Episode 3019 CWSA 11/15/25

All the lazy podcasters take the days off.

Not me.

No, I'm here for you.

And today we're going to have a show like, oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness, it's going to be so good.

You'll you'll barely be able to stand it.

Let us prepare for all this goodness while you stream in.

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

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I think it's time to do a reframe.

What do you think?

A reframe from my book?

Reframe your brain?

the best reviewed book I've ever written and uh changes lives everywhere.

All right, a reframe is meant to change your life with just a simple sentence that makes you think about something differently.

Not all the reframes are for every person, but you might find one that's just for you.

All right.

Today's reframe is uh the old way of looking things is that confidence is something you're born with.

Do you ever look at somebody who seemed confident and you said to yourself, "Man, I sure wish I were that confident." Well, instead of thinking that confidence is something you're born with, which I do not observe to be necessarily true except for a very few people, confidence is something you learn.

Confidence is a learned skill.

I would say that I'm very much in that category.

So, how many of you would define me as confident?

At least in the way that I present myself in public.

I present myself as confident, right?

That's because in public, I only do things I'm good at.

Why would I do something I'm bad at in public?

So, confidence is really just about being good at something.

That's it.

Just just become good at something and then watch how confident you are.

And then if you act less confident about something you're legitimately inexperienced at, that's not really a flaw.

That that's just you being accurate in your assessment of your abilities.

So confidence is something you you develop.

It's not something you're born with.

And that will help you get through those unconfident periods because you'll know there's nothing wrong with you.

You're either good at something or you're not.

And that would be the proper viewpoint.

All right.

I was uh looking at the Dilbert calendar the other day, the brand new Dilbert calendar for 2026, the best thing that ever happened in the world of calendars.

And I was thinking to myself, God, this is so well done.

How could it possibly be better?

I mean, there's really no way it could be better, right?

Wait, wait.

I've got an idea.

Usually the calendars have comics on one side.

Work with me here.

What if?

What if?

What if they had comics on both sides?

I know.

I know.

I know.

Settle down.

Settle down.

See, look how cool that would be.

So, you would you would uh you'd see your comic, right?

And you'd be like, "Wow, that's a Dilbert comic.

I'm so happy." Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Oh my god, there's another comic.

There are comics on both sides of these pages, people.

Both sides.

One is the Dilbert Reborn that's a little bit spicier.

The other side is the classics which you're used to.

But oh my god.

Well, now now it would be fair to say there is no way for this calendar to be better.

I mean really the the only thing I can even imagine is if it came with if it came with its own kind of easel or something.

I mean imagine if it came with its own little holder.

I mean it's almost too good to Wait a minute.

What is this?

It comes with its own holder.

Oh my goodness.

It come people.

It comes with its own holder.

Just put that in there.

You put that in there.

Put your calendar on here.

If it were outside the box instead of inside the box.

Well, well, that's that's almost too much.

I might faint just from the goodness of it all.

All right.

I'm back.

All right.

Well, after the uh show today, Owen Gregorian will have his spaces afterparty.

Um, so go look for Owen Gregorian after the show.

He'll he'll have it up and running a few minutes after we're done.

All right.

Uh, today is kind of a big day for me.

Um, so I've got an announcement to make.

The last day that I will draw Dilbert with my own hand is yesterday.

I probably, but I don't know this for sure, probably will never draw Dilbert again because both of my hands have now crapped out.

Now, when I was young, people who know me well can testify that I had one irrational fear in life.

Oh, by the way, the comic will continue.

I'll just I'll write it.

But my uh uh my art director will do the finished art as well as the first draft.

So I'll basically describe it to her.

She, by the way, she's been drawing it for years.

So my art director has been doing the finished art for years.

She knows how to do it really well, better than me.

Uh so all I do is say which characters are there, what expressions they have, and then I take a look at it to make sure that I communicated well.

Uh, so as of today, today's comic is drawn by my assistant.

And if you want to see how that looks compared to my drawing, you're going to find out that she's a better artist than I am, but it won't look different to you because, like I said, she's been drawing it for years.

So, it's not going to look different at all.

You won't even notice.

Uh, but it's a full disclosure.

Now, let me tell you the bad coincidence.

So, ever since I was young, I had an irrational fear.

Two of them really.

One was drowning, just an irrational fear.

And the other was something happening to my hands.

That's why I taught myself to draw left-handed because I thought, you know, I don't want to have the risk.

Very unusual for an artist to teach themselves to draw with both hands.

I've never even heard of it.

But I had this irrational fear that I would lose lose the ability to draw with one hand.

So I taught myself to draw left-handed, which I have for now a while.

But my right hand got burned out by something called a focal distonia.

It's actually the same problem I had with my voice.

It's a it's a spasm in a muscle from overuse.

So it has nothing to do with uh that that other thing that people get in their hand.

It has nothing to do with any other thing.

It's a focal distonia is what it's called.

So when I got the focal donia, I moved to my left hand.

But more recently in the last month or two, my left hand has become paralyzed from presumably a I don't know, I'm guessing a tumor that's laying on some nerve or something.

So try to calculate these odds.

What are the odds that I would be first of all uh obsessed with not having a problem with my hands and that I would have two separate problems at the same time.

They had nothing to do with each other.

What are the odds of that?

Because I'll bet not one of you wakes up in the morning worried about your hands.

I'm the only one.

The only one worrying about it.

And both hands got taken out at the same time by completely different situations.

But if you know anything about me, I'm not much of a quitter.

So, I'm going to try to get rid of this cancer if I can see see if anything normalizes.

I don't know.

I'm not expecting it to, but it might.

All right, moving on.

Why do I have that on my list?

That wasn't interesting.

>> >> Oh, I told you some uh incorrect things about the new law about hemp.

