Episode 3015 CWSA 11/11/25

Good morning everybody.

I got to fix my lighting.

I look like a head that's just sort of drifting.

By the way, if anybody can tell me how on my Apple laptop to turn off the screen saver so it doesn't turn off in the middle of my live stream.

Boy, would I appreciate it.

I can search for screen.

I can look for display.

I can look for power.

I can look for auto off.

I can search all over that damn computer, but I will not find the simplest command.

How do I turn the screen saver off?

So, if anybody knows how to do that, please let me know.

All right, we've got a show to do.

And uh let's see.

Let me jump in here and look at what you're looking at.

Well, apparently that's not an option either.

I think everything in my computer world failed today at the same time.

My printer wasn't connected.

My computer was random.

Really?

No, this isn't working either.

The simplest thing.

There we go.

The simplest thing is working now.

All right, that's enough of me complaining.

You want to show and you shall not lock screen.

So, you think lock.

Well, I'll search for lock next time.

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

It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and you've never had a better time.

But if you'd like to take a chance of elevating this experience up to levels that nobody can understand with her tiny shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mugger, a glass, a tanker, chelstein, a canteen sugar flask, a vessel of any kind.

Fill it with your favorite liquid.

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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing makes everything better.

Sculpt the simultaneous sip.

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Go.

Fantastic.

Best sip I've ever had.

Well, we'll get back to that.

Would you like to start with a reframe from my book, Reframe Your Brain?

Full of over 200 frames.

Reframes.

Any one of them could change your life.

You never know.

All right.

Uh, here's one.

Um, oh, here here's the deathbed reframe.

This one's kind of useful.

Do you ever have this big old problem?

You're like, "Ah, this problem is plaguing me.

I can't get it out of my mind." All you do if you've got a problem you can't get on your head is uh instead of saying that my stress and anxiety are being caused by the things in my life, ask yourself how many of those things you'll be thinking about on your deathbed.

And the answer is none of them.

Once you realize that you won't care about any of them on your deathbed, it turns out it makes it easier to not worry about them today.

So, this is one you just have to try.

You literally just imagine yourself at the end of your life and you know your loved ones are around and they're like, "Hey, Scott, what about that printer that wasn't working that day?" I think it was November 11th in 2025.

Do you remember?

Do you remember how mad you were the printer wasn't working?

How do you feel about it now?

Oh, I'm dying.

I I don't I can't even think about the printer.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It wasn't important then and it's not important now.

The deathbed reframe.

If it's not going to matter on your deathbed, it probably doesn't matter that much.

I mean, you might have to fix it.

Whatever the problem is, you might still have to fix it, but you don't have to worry about it so much.

All right, let's get to the big stories of the day.

The big story of the day is that the Dilbert calendar is available.

Okay, you already know that you can only get it at Amazon and uh it's available to Americans or Americans who can buy from Amazon.com or anybody who can buy from Amazon.com.

It's available to you and it's got comics on both sides.

Oo, got the spicy stuff.

Well, are you supposed to say happy Veterans Day?

I've never known how to navigate this.

Instead of saying happy Veterans Day, may I just take a moment to show my undying respect for all veterans and to thank you in case you don't get thanked enough today.

How many of you are vets?

How many watching this are veterans?

You're the special people today.

So, if you happen to be a vet, just know that I am thinking highly respectful thoughts about you right now because we wouldn't get any of this stuff without you.

I am quite aware that the quality of my life is directly directly springs from the fact that there are brave people who go to war um when it needs to be done.

Sometimes even when it doesn't need to be done, but that's another story.

So, all respect to you veterans.

Well, in other news, you won't even believe this, but the TPUSA group was trying to do an event yesterday at UC Berkeley.

How do you think that went?

Do you think any of the UC Berkeley Democrats uh complained about having TPUSA there?

Of course they did.

A fight broke out.

There was bloodshed.

There was There were police.

I don't know how bad it got.

It might have been just a few people fighting, but remember how I tell you that I, you know, I used to be, well, honestly, there was a long period in my life where the thing I was most proud of, most proud of of my own performance in life, per se, is that I got my MBA at Berkeley, the Hos School of Business, and that I did it while I was working full-time.

Now, if you've never tried that, let me tell you, it's a little bit challenging to get an MBA at night while you've already worked full-time during the day.

It's hard, in case you're wondering.

It's hard.

And it lasts three years instead of two because the full-time MBA class would would be compressed.

But wow, was it hard.

So hard.

I I may have told you this story before, but uh on day one, not literally day one, but uh the very first test I took in my MBA courses, they wrote the distribution to professor, he wrote the distribution of the grades on the board so we could all see where we stood.

And then he told us, uh I have to tell you, I forget the the percentage, but it was something like half, maybe half or one/ird.

He said, "Half or one-third of you, whatever the number was, it was horrifying, will not make it through the cl the course." And I'm sitting there thinking, "Really?

Half of us?" Because you don't even get into Berkeley unless you've got something going on.

You know what I You know what I mean?

Like they don't even let you in unless you've already proven you can handle things at a pretty high level.

So I thought it can't be true.

Can't possibly be true that the bottom I don't know.

I let's say it was one-third.

That sounds about right.

It couldn't possibly be true that one-third drop out in the first semester.

And uh then we took a test and the test came back and uh we saw the distribution.

Now the distribution did not have names on it, but I could still tell which grade was mine.

Do you know how I could tell which grade was mine without a name on it?

before I'd seen my test.

It was the lowest one in the class.

It was the lowest grade in the class.

It wasn't second.

It wasn't third lowest.

It was the lowest grade in the class.

Right after he told me that one-third of the people aren't going to make it at all.

Do you know how mad that made me that I'd put all that work into getting in?

First of all, getting into the MBA class wasn't easy.

All that work and he's basically saying it's not going to work for you and here is proof.

Well, then another another test came up and I managed to be not the worst grade.

So, on the second test, not the worst.

Definitely not the worst, but toward the bottom.

By the third test, somewhat respectable, somewhere in the I don't know, somewhere in the middle.

By the fourth test, I had decided.

I ever tell you the difference between wanting and deciding.

Wanting means that you could allow yourself to quit if you wanted.

You could just change what you want.

deciding is different.

I had decided that nothing was going to stop me from getting that freaking MBA.

Nothing.

And so by the end of by the end of the course, I was getting reasonable grades and managed to graduate with my degree.

It was worth as much as everybody else's.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

I had to give up every weekend my entire social life.

And it hurt for 3 years.

But when I was done and I got that degree, for years that was the greatest pride of my life.

And now Berkeley turned into a garbage pit.

I take no pride in it whatsoever.

I'm still happy I did the work, but I don't care about the degree.

I mean, hell with that.

Anyway, sorry, Berkeley.

So according to the University of Zurich, uh Natalie Huber is writing that uh AI is pretty unbiased relatively speaking.

They did a test to see how unbiased it is with its answers.

But it turns out that it does become instantly biased if you tell it the source of the data.

So if you say, "Hey, this data came from the Washington Post or the New York Times." The AIS, and this is all the AIS, not just one.

will say, "Oh, it looks pretty good.

Comes from one of those good sources." But if it comes from, let's say, a rightle leaning source that might actually be very credible, uh, it will say, "Well, not so sure.

We're not so sure about this one." So yes, uh AI does have bias and apparently even the Chinese AI Deep Seek allegedly has an anti-China allegedly has an anti-China bias because it got trained on so much data that had an anti-China bias that even the Chinese even the Chinese AI has an anti-China bias.

Anyway, um big, uh I'd like to give a call out to Dana Parino, Fox News, who from the beginning of the government shutdown drama would say calmly at the beginning of most of the episodes of the five, and we know how it's going to end.

The Democrats will cave.

And a day goes by, the five comes back on, and Dana says, "And we know how this will end.

the Democrats are going to cave.

They always do.

Or there's there was some rule about why you can always predict why it would happen.

And and what I loved was she was so confident about the outcome.

I thought, "Yeah, you're putting yourself out there a little bit." I I agreed with her, by the way.

I thought that she was probably right, but I thought that's pretty confident to put that out there and 100% right.

Nailed it.

So, good for you.

And she wasn't the only one.

I think Greg was predicting the same.

There were other people who predicted it, but I just liked her confidence.

Uh, and you know, she has the experience to know what she's talking about.

All right.

Uh, let's talk.

We We still have a few more days, if not weeks, of enjoying the Democrats bad reaction to the shutdown negotiations being over.

If you haven't seen yet John Stewart's Monday Night Show, it really is sort of a masterpiece.

He's not happy.

He's not happy with Chuck Schumer getting a nothing.

So, we got this life or death situation.

They told us that, you know, babies are starving and planes are falling out of the air.

Uh and yet they decide after telling us for weeks that that babies will die and planes will fall out of the sky uh if they agree with the Republicans on anything.

They just sort of cave in.

And but here's what John Stewart couldn't believe and and he made this hilarious.

Now what's funny about it is he really doesn't look like he's taking sides.

Well, maybe he does, but he's hitting his own team hard.

He's hitting his own team harder than he's hitting the the Republicans by far.

He's hitting his own side.

So that that gives him a little credibility because when his own side has a bad day, he goes after his own side.

You have to have that or nobody's going to really take you too seriously.

Um he goes John Sewer says, "Where in the art of war does it say uh you know never pressure your never press your advantage?" And this was the funniest line.

uh that Chuck Schumer sold out.

He sold out on what he wanted in return for a promise to negotiate later and then later not get what he wanted.

He traded what he wanted for a promise to not get what he wanted later.

That's exactly what happened.

A promise to not get what you want later.

>> >> That's a funny line.

Oh, John Stewart, you're so funny.

So, even John Stewart, when here's how I interpret this by by mocking Schumer by taking out the art of war, he took out the actual book, The Art of War by Sunsu.

I think what he's trying to tell them is that they're not dealing on a strategic level.

How many times have I said that?

that the that the Republicans and Trump in particular, they seem to deal entirely on a strategic level.

I mean, there's a moral and ethical frame to it, but that but they're very strategic.

The Democrats just seem to be acting out.

It doesn't doesn't seem strategic at all, does it?

It just feels like they're mad at something.

Their their whole approach to the shutdown was fight.

That's not even the right context for that.

Fight, fight, fight.

The right context was you just got your ear shot.

The wrong context is the way they were using it.

Like like just being tougher in the way they talk is going to make it all work.

They didn't have any strategy.

They were they were just trying to blame Republicans and see see if something would work.

Anyway, you you really have to see the John Stewart video.

Van Jones tries to tries to save as much as he can from this situation, but uh I don't think he he quite nailed it.

Uh but only because he doesn't have much to work with in this particular case.

Now, I like to be transparent.

I like Van Jones.

Yeah.

And and am I am I biased for people that I just personally kind of like?

Yes, a little bit.

I'm a little bit biased for people I like.

And I like him.

Uh he's a likable guy.

I've talked to him and he was very very generous to me.

So I like him.

But he didn't have anything to work with here.

He had nothing to work with.

So he comes out, he goes uh he goes, "Look," this was on CNN, of course.

He says, "Look, right now, Democrats are going to kick each other and tear each other up and be mad at each other, but when the smoke clears for most Americans, something has been proven here." So, this is Van.

He says, "Republicans are just not that into Americans right now.

Really, the the best you have is reading the minds of Republicans and and uh and it looks all evil in there.

You you think the Republicans are just turned into demons or something?

What is it that would affect all Republicans?

Uh all Republicans just are not into Americans right now.

So you think that the America First party that literally is America first are not that into Americans?

What?

Okay.

Um and then he said, and this looks like this will be the approach they're going to all take.

quote, "How much pain were the Republicans willing to let Americans suffer so they didn't have to?

They're just not that into you, America." Uh, how much pain were the Republicans willing to let you suffer?

The Democrats could have voted to open it at any moment.

They just lied to their base and act like they didn't have the power to open it because we're not in power.

We're not in power.

That doesn't change the fact that they have the votes.

They can vote anything they want or in this case they could have voted past the 60 people limit.

And then he says uh Van says Donald Trump and Republicans were willing to let planes fall out of the sky.

I can't believe he's he's going this far.

And children starve before they came to the table.

That's so absurd.

Like only one side was starving children or as if any children were starving.

