bring in the

next person and they say, "Uh, I I don't

see I don't even see the button." And

then you bring in the third, fourth, and

fifth, and they all say, "Uh, I don't

know where the button is." You don't

have to wonder if those five people are

coincidentally messed up and they're the

only ones who can't use your user

interface. You have guaranteed that it's

unusable.

Four out of five, three out of five

guarantees it's unusable. You have to

redo it. So if you're looking at how

people feel,

and this is maybe the the analogy is not

perfect. I realize that. But if you look

at how people feel, we're way more

similar in how we feel

than in how we talk.

So if you get an opinion poll, people

will be talking in all different ways,

but the way they feel about it might

just be one of two ways. It either

bothers you or doesn't bother you. And

that would be I mean that would just be

amazing if you do that on every topic. I

think that's uh Trump's superpower is

that he can feel how people feel

somehow.

All right. Uh there was a Nobel Prize

awarded to uh the first mainland Chinese

scientist and also a woman. I think

that's worth noting for China. And uh

she discovered uh artisan malaria cure.

Oh wow. She saved millions of lives with

a malaria cure. Damn, that's pretty

impressive. But uh um instead of being

impressed by the science, I'm going to

impress you with a joke that somebody

told about this topic. This is one of

the best jokes I've ever seen. And uh

it's by uh Mabobo Ya Naduki who may or

may not be a real person. I can't tell

online but uh you have to listen to this

joke. So the article says that her name

is Tu Yuyu to Yuyu and uh she won the

Nobel Prize. Now this of course is a you

know a great honor uh you know we should

be showing her maximum respect.

So her name is spelled two. The first

name is just tu and then the last name

is just the word u put together twice.

Uu y o u yu. And here's the joke from

Mabogo. Also, she is the most difficult

person to sing happy birthday to.

Happy birthday to you. You

come on. I think it had I think that

joke had 16 million views when I checked

this morning. That's a quality joke.

That's a quality joke. That's a That's a

Nobel Prize joke right there.

I hate that the joke overshadowed her

her accomplishment of quote saving

millions of lives.

But yeah, saving millions of lives,

that's cool, too. That's cool, too. But

are we overlooking the quality of this

joke? Come on, people. Let's be fair.

Anyway,

um

you want to hear the least surprising

news of the day? The news is all weird

and funny and uh the today's show will

be the best you ever saw. Um, so

remember I always say that all data is

fake if it matters. If it doesn't

matter, you know, maybe it's maybe it's

not fake, but if it matters, there's

somebody whose job it is to make sure

that you don't see the real the real

stuff. There's always somebody's job to

make sure you don't see accurate data.

It used to be my job when I worked for a

big corporation. My job was to make sure

people didn't see accurate data.

And you know, you don't think about it

that you don't think of it that way at

first, but you you soon realize, you

know, that when you say, "Hey, I don't

have good data for this branch bank or

whatever that I was uh monitoring. So,

we should just leave out the data

because we don't really have data for

this one bank." And the boss would say,

"Nah, just make something up and put it

in there because I don't use the data

anyway. I just use it if it agrees with

me." He actually told me that. So,

so given that context

that all data is fake,

if it matters, what do you think of the

census data?

What would matter more than census data?

Maybe just the national elections, but

census data is right up there, right? Do

you what what else would be like way

toward the top of importance of data?

How about jobs data?

How about those jobs? The jobs data we

recently learned that was just totally

made up.

One of one of the uh by far Oh, actually

I'm not high, Irene.

I'm not high at all. I will be after the

show. Um

just it's worth mentioning that opinion.

I think the news is just genuinely funny

today. Uh, and I've been sort of

laughing all day. But on top of that,

uh, I won't give you the long story, but

the short story is this is the first

pain-free day I've had since last

December.

So, if you think I'm high on life, oh

god, I am.

I didn't know that I could ever feel

pain-free again. Now, it won't last.

That's also a longer story. It's

probably just today, but I have rarely

felt better than I feel right now.

Rarely my whole life. Cuz you know, you

feel better if you're coming off of

something bad. There there's nothing.

The the best meal I ever had in my life

was after a week of dental work where I

could only eat soft food. And the first

time I had like a piece of some pasta, I

thought, "Oh my god. Oh, what is this?

It's like God in my mouth. So that's how

I'm feeling right now. So if I do seem

unusually happy, you're right. But not

for marijuana. And I don't drink. So

it's not it's not those two things.

Anyway, back to the Census Bureau. If we

know that all data is fake, if it

matters, and the census matters more

than just about anything, would you be

surprised that there's a group called

Center for Renewing America whose claim

is that the census is not just flawed,

but intentionally,

intentionally flawed. And I was thinking

to myself, hm, how are they going to

convince me of that? because, you know,

everything's political and you can't

trust you can't really trust some, you

know, entity you've never heard of

suddenly making a, you know, big

provocative claim. You know, you want to

you want to keep your powder dry, maybe

see if anybody else is saying the same

thing, listen to the argument, hear both

sides.

Well, they didn't have to do that. Uh,

apparently the Census Bureau, according

to the Center for Renewing America, has

a quote secretive algorithm that only a

handful of bureaucrats have access to.

It's called differential privacy to

scramble block level data, hide

citizenship status, and shift political

power to non-citizens.

Okay, you had me at secretive algorithm.

Oh, but let us tell you more about why

we know this data is not accurate. No,

stop. Stop. Did you not just say secret

algorithm? Yes, we did. That's just the

beginning of our argument. Stop. Stop.

Take the rest of the day off. If you

tell me that any part of the

census has a secret algorithm,

we're done here. We're done here. The

census is I don't know how

much but it's definitely

How about those temperature

calculations for climate change? Huh?

Huh? Do you think that they replaced all

the thermometers that went out of

service or were close to uh heat

islands? In other words, too close to

things like airports that would heat

them up too much. No, they use their

secretive algorithm to

to estimate what the temperature would

be if they had measured it.

So the climate change and apparently the

census

have always been complete

Have always been.

So that was fun. Now I know there's

going to be another side to this story

and the census people will say no no

that's not true. But I'll tell you,

there's nothing more persuasive to me

than somebody says they got a secret

algorithm.

No other questions. I have no other

questions after I hear that phrase.

How about Obamacare?