There's some apparently Congress was looking at making hemp illegal and I thought, "Oh, this is some trick they're using just to make marijuana illegal and that was my take on it." That was all wrong.

That was all fake news.

Uh there is a change on hemp, but I'm told that from somebody named Ben Groves.

Hm.

Is that a real name?

Um, who told me on X that the real purpose of it was to close some loopholes.

Apparently, people were using the hemp uh agricultural laws to uh do some things that were more about THC than hemp.

And if you were using the hemp laws to get around some THC regulations, that's not cool.

So, it looks like that's what they were after.

But we'll see.

Um, you know what?

Uh, do you ever wonder how the average person understands the world?

Because I feel like most of you are above average.

You know, if if you can find this podcast and this is the kind of content you'd want to watch, if you're even listening to this content, you're you're above average in intelligence.

This is not I mean honestly this is not really the podcast for the average people.

We talk about some some uh some intellectually interesting things.

So most of you are smarter than than normal but even so the government has turned into a confusopy a word that I invented I don't know 25 years ago.

And a confusopoly means that um the consumer doesn't know what's a good deal and what's a bad deal because everything's too complicated.

And that's where we're at where the government has become a confusopy.

Now, why does that work so well for the politicians?

Because the politicians only have to confuse you to stay in power.

If they did not confuse you, then you would know exactly what they were promoting and you might even know if it worked or it didn't work.

That's no good.

The the politicians don't want you to be able to measure their effectiveness because you would measure it maybe, you know, less than they would.

So, they'd rather have a big confusing situation where both sides could say they have the better health care plan.

both sides could say they've got the better idea for bringing down prices, right?

So, as long as both sides can make claims that are confusing and you can't discern what's true, then everybody can stay in power.

So, confusion is not an accident in government or in business.

Confusion often, probably more often than any other reason, is for the purpose of making you unable to discern what's going on.

That's his purpose.

Anyway, I was waiting for uh either uh Jonathan Turley or Durowitz to weigh in on this um British broadcasting story.

Trump is apparently going to sue them for I don't know, a billion dollars.

He hasn't decided yet.

Probably be a lot.

And uh Turley says that uh they disagrees with friends and colleagues who have suggested that this would be an easy case to prove in a US court.

So what would be proven or not is Trump would uh say that they defamed him.

I guess that's the right word, defamed.

And that they did it intentionally.

So the intentional part or at least they should have known.

I think that ends up being the same.

It's either intentional or you should have known it was going to happen.

I think they both apply.

Uh, but this is legal stuff.

I'm not good at it.

So, listen to listen to your podcasters who have also been lawyers because it turns out there's a lot of them.

There's there's a lot of podcasters, especially on the right, who at one point were lawyers.

I guess they're still lawyers.

Um, but do you agree?

Do you think it would be difficult to make the case?

I believe it might be nearly impossible.

So, I'm going to agree with Turley, which I always do, by the way.

You know, full disclosure, if I had a different opinion than Jonathan Turley on a legal question, I would immediately uh abandon my position.

The the minute I found out he had a different opinion, I'd be like, "What's his opinion?" Okay, that's my opinion now.

Same with Duruititz.

I would just abandon my opinion immediately if they disagreed.

But I also think that the problem here is not that it happened.

That part will be easy to demonstrate and not that they didn't know about it.

They might be able to prove that whoever did it was completely aware of what they were doing in the sense that they knew it wasn't an exact quote.

But I think you have to go further to make your case.

And I believe you have to show that you intentionally were trying to cause damage.

As far as I know, there's no document that shows that, right?

Is is there any BBC email or text that says anything like uh well, we'll do it this way to damage Trump?

I don't think that exists.

And without that, I don't really know how you could win that case.

But does Trump need to win?

He does not.

And Trump does not need to win.

He's created a situation where the threat alone might cause them to settle.

And even if they don't settle and they decide to fight it out, uh, everybody else is going to look at it and say, "Oh, that's some trouble I don't want." So, I think Trump wins in every scenario simply by putting the the fear of lawsuits into his enemies.

That feels like a really useful thing to do if you're him.

You know, in general, I would think it would be a little unethical to just use the the fear of the courts as your main tool.

But in his specific case where he's been lawfared from top to bottom and impeached and every other weasel thing happened to him, in his case, yeah, he can use the threat.

I think that would be totally appropriate, even if he makes some money on it.

Well, you've all been wondering why Trump had been so worthless on healthcare, right?

And you kept saying, "Well, you know, it's not enough to say Obamacare is bad.

We we're going to agree with you on that, but you're going to have to suggest something that's not bad, i.e.

your job as the government." And so Trump now has an outline for replacing what he calls a stupid Obamacare.

And the key to that, according to modernity, Steve Watson's writing about it.

The key to it is instead of giving money to insurance companies, he would or to Yeah.

he would give it to the um patients and then they could shop around and then the free market would kick in because uh because the customers would have some kind of uh transparency on prices.

I think that's part of it somewhere.

And they the free market would lower costs.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that if the only thing that he did was change who has the money in their pocket that that would change the cost of healthcare?

Maybe over time, but probably not.

It doesn't really look like it would is a game changer, does it?

To you.

All right.

So, I feel like that's a little less than uh we need.

Um, and then other people said if you get rid of Obamacare, then uh insurance companies won't take the high-risisk people because they wouldn't have to.

Part of Obamacare is that they have to take the high-risisk people, right?

They have to.

And that's partly what raises costs.

Well, so that would just recreate that problem.

if Obamacare is scrapped.

I don't know what we do about that.

Um, and then I'm going to go back to my confuseopoly theme.

All right.

So, now I've described to you a Trumpian kind of approach, which is free market and who you give the money to and then you wait blah blah blah.

Now, there are other parts to it, but do you think you could actually compare that to the alternative, or would it all just be confusing?

I can't do it.