I'm pretty sure nobody starved.

Have you seen any anecdotal stories of you know even that the reason you can't do this story?

If the press did a story about the family they Oh, it's terrible that I'm laughing at this.

Stop it, Scott.

This is not funny.

If the press, let's say they found a family that where little Billy was starving and they and they did a story from, let's say, the family's living room and they're like, "There's little Billy.

Little Billy over in the couch.

He won't be eating today.

He didn't eat yesterday.

He he'll probably be gone by noon." And and then it would be the fault of the the reporter for not feeding little Billy because, you know, you probably have a few extra bucks.

May maybe you could spare a little bit for Billy before he falls over on the couch during your live your life.

that piece.

It It's only funny because I just realized you can't do a story about it because the moment you do a story about a starving anything in the United States, people send them food and they they stop starving immediately.

All right.

Well, we do have a good country in the sense that nobody's going to look at somebody starving and let them starve.

We just don't live in that country.

If you see somebody starving, we're going to feed them.

Let let let me uh if I have any neighbors within walking distance who are starving, just knock on my door.

Just knock on my door.

You have to be within walking distance.

I can't feed the world.

But if any of my walking distance neighbors are literally unable to eat, I'll give you a sandwich.

Stop by.

All right.

So, what I liked about uh Van Jones's approach is in some ways he's sort of an indicator of, you know, testing some of the narratives uh because he's good at it.

So, I think he, you know, they let him go first sometimes just to see how it works.

But listen to listen to every Democrat trick he tried.

Let's see.

Uh was there mind readading?

How many times have I told you that Democrats, they pretend they can read the minds of Republicans, but what they see in there is not America first and we like the Constitution and we like our God and we like families.

They don't see the things that they're actually thinking.

What they see is things that are created by the squirrels running around in their skulls and then they imagine that they can read minds.

That's here, right?

They're imagining that they're looking into into Republican minds and that they don't mind if planes fall out of the sky and children starve.

How about a character attack?

Have you noticed?

Now, obviously Trump does character attacks, but he's a special case.

But in terms of Republicans versus Democrats in general, I think uh Republicans are a little more likely to talk about the policy, whereas Democrats are a little more likely to talk about, oh, bad character.

Did uh did Van do that?

Did he treat the Republicans as if they have bad character?

Yes, he treated them like they don't care if babies die.

How about imaginary problems?

Have you heard me talk about that a million times?

that uh Democrats come up with imaginary problems.

Well, this was completely self self-created and it was an imaginary problem in the sense that they could they could solve it without doing any real work.

It was 100% solvable just by going a would you like to see that again?

Watch me solve the starving children and planes falling out of the air.

A there that's me voting in favor of passing a short-term continuing resolution.

A Democrats remember that.

That's how it's done.

Hey, save the world.

What about projection?

The thing where they're doing the bad thing, but they blame the Republicans of doing the very bad thing that they're doing.

Yes, that was the whole shutdown.

The whole shutdown was acting like it the Republicans had some power over it, which they didn't.

So, we got the projection.

How about the cluster B personality disorder?

Have any of you had any experience with a narcissist?

That's part of the cluster B, so-called cluster B personality disorders.

Well, if you've ever seen it, the way it looks is they blame you of whatever they're doing.

So, really, that's the same as the projection and the imaginary problems and the mind readading and the character assaults.

They're they're all sort of under that domain.

So, we got that.

Then we've got uh Democrats trying to focus their victories on things you can't measure.

Things you can't measure.

Is this one of those things you can't really measure?

Well, I haven't heard any numbers for children dying.

I didn't see any measurement of that.

I don't know the number of planes that fell out of the air.

I think it's zero.

I think it is.

>> >> So the entire uh shutdown was about what might happen if you don't open up.

Except that didn't happen.

We did open up.

So it was this whole set of imaginary things that could happen but didn't as usual.

Um, yeah.

So, the one that's missing is where the Democrats uh say a problem doesn't really exist like they do with Antifa.

Th that didn't apply to this one because everybody agrees that if you're not funding SNAP, people are going to have more trouble getting food.

So, at least they agreed on the problem.

But but could you see how stunningly consistent it is that Van uh who's a totally reasonable smart guy?

He he's following the the Democrat plan that looks like mental problems more than it looks like the art of war, if you know what I mean.

Um there was a I think it was a fake truth social that was hilarious.

I wish it hadn't been true, but it uh it purported to show that Trump was saying that fat people would not be allowed in the United States.

And then it ended with saying that Rosie O'Donnell will never come back, which would be a comment under a weight.

Uh that did not happen as far as Grock can tell.

So Grock said that was not real.

Uh I made the mistake of reposting that this morning before I said to myself, I better check this one.

This one's a little bit too on the nose.

And sure enough, Grock said, "Nope." But here's the fun part.

It's actually based on something real.

It's It is real that the State Department is going to ban overweight people from entering the US on a visa, but it would be based on general health requirements.

So, we're not talking about somebody who's got a few extra pounds because that would be everybody.

We're we're talking about people who are clearly not as healthy as they could be and clearly will be a burden on the health care uh situation in the US.

Under those conditions, I guess the State Department says no visa for you, which isn't not a terrible decision.

I I can see that.

Well, the Supreme Court's still thinking about tariffs, and Trump points out that they don't understand tariffs, which is no big surprise.

He says that they've been given the wrong numbers on unwinding the tariffs because one of the questions that the Supremes asked was, "What would it cost if we rule to unwind the tariffs that have already happened?" And Trump points out that the tariffs are not unconnected to the deals about bringing capital into the US.

He says that there are $3 trillion that also has to be unwound because part of this part of the tariff agreements were that people would uh would be invested in the US.

So, is it possible that the Supreme Court is going to be off in their calculation by $3 trillion and then they're going to make a decision that we're all bound by while being off on the assumptions by $3 trillion.

And it might be they might be off by $3 trillion and then make a decision based on that bad assumption.

now because Trump has said you know that it's and who knows about the three trillion I don't know if the three trillion tracks exactly but it is correct that you can't separate all this stuff logically you can't separate uh Trump says that we'll have over 20 trillion coming into our economy I think that was on Laura Ingram uh she did a very illuminating uh interview with Trump but here's my take uh All data is fake.

All data is fake.

If you simply if you simply went by, you know, what the Republicans are claiming, you'd find out later it wasn't exactly right.

If you go by what the Supreme Court is believing, that's not right.

If you tried to do the math yourself and add it up on your own, you wouldn't get the right answer.

All of our important decisions, we pretend that somehow we have all this knowledge.

We don't.

We're we're mostly guessing, bias and guessing.

That's mostly life.

Um but also apparently the Supreme Court is considering uh looking into the case of the ballot deadlines.

So I guess there are 30 states that uh are up for a decision.

We'll say not really because the Supremes haven't decided to take the case yet, but it looks like they might.

And the idea would be if the Supreme Court could allow the I think the administration, the feds to tell states that they can't count later if ballots.

So, there's a possibility that the Supreme Court will say you can't count ballots that come in 30 days late or whatever deadline they put on it.

I think that they might.

Don't know how this one will go.

I don't have a good I'm not really good on the Supreme Court um predictions, but that would be a really big thing and it would give me some confidence in our system because none of us understand why it should take so long only in one country.

Am I right?

Every one of you has the same issue which is okay if if if you really have to wait 30 days why is it only the the top industrialized country in the world has to wait 30 days really we can't figure that out but Estonia can do it in a day I'm just making that up but I think they can actually that Estonia you vote on the app on your phone all All right.

So, that might be a big big deal.

We'll see.

Um, Laura Graham asked Trump about the concept of the 50-year mortgage proposal.

And, uh, I think Trump gave a really good answer to that.

So, rather than trying to, you know, weigh it in and really get into numbers and stuff, he said, quote, "All it means is you pay less per month.

You pay it over a longer period of time." Now, that's not really all it means because it also means you pay more.

Means you don't get to own your house outright as soon.

You know, it might be you live your entire life and you never owned your house completely.

So, it's not like there's no cost, but I think his summary is completely fair.

The part you'd feel as though you're paying less per month, but longer.

Um and then uh Trump changed the subject to he thinks the real he he didn't think that would make a big difference in home ownership.

So he thought that would be a minor change that some people would like, some people wouldn't, but you know, it's freedom if you have the freedom for that option.

More freedom is better probably.

Uh but he thinks the Fed will uh lower interest rates when we get a new Fed chair in the spring, maybe before that.

I I think we're supposed to have a couple of more rate cuts no matter who's there, right?

So, that's a good answer on housing.

Interest rates are going down, etc.

And then, uh, Scott Basant, Treasury head, uh, he was on MSNBC and embarrassed them because he knows so much more than they do about everything.

So, the MSNBC host asks uh, Scott Bent, how does a$20 billion bailout of Argentina help Americans?

Now, that's a pretty good question, right?

I saw this in a post by the Patriot Oasis and Besson answered that.

You said, "Uh, do you know what a swap line is?" Boom.

And we're done.

He could have stopped there.

So, they MSNBC characterized it as a bailout.

And Bess Best Bess just looks at him and goes, "Do you know what a swap line is?" Now, I just told you that I have an MBA from a top school.

I've got a degree in economics.

I didn't know what a swap line was.

How many of you know what a swap line is?

Is there even one person here who could say, "Oh, a swap line." Yeah, a swap line is different from a bailout.

Let me tell you the ways.

I don't know.

Uh, all I know is if somebody said that to me, I would stop the conversation immediately because I would recognize that they know a lot more than I do about whatever this is.

So, after he goes, "Do you know what a swap line is?" The MSNBC host said, "Uh, it's a currency swap." Yes.

And then Besson doesn't let it doesn't let him or her off the hook.

I don't know who it was.

He goes, "But what is that?

Why would you call it a bailout?" So, so instead of answering the question, he just puts it back.

Why would you call that a bailout if you know what it is?

That's a pretty good answer.

If you know what it is, why would you call it a bailout?

Ooh.

Ooh.

Stick it in and turn it.

Uh then, uh, Besson explains.

She says, "In most bailouts, you don't make money.

The US government made money.

Apparently, we've already made money.

The government's going to make money.

That's a lot we could have been doing for America farmers if the Democrats hadn't closed the government.

So then Besson throws in the government closing just to get a little extra zing.

Anyway, a swap line.

Uh let me tell you what it is.

It's basically I think they I think what we do is swap some currency.

So, they get some dollars and we get some of their uh sketchy stuff.

And there's something about the temporary swap that gives support to their currency.

But because we're the ones who gave support to the currency, we can have some confidence that it will be supported because we just gave us some support.

And that makes it value go up.

And then when the country is sufficiently stabilized, the currency that we swapped for may have gone up in value, which I think is what happened or will happen.

I don't know if that's a good description, but there but there's something about just temporarily trading currency, not all of it, just some of it that seems to stabilize the less stable country.

Does that work?

Well, I wouldn't have done it on my own, but if Scott Bassen tells me that's a good idea and it works, I'm going to believe it.

He's pretty credible.

Speaking of credible, um Mike Benz is educating us about how the university system is part of this big international network of uh people who are trying to behind our backs find clever ways to censor essentially right-wing, you know, conservatives.

Uh and so because it's illegal to censor people and stop their free speech in the United States, apparently the universities are a vital part of this big system which has evolved in which the schools are propagandizing people and working with international entities to uh coordinate global censorship.

Now I wouldn't know any of that without Mike Benz.

And I keep saying this, but I feel like I'm not saying it right.

And I I'm going to take another run at it.

So, if you've heard me say this, I'm just trying to say it better because if I say it better, it just becomes more powerful.

So, um, here's what I want to say.

I'm going to give you a little mental mental test or like a thought experiment.

Oh, okay.

It's a thought experiment.

Are you ready?

Um, somebody tells you that uh you're going to compete in some kind of an IQ test, but it could be an SAT or just some general intelligence test.

And you walk into the room and you say to yourself, "Yeah, I'm pretty smart.

I bet I could do all right in this IQ test." And you sit down to take the test and you look to your left and it's Victor Davis Hansen.

He's also taken the test and you go, "Oh it's Victor Davis Hansen." Okay, I'm not going to be him on the IQ test.

But then you look to your right and it's Ben Shapiro.