Do you think that the data about

Obamacare is pretty good? Pretty clean.

the people who put it into uh put it

into law, they had a good idea what was

going to happen and they weren't

surprised at all because things went

just the way they estimated it would.

Obamacare, what do you think? Well,

according to economist Steven Moore, uh

the real he posted on the real problem

is that Obamacare was never actually

affordable.

So apparently the Washington Post just

uh according to Stephen just admitted

what conservatives have been saying for

15 years. Quote, this is from the

Washington Post. The real problem is

that Obamacare was never actually

affordable.

Thank you, Jeff Bezos. You know, you

wonder if Jeff Bezos was at all serious

about making the at least the opinion

part of the newspaper um closer to

something that would show both sides or

at least close to the middle or

something. I would say this is one of

the best examples of him succeeding in

that in that narrow aim that I've seen.

Can you believe that the Washington

Post, you know, the big the biggest one

of the biggest supporters of the

Democrats would say this directly? The

problem was it was never a good idea

economically. And that, by the way, is

the best reframe for Obamacare. Here's

the worst reframe. You cheap, miserable,

psychotic bastards want to cut that

Obamacare and take away all the

affordable health care for people. What

kind of monsters are you?

That would be the current frame. Not so

good. Here's a better one. The people

who implemented it knew it would fail

because it was never affordable. And now

we're just paying the cost of those

people who lied to you for those many

years.

That is completely true that the people

who implemented it lied to you about

what it would cost and uh they've been

lying since then. And that it was never

affordable. It's it's not a question of

um are you willing to pay more? That

that's what it feels like. Are you

willing to pay more? It's not really

that. It was unaffordable by its nature

on day one and wasn't going to get

better. Now, I have complimented Obama

for the way he implemented it flawed

because he said out loud, and I

appreciated the transparency at the

time. At the time, he said, "There are

lots of problems with Obamacare." He

didn't call it that, but he said uh if

we don't get something in there, we

won't have anything to correct. I'm I'm

paraphrasing. That's not his exact

words, but he did he did say directly

that he would prefer to implement a

flawed plan and then

the markets try to adjust and you know

get the price down etc. So that wasn't

the worst idea in the world. Uh except

that it under I think it

underappreciated how incompetent

Congress is. If we had a competent

Congress that operated let's say like a

startup or like a private industry, then

you could implement something bad, let's

call it the original iPhone. The

original iPhone was a piece of garbage.

I mean it was just garbage.

But it was also Apple computer. So by

putting the first one out there, they

they created a market amazingly against

all odds and then they could work on it

every year and then it could become an

amazing an amazing piece of technology.

So it's not that unusual for a private

entity to do what Obama did, implement

the flawed version and that's the

fastest way you get it fixed by, you

know, raising its visibility.

So, but it didn't work. It didn't work.

The government is not capable of doing

what Apple is capable of doing, which is

fast fixing things that are broken. Once

something becomes a, you know, a law or

somebody in Congress is making money at

it or, you know, their cronies are

overcharging Obamacare and all the other

things that happen. Can't really fix it.

Can't really fix it. So, what is Trump

doing?

He's breaking it without having a

solution.

Does that make sense? Does it make sense

to break it if you don't have a good

replacement? People depend on it. He's

just going to break it.

Well, probably it does make sense

because again, the government is not

Apple computer. Keeping it flawed and

fixing it would be great if we were

Apple computer, but sometimes you just

have to break it. You gota you got to

shake the box. And it's going to cause

all kinds of problems in the short run.

Do you know who has balls big enough to

create all kinds of problems in the

short run? Cuz it's the only way to get

to where we need to get affordable

healthcare. Trump. Somebody who doesn't

need to run again. If if he were running

for president again,

might change how he approached it. But

he's got the balls. He's got the

mandate. He's got the second term, he's

got the right people, he can break this

thing. And the faster we can figure out

some way to fix it because fixing it is

the goal. The goal is not breaking it.

The the goal is not just taking away

those, you know, tax burdens. The goal

is to have a better healthcare. He

doesn't have that yet, but boy, can he

shake a box.

However, there are some good things

happening in healthcare that we'll talk

about in a minute.

Bernie Sanders, uh, according to

Breitbart News, is reporting on that. He

was in an interview recently and he

said, uh, um, the Democrats will quote,

quote, lose our leverage if they vote to

resume the pay of air traffic

controllers and service members.

So, talk about tonedeaf.

When when the government uh is shut

down, who is suffering?

It's people who are at the lowest

economic rung. It's uh ordinary, you

know, air traffic controllers and of

course service people. That's the most

the most grotesque

part of this is if service people are

affected. I mean, that's just grotesque.

But to refer to it as losing our

leverage.

Talk about not being able to read a

room. Do you know how much we care about

Democrat leverage when you can't pay

your

effing bills? If you can't pay your

bills, you just hate their guts from top

to bottom. And you probably don't even

care who it was that that you know

blocked the uh the payments. You just

freaking hate their freaking guts. You

imagine looking in your bank account and

the money isn't there and and you know

who it is. It's Bernie. And then Bernie

says, "We don't want to lose our

leverage." Well, you and your

leverage, Bernie. Why don't you take

your leverage and shove it so far up

your crinkled ass that it comes

out your ears? you and your

leverage. And by the way, it's not like

I disagree with them. I'm not

disagreeing with the point. I'm just

saying if you do this to people and then

you say out loud it's for your

leverage.

You better fix that. That is such a

messaging mistake. Imagine this clown

being your president. This is the

opposite of reading a room, right? How

could you read a room worse than this?

Oh, what we need is some massive

socialism and don't want to give up our

leverage. should certainly don't want to

be paying those people in the military.

you. you and your leverage.

All right.

According to Rasmmanson poll,

um 49%

uh of the people who were pled say that

Democrats did the closing of the

government for the benefit of illegal

aliens. Nearly half of voters agree with

a top Trump administration figure on the

reason for the current government

shutdown. 49% so about half say that the

Democrats shut it down to give free

health care to illegal aliens.

So

is the free health care to illegal

aliens the reason the government is shut

down?