I mean, I I feel like I'm reasonably bright and I actually care about the topic and I've looked into it at various times at various depths, but I have no idea.

I have no idea how to fix it.

I have no idea if Trump has the best idea I've ever heard.

I have no idea if there's some better way to fix Obamacare.

And neither do you.

Do we agree that we we're just out of our depth?

But so is everybody else.

And if somebody if someone were not out of their depth and they really really understood this and had a great idea and brought it to you, you wouldn't know it was a great idea.

So, how do you get from here to there if none of us could even evaluate the quality of the idea, which I think is where we're at?

It wouldn't be enough that there are some experts who could tell the difference.

I don't even know if that's true.

I I kind of doubt it.

I think even the experts would be guessing on this one.

But a very interesting h thing happened yesterday.

I don't know if any of you noticed.

So yesterday on my podcast, do you remember what I said about healthcare?

So get the get the timing of this just because this is more fun this way.

I I was sort of frustrated and I said the only way I could even imagine we would get affordable health care without ruining the country is that uh Tesla would start a robot hospital, a robot hospital.

Because, you know, Elon had said we're getting closer and closer to the the robot surgeon that will be way better than a human.

Well, I don't know how far away we are, but if we could save ourselves on healthcare within several years, would that be soon enough?

Could if if we could get way lowcost healthcare with robots in, let's say, five years, would we already be bankrupt by then?

be kind of close.

So, here's what I'd like to see.

I've I've taught you this persuasion trick before, right?

Here's a really important persuasion trick.

I hope I hope someone in the administration is paying attention.

Um, and I'm going to I'm going to put this in the So, so this is something I learned in my corporate days, and it goes like this.

Whoever does the best job of making a picture about the situation essentially rules the day.

If you could come up with a graph of let's say climate change, would that change anything?

Oh yeah, those climate change graphs changed everything.

Just everything.

When you see a graph of our national debt going through the ceiling, does that change anything?

Oh yeah, it does.

It does.

Because when you see the picture, it just changes everything.

Now, let's talk about health care.

Who who has a picture of health care as a solution?

Nobody.

There's no picture that would show how we could ever survive health care costs the way they are and the way they will be.

There's no picture.

And so that means that that space is completely available for persuasion, which means that the team that's really good at this stuff, which would be the Republicans, they have a wide open space and there's a specific picture that they need to create.

And I'm going to describe it now, but you know, my hands don't work, so I'm not going to draw the picture.

So I'd like to see somebody take a run at it.

And if several people take a run at, we'll just pick the best one.

But here's what the picture should show.

It should show health care costs in the United States with a little bit of history so that you can see them zooming to the sky.

Maybe maybe you also show the national debt screaming into unsustainable territory and that would be the do nothing scenario.

But if you want to make a story where we're saved by robots, which by the way, I think is nearly guaranteed.

It's closer to guaranteed if you wait long enough than it is to maybe.

Would you agree with that statement that the idea of robot medical care, it's not an if.

It's definitely coming.

We don't know if it's a year or five years or 10 years, but it's definitely coming.

So you pick a time that seems reasonable, five years.

Five years, maybe 10.

And then you you show that the expenses for healthcare are going through the roof.

And then in that fifth or 10th year, whatever you thought was reasonable.

You you show a plateau.

You know, it's not completely flat, but it flattens.

And then you show it dropping down.

Now, why why would you show that?

Because we feel right now the healthc care is hopeless, that there's nothing going to happen except it will go up unless we just take people off of healthcare, which we don't really want to do, right?

We'd like everybody to be on there.

So, I'd like one good persuasive picture that shows that we do have a path out and it goes through probably Tesla.

I mean, you could even label it Tesla.

Now, I don't know that Elon would object to the idea that uh either his company or one like it or other companies in that domain would be the only way out.

The only way out.

There's no second way to do this.

If there were a second way to do it, it'd be a whole different situation.

There's not.

There might be one way, and we might be lucky enough to be alive when that one opportunity just happens to come along.

So if you want to change the world, make one persuasive picture that shows yes, we're in total trouble.

Now, in the short run, we'll just fund it, as expensive as it is, but we're going to try as hard as possible to make sure that Elon's vision of a robot nearly free healthcare world happens.

And that might require some, you know, private plus government uh coordination.

I know you don't like the government part, but usually you need it.

All right.

What do you think of that idea?

So, you've been living in this world where where healthcare is the biggest problem, it looks like.

Uh, but I just offered you something that looks like a solution, but you still have to way overpay for 5 to 10 years before you got there.

That's still better than no solution, right?

even if it takes a few years because you could you could subsidize it if you knew we were rapidly approaching the place where robots make everything almost free.

That's that's what Elon thinks that we'll get to the point where of such abundance because of robots and AI that everybody will have everything.

So anyway, you you got really quiet in the comments.

I can't tell if you think that's a good idea or you're thinking about it.

Well, here's the way you should evaluate it.

There there's some idiot who just keeps writing in all caps, stupid idea.

So, you know, I know what the NPCs are going to say.

Scott, I'm an NPC and the important thing is that the government should not be involved in anything.

Scott, I'm an NPC and you can't give Elon Musk any more any more sway over the economy, Scott.

All right, so we'll forget forget about you all caps guy.

All right, let me just make sure I'm seeing your comments here.

All right, but you here's the way to evaluate that.

You should not evaluate it based on a perfect idea.

That's what the NPCs do.

Did I suggest a perfect idea?

No.

No, it's not perfect.

Uh, did I sus Did I suggest an idea that we hadn't seriously thought about?

Yes.

Is it an idea that you could imagine?

It takes some imagination that you could imagine it it could help work things out and we'd all get healthcare.

Yes, you can imagine it, right?

So, if there's literally one and only one plan on the table, and I believe there is, it's this.

We we overpay for healthcare in the short run, just we have it, but we work as hard and as fast as possible to make sure that the cost of health care drops to zero or close to it with robots.