You're like, "God, I don't always agree with Ben Shapiro, but he's way smarter than me and he's taking the test.

Well, maybe I could come in third." And then you look in front of you and there's Scott Bent.

You're like, "Oh, come on.

Come on.

How's this fair?

And you look behind you and it's Jordan Peterson when he's full health.

And you go, "Uh, come on.

Come on.

How in the world did I get in this room?" And then you you look, you know, over there and it's uh Thomas Massie.

Oh, come on.

He went to MIT.

Come on.

Then you look over there and it's Mike Benz.

And then you look over there and it's David Saxs.

Do you feel that?

I have to I have to give you a confession.

When I was a young man, I was not conservative.

I didn't identify as conservative.

And the reason was it seemed embarrassing because I thought maybe the dumb people were all on one side.

Has anybody have that feeling?

Like a long time ago.

It felt like the dumb people were the conservatives and all the all the really bright Ivy League people tended to be on the left and I didn't I didn't really want to be associated with the dumb people.

Now I may have been right.

I may have been wrong.

I'm just telling you how I was thinking at that time.

But when I put you in that room and I made you sit at that desk or imagine it and then I made you wonder how you would do if you were surrounded by some of the most notable conservatives.

Now you may have also noted that I could have gone on for a long time.

I could have I could have continued mentioning people who were the most notable ones, the ones you see all the time.

And I I didn't even I didn't even mention Elon Musk.

Put put Elon in the room, right?

He he gets to be in the room, too.

So, we've got the smartest room that civilization has ever assembled.

But at least the Democrats have a good set of people running against them, right?

All right.

I'm going to put you in another room.

You ready?

Room number two.

Room number two.

You go in for your IQ test.

You sit down and you look to your left and there's AOC.

And you say to yourself, "Oocc, she went to college.

She's she's bright, but I think I can take her." Then you look at the other side and there's Jasmine Crockett.

And you go, "She did go to law school, right?

I think she has a legal degree." But you say to yourself, "Still, I feel like I could take her on this IQ test." Then you look the other direction, you see Eric Swallwell.

You say, "Okay, I could be him." Also, he's an attorney, I think.

Adam Schiff, yeah, I I could take Adam.

Uh Jamie Raskin, I think so.

Chuck Schumer, definitely.

Bernie Bernie Sanders?

Yeah, definitely.

Uh how about Mayor Brandon Johnson?

Probably.

Now, what's interesting is I don't know, at least half of the people I mentioned have Ivy League uh or very high credentials.

They're either all attorneys or they went to a good school, they're economic majors or something like that.

But did this group of people look like the ones that you want running things compared to the first group of people?

And by the way, do you see how powerful that is?

I I I like to make sure you're getting the persuasion lesson at the same time as the as the politics.

From a persuasion perspective, did you did you feel how powerful that was that I put you in the room first with the conservatives and then with the Democrats?

You could feel that, couldn't you?

Isn't that powerful?

That that's a uh Jerry Jerry Jerry Spence a famous lawyer who always says you you tell the story you put the person in the story and it's very persuasive rather than just say the facts.

So that's what I did for you.

Put you in the story.

Anyway, some of the Democrats are done with uh their leadership.

Schumer and Roana says uh says it's time to get rid of Schumer as a leader.

You can't lead the fight to stop health care premiums from skyrocketing for Americans.

What will you fight for?

And then Seth Molton, also Democrat, Massachusetts, and Ed Marky, Democrat, Massachusetts.

They're also anti-Shumer at the moment.

We'll see if that grows.

Um, yeah.

So, Schubers and Joel.

Now, not only not only do conservatives or at least people who are pro.

Trump at the moment, not only do they have better smarter people who are the the head the head uh notable people, but even their spouses are better on podcasts.

How many of you have watched Cheryl Hines, who for whatever reason, I think probably smart reasons, has been appearing on some podcasts lately, and then compare that to uh Michelle Obama's podcasts and uh uh let's see, Jimmy Kimmel's wife's podcast and some other spousy podcast.

If you haven't seen Cheryl Hines on the podcast, you missed how to do podcasts.

I don't know how much experience she had on podcast per se, but boy does she nail.

She is so good.

And what she does right is, you know, first of all, she's charismatic and likable.

Uh, every man likes her.

Every woman wants to be her.

So, you know, she's starting with all the all the tools.

That's good.

But she doesn't leave her lane ever.

And her lane is the thing she does know and she never goes into the stuff she doesn't know.

And she just is polite to everybody.

Says, "Why not be nice to everybody?" And just never says whatever you think would be the provocative thing to try to make a news cycle.

She just comes across as so damn likable that you think RFK Jr.'s uh smarter than you thought because how in the heck, you know, did he lock her down?

So, you know, some of that just rubs off naturally on this the spouse as it would.

And it works both ways, right?

Uh he rubs off on her, she rubs on him.

But boy is she good.

If you haven't seen her her appearance on uh Club Random, I mean, of all things, Club Random would be the place that most um if you were a PR expert, you'd probably tell her not to go on there, right?

But she makes her own decisions, it looks like.

And uh she went on there and nailed it.

Just totally nailed it.

Yep.

Bill loved her.

Um CNN is asking Hakee Jeff if the government shutdown was worth it.

Um and Hakee said, "We have waged a battle on behalf of the American people." Is that the answer to the question, "Was it worth it?" "No." And CNN followed up, "But you didn't get what you want." And Jeffrey says, "At the end of the day, the fight lives on." Now remember what I told you about goals versus systems.

Their goal was to fight and they accomplished their goal.

They fought.

The the Republicans had a system which is they stick together.

The Republican system is that they just stick together.

They take directions from Trump because that seems to work out.

you know that if they if you've been paying attention following Trump's lead on just about anything ends up being the smart play.

So so Republicans have this perfect system.

What does Trump want?

Does that sound reasonable?

Are we all going to most of us anyway except for a Massie and Irand maybe.

Are we all going to be on the same page?

Yes.

That's pretty good system.

Then you talk to the Democrats, they're like, "We got to fight you.

Fight you and we got to swear more and fight you." Well, now Jeff is claiming some kind of success because he fought.

So they accomplished their goal.

They fought.

How may maybe you should have a different goal or maybe you should have I mean they would say, you know, the goal was to open the government, but they seem happy that they did the fight.

So it makes it look different.

Speaking of Jasmine Crockett, uh she I love this story.

She she's demanding that all 50 states abolished Dominion voting machines.

Now, I don't know how many states actually use them, but uh because Dominion is now owned by some entity that has conservative connections, she thinks that it's a sure thing that they will be used to rig the election.

So now we have we went from a Democrat swearing there could never be a way to rig an election to a top Democrat, at least in terms of attention, a top Democrat saying, "Oh my god, these elections are so unsecure.

We're going to have to change this right away." That's called winning.

Winning.

Uh, I've been telling you for a while that one of the the big turning points in the American mind will be when we realize there was never a way to know who won.

I don't know who won because I didn't count the votes and I don't trust anybody who does.

But if you don't realize there never was a way to know who won.

There never was.

Because you could never know what happened that you don't know about.

What if somebody cheated in a clever way and got away with it?

How would you know?

Getting away with it is what that means.

That they didn't get caught.

You think nobody's ever cheated an election and didn't get caught?

It must happen all the time.

So, the fact that the Democrats made it so you couldn't get a job or couldn't go to college if you believed that the election was even questionable, that's a pretty bold play right there.

But now we have uh Jasmine saying what one what one in my mind is actually a completely reasonable complaint.

The reasonable complaint is that you can't know for sure or you can't be confident.

You can't be confident that you know for sure the election was um fair when machines are involved and you don't know if anybody had access to the machines and maybe you're not sure that you could find out if anybody had access to the machines.

So it's completely reasonable and it actually matches a lot of conservative thought including my own.

So what should Trump do about that?

Now, this is a joke, but not really.

Wouldn't it be funny if he invited her to the White House so that other people could hear her complaints about the machines and about the unreliability of the the voting system?

What would she do?

What What would she do if Trump not only agreed with her, but asked if he could boost her signal?

Yeah, you know, you make a good point there.

I don't know about the voting machines.

We'll have somebody look into that.

But in general, if what you're saying is our elections need some extra security, well, here's what I can do for you.

All paper ballots.

That's what you want.

You don't want machines.

You want all paper ballots.

And don't you think it'd be a good idea if we made sure we don't count them for too many days because you don't want any you don't want those conservatives to be sneaking in any fake ballots after the election day, right?

Nobody wants that.

So, how about you and I get together and we fix this election system and then you can win fair and square on your great policies.

That will never happen, but it's funny to think about it.

Anyway, so Bill O'Reilly, who is getting a lot of attention lately, a lot of it's on News.

Nation, by the way.

Are you tracking the um the News Nation Arc?

I don't know how they're doing financially, but I got to say that Chris Cuomo is doing an incredibly good job of promoting, you know, a new network, Newsy Network.

And uh they do have interesting guests.

Um, Cuomo was the first person who I trusted, who reached out to me after I got cancelled and I thought did a very respectful and fair but tough interview with me.

Uh, so I have lots of good things to say about Cuomo uh, just because of personal interactions.

But, uh, yeah, newsation is doing a great job.

But anyway, they had Bill O'Reilly on quite a few times and uh so they're they're sort of reconstituting him.

But he said on the cost of living, he thinks sort of the next the midterms will really and maybe 2028 will turn on cost of living things and he's probably right about that.

And he suggests a cost of living zar.

Now, if he's suggesting a cost of living ZAR simply for the purpose of making it look like Republicans are doing something about affordability, maybe it's a semi good idea.

But if you leave out what would the ZAR do, I don't know if it's anything.

What What would the Zar exactly do?

Is there something that AAR knows how to do that you and I don't know how to do?

What exactly do you do?

I can't think of anything.

If people had great ideas for lowering costs, don't you think we'd be noodling on those all the time?

If the Republicans have a great idea that the that the No, I'm sorry.

If if Democrats have a great idea for lowering costs, I want to hear it.

I don't want to reject it.

If anybody has a great idea for lowering costs, I'd like to hear it.

So, I feel as though it's a lack of anybody having an idea.

It's not like somebody didn't fight hard enough.

It's not because we didn't have a zar.

It's not because there's no cabinet position for lowering uh expenses.

It's because nobody has an idea, you know, short of the big ideas like Trump has of lowering interest rates, for example.

And you could do things around the margin, but I don't know what a ZAR is going to get you.

Uh, let's get an idea first and then maybe a ZAR.

So, Trump is now, I guess, in favor of up to 600,000 Chinese students coming to the US uh for college.

And uh he says that's a pro mega stance.

He was telling Laura and Grim.

Um, and he says that if you didn't do that, because the Chinese students bring in a lot of money to the colleges because they they pay full price where a lot of Americans would not.

Uh, Trump says you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business.

I think he mentioned the historically black colleges would also have trouble.

Uh, he says, "I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else." Well, MAGA wants everything to work, right?

So, if the only way college works is if there are a lot of Chinese students, then I don't know, maybe you do the best you can to make that situation work, which looks like what Trump is doing.

But I don't know how you could feel safe with that here.

So, here's my take.

I assume there's something Trump knows that we don't about the Chinese students.

One thing he might know, and this is pure speculation, because remember I'm not a Democrat, so I can't read any minds.

Pure speculation.

What if um our intelligence people have assessed that the best way we can deal with China is to educate their elites in our schools, right?

Would that be the worst idea?

You you don't think that the intelligence people could get to the get to our Ivy League colleges and say, "All right, you're going to have a whole bunch of Chinese students and uh under these conditions, we think it's good for America.

You got to make sure that you propagandize some ma make sure that they have, I don't know, let's say an American roommate who might be working for the CIA someday." I'm making that one up.

But don't you think there's some way that that the US could exploit that many students to have influence back in China some years in the future because it it seems like we always get we get along better I've said this before we tend to get along best with the countries where the leader speaks English and has some connection to our country.

So this would be creating a whole bunch of people who obviously would be getting better at English.

They would have to speak it to come here, but they would be getting better at English and they would just get more connections to our country.

Is that bad?

Well, if they're stealing secrets and stuff like that, it's bad.

But one also assumes that our intelligence people would be all over the phones and devices of the Chinese students, wouldn't they?