Well, it's some of the reason,

but but the Trump administration is

totally dominating the the messaging and

they have made people argue whether or

not they're uh you know helping to pay

illegal aliens. I'm not even going to

get into that argument. It would be easy

to argue

that's not exactly technically what's

going on, but it would be equally easy

to argue that well, although it's not

technically what's going on, it's

exactly what's going on. But I can see

why technically you think it's not, but

it's exactly what's going on. And a lot

of it has to do with who you call

illegal. If you're here on amnesty, is

it illegal? And then there's a question

of if the hospitals are going to treat

you either way,

what's different?

The hospital's still going to treat you.

Uh but I guess you just wouldn't have

the emergency room would still treat

you, but uh you wouldn't have regular

health care, which of course would be

way better.

So, uh messaging wise, I'd have to give

the win so far to Trump.

All right, here's a story about uh

Galman amnesia.

Do all of you know that now? I talk

about it so much that most of my

audience should recognize that. Galman

amnesia. Quickly, Galman was a physicist

who realized that when he read the paper

and saw a story on his expertise,

physics, he always knew the story was

fake news.

But but as soon as he turned the page to

let's say politics, he would read it

like it was probably true. And one day

he thought, uh, I feel like I might be

noticing a pattern here that whenever I

know the truth of the story, the news is

fake. But whenever I don't know the

truth behind the story, I just

uncritically assume they got that one

right. And so he concluded that probably

all the news is fake. Would

you like to see a real world example of

galman amnesia?

Now, one of the benefits I think I think

Bill Morris said exactly the same thing.

I'm going to say paraphrasing that if

you're a public figure, you live gal man

amnesia all day long, which is when you

read stories about yourself or about

something you're an expert on, you know

it's fake news. So if you're a

celebrity, you've seen the fake news

about yourself over and over and over

and over and over again to the point

where if you saw news about at least

another celebrity,

you would say probably not. Probably

there's context missing, etc. So there

was a story about me

uh yesterday. So there's an entity

called the bull work. The bull work. So

that's a publication. I didn't realize

that it wasn't just a Democrat

publication. Apparently, they're

anti-Trumpers.

And uh one of the one of the principles

there is uh Tim Miller, who I did not

realize that before he was an

anti-Trumper, he was uh uh Jeb Bush's

communication director

for Jeb Bush.

So imagine

imagine if your prior job

was Jeb Bush's communications director.

Oh, poor guy. Let me summarize Jeb

Bush's

communication.

I'm I'm going to do a fast forward of

Jeb Bush's speeches and things. He said

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah fast forward blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

and then then that would go on for you

know hundreds of hours. Now let me quote

uh Donald Trump totally ending the

career of Jeb Bush

with these words.

Jeb Bush is so low energy.

And we're done.

Imagine Imagine

Imagine being the communication

director and having your entire campaign

taken out with one sentence.

Anyway,

now I'm I'm making fun of Tim Miller

only because of the the unfortunate

career arc he has,

but I have to admit I like him. Uh I and

I'd wondered why when he was on MSNBC

and the the the shows I'm all primed to

dislike. I wondered why he always seemed

like a reasonable guy. Even even though

he'd be a little anti-Trump, I'd think,

well, he's not crazy like a lot of the

people that MSNBC has on are just just

bad crazy. But he didn't seem

crazy.

And I kept wondering

how could this, you know, rational

person who has a different opinion, but

he's a rational person. How, like, how

is he part of the Democrats? And now I

learned that uh I think he's maybe a

recent uh I don't know, independent,

maybe. I don't know what he is, but he's

he's no longer a Republican. He's an

anti-Trumper. So, he was on with Bill

Crystal and they were showing a video of

me.

So, when they showed a video of me,

let's see if you can guess. Do you think

it included the full context so you can

really see what I had to say? How many

people think that they showed the full

context of my comments? Of course not.

Do you think that taking it out of

context completely reversed

or at least, you know, maximally changed

what I was saying? Of course. Of course.

And do you think that you would have

necessarily noticed if you had not also

had the pleasure of listening to me say

it originally and then seeing what they

did to it? Would you have noticed? Was

there any way you could tell that

context had been removed? No. But I

could tell. I could tell. So this is GB

and amnesia. I knew what they left out.

But you didn't. Unless you watched me. A

lot of you watch me.

So, here's what they uh what they

included.

They included me um

talking about how uh Trump was in my

opinion he was authoritarian and a

strong man.

And uh what I meant by that is that he

he pushes every envelope. He he kicks

every door. He does everything that he

can get done. Executive orders, he

pushes around Israel if he can. He's a

bully.

And my argument was if you know your

perfect form of government would be

exactly that guy.

Now, here's the parts they left out,

then I would never support him for a

third term because the system would

break down. So if you don't leave the

part where it's completely impractical

to have any kind of a policy of, you

know, trying to have or supporting an

authoritarian

strongman, you're completely missing the

philosophical

uh brilliance of my point. The point is

not that we should try to get that or

that the next one should be that or that

we should be glad we have it. I'm just

saying we do have it and it works great.

So, I'm not going to complain about

something we do have and it works great.

But Trump is such a unique character

that uh you're not going to there's no

there's no hope you're going to get a

second one, right? It's not like you

say, "Oh, let let's try to get another

one who's who's that ballsy and that

strong." Well, good luck. Good luck with

that. you know, sort of a one-off.

So, I reposted it and said, you know,

I'd never support it. But what's funny

is I don't know a single person who

seriously

thinks Trump should or would do a third

term.

Do any of you? I'm curious. There'll

always be there's always going to be

some troll who says yes. But seriously,

how many of you, you're the, this is

probably one of the most Trumpup

supporting audiences in the whole world.

How many of you think it would be a good

idea for the United States, no matter

how much you love Trump? How many think

it would be a good idea at his age,

especially

to to break the entire system by running

again? All right, look at the comments.

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. So, why

does Trump keep teasing it? Is he just

testing the water?

It feels like it sometimes, but far more

obvious than that is that he's trolling

them. So, every minute that uh Tim and

Bill spend showing videos of me talking

about Trump maybe maybe being a

dictator. Oh, they conflated it. They

conflated my saying that having the the

strong man might be actually good for

you. They conflated that with me wanting

him to have a third term, which is the

opposite of my opinion. All right? So,

when you conflate something with its

opposite,

you're not doing anything useful for

anybody. You're you're just making some

content. So, all of the time that they

spent making that video and talking

about it, followed by all the time that

maybe they have to deal with the fact

that now they're getting some blowback

is all wasted anti-Trump time

cuz we don't care. We don't care that

these two guys honestly believe that

Trump might want to serve a third term

when there's no way that's ever

going to happen. And then somebody tried

to challenge me online and they said,

"All right, all right." This is

paraphrasing, too. I go, "All right, so

so Scott, uh, if you don't think you

should have a third term, are are you

going to agree that if he tries to have

a third term, you're going to fight it?"