You tell me you have a better idea, and you know what I'm going to say?

That's a confusopoly.

Is my idea confusing?

Does everybody understand?

Short run you overpay.

Everybody knows what overpaying is.

Long run robots come in and lower the cost.

Everybody knows what a robot is.

Everybody knows what lowering cost is.

So now I have the simplest idea, the easiest one to explain.

It covers the short run, which is going to be unpleasant, but that would be true of every plan.

In every plan, the short run is unpleasant.

So if you say to me, but Scott, you've solved nothing in the short run.

I would say that is common to all plans.

Nobody has a nobody has a shortterm plan.

But if there's only one long-term plan, you're going to have to beat it, right?

You're gonna have to come up with an idea that's better than that.

Now, I haven't heard one.

Have you?

So, here's the interesting thing that just uh 3 hours after I said the only way to solve this is Tesla robot hospitals, uh that's basically what Elon said at a convention he was at.

Um he said uh ba basically he said that we'll you know that doctors don't grow on trees but that they will be built in factories which is a great line.

Let me let me say it again.

This is just a great line that doctors don't grow on trees but in the robot world they will be built in factories.

That's a really good reframe.

All right.

There was a whole bunch of other Tesla news I thought was interesting.

I didn't know this, but apparently Tesla is moving quickly toward its Americanbuilt cars having no Chinese parts.

Now, that's only for the Americanbuilt cars.

How smart is it that uh Tesla is moving first to make just the Americanbuilt cars have no Chinese parts?

Well, I think that's really smart because if something blows up in the supply chain, you'd certainly want America to be something you could um let's say retreat to and say, "All right, well, we still have America, you know, so it' still be a viable company and you could build from there." So, yes, that's exactly where you want to start with no Chinese parts, Americanbuilt cars, because they build cars in other countries.

Um, and uh, also Elon Musk says that they've mapped out a plan to put a 100 gigawatts per year of solar powered AI satellites into orbit.

Um, I saw this on a post by Nick uh, Cruz Patane, who's a real good follow on all the Tesla stuff.

Nick Cruz Patane.

Anyway, um, this is what Elon said.

He said, "We see a path to putting a 100 gawatts per year of solar powered." I think that's like a quarter of all the energy used in the entire country.

And he's looking to put that much up per year because the amount of energy we're going to use is almost incalculable.

So, we're not we're not going to have too much.

Um, and apparently what they can do is just put a bunch of satellites in the air and network them together, which they already know how to do.

they have all the components for that.

And uh and he pointed out that the United States consumes roughly 460 gigawatts on average per year.

So he wants to put a 100red gigawatts into the air every year over the United States when we're only using so it's like a little more or a little less than a quarter of that.

Uh anyway, and he says we have a plan mapped out to do it.

So it gets crazy.

So this is not hypothetical.

It's not hypothetical.

He's literally going to make Tesla the biggest energy company in the world.

It looks like it's going to happen any moment now.

Now I I want to give credit to the person who made this uh recommendation to me several years ago, but I think I'll wait to talk to him to see if he wants his name mentioned.

But a very successful investor once said on X that you should look at Tesla as a energy company.

And I thought to myself, what an energy company?

I don't quite get that.

Now I get it.

Now I get it.

It could very easily the energy company could be I don't know.

It could be bigger than robots, I imagine.

Uh, so we'll see.

Anyway, I'll ask if I can use his name because that was that was a really interesting reframe that that Tesla was an energy company.

Well, also Tesla uh they're designing something called the A5 chip that they will use in their robots in their cars.

But what's interesting is I guess they had some problems trying to make this chip and they had two chip projects going on at the same time and Elon decided to collapse them into one program which is now doing better.

I I think he got involved directly as he likes to do and maybe work that out.

But he actually predicts that their chip would be better than Nvidia's and that it would be 10% the cost of an Nvidia chip and two to three times uh at least he said two to three times better.

What?

Wait, what?

Are are you serious?

Are you telling me that Nvidia is like the the class of all chipm people?

Like nobody can nobody can even copy them.

They're so good.

They're uncopyable.

The entire country of China with all of its technical prowess can't match Nvidia.

And Elon just sits there in a chair.

They turn the camera on.

He's like, "Yeah, we're building one that's two to three times better and it'll be about 10% of the cost." Wait, what?

What?

Are you serious?

10% of the cost and two to three times better than the best thing that's ever existed.

Is that even possible?

Yes.

Yep.

If anyone else said that, wouldn't you say, "Yeah, sure.

Prove it." You might not, you know, bet against it, but you wouldn't think it's likely, would you?

But when Elon Musk, who as far as I know is not known as a chip designer, manufacturer fab kind of a guy, he just enters the market and he's going to completely dominate it in how long?

A few months.

How long is that going to take?

I I don't even know how to evaluate that.

That That is such a big claim, but yet possible.

So everything that you think you can predict about AI and robots in the future and healthcare, I don't think any of this is predictable because who saw this coming?

Who saw that coming?

Anyway, so at the same event, that's where Elon said that uh they do plan to build robbo robboles.

So I I wasn't crazy that that might be our only path out.

Now, I think Elon's been quiet about this.

He's got so many things going on that he has lots to talk about, no matter where he is and what he's talking about.

So, it could be that he's just waiting for the right time.

Maybe this is the right time.

But my goodness, he's going to solve healthcare, energy, and chips and robots and self-driving cars.

And that's just this year.

What's he going to do next year?

Good lord.

Anyway, um so that's happening.

I I would go further and say that unless we use robots to solve our health care and our affordability that we're heading towards certain doom.

that civilization is on a path toward guaranteed destruction by essentially overspending.

If if we just keep doing what we're doing or if we even try to tweak it a little bit, we're all dead.