Wouldn't it make sense that every single device a Chinese student brings over that our intelligence people penetrate so we can keep an eye on probably.

So before you say Trump is wrong about this uh and I don't know if he's right or wrong.

What I know for sure is that he knows more about this than we do.

It could be also that there's nothing about this he likes, but it's part of a deal to get something else done.

For example, what if the only way we can get a good uh um rare earth mineral temporary deal until we can do it ourselves?

What if the only way we can get that is that privately President Xi has said, "I tell you what, you're going to have to let the Chinese students in.

I'm getting too much pressure from the elites who want to send their kids there.

I'll give you your your minerals, but you got to open the colleges." Would that be a good play?

If you thought that was true, and I'm not saying it is, wouldn't it be a good play to at least consider taking in a good number of Chinese students?

They might.

So, don't assume you know what Trump is thinking because he gets different information than you do on stuff like that.

Well, Soft Bank, the company, uh, is selling it entire stake in Nvidia for 5.8 8 billion.

Now, you might say, "Uhoh, uh, do they think that Nvidia is no longer a good investment?" It's probably not that exactly, but rather they're they're freeing up cash for more open AI uh, investments.

So, it looks like they want to put their money on the software side, not the hardware side with Nvidia.

Now, I told you I sold my Nvidia earlier in the year after pretty good game uh because I didn't trust that a hardware company could have a sustainable long-term advantage when the stakes are this high.

When the stakes are this high, it guarantees, it just guarantees that the best players in the world are going to flow in and try to take some of that margin.

Guaranteed.

There's no way around that.

And since we don't know how good those competitors would be, it would be misleading to say, "Oh, uh, Nvidia is doing really well, so therefore they'll just always do well into infinity." Well, here's some news.

Uh uh apparently Elon Musk is very serious about starting his own chip company and getting the cost of his chips down to about 10% of what the Nvidia chips cost and also being way better.

Now Elon already believes that he can take out Nvidia if it were anyone else.

How many times do we ever say this?

We say this all the time.

If anyone else said that, you would say, "Well, I don't know about that." But if Elon says, "Well, looks like I'm going to have to build a chip fabrication plant to get enough chips.

And if I'm going to build a plant, it's not going to be just as good as everybody else's plant.

It's going to be this giant, what do you call it?

A megalop something so enormous you can't even visualize it." So, it'd be enormous.

It would make more chips than other people because he'll need more.

And if he if he makes his own chips, he's going to have he's going to own every AI market he wants because he's the only one who'll have enough chips.

So, if you were a soft bank and you had $5.8 8 billion in one AI chip company and Elon Musk just said in public, you know, I think I might compete with that and beat it with a 90% cheaper product.

Even if even if Nvidia was so nimble that they could match that, it would still take 90% off their profit, right?

I mean, roughly speaking.

So, I don't I don't give financial advice as you know.

This is not financial advice.

Um, if you had followed my financial advice and sold Nvidia when I did, you would have lost a lot of money compared to holding until now.

So, keep in mind I'm not good at investing.

I'll tell you that as often as you need to hear it because I know it's kind of tempting.

If you like my opinions on, you know, some political thing, you'll think, well, then maybe he's also good at investing.

Nobody's good at it.

Nobody's good at investing.

Nobody is.

A lot of his luck and insider trading.

All right.

Uh, apparently there was some kind of Jim Ha, Gateway Pundit, says there was some kind of leaked phone call that showed that the State Department is backing their uh, color revolution with global partners.

I can't tell if this is the same thing that Mike Benz was talking about or not, but apparently there's newly surfaced recordings shared by Data Republican, an account on X.

Um, former USA ID employees openly discussed moving internal groups off federal systems into encrypted signal chats ahead of the presidential inauguration.

That would have been Trump in in January and then linking up with international partners to mobilize against author.

Oh, there it is.

Mobilize against authoritarianism.

So when you hear that these big networks are mobilizing against authoritarianism, that should be thought of as a color revolution.

How many Democrats do you think know what a color revolution is?

I'll bet most of my audience does.

Uh certainly all of Mike Benz's audience does, but how many Democrats would even know what that is?

A color revolution.

That that's when the United States overthrows other countries.

But apparently the same same tools have been used internally which is very illegal and inappropriate.

All right.

Um here's a story that I wouldn't mention except I like Rand Paul.

So I'm going to give him a little boost on his messaging.

Um, apparently this there's some kind of legislation cooking that would ruin the totally legal hemp production in his state, Kentucky.

So, apparently all of the hemp people would be put out of business by whatever change this is.

I don't know what the change is, but there's no reason the hemp business should be crippled.

That would be not understanding what hemp is.

You can't get high smoking hemp.

You know, it's related to cannabis, but doesn't get you high.

That's why it's legal.

Why in the world would they do something to take out an entire industry in 23 states?

So, I don't know the details there, but I'm going to trust Rand Paul.

And I'll give him a little boost because I think he's one of the good guys.

He doesn't always agree with me.

He doesn't always agree with Trump, but I just think he's one of the good guys.

So, I'll give him a boost on that.

quote.

So, whoever is in charge of that hemp thing, give that a rethink.

I think Rand is probably right on that.

Russia is upping it UAV.

Uh, that would be the drones warfare game.

Now, they have a 62 mile range attack drone swarms.

So, they can attack with a swarm within 62 miles.

That's still sort of frontlineish.

Anyway, so as I've long predicted, the robot war is pretty much a robot war.

When was the last time you heard a uh casualty estimate out of Ukraine?

Anybody?

All right, here's a little test.

Tell me how many soldiers were killed.

Let's say just Ukrainian soldiers uh last week.

Number of Ukrainian soldiers killed last week.

Anybody?

I don't think it was in the news.

Why would it not be in the news?

There's only one reason I can think of why casualty numbers for a major war would no longer be in the news.

Can you think of a second reason?

The first reason is it's very low number, right?

Well, what if only three people died?

I'm not saying that's true.

Could have been thousands.

We don't know one way or the other.

Maybe it's thousands.

But what if it was three?

Why are they not telling us if it were thousands?

Don't you think they would have told us?

Because the news likes to report on whatever is bad and thousands a week would be super bad.

or or even just to show that Trump is wrong about the number of people dying because I think he said something like 5,000 a week or something.

And if that's not right, wouldn't you expect Daniel Dale would jump right in and say, "No, no, it was only three people." I mean, if it was.

So, I'm not saying it was three people.

I'm saying it's a war where they stopped counting casualties.

I I don't believe they ever stopped in Gaza, did they?

I mean, the numbers might have been, you know, fraudulent, but I don't think they stopped reporting them.

So, we don't know what's going on there, but um I suspect that it has turned into an all robot war and that the only thing that they should be reporting is what they are, which is how many drones were deployed last night and how many hit their target and how many guys got shot down.

So maybe that's all we need.

There's a new paper that claims that everything you know about the universe expansion is wrong.

Futurism is writing about this.

Victor Tanganger.

Not everybody agrees, but if you've ever followed Scott, stop all the All right, let's see.

Uh if I'm right, Scott, stop all the scenarios of if I'm right.

How about you give me a reason?

How about you do your own podcast and don't give me advice in the middle of the podcast?

How about that?

How's your podcast doing with all your good advice?

Don't be an It's like you could turn your and your off just for an hour to watch one podcast.

You don't have to be that guy.

You really don't.

You can simply be a nicer person and then people would like you more.

You get invited to more.

I'm guessing you don't get invited to anything.

Am I right?

Probably nothing based on based on what I've seen so far.

All right.

Um, China is pretending it's going to do something about fentinol.

And according to the Hill, DD Tang writes that uh China said on Monday that's going to pledge to crack down on chemicals that can be used to make fentinel.

Huh.

What does that remind you of?

They didn't actually ban the fentinel chemicals.

They just made a pledge to crack down on it.

Well, that sounds a lot like the deal that Schumer got.

Well, we'll promise to talk about it later before we don't give it to you.

No, I do not believe that China did a damn thing at all about fentinel.

Did they promise that they would do a damn thing about fentinel?

Maybe.

Maybe they said they would.

Do I think that they will?

Why would I think that?

They they haven't they they they haven't done anything that they said they would do yet.

I mean, nothing meaningful.

So, I'm going to say that's a lie from China.

And we'll never see that.

All right.

Hey, timing was pretty good.

Pretty pretty good.

All right.

That's all I got for you today.

I'm going to talk a little bit privately with the good folks, my beloved uh subscribers.

For those of you who got here a little late, did you know that the 2026 Dilbert calendar is available right now?

You can buy it on Amazon.

You'd have to be an American or use Amazon.com, the American version, if you had a way to do that.

I don't know if there is, but I hear there is.

And uh All right.

Thank you.

Did How did you enjoy the show?

Did I tell you anything you didn't know?

But I'm mo here's what I'm most interested in.

I'm not searching for a compliment, although I like them.

So, if you have a compliment, I'm sure I'd enjoy it.

But when I did the uh you're sitting in the class and you're going to take a test, I'd love for you to tell me how powerful that was because as I was doing it, even I could feel it.

Like you actually feel good persuasion.

You just feel it more more than you think it.

And I wondered if you could feel that.

Okay.

Getting a lot of yeses.

Good.

And that should be that should be one of the best lessons you've ever gotten on persuasion because I actually brought you into it.

You know, I didn't just tell you about it.

I brought you into the center of the persuasion and you could feel what it was like from the inside.

Pretty amazing.

All right.

Before I go to my beloveds on locals, I'll give you a little update.

I don't know if this is temporary or not, but today's the first day in in memory, probably since June at least, that uh I've not been in pain in the morning.

I'm not in pain.

There's not a single part of my body that hurts right now.

And that is really rare.

If you've got advanced cancer, that's really rare.

I'm not in any pain meds.

No pain meds right now.

Nothing at all.

And I don't have any pain.

So, I don't know if that means everything's working.

See, here's here's the trick.

The trick is that cancer uh is highly variable.

So for no reason at all, things will hurt like crazy, but then a day later you won't be in pain or the pain will move from one part of your body to a completely different one.

So cancer is real tricky.

So the fact that at the moment it doesn't hurt like crazy.

Yesterday it hurt like crazy.

I was in so much pain at exactly this time yesterday, it's hard to even describe.

I bluffed my way through the podcast, but boy did it hurt.

The moment, no pain at all.

Now, I've taken the radiation on my back, just one spot, not my whole body.

That may have worked.

Uh, I took the blue victto, just the first of what will be six doses.

It's a little too early for that to work, but if it would work, I might see the first indications of it after a week.

and spent a week but also I did the uh the bio shield with Dr.

Sunun Shan and the bio shield should also take a week or two before you see any difference and it's been what a week and a half.

So we're right on the just on the cusp of where I can say it's probably more related to the treatments than it is to some just ordinary variability.

But I can't quite say that yet.

We're not quite there, but we're right on the edge of I wish I could say, "Oh, this shit's working.

It might be." Yeah, I I don't have I don't really have a second explanation why I'm not in pain.

Might be working.

And that would be amazing.

All right, people.

I will see you tomorrow.

And uh my beloveds, I will be coming at you right now.

Assuming my technology works, and it

Good morning everybody.

I got to fix my lighting. I look like a

head that's just sort of drifting.

By the way, if anybody can tell me how

on my Apple laptop

to turn off the screen saver so it

doesn't turn off in the middle of my

live stream. Boy, would I appreciate it.

I can search for screen. I can look for

display. I can look for power. I can

look for auto off. I can search all over

that damn computer, but I will not find

the simplest command. How do I turn the

screen saver off?

So, if anybody knows how to do that,

please let me know. All right, we've got

a show to do.

And uh let's see.

Let me jump in here and look at what

you're looking at. Well, apparently

that's not an option either. I think

everything in my computer world failed

today at the same time.

My printer wasn't connected. My computer

was random.

Really? No, this isn't working either.

The simplest thing. There we go.

The simplest thing is working now.

All right, that's enough of me

complaining. You want to show and you

shall not lock screen. So, you think

lock. [snorts] Well, I'll search for

lock next time.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

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Fantastic.

Best sip I've ever had. Well, we'll get

back to that. Would you like to start

with a reframe

from my book, Reframe Your Brain?

Full of over 200 frames. Reframes. Any

one of them could change your life. You

never know.

All right. Uh,

here's one.