And I I guess I thought that was a

gotcha.

To which I said, "Yes, yes, that's

exactly what I would do if he tried to

have a third term." Seriously. And

there's nothing like that happening.

There's nothing like that happening. But

if it did happen, oh yeah. Yeah. I'd be

standing on top of a building screaming,

"Do not let this happen." Because that

would be the end of the Constitution,

the end of the whole, you know, American

experiment. No. No way.

But do I like it that he trolls them and

makes them suck up all their time not

talking about anything useful? Okay. I

kind of love that. Kind of love it.

uh Alan Walton, who's one of the

commenters in the comment thread on that

topic, and he said uh talking about me,

he said that I said 10 seconds after the

clip ended that they would have major

problems if Trump ran for a third term.

Now, if I may defend

uh Tim Miller and Bill, well, Tim Miller

mostly, if I may defend him, probably

somebody sent him the clip. Probably

somebody sent him the clip. I doubt he

watched the entire clip and then decided

to, you know, leave out the most

critical part.

Why? Because he used to be a Republican.

And like I said,

he presents himself as a rational

person. Even if I disagree with his

views, they seem rational. And so I

don't believe that, you know, if I'm a a

reasonably good judge of character, do I

think that Bill Crystal would have

intentionally left out the clarifier?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I think Bill

Crystal would have intentionally left

out the clarifier so that he could do

that creepy smile. You know, that creepy

Bill Crystal smile.

Yeah. Yeah. I think he's going to he's

going to be Hitler and take over the

movies.

Um but do I think that Tim Miller, who

used to be Jeb Bush's guy, Jeb Bush also

a perfectly reasonable person, low

energy? No, just kidding. Um, I don't

think he would have personally

been okay with clipping off the most

important part of the clip. I think

somebody sent it to him and maybe

somebody he trusted and he went with it.

We all do that, by the way. Uh, how many

times have I shown a clip and then

somebody said, "Uh, that was from six

years ago, Scott." And I go,

you know, and then I slink away to

delete it. So, if you're in this

business, you make that mistake a lot.

Um, and I don't I don't really judge it.

You know, I I'm okay

as long as it's done in a platform where

the comments can, you know, add the

context. It's not a perfect world,

right? It's not a perfect world. So, I'm

not going to say Tim Miller should never

make a mistake on a clip. I'm not going

to say that. I make that same mistake

twice a day.

uh for as long as it could be corrected.

Thank you Elon Musk.

And then uh commenter Ozarki

Patrick Parish said also in that uh in

that thread he said Trump is so

authoritarian that he can't just open

the government up on his authoritarian

order, but he just he's just

authoritarian enough to serve a third

term. Got it

right. He can't pass a budget by

himself. He can't put um he can't put

the National Guard into a city by

himself. He has to obey the courts and

is

you know if you wanted to make the

argument that he's not an authoritarian,

you have all you have you have a lot of

argument. Um I use I use the term

authoritarian a little different maybe

than most people. I think when some

people say authoritarian, they say, "Oh,

he's doing things for his own benefit,

right?" But that's not really in the

definition.

The definition is that the authoritarian

has a strong focus on authority.

What's another word for authority?

The Constitution.

What's another word for authority?

The law. The law. What's another word

for authority?

Uh, head of the military, defending the

border. So, when I see a authoritarian,

I see somebody who's willing to uh kick

every door, push every envelope, but

but if the court says too far, he says,

"All right, well, we'll try something

else."

That's exactly the kind of strong man

authoritarian I want. I want obey the

law, obey the constitution, you know,

don't take away my second amendment. Is

that authoritarian?

Because he's certainly strongly backing

authority.

But unless he runs for a third term,

it's not about him. It's really not

about him.

All right.

Um, I finally decided to follow a little

bit this story about the eight senators

whose phone records were monitored, not

their conversations, but the actual who

they called and when and how long they

talked as part of Jack Smith's so-called

Arctic Frost investigation. So, I guess

when January 6 was still buzzing, uh,

Jack Smith was trying to figure out if

Trump had planned the insurrection and

was he talking to anybody that they

could further investigate to find out if

there had been conversations about an

actual insurrection? There had not. Do

you do you think that by now

that if there had been any evidence that

an insurrection had been planned on

January 6, do you think we wouldn't have

heard that by now?

Seriously, none. Not a single

conversation by anybody who mattered

that they were planning an insurrection.

None. Not a single one. And it it is

still And how many people were charged

with the crime of insurrection?

None.

None. Nobody. Nobody was even uh what's

the word? Indicted. You know how you can

get the Supreme Court to indict a ham

sandwich, right? Nobody was even

indicted.

Nobody's admitted it. There's been no

document. There's been no whistleblower.

There's not even been a conversation

with any normal person who attended

January 6 to say, "Hey, do you have a

minute? Could you tell me what your

intention was?"

How many of them said, "Oh, our

intention is to overthrow the election

and put in Trump illegally." Not a

single person had that intention. Well,

you know, it's a big crowd. There might

have been some crazies there, but the

general crowd believed that the election

had just been stolen right in front of

them and were there to make sure there

was time to check out their suspicions.

That's it.

But anyway, during the time back in the

day, uh, Jack Smith was trying to figure

out if he if Trump had been talking to

anybody that they should find out more

information about. And that included

people like Lindseay Graham, uh, Josh

Holly,

and, uh, Ron Johnson, and some others

that you'd be less familiar with. But

let me tell you this. If you if if what

you're doing, Democrats, is pissing off

Lindsey Graham, Josh Holly, and uh Ron

Johnson,

you got some trouble coming.

You You got trouble coming. Those three

guys don't take You know, maybe

the other ones, too. I just don't I'm

not I'm less familiar with the other

one, but those three guys, no, they

don't take any So So the

blowback's going to be pretty fierce.

And uh and so far Lindsey Graham has let

them have it in public

and we only just found this out. Now

legal experts are defending it

um because they legally got subpoenas

and they stayed within the bounds of the

law.