Basically, it's not a tweakable situation, you would have to do something so fundamentally different than what the economy is doing now or you'd have no chance of survival really.

You would just spend ourselves into oblivion.

But with robots, suddenly we do have a path out.

And it's not a crazy path.

It's it's one that looks like something the smart people can figure out.

So watching the smart people try to save civilization is kind of inspiring.

You know what I mean?

Because you know if le let's say you were one of the captains of industry you know you're a a Musk or a Bezos or you're a Mark Cuban or you know you can throw in some other names wouldn't you feel a responsibility to save the world because it looks like it's not going to save itself and there's a very small group of people who might have the capability to really get in there and re-engineer things.

If I were in that situation, I would feel that I had to get involved.

It looks like that's what's driving Elon.

That he must be completely aware that nobody else is going to solve this problem.

I mean, maybe maybe somebody else could, but I wouldn't be betting on it.

Any robots coming.

Um Elon also said he doesn't own any vacation homes.

He just has one medium-sized house in Austin and a tiny one at Starbase.

And when he takes his friends there, they don't believe it's real, that they think it's a prank.

Uh, really?

This is your house?

How much would you love to see his medium-sized house?

I would love I would love that.

That would be like better than a museum.

Like just just look around.

It's like, okay, what kind of games you got?

Be so interesting.

Well, Bill Maher was on last night and then we can all be mad at each other because mentioning Bill Maher gives him more attention.

Some of you don't like it if he gets too much attention.

But I love watching his, you know, his arc of uh figuring out what is real and what isn't.

That's really interesting to me because he's doing a really good job of trying to burrow through the to get to some kind of truth.

He's not at truth.

He's definitely not there.

But the amount of effort and risk he's putting into trying to find there is actually inspiring and I I appreciate I appreciate the risk he takes to try to find it.

So last night on his show he went after Zoran Mumami pretty hard with a brutal history on socialism and how it always fails and ends up in disaster.

And he was very clear that Madani is a disaster waiting to happen.

That's their side right now.

Do you respect that?

Do you respect that Bill Maher is taking the the darling of his own team and saying, "Don't you understand that this is not just a problem, but you're talking about the end of civilization if this kind of thinking takes over?" And that's exactly what I'd like to see coming from the the people who can make a difference.

and Mar is somebody who could make a difference.

Um, so I guess President Trump said he's withdrawing his support from Marjorie Taylor Green because she's not she's not supportive enough of him.

And uh, I wasn't sure what that was all about besides the Epstein files.

She wants all the Epstein files released.

He doesn't, but also the Democrats don't want them released.

The Democrats just voted against releasing them, right?

So, in what world do Trump and the Democrats come down on the same side that they both don't want to release the Epstein files?

Now, I'm told that the Democrats have some, you know, word salad negotiating thing that's the reason they said no to releasing them.

Like they're they're trying to guess something in return.

But that didn't sound real to me.

It sounded like an excuse not to release them.

Everything sounds like an excuse not to release them actually, no matter who you're talking to.

Anyway, so the other differences with Marjorie Taylor Green and the president are uh involvement in foreign wars such as Gaza, um the Epstein files, healthc care.

She's she thinks she he should do more in healthcare as do all of us and inflation and prices and stuff like that.

But I don't know what else he could be doing.

Frankly, don't know what he could be doing.

But here's my take on all that.

I I feel like I'm not going to take sides on any of that.

Um I just don't like taking sides when I like both sides.

I like President Trump and I like Marjorie Taylor Green and I like a lot of the people who are battling each other, you know, Candace against whoever and uh Tucker against whoever and you know, so it's hard for me to get past especially the ones I've met.

You know, there a few of them I've met personally.

Once you meet somebody personally and they're nice to you and they're warm and they're completely open to you, it's really hard to slam them in public.

I know that's you could argue that's, you know, sort of what I should be doing, but I don't know.

I just can't do it.

Just can't do it.

So, I'm going to I'm just going to say of all the all the personal drama, you might want to pay attention to it for fun, but I wouldn't take it too seriously.

It it just weakens your own team.

So, don't take it too seriously.

Um, do you know who Kelly means is?

I guess he would be an activist.

I hope that's the right word.

He wouldn't mind.

an activist uh against big pharma and big food and some of their abuses.

Anyway, here's a claim he made.

He was talking to Megan Kelly at some event um about the Make America Healthy Again movement.

He said that there's this is unbelievable.

I mean, I believe it because of the source, but he says there's a CIA manual is being sent to all employees in the Make America Healthy sort of world.

and they're suddenly around this CIA manual called I can't believe this is true.

It's a little too on the nose, but the source is good.

So, but it is too on the nose.

This uh allegedly the CIA manual is how to be a bad bureaucrat and subvert an institution from within.

Okay, I think I'm talking myself out of believing this.

Isn't that a little bit too a little bit too perfect.

All right.

So, I'm going to put a question mark on this.

I do believe that Kelly means his high high credibility.

I don't believe that he would mislead you intentionally.

That's not his thing at all.

So, but he could have some bad information.

Anybody could.

Uh and uh apparently people are saying that 90% of the employees at Health and Her Human Services um are talking about this thing and they're afraid that RFK Jr.

and Trump are anti-science so they have to save the planet from these anti-science guys.

I don't know.

So I I guess I'm going to put a question mark on this one.

Uh, and the question mark is not about the people involved.

I think they're all high credibility and high value added people.

I just don't know if the document is real.

It might exist, but it doesn't mean it came from the CIA.

I don't know if they would even deny it.

Anyway, as you know, there's a whole bunch of Epstein files got released.

20,000 files with 1500 Trump mentions.

1,500 Trump mentions.

Now, I realize people talk about Trump a lot, but even my emails don't have 1500 Trump messages, and I talk about him all the time.

1,500.

I don't know.