Um,

oh, here here's the deathbed reframe.

This one's kind of useful. Do you ever

have this big old problem? You're like,

"Ah, this problem is plaguing me. I

can't get it out of my mind." All you do

if you've got a problem you can't get on

your head is uh

instead of saying that my stress and

anxiety are being caused by the things

in my life, ask yourself how many of

those things you'll be thinking about on

your deathbed.

And the answer is none of them. Once you

realize that you won't care about any of

them on your deathbed, it turns out it

makes it easier to not worry about them

today. So, this is one you just have to

try. You literally just imagine yourself

at the end of your life and you know

your loved ones are around and they're

like, "Hey, Scott,

what about that printer that wasn't

working that day?" I think it was

November 11th in 2025. Do you remember?

Do you remember how mad you were the

printer wasn't working? How do you feel

about it now? Oh, I'm dying. I I don't I

can't even think about the printer.

Exactly. Exactly. It wasn't important

then and it's not important now. The

deathbed reframe. If it's not going to

matter on your deathbed, it probably

doesn't matter that much. I mean, you

might have to fix it. Whatever the

problem is, you might still have to fix

it, but you don't have to worry about it

so much. All right, let's get to the big

stories of the day. The big story of the

day is that the Dilbert calendar is

available. Okay, you already know that

you can only get it at Amazon and uh

it's available to Americans or Americans

who can buy from Amazon.com or anybody

who can buy from Amazon.com.

It's available to you and it's got

comics on both sides. Oo,

got the spicy stuff. Well, are you

supposed to say happy Veterans Day? I've

never known how to navigate this.

Instead of saying happy Veterans Day,

may I just take a moment to show my

undying respect for all veterans and to

thank you in case you don't get thanked

enough today. How many of you are vets?

How many watching this are veterans?

You're the special people today. So, if

you happen to be a vet, just know that I

am thinking highly respectful thoughts

about you right now because we wouldn't

get any of this stuff without you.

I am quite aware that the quality of my

life is directly directly springs from

the fact that there are brave people who

go to war um when it needs to be done.

Sometimes even when it doesn't need to

be done, but that's another story. So,

all respect to you veterans.

Well, in other news, you won't even

believe this, but the TPUSA group was

trying to do an event yesterday at UC

Berkeley. How do you think that went? Do

you think any of the UC Berkeley

Democrats

uh complained about having TPUSA there?

Of course they did. A fight broke out.

There was bloodshed. There was There

were police. I don't know how bad it

got. It might have been just a few

people fighting, but remember how I tell

you that I, you know, I used to be,

well, honestly, there was a long period

in my life where the thing I was most

proud of, most proud of of my own

performance in life, per se, is that I

got my MBA at Berkeley, the Hos School

of Business, and that I did it while I

was working full-time.

Now, if you've never tried that,

let [clears throat] me tell you, it's a

little bit challenging to get an MBA at

night while you've already worked

full-time during the day. It's hard, in

case you're wondering. It's hard. And it

lasts three years instead of two because

the full-time MBA class would would be

compressed. But wow, was it hard. So

hard. I I may have told you this story

before, but uh on day one,

not literally day one, but uh the very

first test I took in my MBA courses,

they wrote the distribution to

professor, he wrote the distribution of

the grades on the board so we could all

see where we stood. And then he told us,

uh I have to tell you, I forget the the

percentage, but it was something like

half, maybe half or one/ird. He said,

"Half or one-third of you, whatever the

number was, it was horrifying,

will not make it through the cl the

course." And I'm sitting there thinking,

"Really? Half of us?" Because you don't

even get into Berkeley unless you've got

something going on. You know what I You

know what I mean? Like they don't even

let you in unless you've already proven

you can handle things at a pretty high

level. So I thought it can't be true.

Can't possibly be true that the bottom I

don't know. I let's say it was

one-third.

That sounds about right. It couldn't

possibly be true that one-third drop out

in the first semester.

And uh then we took a test and the test

came back and uh we saw the

distribution. Now the distribution did

not have names on it,

but I could still tell which grade was

mine. Do you know how I could tell which

grade was mine without a name on it?

before I'd seen my test.

It was the lowest one in the class.

[laughter]

It was the lowest grade in the class. It

wasn't second. It wasn't third lowest.

It was the lowest grade in the class.

Right after he told me that one-third of

the people aren't going to make it at

all. Do you know how mad that made me

that I'd put all that work into getting

in? First of all, getting into the MBA

class wasn't easy. All that work and

he's basically saying it's not going to

work for you and here is proof.

Well, then another another test came up

and I managed to be not the worst grade.

So, on the second test, not the worst.

Definitely not the worst, but toward the

bottom. By the third test,

somewhat respectable,

somewhere in the I don't know, somewhere

in the middle.

By the fourth test,

I had decided.

I ever tell you the difference between

wanting and deciding.

Wanting

means that you could allow yourself to

quit if you wanted. You could just

change what you want. deciding

is different. I had decided that nothing

was going to stop me from getting that

freaking MBA. Nothing. And so by the end

of by the end of the course, I was

getting reasonable grades and managed to

graduate with my degree. It was worth as

much as everybody else's. It was the

hardest thing I've ever done. I had to

give up every weekend my entire social

life. And it hurt for 3 years. But when

I was done and I got that degree,

for years that was the greatest pride of

my life.

And now Berkeley turned into a garbage

pit. I take no pride in it whatsoever.

I'm still happy I did the work, but I

don't care about the degree. I mean,

hell with that. Anyway, sorry, Berkeley.

So according to the University of

Zurich,

uh Natalie Huber is writing that uh AI

is pretty unbiased relatively speaking.

They did a test to see how unbiased it

is with its answers. But it turns out

that it does become instantly biased if

you tell it the source of the data.

So if you say, "Hey, this data came from

the Washington Post or the New York

Times." The AIS, and this is all the

AIS, not just one. will say, "Oh, it

looks pretty good. Comes from one of

those good sources." But if it comes

from, let's say, a rightle leaning

source that might actually be very

credible, uh, it will say, "Well, not so

sure. We're not so sure about this one."

So yes,

uh AI does have bias and apparently even

the Chinese AI Deep Seek allegedly has

an anti-China [laughter]

allegedly has an anti-China bias because

it got trained on so much data that had

an anti-China bias that even the Chinese

even the Chinese AI has an anti-China

bias.

Anyway, um

big, uh I'd like to give a call out to

Dana Parino, Fox News, who from the

beginning of the government shutdown

drama would say calmly at the beginning

of most of the episodes of the five, and

we know how it's going to end. The

Democrats will cave. And a day goes by,

the five comes back on, and Dana says,

"And we know how this will end. the

Democrats are going to cave. They always

do. Or there's there was some rule about

why you can always predict why it would

happen. And and what I loved was she was

so confident about the outcome. I

thought, "Yeah, you're putting yourself

out there a little bit." I I agreed with

her, by the way. I thought that she was

probably right, but I thought that's

pretty confident to put that out there

and 100% right. Nailed it.

So, good for you. And she wasn't the

only one. I think Greg was predicting

the same. There were other people who

predicted it, but I just liked her

confidence. Uh, and you know, she has

the experience to know what she's

talking about. All right. Uh, let's

talk. We We still have a few more days,

if not weeks, of enjoying the Democrats

bad reaction to the shutdown

negotiations being over.

If you haven't seen yet John Stewart's

Monday Night Show, [laughter]

it really is sort of a masterpiece. He's

not happy. He's not happy with Chuck

Schumer getting a nothing. So, we got

this life or death situation. They told

us that, you know, babies are starving

and planes are falling out of the air.

Uh and yet they decide [laughter]

after telling us for weeks that that

babies will die and planes will fall out

of the sky uh if they agree with the

Republicans on anything. They just sort

of cave in. And but here's what John

Stewart couldn't believe and and he made

this hilarious. Now what's funny about

it is

he really doesn't look like he's taking

sides. Well, maybe he does, but he's

hitting his own team hard. He's hitting

his own team harder than he's hitting

the the Republicans by far. He's hitting

his own side. So that that gives him a

little credibility because when his own

side has a bad day, he goes after his

own side.

You have to have that or nobody's going

to really take you too seriously. Um he

goes John Sewer says, "Where in the art

of war does it say uh you know never

pressure your never press your

advantage?"

And this was the funniest line. uh

that Chuck Schumer sold out. He sold out

on what he wanted in return for a

promise

to negotiate later and then later not

get what he wanted. [laughter]

He traded what he wanted for a promise

to not get what he wanted later.

[laughter]

That's exactly what happened.

A promise to not get what you want

later.

>> [laughter]

>> That's a funny line. Oh, John Stewart,

you're so funny.

So, even John Stewart, when here's how I

interpret this by by mocking Schumer by

taking out the art of war, he took out

the actual book, The Art of War by

Sunsu. I think what he's trying to tell

them is that they're not dealing on a

strategic level.

[laughter]

How many times have I said that? that

the that the Republicans and Trump in

particular, they seem to deal entirely

on a strategic level. I mean, there's a

moral and ethical frame to it, but that

but they're very strategic. The

Democrats just seem to be acting out.

It doesn't doesn't seem strategic at

all, does it? It just feels like they're

mad at something. Their their whole

approach to the shutdown was fight.

That's not even the right context for

that.

Fight, fight, fight. The right context

was you just got your ear shot. The

wrong context is the way they were using

it. Like like just being tougher in the

way they talk is going to make it all

work.

They didn't have any strategy.

They were they were just trying to blame

Republicans and see see if something

would work. Anyway, you you really have

to see the John Stewart video. Van Jones

tries to tries to

save as much as he can from this

situation, but uh I don't think he he

quite nailed it. Uh but only because he

doesn't have much to work with in this

particular case. Now, I like to be

transparent. I like Van Jones.

Yeah. And and am I am I biased

for people that I just personally kind

of like? Yes, a little bit. I'm a little

bit biased for people I like. And I like

him. Uh he's a likable guy. I've talked

to him and he was very very generous to

me. So I like him. But he didn't have

anything to work with here. He had

nothing to work with. So he comes out,

he goes uh he goes, "Look," this was on

CNN, of course. He says, "Look, right

now, Democrats are going to kick each

other and tear each other up and be mad

at each other, but when the smoke clears

for most Americans, something has been

proven here." So, this is Van. He says,

"Republicans are just not that into

Americans right now.

Really, the the best you have is reading

the minds of Republicans and and uh and

it looks all evil in there. You you

think the Republicans are just turned

into demons or something?

What is it that would affect all

Republicans? Uh all Republicans just are

not into Americans right now. So you

think that the America First party that

literally is America first are not that

into Americans?

What?

Okay. Um and then he said, and this

looks like this will be the approach

they're going to all take. quote, "How

much pain were the Republicans willing

to let Americans suffer so they didn't

have to? They're just not that into you,

America."

Uh,

how much pain were the Republicans

willing to let you suffer? The Democrats

could have voted to open it at any

moment.

They just lied to their base and act

like they didn't have the power to open

it because we're not in power. We're not

in power. That doesn't change the fact

that they have the votes. They can vote

anything they want

or in this case they could have voted

past the 60 people limit. And then he

says uh Van says Donald Trump and

Republicans were willing to let planes

fall out of the sky. I can't believe

he's he's going this far. And children

starve before they came to the table.

That's so absurd. Like only one side was

starving children or as if any children

were starving. I'm pretty sure nobody

starved.

Have you seen any anecdotal stories of

you know even that the reason you can't

do this story?

If the press did a story about the

family they [laughter]

Oh, it's terrible that I'm laughing at

this. Stop it, Scott. This is not funny.

If the press, let's say they found a

family that

where little Billy was starving

[laughter]

and they [clears throat] and they did a

story from, let's say, the family's

living room and they're like, "There's

little Billy. Little Billy over in the

couch. He won't be eating today. He

didn't eat yesterday. He he'll probably

be gone by noon."

[laughter] And and then it would be the

fault of the the reporter for not

feeding little Billy because, you know,

you probably have a few extra bucks. May

maybe you could spare a little bit for

Billy before he falls over on the couch

during your live your life. [laughter]

that piece. It [clears throat] It's only

funny because I just realized you can't

do a story about it because the moment

you do a story about a starving anything

in the United States, people send them

food and they they stop starving

immediately.