Is that enough? I don't know. Um but

they you eventually the case was dropped

but only because Trump became president.

So, I'm going to say that uh maybe

that's not a technical violation of law,

but boy does it sound bad.

All right, let's talk about healthcare.

Wall Street Journal is writing a story

about Don Jr. being uh recently put on

the board I think in February of a

company that's trying to sell um

pharmaceutical meds mostly but say

mostly focusing on generics directly to

customers and Don John Don Jr. and

others are going to be meeting with big

pharma people sometime soon and trying

to get that. All right. So, uh it's

called Blink RX

and uh they would be competing with uh

Mark Cuban's company that does a similar

but there are some differences called

cost plus Drugs.

Now, I went to Grock. I spent a lot of

time on Grock today because all the

stories needed more context than I could

find in the news. But uh I wanted to ask

you what's the difference between this

uh cost plus drugs that Mark Cuban's

already rolled out and blink RX that is

in some state of being rolled out. I

don't know how much Wall Street Journal

is writing about that. Uh in both cases

you uh depending on the drug, it's not

every drug, but uh both of them have a

emphasis on generics because those are

places you can save some money. But um

apparently

uh yeah, apparently you can save money

on uh even some drugs that have insured

co-pays. So, in the case of Mark Cuban's

company, cost plus drugs, um they can

sometimes even beat the co-pay, not not

just the cost of the drug, but if you

have insurance and there's a copay, they

can sometimes beat the entire cost of

the copay. I don't know how often that

happens, but that'd be damn impressive.

Anyway, um so my point is that they both

seem to be in the in the market for

cutting out the middleman so that big

pharma doesn't have to go through these

middleman entities that have you know

big big markups

etc. Um so want some good news.

So here's some good news. The good news

is these are serious companies. You

know, one has the clout to bring in all

the big pharma CEOs

and the other one is Mark Cuban who has

all all the clout in the world and

they're going to be it looks like

competing against each other. Now, um I

I don't know enough about either company

to know what the competitive, you know,

matchup would be and but I would

encourage you to look into it. And it

turns out that there's a tool for

allowing you to find the lowcost way to

get your drug. And I believe that tool

would include both Mark Cuban's uh

company cost plus drugs as well as this

Blink RX that Don Jr. is getting

involved with. So uh the tool is called

and there are other ones like it. I

don't know what they are but good RX. So

it's all one word good RX. So Google

that if you're looking for a cheaper

place to get your drugs, especially the

generics.

So the good news is very capable people

are competing on a very important topic.

See this is why we need billionaires.

Do you ever say to yourself, I wish we

could, you know, get rid of all those

billionaires who are distorting the

system.

If you didn't have a billionaire, we

wouldn't be going to Mars. We wouldn't

have an electric car. We wouldn't have a

neurolink. And we wouldn't have a cost

plus drugs. And we probably wouldn't

have a uh whatever this other one is,

right? This is all billionaire stuff.

You know, I I felt a little bit of this

when I got a little bit rich. You know,

I'm nowhere near billionaire status, of

course, but even just getting a little

bit rich, you you automatically feel

this weight to do something for the

world, like payback, right? So you So

that's why I did the dill burrito. I

tried to make a food that was more

nutritious. It's why I do a lot of

things. But um imagine being a

billionaire. Like imagine the pressure

you would feel if you didn't feel like

you were doing enough for the world. And

I believe that this is very much drives

some of our best innovations. I know you

can have some complaints about Bill

Gates. There's something more

complicated going on there and I don't

know what it is. But if you're looking

at, you know, who is it who's taking a

stab at lowering our pharma costs,

it's some rich people. It's rich people.

Anyway,

Ran Paul has introduced his own budget

reduction plan for the government. He

wants to cut six cents from every dollar

the government spends. And he says if we

did that, we could balance the budget in

five years.

Now, here's what I like about this.

First of all, I like Ran Paul in

general. Uh I just love that he's part

of Congress, and I love that he's a

noisy part of Congress. don't always

agree with him. But that's not really

the test. The test is not whether I

always agree with him. The test is is he

additive. He is additive as hell. Even

when he doesn't get his way, he he

always extends the argument. He makes

you think about it a little bit more

clearly. He always adds some context.

And he seems to be always on the side of

the public. Seems like it. I mean, I

can't read his mind. you maybe everybody

has his secret evil thoughts or

something, but it doesn't look like it.

It looks like he's literally just on our

side. Now, would this work? Um, well,

he'll never get Congress to act on it

because we don't have a Congress that

can do smart hard things. They can do

smart things sometimes.

uh they could do hard things other

times, but they can't seem to put the

two of them together that that they need

to do something that's smart but also

hard. You know, otherwise if they could

do that, the budget would already be

balanced. But it's by design, they're

unable to do that because they will lose

their jobs. As soon as somebody said,

"Well, let's do something good for the

public. uh you know, we hate it, but

we're going to have to cut these prices

or cut these uh expenses. They'd get

fired. They wouldn't get reelected. So,

we have a system that by its design

can't solve problems that are both smart

and hard. That's why you need a

billionaire occasionally because they

can do that. What can Elon Musk do that

the government can't do? He can solve a

problem that's smart and hard

and we're watching him do it every day.

Anyway, um here's what I love about the

way Rand Paul presented this. Instead of

saying cut 6%,

which sometimes could sound like a lot,

depending on the domain, 6% would be a

lot. If you if you lost 6% in the stock

market, it feel like a lot. If you had

to pay 6% interest rate on a mortgage,

it would feel like a lot.

But what if it's six cents?

six cents. Remember, I always tell you

that if somebody tells you the dollar

amount without the percentage or the

percentage without the dollar amount,

it's always propaganda. It's at least

persuasion. So, because I like grandpa,

I'm not going to call this propaganda.

I'll call it persuasion. It's kind of

clever to call it six cents. Doesn't

that sound like less? 6%

feels like it reminds you of other 6%

things that would be too expensive. But

if somebody said uh uh here you can buy

this item, whatever it is, it wouldn't

matter if it's a piece of candy or an

automobile. If they said it's 6 cents,

you would say, "Oh, you mean like

nothing? You mean like it's is basically

zero?"