Um, and uh, Alan Dersowitz was saying on a podcast that the media is intentionally twisting the facts of the Epstein case to smear Trump.

And he gives an example.

Um he said that the newly surfaced emails there's uh one detail that the press leaves out.

Now when I tell you what the press leaves out, you're going to shake your head and some of you are lost in the confusopy of this story.

So you may have missed this little point here.

Here's just a minor point.

One of the most damning and provocative things so far is the claim that Virginia Jeffrey Joffrey, she was one of the known victims of uh of Epstein, that there's a claim that Trump spent hours with her.

It's also true that Virginia Joffrey has said publicly that she never met Trump.

So her claim before she passed away tragically recently is her claim is that she never met him, but apparently there's something in in some document that said they spent hours together.

Who do you believe?

I I feel like I believe her or at least it adds enough uh doubt into the story that you should put that in there.

But can you believe that the media doesn't mention that she's denied ever meeting him, much less spending hours with him.

So, I mean, it's not like you would forget if you'd met Trump and spent several hours with him.

You wouldn't forget.

So, I agree with Duruitz.

That sounds like a intentional smearing of Trump.

Um, I saw PJ Media saying, "This says it all that the Democrats blocked the release of the Epstein files." Matt Margolus is writing about this.

Um, do you what do you think that's telling you?

The fact that the Democrats didn't want it released?

Is it telling you that there's nothing damning about Trump?

Because if they release it, you could see there's nothing damning or uh or what?

Like why would they not release it?

They they would be better off with the uncertainty that there's something in there if they knew for sure there was nothing in there.

And as many have pointed out, I think Matt does too, that if there was anything in there that was bad for Trump, you think the Democrats wouldn't have already found it and released it?

So there's a strong suggestion that there's nothing about Trump that's bad.

So why would Trump want it not to be released?

Well, Dersowitz gives you the perfect reason.

According to Duruitz, if you release real information, the illegitimate press will just change it and act like it's something it's not.

That's what they did with the Virginia Joffrey thing.

They took a real thing and they just changed it to a fake thing.

And nobody's going to research it.

So, they're just going to turn on the news.

They're going to hear MSNBC's version of it.

They're going to turn it off and think that's the reality, but not.

So, yeah.

So, why would the Democrats block it unless they were up to no good?

They wouldn't block it to protect Trump.

So therefore, there must be nothing in there that would hurt him.

But there might be things in there that would hurt other people, and there might be things in there that could be misinterpreted easily, which would be just as much a problem.

Anyway, um anyway, so Trump apparently going on the offense as he likes to.

He's asking the Department of Justice to look into a few billionaires and other just rich people uh who had connections to Epstein.

He actually named names.

Now, I wouldn't talk about this except the president named the names.

Uh to me, this sounds totally inappropriate to accuse them because as far as I know, there's no evidence of specific wrongdoing.

So Trump named Bill Clinton, Reed Hoffman, Larry Summers, and he called and he says JP Morgan Chase.

So I guess that means some executives unnamed.

And uh he says the record show they spent a lot of time on the island.

I don't know if that's true.

They might have spent more time on the plane than the island, but um as far as I know, none of them have specific claims of wrongdoing.

Right.

There there are people who speculate, but I don't believe there's any like witness or whistleblower or anything like that.

So, I'm always uncomfortable naming names when they're there's just no criminal evidence or anything.

Now, I'm not comfortable with the president asking the Department of Justice to look for a crime when there's not some smoking gun there.

And I don't know, is it is it a smoking gun enough that they spend time together?

Well, it would if you were in a cartel, right?

If you were a cartel member, uh, or let's say somebody discovered you were in a cartel, you don't think that maybe they'd get a little extra scrutiny?

Yeah.

So, it makes sense that your associations might raise a red flag, but is this enough of a red flag?

Now, I'm curious.

So, I would like to know the answer, too.

But I don't know.

This gets mighty close mighty close to violating some kind of basic right, but I'm no lawyer.

So, we don't know if Trump's going strictly for revenge.

It's a distraction.

It' be a good distraction.

Uh, or is it a warning to other people who might be in the file that you better help me keep that sealed?

It might be a warning to the people in the file.

It might be his way to tell these uh three or four people uh on this on this particular issue, we're sort of on the same page.

And if you don't want to be the one who's investigated, you might want to join me in saying these should not be released.

But what did Reed Hoffman do?

Cleverly Reed Hoffen said today Trump should release all the Epstein files, every person in every document.

And he sort of suggested that Trump was using these rich Democrats as sort of a stalling technique.

So he was just stalling maybe.

Maybe.

So I think Reed Hoffman played it right because he might know that they're not going to be released.

uh which would be playing it right because then he looks he looks innocent because he's calling for full transparency.

Whoever it is who calls for full transparency, you just assume they must be innocent.

So if he knows then no matter what he says or does they're not going to be released anyway and he might know that then the best play you could ever make is to say release those files.

They should all be released.

That would be a good play.

But again, I say there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the people named, including Reed Hoffman, did anything inappropriate or illegal on the island.

All right.

Uh, apparently some prison staffers at wherever Galain Maxwell is being held at the moment, they hacked into her emails.

I guess that would be prison emails.

uh and then gave the copies of her emails to uh Representative Rascin.

Have you noticed that wherever Rascin is, there's something sketchy happening, every time you see his name, you're like, "Oh god, this is going to be sketchy." And sure enough, he uh claimed to be a whistleblower.

I don't know if that's a legitimate claim, but under that umbrella, he got these emails.

And what did it say?

Uh, and I I guess the staffers who did this were fired, the ones who who who leaked it.

Um, and it said something that was interesting.

Um, the release is Was there nothing in the emails?

Uh maybe the emails were so uninteresting that I didn't care.

I went um oh I guess the emails uh sort of suggested according to Rascin that she was angling for a pardon or to have her sentence commuted.