All right. Well, we do have a good

country in the sense that nobody's going

to look at somebody starving and let

them starve. We just don't live in that

country. If you see somebody starving,

we're going to feed them. Let let let me

uh if I have any neighbors within

walking distance who are starving, just

knock on my door. [laughter]

Just knock on my door. You have to be

within walking distance. I can't feed

the world. But if any of my walking

distance neighbors are literally unable

to eat, I'll give you a sandwich. Stop

by. All right. [sighs]

So, what I liked about uh Van Jones's

approach is in some ways he's sort of an

indicator of, you know, testing some of

the narratives uh because he's good at

it. So, I think he, you know, they let

him go first sometimes just to see how

it works. But listen to listen to every

Democrat trick he tried.

Let's see. Uh was there mind readading?

How many times have I told you that

Democrats, they pretend they can read

the minds of Republicans, but what they

see in there is not America first and we

like the Constitution and we like our

God and we like families. They don't see

the things that they're actually

thinking. What they see is things that

are created by the squirrels running

around in their skulls and then they

imagine that they can read minds. That's

here, right? They're imagining that

they're looking into into Republican

minds and that they don't mind if planes

fall out of the sky [laughter] and

children starve.

How about a character attack?

Have you noticed? Now, obviously Trump

does character attacks, but he's a

special case. But in terms of

Republicans versus Democrats in general,

I think uh Republicans are a little more

likely to talk about the policy, whereas

Democrats are a little more likely to

talk about, oh, bad character. Did uh

did Van do that? Did he treat the

Republicans as if they have bad

character? Yes, he treated them like

they don't care if babies die. How about

imaginary problems? Have you heard me

talk about that a million times? that uh

Democrats come up with imaginary

problems. Well, this was completely self

self-created and it was an imaginary

problem in the sense that they could

they could solve it without doing any

real work. It was 100% solvable just by

going a

would you like to see that again?

Watch me solve the starving children and

planes falling out of the air. A

there that's me voting in favor of

passing a short-term continuing

resolution. A

Democrats remember that. That's how it's

done. Hey, save the world. What about

projection? The thing where they're

doing the bad thing, but they blame the

Republicans of doing the very bad thing

that they're doing. Yes, that was the

whole shutdown. The whole shutdown was

acting like it the Republicans had some

power over it, which they didn't. So, we

got the projection. How about the

cluster B personality disorder?

Have any of you had any experience with

a narcissist? That's part of the cluster

B, so-called cluster B personality

disorders.

Well, if you've ever seen it, the way it

looks is

they blame you of whatever they're

doing. So, really, that's the same as

the projection and the imaginary

problems and the mind readading and the

character assaults. They're they're all

sort of under that domain. So, we got

that. Then we've got uh Democrats trying

to focus their victories on things you

can't measure.

Things you can't measure. Is this one of

those things you can't really measure?

Well, I haven't heard any numbers for

children dying. I didn't see any

measurement of that. I don't know the

number of planes that fell out of the

air. I think it's zero. I think it is.

>> [snorts]

>> So the entire uh shutdown was about what

might happen if you don't open up.

Except that didn't happen. We did open

up. So it was this whole set of

imaginary things that could happen but

didn't as usual.

Um,

yeah.

So, the one that's missing is where the

Democrats uh say a problem doesn't

really exist like they do with Antifa.

Th that didn't apply to this one because

everybody agrees that if you're not

funding SNAP, people are going to have

more trouble getting food. So, at least

they agreed on the problem. [snorts] But

but could you see how stunningly

consistent it is that Van uh who's a

totally reasonable smart guy? He he's

following the the Democrat plan that

looks like mental problems more than it

looks like the art of war, if you know

what I mean.

Um there was a I think it was a fake

truth social that was hilarious. I wish

it hadn't been true, but it uh it

purported to show that Trump was saying

that fat people would not be allowed in

the United States. And then [snorts] it

ended with saying that Rosie O'Donnell

will never come back, which would be a

comment under a weight. Uh that did not

happen as far as Grock can tell. So

Grock said that was not real. Uh I made

the mistake of reposting that this

morning before I said to myself, I

better check this one. This one's a

little bit too on the nose. And sure

enough, Grock said, "Nope." But here's

the fun part. It's actually based on

something real. It's It is real that the

State Department is going to ban

overweight people from entering the US

on a visa, but it would be based on

general health requirements. So, we're

not talking about somebody who's got a

few extra pounds because that would be

everybody. We're we're talking about

people who are clearly not as healthy as

they could be and clearly will be a

burden on the health care uh situation

in the US. Under those conditions, I

guess the State Department says no visa

for you, which isn't not a terrible

decision. I I can see that.

Well, the Supreme Court's still thinking

about tariffs, and Trump points out that

they don't understand tariffs, which is

no big surprise. He says that they've

been given the wrong numbers on

unwinding the tariffs because one of the

questions that the Supremes asked was,

"What would it cost if we rule to unwind

the tariffs that have already happened?"

And Trump points out that the tariffs

are not unconnected

to the deals about bringing capital into

the US. He says that there are $3

trillion that also has to be unwound

because part of this part of the tariff

agreements were that people would uh

would be invested in the US. So, is it

possible that the Supreme Court

is going to be off in their calculation

by $3 trillion

and then they're going to make a

decision that we're all bound by

while being off on the assumptions by $3

trillion.

And it might be they might be off by $3

trillion and then make a decision based

on that bad assumption. now because

Trump has said you know that it's and

who knows about the three trillion I

don't know if the three trillion tracks

exactly but it is correct that [snorts]

you can't separate all this stuff

logically you can't separate uh Trump

says that we'll have over 20 trillion

coming into our economy I think that was

on Laura Ingram

uh she did a very illuminating uh

interview with Trump but here's my take

uh All data is fake. All data is fake.

If you simply if you simply went by, you

know, what the Republicans are claiming,

you'd find out later it wasn't exactly

right. If you go by what the Supreme

Court is believing, that's not right. If

you tried to do the math yourself and

add it up on your own, you wouldn't get

the right answer. All of our important

decisions, we pretend that somehow we

have all this knowledge. We don't. We're

we're mostly guessing,

bias and guessing. That's mostly life.

Um but also apparently the Supreme Court

is considering

uh looking into the case of the ballot

deadlines. So I guess there are 30

states that uh are up for a decision.

We'll say not really because the

Supremes haven't decided to take the

case yet, but it looks like they might.

And the idea would be if the Supreme

Court could allow the I think the

administration,

the feds to tell states that they can't

count later if ballots.

So, there's a possibility

that the Supreme Court will say you

can't count ballots that come in 30 days

late or whatever deadline they put on

it. I think that they might.

Don't know how this one will go. I don't

have a good I'm not really good on the

Supreme Court um predictions, but that

would be a really big thing and it would

give me some confidence in our system

because none of us understand why it

should take so long only in one country.

Am I right? Every one of you has the

same issue which is okay if if if you

really have to wait 30 days why is it

only the the top industrialized country

in the world has to wait 30 days really

we can't figure that out but Estonia can

do it in a day I'm just making that up

but I think they can actually that

Estonia you vote on the app on your

phone

all All right.

So, that might be a big big deal. We'll

see.

Um,

Laura Graham asked Trump about the

concept of the 50-year mortgage

proposal.

And, uh, I think Trump gave a really

good answer to that. So, rather than

trying to, you know, weigh it in and

really get into numbers and stuff, he

said, quote, "All it means is you pay

less per month. You pay it over a longer

period of time." Now, that's not really

all it means because it also means you

pay more. Means you don't get to own

your house outright as soon. You know,

it might be you live your entire life

and you never owned your house

completely. So, it's not like there's no

cost, but I think his summary is

completely fair. The part you'd feel

as though you're paying less per month,

but longer. Um and then uh Trump changed

the subject to he thinks the real he he

didn't think that would make a big

difference in home ownership. So he

thought that would be a minor change

that some people would like, some people

wouldn't, but you know, it's freedom if

you have the freedom for that option.

More freedom is better probably. Uh but

he thinks the Fed will uh lower interest

rates when we get a new Fed chair in the

spring, maybe before that. I I think

we're supposed to have a couple of more

rate cuts no matter who's there, right?

So, that's a good answer on housing.

Interest rates are going down,

etc. And then, uh, Scott Basant,

Treasury head, uh, he was on MSNBC and

embarrassed them because he knows so

much more than they do about everything.

So, the MSNBC host asks uh, Scott Bent,

how does a$20 billion bailout of

Argentina help Americans? Now, that's a

pretty good question, right? I saw this

in a post by the Patriot Oasis and

Besson answered that. You said, "Uh, do

you know what a swap line is?"

Boom. And we're done. [laughter]

He [clears throat] could have stopped

there. So, they MSNBC characterized it

as a bailout. And Bess Best Bess just

looks at him and goes, "Do you know what

a swap line is?" Now, I just told you

that I have an MBA from a top school.

I've got a degree in economics. I didn't

know what a swap line was. How many of

you know what a swap line is?

Is there even one person here who could

say, "Oh, a swap line." Yeah, a swap

line is different from a bailout. Let me

tell you the ways. I don't know. Uh, all

I know is if somebody said that to me, I

would stop the conversation immediately

because I would recognize that they know

a lot more than I do about whatever this

is.

So, after he goes, "Do you know what a

swap line is?" The MSNBC host said, "Uh,

it's a currency swap." Yes. And then

Besson doesn't let it doesn't let him or

her off the hook. I don't know who it

was. He goes, "But what is that? Why

would you call it a bailout?"

So, so instead of answering the

question, he just puts it back. Why

would you call that a bailout if you

know what it is? That's a pretty good

answer. If you know what it is, why

would you call it a bailout?

Ooh. Ooh. Stick it in and turn it.

Uh

then, uh, Besson explains. She says, "In

most bailouts, you don't make money. The

US government made money. Apparently,

we've already made money. The

government's going to make money. That's

a lot we could have been doing for

America

farmers if the Democrats hadn't closed

the government. So then Besson throws in

the government closing just to get a

little extra zing.

Anyway, a swap line. Uh let me tell you

what it is. It's basically

I think they I think what we do is swap

some currency. So, they get some dollars

and we get some of their uh sketchy

stuff. And there's something about the

temporary swap

that gives support to their currency.

But because we're the ones who gave

support to the currency, we can have

some confidence that it will be

supported because we just gave us some

support. And that makes it value go up.

And then when the country is

sufficiently stabilized, the currency

that we swapped for may have gone up in

value, which I think is what happened or

will happen. I don't know if that's a

good description, but there but there's

something about just temporarily trading

currency, not all of it, just some of it

that seems to stabilize the less stable

country.

Does that work? Well, I wouldn't have

done it on my own, but if Scott Bassen

tells me that's a good idea and it

works, I'm going to believe it. He's

pretty credible.

Speaking of credible,

um Mike Benz is educating us about how

the university system is part of this

big international network of uh people

who are trying to behind our backs find

clever ways to censor essentially

right-wing, you know, conservatives. Uh

and so because it's illegal to censor

people and stop their free speech in the

United States, apparently the

universities are a vital part of this

big system which has evolved in which

the schools are propagandizing people

and working with international entities

to uh coordinate global censorship.

Now I wouldn't know any of that

without Mike Benz.

And I keep saying this, but I feel like

I'm not saying it right. And I I'm going

to take another run at it. So, if you've

heard me say this, I'm just trying to

say it better because if I say it

better, it just becomes more powerful.

So,

um,

here's what I want to say.

I'm going to give you a little mental

mental test or like a thought

experiment. Oh, okay. It's a thought

experiment. Are you ready? Um, somebody

tells you that uh you're going to

compete in some kind of an IQ test, but

it could be an SAT or just some general

intelligence test. And you walk into the

room and you say to yourself, "Yeah, I'm

pretty smart. I bet I could do all right

in this IQ test." And you sit down to

take the test and you look to your left

and it's Victor Davis Hansen.

He's also taken the test and you go, "Oh

it's Victor Davis Hansen." Okay,

I'm not going to be him on the IQ test.

But then you look to your right and it's

Ben Shapiro. You're like, "God, I don't

always agree with Ben Shapiro, but he's

way smarter than me and he's taking the

test. Well, maybe I could come in

third."