So, it's a very clever way to um to put

it. I don't think you'll get support in

Congress.

All right. Did I tell you that today's

news is all fun?

Okay. If you haven't seen Pam Bondi uh

testifying before Congress, I guess

yesterday, and responding to Adam Schiff

and then to Richard Blumenthal,

do yourself a treat. Now, I don't know

that this is true. I'm going to add a

little speculation here, but I think

it's true. It looks to me like the top

administration people have decided that

if they have to testify in front of uh

pencil neck Adam Schiff that they're not

going to be take any of it seriously and

they're going to spend the entire time

that Schiff has insulting him personally

and never stopping, never answering the

question, just insulting him personally

while it's on CNN and MSNBC

until he runs out of time and Pam Bondi

did that to both Adam Schiff and then a

little bit less but also some to Richard

Blumenthal and I thought to myself as

long as she's only doing it to the

designated liars you know your

Swallwells your shifts your your Rascins

you and I think I'd throw Blumenthal on

there too as long as she's only doing it

to the bad players please do more of

this I I want to see this all day long.

I want CNN to say, you know, we're not

even going to bother covering it because

all it is going to be is Pam Bondi

screaming insults over Adam Schiff,

begging for to get his time back.

I loved it. I I did not think that there

would be any meaningful way you could

respond to being sat in front of the TV

cameras and then allowing the politician

to say, "I demand my time back so I can

insult you." Is it true that you ran

over a child? Well, no, I didn't. It's

my time. It's my time, but I didn't

really run over a child. Shut up. It's

my time. It's my time. And and then just

say a bunch more

I can't put up with that for another

minute. But watching Pam Bondi literally

just sitting there trying to think of

new insults and then yelling her insults

so you couldn't ignore them. Oh my god,

I loved it. I loved it. It's like it's

it's like Scott Jennings on uh on

steroids or something.

you know how much we like Scott Jennings

because he always has that you know calm

measured you know wellthoughtout

response to the craziness but see but

seeing somebody who is a smart you know

thinking person you know highlevel

executive very serious made it to the

you know highest levels of government

seeing that person realize that the

situation itself is so absurd that the

funniest thing she can do is just insult

him to his face on TV for as long as she

can get away with it. A+.

Pam Bondi, I have never loved you more.

That was just A+.

More, please.

I don't know if anybody else will be

able to match that. That was just really

good work.

Well, the Illinois

uh it looks like oh Texas uh National

Guard has arrived in a training camp I

guess in Illinois and they will be

deploy deployed soon but again the news

is all funny. So there's a photograph

ABC ran it on on Axe of the uh supposed

Texas National Guard troops getting off

a truck in Illinois. And if you haven't

seen the picture, you really have to

because they're all they're all obese.

Now, I don't know if all National Guard

people in Texas are obese, but there

were like six of them in the front of

the picture who were clearly obese, you

know, all decked out in their their

military outfits. And uh I just thought

to myself, uh paging uh Pete Hegsth,

Pete Hegsth,

uh could you show up and maybe uh lead

some

lead some jumping jacks?

I can't believe that that picture got

released. They they look so not ready

for war,

but luckily it's not a war.

Anyway,

um all right, let me talk about uh the

persuasion view on uh all the sending

the National Guard into cities. All

right, so there are two ways to look at

this. So there there are definitely two

sides of this. On one hand, it does look

quote authoritarian for the federal

government to be sending troops to

cities. Would you agree?

Now, I mean, you don't have to you don't

have to disagree with sending the

troops. I'm just asking you a very

narrow question. Would you not agree

that the Democrats are trying to create

this authoritarian wrap on Trump that

sending uh unformed officers and

especially people with masks on and

stuff, it plays it plays into their um

into their model. Right? Now, that

doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Don't

get me wrong. doesn't mean you shouldn't

do it, but I often refer to Trump as

what I call anensive president,

meaning that damn, he's getting stuff

done, but he's going to leave a little

breakage because it's usually the only

way he can get anything done. So, this

is in the category of a little bit of

breakage because it it gives them

something to focus on. Oh, the

authoritarian authoritarian. And it

works a little bit. I would say it

works. I would say they've convinced

their base quite a bit of it that oh

this is authoritarian. It's the next

step before Hitler comes in. Right. So

on one hand uh it supports their fake

messaging about authoritarian and and it

also supports their fake paid protests

which apparently are going to happen

today. So you'll see some more fake paid

performers

uh protesting. So that all fits into the

Democrat model a little bit. And if

there was nothing else to say, it would

look like Democrats are winning on this

topic, winning politically.

But let me give you the other side,

which is more with less obvious. So the

the less obvious part is the fun part.

So on the pro Trump side of this

argument, persuasion-wise,

the imagery

um is telling us that Democrat leaders

have left you to die, have left you to

die at the hands of criminals and cartel

members

and the only person who's trying to save

your freaking life

is Trump with the National Guard.

So Trump has the um the strong imagery

of sending in the the cavalry, sending

in the rescue squad. So if he can frame

this successfully, and it sounds, you

know, based on Rasmus, it sounds like he

has he if he can frame this as saving

the the poor, downtrodden, especially

low-income and almost always minority

population. if he can say, "I'm sending

these people in to save you because your

leaders have left you to die at the

hands of criminals and cartels."

Let me say that sentence again. I'm

sending in the the National Guard

because your local leaders have left you

to die at the hands of the criminals and

the cartels. Now, is that exactly true?

Have they left you to die? Well, no. I

mean, they have police

and it's certainly not their intention

for you to die.

But feel how strong that is.

Your leaders are leaving you to die. I'm

sending somebody to save your life.

Do you feel that? Now, remember I was

mentioning earlier Dr. Carmen Simon and

her and her experiments where she can

put sensors on your body and find out

how you're responding to different

messages. How do you think you would

respond to that message?

Your leaders are leaving you to die at

the hands of criminals and cartels.

I'm I'm sending in the military to stop

them.

I feel like that's just a dead winner. I

shouldn't say dead, but um I believe

that Trump has once again correctly read

the room. I believe that when people

answer polls, they answer it with words.

In other words, they they've got a point

of view that matches their team and

that's been put into words by other

people. And then if you're asked your

opinion, you'll look at the words and

you'll you'll say, "What words do I have

that you know is the answer to that

opinion?" But you'll be you'll be

dealing on the word level, also known as

the policy level, the word level. Trump

is dealing on the

stay alive level. Stay alive.