To which I say, how's that a story?

If you were in jail for, you know, lots of years and lots of years to go, aren't you always angling for a commutation or a or a pardon?

Wouldn't it be more of a story if she were not?

Now, I'm going to use my uh George Carlin example again where he says, "You don't have to actually say the words to somebody you're colluding with if they know what you need." Obviously, the Trump administration knows she would like a pardon or a commutation, right?

Obviously, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

Would they have to say it?

Would it be necessary that she said it directly?

Not really.

We all know that she wants one.

Why wouldn't she?

There there's no argument in the other direction.

So yeah, of course she wants one.

So that's a nothing story except for the Rascin part being a weasel.

Uh Germany's buying $150 million of weapons to give to Ukraine.

Um it makes me wonder if the cost of warfare is coming down over time.

Um because we're in a weird phase of history where we're shifting from, you know, tanks and artillery to more drones.

Are the drones cheaper?

Are are we getting as much of war done?

Ukraine, I guess.

Are they getting as much war done as they would if they spent more money and had more traditional weapons?

So, one of my questions is, is the general cost of warfare, whether it's Ukraine or anyone anything else, is the cost of where warfare coming down because the the tools are different?

I don't know.

Maybe.

And then I looked up the uh I've been obsessed about this a little bit lately.

Why we don't see reporting on the number of casualties anymore.

Have you noticed that?

So, we've got this big war.

Ukraine and Russia and we're worried that it might turn into a world war and I don't know how many people are being killed.

Isn't that like super obviously missing in the reporting?

What what would be the more important number than well this week x number of Ukrainians were injured and killed.

Why is everybody leaving that out?

So I went to Grock and started asking some questions.

But then I thought, oh, I don't know if any of these answers are real.

I I don't know if it's hallucinating.

Grock did start off by saying that the numbers are totally unreliable.

Uh, no matter no matter what source you use, you should take it with a grain of salt.

But I also wondered, what is the range?

Like, can you give me a range at all?

Now, why is somebody writing N O O O L over and over again in my comments.

Like, what's that?

Stop doing that.

It's bugging me.

If it meant something, that'd be better.

But anyway, Grock tells me, and you can fact check me on this, that uh something like I don't know 3 to 10,000 people a week are being killed.

uh some combination of Russians and Ukrainians.

Does that sound right to you?

Three Do you believe that 3 to 10,000 are dying per week and that they don't report that?

That doesn't seem right.

So, I have a suspicion, which is completely without data, that maybe the actual death rate is way lower than we think.

Still terrible.

is still bad.

Still lots of injuries.

But it might be we might have a drone war where there are far more injuries than there are deaths because a lot of the drone stuff is to injure and maim.

It's not all deadly.

So I wonder if we went to well we didn't actually kill too many Russians but we maimed 20,000.

Maybe they wouldn't report that would they?

So, it's a little bit sketchy that somebody, you know, Germany's giving them 150 million, but they probably don't have any idea how many Ukrainians or Russians are dying.

The most important data.

So, um, and then I saw another survey, again, you can't really trust anything that comes out of that area, that said that, uh, in Ukraine, something like 90% of the population, uh, has some close contact with somebody who was injured during the war, injured or killed.

90%.

That'll that'll certainly have an impact.

Whereas uh a survey says Russia has only 30% of its population had some direct family tie to some some death or injury.

I don't know if you can believe any of those numbers, but we'll see.

Um I saw an argument today that I thought was interesting.

There's a Yale professor um whose name is We'll get to it.

um Marovitz and he's got this argument that merit is a myth used to justify inequality that the idea of merit is sort of a a trick and that there's no such thing as merit.

Uh we just use it to justify our own getting more than other people.

Oh, that that chat ended.

That's what's going on.

All right, let's try something else.

This will work.

Oh, that works.

Okay, much better.

Anyway, so I wonder what what is the argument that meritocracy is a myth?

Because most of my worldview is built around meritocracy.

I I hate to find out that my worldview is built on a myth.

So, I thought I'm going to look into this a little bit.

So there might be a little bit of word salad going on here because you know Yale law pro professor but he says that quote any idea that merit makes inequality deserved is a circle.

What merit isn't a real virtue it's just an ideological conceit constructed to launder otherwise offensive inequalities.

What what do any of those words mean?

I I feel like if I, you know, diagrammed it out, I might be able to understand what he's saying.

But here here's a general statement.

If the clearest you can make your argument is this, you don't really have an argument.

No.

No.

Unless you can be a little bit clearer than that, I'm sorry.

I can't take it too seriously.

But then he had a good point that made me reassess.

He he pointed out that uh merit is highly driven not entirely but highly driven by your parental resources.

And then I said, "Oh, okay.

Now now you're talking.

That's a reasonable a reasonable point of view." So if you are rich, for example, uh more likely you will be funded to go to a good school.

you'll be in a good neighborhood, you know, less crime, less drugs.

I don't know about the drugs, but uh there should be a gigantic difference in meritocracy, meaning that some people who have the the brains and the ambition will also have the the parental backing and some won't and that that difference could make all the difference.

That's not a bad that's not a terrible opinion.

So, I started out thinking that I was just going to sort of mock this point of view because I like meritocracy and anybody who's arguing against it is going to be a fool.

But that's actually a reasonably good point, isn't it?

That your meritocracy won't go that far unless you've got some resources behind it.

Now, in my in my case, uh I came from a generation where you didn't need that many resources behind it.

You could still work it out.

Yeah, that would that would have been my case.

But at the moment in the current world, yeah, it does seem like the resources your parents put into it are going to drive your success of your meritocracy.

So, wasn't expecting to have my mind changed by that, but maybe it was a little bit.

I mean, I don't know that I would do anything differently, but it changes my frame on it a little bit.

And uh we are done with the prepared part of my presentation.