And then you look in front of you and

there's Scott Bent. You're like, "Oh,

come on. Come on. How's this fair? And

you look behind you and it's Jordan

Peterson when he's full health.

And you go, "Uh, come on. Come on. How

in the world did I get in this room?"

And then you you look, you know, over

there and it's uh Thomas Massie. Oh,

come on. He went to MIT.

Come on. Then you look over there and

it's Mike Benz. And then you look over

there and it's David Saxs.

Do you feel that?

I have to I have to give you a

confession.

When I was a young man, I was not

conservative. I didn't identify as

conservative. And the reason was it

seemed embarrassing because I thought

maybe the dumb people were all on one

side.

Has anybody have that feeling? Like a

long time ago. It felt like the dumb

people were the conservatives and all

the all the really bright Ivy League

people tended to be on the left and I

didn't I didn't really want to be

associated with the dumb people. Now I

may have been right. I may have been

wrong. I'm just telling you how I was

thinking at that time. But when I put

you in that room and I made you sit at

that desk or imagine it and then I made

you wonder how you would do if you were

surrounded by some of the most notable

conservatives. Now you may have also

noted that I could have gone on for a

long time. I could have I could have

continued mentioning people who were the

most notable ones, the ones you see all

the time. And I I didn't even I didn't

even mention Elon Musk.

Put put Elon in the room, right? He he

gets to be in the room, too. So, we've

got the smartest room that civilization

has ever assembled.

But at least the Democrats have a good

set of people running against them,

right? All right. I'm going to put you

in another room. You ready?

Room number two.

Room number two. You go in for your IQ

test. You sit down and you look to your

left and there's AOC. And you say to

yourself, "Oocc,

she went to college. She's she's bright,

but I think I can take her." Then you

look at the other side and there's

Jasmine Crockett.

And you go, "She did go to law school,

right? I think she has a legal degree."

But you say to yourself, "Still, I feel

like I could take her on this IQ test."

Then you look the other direction, you

see Eric Swallwell.

You say, "Okay, I could be him." Also,

he's an attorney, I think. Adam Schiff,

yeah, I I could take Adam. Uh Jamie

Raskin, I think so. Chuck Schumer,

definitely. Bernie Bernie Sanders? Yeah,

definitely. Uh how about Mayor Brandon

Johnson?

Probably. [laughter] Now, what's

[clears throat] interesting is I don't

know, at least half of the people I

mentioned have Ivy League uh or very

high credentials. They're either all

attorneys or they went to a good school,

they're economic majors or something

like that. But did this group of people

look like the ones that you want running

things compared to the first group of

people?

And by the way, do you see how powerful

that is? I I I like to make sure you're

getting the persuasion lesson at the

same time as the as the politics. From a

persuasion perspective, did you did you

feel how powerful that was that I put

you in the room first with the

conservatives

and then with the Democrats?

You could feel that, couldn't you? Isn't

that powerful? That that's a uh Jerry

Jerry

Jerry Spence a famous lawyer who always

says you you tell the story you put the

person in the story and it's very

persuasive rather than just say the

facts. So that's what I did for you. Put

you in the story.

Anyway, some of the Democrats are done

with uh their leadership. Schumer and

Roana says uh

says it's time to get rid of Schumer as

a leader. You can't lead the fight to

stop health care premiums from

skyrocketing for Americans. What will

you fight for?

And then Seth Molton, also Democrat,

Massachusetts, and Ed Marky, Democrat,

Massachusetts. They're also anti-Shumer

at the moment. We'll see if that grows.

Um,

yeah. So, Schubers and Joel.

Now, not only

not only do conservatives or at least

people who are proTrump at the moment,

not only do they have better smarter

people who are the the head the head uh

notable people, but even their spouses

are better on podcasts.

How many of you have watched Cheryl

Hines, who for whatever reason, I think

probably smart reasons, has been

appearing on some podcasts lately, and

then compare that to uh Michelle Obama's

podcasts

and [clears throat] uh

uh let's see, Jimmy Kimmel's wife's

podcast

and some other spousy podcast. If you

haven't seen Cheryl Hines on the

podcast, you missed how to do podcasts.

I don't know how much experience she had

on podcast per se, but boy does she

nail.

She is so good. And what she does right

is, you know, first of all, she's

charismatic and likable. Uh, every man

likes her. Every woman wants to be her.

So, you know, [clears throat] she's

starting with all the all the tools.

That's good. But she doesn't leave her

lane ever. And her lane is

the thing she does know

and she never goes into the stuff she

doesn't know. And she just is polite to

everybody. Says, "Why not be nice to

everybody?" And just never says whatever

you think would be the provocative thing

to try to make a news cycle. She just

comes across as so damn likable that you

think RFK Jr.'s uh smarter than you

thought because how in the heck, you

know, did he lock her down? So, you

know, some of that just rubs off

naturally on this the spouse as it

would. And it works both ways, right? Uh

he rubs off on her, she rubs on him. But

boy is she good. If you haven't seen her

her appearance on uh Club Random, I

mean, of all things, Club Random would

be the place that most um if you were a

PR expert, you'd probably tell her not

to go on there, right?

But she makes her own decisions, it

looks like. And uh she went on there and

nailed it. Just totally nailed it. Yep.

Bill loved her.

Um CNN is asking Hakee Jeff if the

government shutdown was worth it.

Um and Hakee said, "We have waged a

battle on behalf of the American

people."

Is that the answer to the question, "Was

it worth it?" "No." And CNN followed up,

"But you didn't get what you want." And

Jeffrey says, "At the end of the day,

the fight lives on." Now

remember what I told you about goals

versus systems.

Their goal was to fight and they

[clears throat] accomplished their goal.

They fought.

The the Republicans had a system which

is they stick together. [laughter]

The Republican [clears throat] system is

that they just stick together. They take

directions from Trump because that seems

to work out. you know that if they if

you've been paying attention following

Trump's lead on just about anything ends

up being the smart play. So so

Republicans have this perfect system.

What does Trump want? Does that sound

reasonable? Are we all going to most of

us anyway except for a Massie and Irand

maybe. Are we all going to be on the

same page? Yes. That's pretty good

system. Then you talk to the Democrats,

they're like, "We got to fight you.

Fight you and we got to swear more and

fight you." Well, now Jeff is claiming

some kind of success because he fought.

So they accomplished their goal. They

fought.

How may maybe you should have a

different goal or maybe you should have

I mean they would say, you know, the

goal was to open the government, but

they seem happy that they did the fight.

So it makes it look different. Speaking

of Jasmine Crockett,

uh she [laughter]

I love [clears throat] this story. She

she's demanding that all 50 states

abolished Dominion voting machines. Now,

I don't know how many states actually

use them, but uh because Dominion is now

owned by some entity that has

conservative connections, she thinks

that it's a sure thing that they will be

used to rig the election. So now we have

we went from a Democrat swearing there

could never be a way to rig an election

to a top Democrat, at least in terms of

attention, a top Democrat saying, "Oh my

god, these elections are so unsecure.

We're going to have to change this right

away."

That's called winning.

Winning. Uh, I've been telling you for a

while that one of the the big turning

points in the American mind will be when

we realize there was never a way to know

who won.

I don't know who won because I didn't

count the votes and I don't trust

anybody who does. But if you don't

realize there never was a way to know

who won. There never was.

Because you could never know what

happened that you don't know about. What

if somebody cheated in a clever way and

got away with it? How would you know?

Getting away with it is what that means.

That they didn't get caught. You think

nobody's ever cheated an election and

didn't get caught?

It must happen all the time. So, the

fact that the Democrats made it so you

couldn't get a job or couldn't go to

college if you believed that the

election was even questionable,

that's a pretty bold play right there.

But now we have uh Jasmine saying what

one what one in my mind is actually

a completely reasonable complaint.

The reasonable complaint is that you

can't know for sure or you can't be

confident.

You can't be confident that you know for

sure the election was

um fair when machines are involved and

you don't know if anybody had access to

the machines and maybe you're not sure

that you could find out if anybody had

access to the machines. So it's

completely reasonable and it actually

matches a lot of conservative thought

including my own.

So what should Trump do about that?

Now, this is a joke, but not really.

Wouldn't it be funny if he invited her

to the White House so that other people

could hear her complaints about the

machines and about the unreliability of

the the voting system?

What would she do? What What would she

do if Trump not only agreed with her,

but asked if he could boost her signal?

Yeah, you know, you make a good point

there. I don't know about the voting

machines. We'll have somebody look into

that. But in general, if what you're

saying is our elections need some extra

security, well, here's what I can do for

you. All paper ballots. That's what you

want. You don't want machines. You want

all paper ballots. And don't you think

it'd be a good idea if we made sure we

don't count them for too many days

because you don't want any you don't

want those conservatives to be sneaking

in any fake ballots after the election

day, right? Nobody wants that.

So, how about you and I get together and

we fix this election system and then you

can win fair and square on your great

policies.

That will never happen, but it's funny

to think about it.

Anyway,

so Bill O'Reilly, who is getting a lot

of attention lately, a lot of it's on

NewsNation,

by the way. Are you tracking the um the

News Nation Arc? I don't know how

they're doing financially, but I got to

say that Chris Cuomo is doing an

incredibly good job of promoting, you

know, a new network, Newsy Network. And

uh they do have interesting guests. Um,

Cuomo was the first person who I

trusted, who reached out to me after I

got cancelled and I thought did a very

respectful and fair but tough interview

with me. Uh, so I have lots of good

things to say about Cuomo

uh, just because of personal

interactions.

But, uh, yeah, newsation is doing a

great job. But anyway, they had Bill

O'Reilly on quite a few times and uh so

they're they're sort of reconstituting

him. But he said on the cost of living,

he thinks sort of the next the midterms

will really and maybe 2028 will turn on

cost of living things and he's probably

right about that. And he suggests a cost

of living zar.

Now, if he's suggesting a cost of living

ZAR simply for the purpose of making it

look like Republicans are doing

something about affordability,

maybe it's a semi good idea.

But if you leave out what would the ZAR

do, I don't know if it's anything.

What What would the Zar exactly do?

[laughter]

Is there something that AAR knows how to

do that you and I don't know how to do?

What exactly do you do? I can't think of

anything. If people had great ideas for

lowering costs, don't you think we'd be

noodling on those all the time? If the

Republicans have a great idea

that the that the No, I'm sorry. If if

Democrats have a great idea for lowering

costs, I want to hear it. I don't want

to reject it. If anybody has a great

idea for lowering costs, I'd like to

hear it. So, I feel as though it's a

lack of anybody having an idea. It's not

like somebody didn't fight hard enough.

It's not because we didn't have a zar.

It's not because there's no cabinet

position for lowering uh expenses. It's

because nobody has an idea, you know,

short of the big ideas like Trump has of

lowering interest rates, for example.

And you could do things around the

margin, but I don't know what a ZAR is

going to get you. Uh, let's get an idea

first and then maybe a ZAR. So, Trump is

now, I guess, in favor of up to 600,000

Chinese students coming to the US uh for

college.

And uh he says that's a pro mega stance.

He was telling Laura and Grim. Um, and

he says that if you didn't do that,

because the Chinese students bring in a

lot of money to the colleges because

they they pay full price where a lot of

Americans would not. Uh, Trump says you

would have half the colleges in the

United States go out of business. I

think he mentioned the historically

black colleges would also have trouble.

Uh, he says, "I know what MAGA wants

better than anybody else." Well, MAGA

wants everything to work, right? So, if

the only way college works is if there

are a lot of Chinese students, then I

don't know, maybe you do the best you

can to make that situation work, which

looks like what Trump is doing. But I

don't know how you could feel safe with

that

here. So, here's my take. I assume

there's something Trump knows that we

don't

about the Chinese students. One thing he

might know, and this is pure

speculation, because remember I'm not a

Democrat, so I can't read any minds.

Pure speculation. What if um our

intelligence people have assessed that

the best way we can deal with China is

to educate their elites in our schools,

right? Would that be the worst idea? You

you don't think that the intelligence

people could get to the get to our Ivy

League colleges and say, "All right,

you're going to have a whole bunch of

Chinese students

and uh under these conditions, we think

it's good for America. You got to make

sure that you propagandize some

[laughter] ma make sure that they have,

I don't know, let's say an American

roommate who might be working for the

CIA someday." I'm making that one up.