Live. Don't be stabbed by a bad guy.

Are those similar?

Do you think the people who are dealing

on the word level, even though those

words do play through into polls, which

would make it look like it's a closer a

closer debate than it really is on the

visceral physical level,

this is a blowout. It's an absolute

blowout.

But it won't be until after it works

that 80% of the the country will see it

was a blowout.

But you can't beat

I'm going to keep you alive. You can't

beat that. How do you beat that? And by

the way, it's close enough to true

because everybody feels that, you know,

the impact of crime. Everybody feels it.

Um, so it hits exactly what you're

thinking and feeling in the strongest

possible way.

Uh, so I think Trump's got the uh the

leverage, as we say. Here's something

else Trump said being funny. Uh he was

talking to uh Carney from uh Canada and

uh separately he said Democrats have no

leader. They remind me of Somalia. Okay,

that's just so perfect.

They remind me of Somalia. How am I not

going to quote that? I mean, seriously,

Democrats have no leader. They remind me

of Somalia. If you take out the Somalia

part, would I quote it? No, of course I

wouldn't. It would just be sort of an

ordinary statement. You know, I say it,

you say it, we all say they don't have a

leader. The news says it. It wouldn't be

anything. But as soon as he adds, they

reminded me of Somalia.

[Laughter]

part of your brain goes

and then it like it burrows in and it

and it uh persuasion wise it becomes an

association that you can't lose. Will I

ever forget ever for the rest of my

life? Will I ever forget that Trump

compared the Democrats with no leaders

to Somalia? No, I won't forget that for

the rest of my life. Well, the rest of

my life might not be that long, but uh

the rest of you, you might remember it,

too.

And then he had another witism. You had

to see this one to see uh how well he

pulled it off, but that uh so Mark

Carney is sitting in that official chair

that the leaders always sit in next to

the president, you know, so the two of

them are facing out on these chairs. Fox

News is reporting on this. Um, so Mark

Garnney is talking and then the the part

that's hard to explain unless you see

the video, which is worth saying, uh, is

that Trump interrupted him. All right,

so it's it's hard to tell his story with

an interruption in it, but he

interrupted him. And so Mark Carney

starts out by saying, "Uh, this is in

many respects the most important." Trump

interrupts him and he finishes his

sentence with the merger of Canada and

the United States.

So Carney laughed like genuinely laughs

and you know he said no oh no not that

the uh the people attending all laughed.

They all laughed and you know how people

always say that Trump never laughs. He

was totally laughing like he doesn't do

haha you know he doesn't laugh like I do

but he was laughing. He had a he had a

smile wrapped around his face. He knew

he pulled it off. So, you know, he was

happy about it, I'm sure. But,

um, I don't know if I told you this

story,

but it reminds me of a of a joke I heard

from Jared. And I wondered I wondered if

there's any influence there that that

with jokes there, there are only about a

hundred jokes in the world and

everything else is just changed in the

names of the people in the joke. So, it

makes me wonder if uh

if Trump would expose this. And I may

have told this story before, but I'll

tell it again. So, in 2018 when I was

invited to meet with Trump just cuz it

was summer and he was he was just

meeting with some supporters, nothing

important. And I was waiting in the

outer the waiting area to be allowed

into the Oval Office. And uh Jared comes

walking by through the outer office on

the way to work. and uh he was with

another gentleman and I guess he

recognized me from I don't know probably

the podcast

and so he so he makes a point to stop

and introduce himself

but of course he introduces the person

that he's with as well uh so he

introduces himself and he says this is

soand so he's the finance minister of

Mexico and he's here to pay for the wall

now the finance minister belly laughs

Jared laughs. I belly laugh because it

was a great line. Like that the humor

depends not just how clever you are, but

where you say it and in front of whom.

If you do the right joke in the right

audience in the right time, it's magic.

And that that was kind of magic. It was

just brilliant. But doesn't that remind

you of uh a little bit of uh Trump's

joke to to try to infer that uh you know

your your other party from the other

country is totally on board but you're

just joking about it

now. Is Trump also serious

about the possibility of merging with

Canada? I say yes. I would say yes. And

it's not the worst idea in the world. Uh

I think it would be hugely difficult and

it would be you know it would come with

its own risks and everything else but I

I think

sorry cats and keyboards are a bad

combination.

Um, but I think that turning that into a

joke and then turning his relationship

with

very contentious

into two dudes joking. It was brilliant.

It's one of the things that Trump does

better than anybody. If you're doing

what he likes, he's going to go at you

as hard as anybody can go. I talk about

this all the time. It's great

persuasion. If you don't do what he

likes, he goes after you hard. you if

you're at the moment doing things he

likes and I guess he was getting along

with candid at the moment. You know, he

makes a joke, he slaps him on the leg,

they have a laugh, now he's his best

friend. And he and he he praised Carney

like more than more than I've seen him

praise other people. I mean, he he

genuinely he genuinely seems to respect

Carney's, you know, judgment and and

skill. So, that's all good news for us

and Canada. We'll see where that goes.

Meanwhile, over in Hungary, they're

passing a lifetime tax exemption to

mothers of three. So, if you have three

kids, you just don't pay taxes.

Now, what do you think of that idea? Is

there anything missing in that story?

What is it that's obviously missing in

this story? And I had to go to Grock to

get the context. Well, the obvious thing

that's missing is what is the base tax

rate in Hungary to begin with?

If the tax rate was 1%,

it's nothing. If the tax rate was like

America, you know, up to 50%.

Oh my god. I mean, that would be

gigantic policy. Turns out that Hungary,

according to Grock, uh their tax rate is

uh 15% for just everything, income,

investments, just 155.

So, it's a lot easier to go from 15

down to zero for a special class of

people, mothers, who are adding to the

economy. That's a lot easier than going

from rich people paying 50%

um to well, we'll let you get away with

none. How about none? You just have an

extra kid. Do do you know how fast I

would have three children if it meant I

paid no taxes?

It would take me uh nine months.

If if I could pay no taxes in the United

States, because remember, I pay half of

my income in taxes,

if I could take that to zero, I could

find three women. Wait, no, it wouldn't

work with three women. You'd have to

have one woman with three babies. Okay.