But don't you think there's some way

that that the US could exploit that many

students to have influence back in China

some years in the future because it it

seems like we always get we get along

better I've said this before we tend to

get along best with the countries where

the leader speaks English and has some

connection to our country.

So this would be creating a whole bunch

of people who obviously would be getting

better at English. They would have to

speak it to come here, but they would be

getting better at English and they would

just get more connections to our

country. Is that bad?

Well, if they're stealing secrets and

stuff like that, it's bad. But one also

assumes that our intelligence people

would be all over the phones and devices

of the Chinese students, wouldn't they?

Wouldn't it make sense that every single

device a Chinese student brings over

that our intelligence people penetrate

so we can keep an eye on probably. So

before you say Trump is wrong about this

uh and I don't know if he's right or

wrong. What I know for sure is that he

knows more about this than we do.

It could be also that there's nothing

about this he likes, but it's part of a

deal to get something else done.

For example,

what if the only way we can get a good

uh um rare earth mineral temporary deal

until we can do it ourselves? What if

the only way we can get that is that

privately

President Xi has said, "I tell you what,

you're going to have to let the Chinese

students in. I'm getting too much

pressure from the elites who want to

send their kids there. I'll give you

your your minerals, but you got to open

the colleges." Would that be a good

play?

If you thought that was true, and I'm

not saying it is, wouldn't it be a good

play to at least consider taking in a

good number of Chinese students?

They might. So, don't assume you know

what Trump is thinking because he gets

different information than you do on

stuff like that. Well, Soft Bank, the

company, uh, is selling it entire stake

in Nvidia for 5.8 8 billion. Now, you

might say, "Uhoh,

uh, do they think that Nvidia is no

longer a good investment?" It's probably

not that exactly, but rather they're

they're freeing up cash for more open AI

uh, investments. So, it looks like they

want to put their money on the software

side, not the hardware side with Nvidia.

Now, I told you I sold my Nvidia earlier

in the year after pretty good game uh

because I didn't trust that a hardware

company could have a sustainable

long-term advantage when the stakes are

this high. When the stakes are this

high, it guarantees, it just guarantees

that the best players in the world are

going to flow in and try to take some of

that margin. Guaranteed. There's no way

around that. And since we don't know how

good those competitors would be, it

would be misleading to say, "Oh, uh,

Nvidia is doing really well, so

therefore they'll just always do well

into infinity."

Well,

here's some news. Uh

uh apparently Elon Musk is very serious

about starting his own chip company and

getting the cost of his chips down to

about 10% of what the Nvidia chips cost

and also being way better.

Now Elon already believes that he can

take out Nvidia

if it were anyone else. How many times

do we ever say this? We say this all the

time. If anyone else said that,

you would say, "Well, I don't know about

that." But if Elon says, "Well, looks

like I'm going to have to build a chip

fabrication plant to get enough chips.

And if I'm going to build a plant, it's

not going to be just as good as

everybody else's plant. It's going to be

this giant, what do you call it? A

megalop

something so enormous you can't even

visualize it." So, it'd be enormous. It

would make more chips than other people

because he'll need more. And if he if he

makes his own chips, he's going to have

he's going to own every AI market he

wants because he's the only one who'll

have enough chips.

So, if you were a soft bank and you had

$5.8 8 billion in one AI chip company

and Elon Musk just said in public, you

know, I think I might compete with that

and beat it with a 90% cheaper product.

Even if

even if Nvidia was so nimble that they

could match that,

it would still take 90% off their

profit, right? I mean, roughly speaking.

So,

I don't I don't give financial advice as

you know. This is not financial advice.

Um, if you had followed my financial

advice and sold Nvidia when I did, you

would have lost a lot of money compared

to holding until now. So, keep in mind

I'm not good at investing.

I'll tell you that as often as you need

to hear it because I know it's kind of

tempting. If you like my opinions on,

you know, some political thing, you'll

think, well, then maybe he's also good

at investing. Nobody's good at it.

Nobody's good at investing.

Nobody [clears throat] is. A lot of his

luck and insider trading.

All right. Uh,

apparently there was some kind of Jim

Ha, Gateway Pundit, says there was some

kind of leaked phone call that showed

that the State Department is backing

their uh, color revolution with global

partners.

I can't tell if this is the same thing

that Mike Benz was talking about or not,

but apparently there's newly surfaced

recordings

shared by Data Republican, an account on

X. Um, former USA ID employees openly

discussed moving internal groups off

federal systems into encrypted signal

chats ahead of the presidential

inauguration. That would have been Trump

in in January and then linking up with

international partners to mobilize

against author. Oh, there it is.

Mobilize against authoritarianism.

So when you hear that these big networks

are mobilizing against authoritarianism,

that should be thought of as a color

revolution. How many Democrats do you

think know what a color revolution is?

I'll bet most of my audience does. Uh

certainly all of Mike Benz's audience

does, but how many Democrats would even

know what that is? A color revolution.

That that's when the United States

overthrows other countries. But

apparently the same same tools have been

used internally which is very illegal

and inappropriate.

All right.

Um here's a story that I wouldn't

mention except I like Rand Paul. So I'm

going to give him a little boost on his

messaging. Um, apparently this there's

some kind of legislation cooking that

would ruin the totally legal hemp

production in his state, Kentucky.

So, apparently all of the hemp people

would be put out of business by whatever

change this is. I don't know what the

change is, but there's no reason the

hemp business should be crippled.

That would be not understanding what

hemp is. You can't get high smoking

hemp. You know, it's related to

cannabis, but doesn't get you high.

That's why it's legal. Why in the world

would they do something to take out an

entire industry in 23 states? So, I

don't know the details there, but I'm

going to trust Rand Paul. And I'll give

him a little boost because I think he's

one of the good guys. He doesn't always

agree with me. He doesn't always agree

with Trump, but I just think he's one of

the good guys. So, I'll give him a boost

on that. quote. So, whoever is in charge

of that hemp thing, give that a rethink.

I think Rand is probably right on that.

Russia is upping it UAV.

Uh, that would be the drones warfare

game. Now, they have a 62 mile range

attack drone swarms. So, they can attack

with a swarm within 62 miles.

That's still sort of frontlineish.

Anyway, so as I've long predicted, the

robot war is pretty much a robot war.

When was the last time you heard a uh

casualty estimate out of Ukraine?

Anybody?

All right, here's a little test. Tell me

how many soldiers were killed. Let's say

just Ukrainian soldiers uh last week.

Number of Ukrainian soldiers killed last

week. Anybody?

I don't think it was in the news.

Why would it not be in the news?

There's only one reason I can think of

why casualty numbers for a major war

would no longer be in the news.

Can you think of a second reason? The

first reason

is it's very low number,

right? Well, what if only three people

died?

I'm not saying that's true. Could have

been thousands. We don't know one way or

the other. Maybe it's thousands.

But what if it was three?

Why are they not telling us if it were

thousands?

Don't you think they would have told us?

Because the news likes to report on

whatever is bad and thousands a week

would be super bad. or or even just to

show that Trump is wrong about the

number of people dying because I think

he said something like 5,000 a week or

something. And if that's not right,

wouldn't you expect Daniel Dale would

jump right in and say, "No, no, it was

only three people." I mean, if it was.

So, I'm not saying it was three people.

I'm saying it's a war where they stopped

counting casualties.

I I don't believe they ever stopped in

Gaza, did they? I mean, the numbers

might have been, you know, fraudulent,

but I don't think they stopped reporting

them.

So, we don't know what's going on there,

but um I suspect that it has turned into

an all robot war and that the only thing

that they should be reporting is what

they are, which is how many drones were

deployed last night and how many hit

their target and how many guys got shot

down.

So maybe that's all we need. There's a

new paper that claims that everything

you know about the universe expansion is

wrong. Futurism is writing about this.

Victor Tanganger.

Not everybody agrees, but if you've ever

followed

Scott, stop all the

All right, let's see.

Uh if I'm right, Scott, stop all the

scenarios of if I'm right. How about you

give me a reason?

How about you do your own podcast and

don't give me advice in the middle of

the podcast? How about that? How's your

podcast doing with all your good advice?

Don't be an

It's like you could turn your

and your off just for an hour

to watch one podcast. You don't have to

be that guy. You really don't. You can

simply be a nicer person and then people

would like you more. You get invited to

more. I'm guessing you don't get invited

to anything. Am I right?

Probably nothing based on based on what

I've seen so far. All right.

Um, China is pretending it's going to do

something about fentinol.

And according to the Hill, DD Tang

writes that uh China said on Monday

that's going to pledge to crack down on

chemicals that can be used to make

fentinel. Huh. What does that remind you

of? They didn't actually ban the

fentinel chemicals. They just made a

pledge to crack down on it.

Well,

that sounds a lot like the deal that

Schumer got. Well, we'll promise to talk

about it later before we don't give it

to you. No, I do not believe that China

did a damn thing at all

about fentinel. Did they promise that

they would do a damn thing about

fentinel? Maybe. Maybe they said they

would. Do I think that they will? Why

would I think that? They they haven't

they they they haven't done anything

that they said they would do yet. I

mean, nothing meaningful. So, I'm going

to say that's a lie

from China.

And we'll never see that. All right.

Hey, timing was pretty good. Pretty

pretty good. All right. That's all I got

for you today. I'm going to talk a

little bit privately with the good

folks, my beloved uh subscribers. For

those of you who got here a little late,

did you know that the 2026 Dilbert

calendar is available right now? You can

buy it on Amazon. You'd have to be an

American or use Amazon.com, the American

version, if you had a way to do that. I

don't know if there is, but I hear there

is. And uh All right.

Thank you. Did How did you enjoy the

show? Did I tell you anything you didn't

know? But I'm mo here's what I'm most

interested in. I'm not searching for a

compliment, although I like them. So, if

you have a compliment, I'm sure I'd

enjoy it.

But when I did the uh you're sitting in

the class and you're going to take a

test,

I'd love for you to tell me how powerful

that was because as I was doing it, even

I could feel it. Like you actually feel

good persuasion. You just feel it more

more than you think it. And I wondered

if you could feel that.

Okay. Getting a lot of yeses. Good.

And that should be that should be one of

the best lessons you've ever gotten on

persuasion because I actually brought

you into it. You know, I didn't just

tell you about it. I brought you into

the center of the persuasion and you

could feel what it was like from the

inside.

Pretty amazing. All right. Before I go

to my beloveds on locals, I'll give you

a little update.

I don't know if this is temporary or

not, but today's the first day in in

memory, probably since June at least,

that uh I've not been in pain in the

morning. I'm not in pain.

There's not a single part of my body

that hurts right now. And that

is really rare. [laughter]

If you've got advanced cancer, that's

really rare. I'm not in any pain meds.

No pain meds right now. Nothing at all.

And I don't have any pain. So, I don't

know if that means everything's working.

See, here's here's the trick. The trick

is

that cancer uh is highly variable.

So for no reason at all, things will

hurt like crazy,

but then a day later you won't be in

pain or the pain will move from one part

of your body to a completely different

one.

So cancer is real tricky. So the fact

that at the moment it doesn't hurt like

crazy. Yesterday it hurt like crazy. I

was in so much pain at exactly this time

yesterday, it's hard to even describe. I

bluffed my way through the podcast, but

boy did it hurt. The moment, no pain at

all. Now, I've taken the radiation on my

back, just one spot, not my whole body.

That may have worked. Uh, I took the

blue victto, just the first of what will

be six doses. It's a little too early

for that to work, but if it would work,

I might see the first indications of it

after a week. and spent a week but also

I did the uh the bio shield with Dr.

Sunun Shan and the bio shield should

also take a week or two before you see

any difference and it's been what a week

and a half. So we're right on the just

on the cusp

of where I can say it's probably more

related to the treatments

than it is to some just ordinary

variability. But I can't quite say that

yet. We're not quite there, but we're

right on the edge of I wish I could say,

"Oh, this shit's working. It might be."

Yeah, I I don't have I don't really have

a second explanation why I'm not in

pain. Might be working.

And that would be amazing. All right,

people. I will see you tomorrow. And uh

my beloveds, I will be coming at you

right now. Assuming my technology works,

and it