It would take me 27 months plus a little

uh recovery time.

But yeah, I I would have I would have

three kids I didn't plan on having to

save a gigantic amount of money.

Yeah, as long as I didn't have to be too

active in the raising of them. I'm not

good at that. Um

and I won't last long, but you know,

lots of reasons.

All right. Uh I know I'm going super

long. Do you mind?

I can go a little bit longer. Okay.

I'm having so much fun today. You don't

have to listen to it all.

All right. Uh there was some rumors

about Charlie Kirk sending some text

messages that were kind of negative on

his view of how much bullying he was

getting from pro-Israel sources. Some

people didn't think that was necessarily

a real text and might have been fake,

but apparently that's been confirmed

that it's real. So, one of the TPUs guys

I think confirmed it. So, Candace Owens

had it and here's what the message said.

Um,

so Charlie Kirk said in a message, I

think it was a group message. Um, just

lost another huge Jewish donor, 2

million a year because we won't cancel

Tucker uh for the TPUSA event.

And then he says, uh, I'm thinking of

inviting Candace. Now, those are

connected thoughts because, uh, both

Tucker and Candice are accused of being,

uh, anti-Israel. So, if he got if he

lost $2 million because he won't cancel

Tucker, it looks like he was going to

double down and invite Candace.

Sort of a big FU to the people bullying

him.

So then one some other member

uh didn't like that I guess. And then

Charlie went on to explain uh Jewish

donors play into all the stereotypes.

Okay, that's probably something you

don't want to say in public. Um and then

it says, I cannot and will not be

bullied like this. Now let me explain.

He's not saying all Jewish people are

like the stereotypes.

He's saying that the Jewish donors, the

ones he's dealing with, are acting like

the worst stereotypes.

I I probably wouldn't have said that.

That that feels like a little

unnecessarily provocative, but also

probably completely accurate, meaning

that he dealt with these donors. I

didn't. Uh I have no reason to think

he's a liar. So if he says my honest my

honest reaction to this is why are you

acting like the worst stereotypes

and I'm I'm out.

Seems fair. Um and then he says quote

leaving me no choice but to leave the

pro-Israel cause.

Wow.

So now the accusations

um which I do not believe. Let me let me

say up front and then I'll say it one

more when one more time when I'm done. I

don't think Israel put a hit on Charlie

Kirk.

I do not think there's any chance that

Israel put on a hit on Charlie Kirk.

There was a reason.

They had a good reason because if

Charlie Kirk turned against Israel,

he did have enough clout in the United

States and the United States is vital. I

believe Israel would say to their

survival,

they would feel an existential threat by

the fact that he said directly, I'm

going to leave the pro-Israel cause.

Did they have did Israel have a an

incentive to murder him? Yes.

Yes. Let me say it again. I do not

believe Israel had anything to do with

killing him. Here's why.

The bigger existential threat would be

caught doing it. And we always catch

everybody. We're in a world where you

kind of do catch everybody if you care

enough. Do you think that Netanyahu,

as smart as he is strategically, and

even if you hate him, even if you think

he's a monster, he is a genius? Like

actual like the literal kind of genius,

strategically genius. Um, again, I don't

agree with everything he does. That's

not the point. But do you think somebody

as smart as Netanyahu

would take any chance of permanently

ruining the US as an ally?

And and I think the chance would be

at the very least 25%.

Like even if even if Mossad came to him

and said, "Look, we got a plan to take

out this critic and it's really

important to Israel that we do take him

out, but um I think we can get the risk

down to 25% of getting caught." You

think you'd take that? Nope. Nope. Not a

smart person. No smart person in the

world would take that. How about And

especially let's add to the fact that

they knew each other. They knew each

other. How hard is it to do a hit on

somebody you know personally? That's got

to be pretty hard. I mean, you have to

be pretty cold to do that. I'm sure

leaders do it, but it's pretty tough.

So, if you look at it from the point of

view that Netanyahu is not a

there's no chance that they there's no

chance that he would have green lit this

and there's no chance that Msad would

have done it on their own.

So, I'm going to say again, there's no

chance, in my opinion, that Israel was

involved in a hit on a beloved American

um person who if they got caught,

even one or two% chance of getting

caught, is the end of Israel. I mean,

that wouldn't just be a hard week. I

mean, that could very well be the end of

Israel. Um, if they pissed us off that

much and got caught, I mean, it's not

like we don't have contentious things

and they spy on us. I'm sure we spy on

them. They they try to bully us. We try

to bully them back. I mean, that all

that stuff seems more like normal

countries, you know, pursuing what's

good for their country. I don't hate all

of that. It's more like the the give and

take you expect. But if they had, if

they had, and they didn't, in my

opinion, they didn't. But if they had,

biggest mistake Israel would have ever

made in its entire history, bar none.

So, no, I don't think they would do

that.

Well, and finally, an update on the what

I call the robot energy war. You call it

the Ukraine Russia war, but it's really

now robots fighting energy resources.

And allegedly, now this is according to

Pravda, so we can't automatically trust

it, but they say that a Ukrainian drone

hit a cooling tower, a nuclear power

plant cooling tower in the c in the city

of Nova Rosen.

I think I nailed it. Nova, Rosen.

Uh, so so it put a hole in the cooling

tower, but we don't see any

bad stuff escaping yet, but it might. Do

you think that uh

do you think the Ukraine would attack a

cooling tower on a nuclear? I feel like

that would be a mistake because if they

if they declare open war on nuclear

facilities in Russia,

Russia is going to take out all the

nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

Um but if they take out the energy

resources, the other energy resources

like oil and gas, they might be able to

take out enough of that that Russia gets

flexible about peace before they've

destroyed 100% of the energy in Ukraine.

So maybe that's the bet. I don't know.

So it feels like there's at least some

possibility that was a mistake or maybe

fake news. Could be fake news, but it

also could just be a mistake.

It'd be a weird mistake. I mean, hard to

imagine it would be a mistake. All

right, that's all I have for today. Um,

I'm not going to say anything to the

locals people today. I got a had a good

chat with them before the show. Um, so

I'm just going to end because we ran

late. Thank you everybody for staying so

long. I hope you had as much fun as I

did. This is one of the most fun I've

ever had doing the uh podcast. And uh

we'll see you again tomorrow. Same time,

same place.