Look at my timing.

It's amazing.

And uh Owen Gregorian will be setting up his spaceless event in a few minutes.

I'm going to talk to the uh people on locals privately for a few minutes and uh I will see you tomorrow.

Same time, same place.

Okay.

Everybody in?

Are you all in for tomorrow?

Okay.

All right, locals.

I'm going to come at you privately in 30 seconds.

All the lazy podcasters take the days

off. Not me. No, I'm here for you.

And today we're going to have a show

like, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness,

it's going to be so good. You'll you'll

barely be able to stand it.

Let us prepare for all this goodness

while you stream in.

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 on elevating

your experience up to levels that nobody

can even understand with her tiny shiny

human brains. All you need for that is a

copper mug or a glass of tanker gels tin

canine jugger flask.

A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your

favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me

now for the unparalleled pleasure, the

dopamine hit of the day, the thing that

makes everything better. It's called the

simultaneous sip and it happens now. Go.

Oh, feel that oxytocin

surging through your veins.

I think it's time to do a reframe. What

do you think? A reframe from my book?

Reframe your brain? the best reviewed

book I've ever written

and uh

changes lives everywhere. All right, a

reframe is meant to change your life

with just a simple sentence that makes

you think about something differently.

Not all the reframes are for every

person, but you might find one that's

just for you. All right. Today's reframe

is uh

the old way of looking things is that

confidence is something you're born

with. Do you ever look at somebody who

seemed confident and you said to

yourself, "Man, I sure wish I were that

confident." Well, instead of thinking

that confidence is something you're born

with, which I do not observe to be

necessarily true except for a very few

people, confidence is something you

learn. Confidence is a learned skill. I

would say that I'm very much in that

category. So, how many of you would

define me as confident? At least in the

way that I present myself in public. I

present myself as confident, right?

That's because in public, I only do

things I'm good at. Why [clears throat]

would I do something I'm bad at in

public? So,

confidence is really just about being

good at something. That's it. Just just

become good at something and then watch

how confident you are. And then if you

act less confident about something

you're legitimately inexperienced at,

that's not really a flaw. That that's

just you being accurate in your

assessment of your abilities. So

confidence is something you you develop.

It's not something you're born with. And

that will help you get through those

unconfident periods because you'll know

there's nothing wrong with you. You're

either good at something or you're not.

And that would be the proper viewpoint.

All right. I was uh looking at the

Dilbert calendar the other day, the

brand new Dilbert calendar for 2026, the

best thing that ever happened in the

world of calendars. And I was thinking

to myself, God, this is so well done.

How could it possibly be better? I mean,

there's really no way it could be

better, right? Wait, wait. I've got an

idea.

Usually the calendars have comics on one

side.

Work with me here. What if? What if?

What if they had comics on both sides? I

know. I know. I know. Settle down.

Settle down.

See, look how cool that would be. So,

you would you would uh you'd see your

comic,

right? And you'd be like, "Wow, that's a

Dilbert comic. I'm so happy." Wait for

it.

Wait for it. Oh my god, there's another

comic. There are comics on both sides of

these pages, people. Both sides. One is

the Dilbert Reborn that's a little bit

spicier. The other side is the classics

which you're used to. But oh my god.

Well, now now it would be fair to say

there is no way for this calendar to be

better. I mean really the the only thing

I can even imagine is if it came with if

it came with its own kind of easel or

something. I mean imagine if it came

with its own little holder. I mean it's

almost too good to Wait a minute. What

is this?

It comes with its own holder. Oh my

goodness. It come people. It comes with

its own holder.

Just put that in there. You put that in

there. Put your calendar on here. If it

were outside the box instead of inside

the box. Well, well, that's that's

almost too much.

I might faint just from the goodness of

it all.

All right. I'm back.

All right. Well, after the uh show

today, Owen Gregorian will have his

spaces afterparty.

Um, so go look for Owen Gregorian after

the show. He'll he'll have it up and

running a few minutes after we're done.

All right. Uh, today is kind of a big

day for me.

Um,

so I've got an announcement to make.

The last day that I will draw Dilbert

with my own hand

is yesterday.

I probably, but I don't know this for

sure, probably will never draw Dilbert

again because both of my hands have now

crapped out. Now, when I was young,

people who know me well can testify that

I had one irrational fear in life. Oh,

by the way, the comic will continue.

I'll just I'll write it. But my uh uh my

art director will do the finished art as

well as the first draft. So I'll

basically describe it to her. She, by

the way, she's been drawing it for

years. So my art director has been doing

the finished art for years. She knows

how to do it really well, better than

me. Uh so all I do is say which

characters are there, what expressions

they have, and then I take a look at it

to make sure that I communicated well.

Uh, so as of today, today's comic is

drawn by my assistant. And if you want

to see how that looks compared to my

drawing, you're going to find out that

she's a better artist than I am,

but it won't look different to you

because, like I said, she's been drawing

it for years. So, it's not going to look

different at all. You won't even notice.

Uh, but it's a full disclosure. Now, let

me tell you the bad coincidence. So,

ever since I was young, I had an

irrational fear. Two of them really. One

was drowning,

just an irrational fear. And the other

was something happening to my hands.

That's why I taught myself to draw

left-handed

because I thought, you know, I don't

want to have the risk. Very unusual for

an artist to teach themselves to draw

with both hands. I've never even heard

of it. But I had this irrational fear

that I would lose lose the ability to

draw with one hand. So I taught myself

to draw left-handed, which I have for

now a while. But my right hand got

burned out by something called a focal

distonia.

It's actually the same problem I had

with my voice. It's a it's a spasm in a

muscle from overuse. So it has nothing

to do with uh that that other thing that

people get in their hand.

It has nothing to do with any other

thing. It's a focal distonia is what

it's called. So when I got the focal

donia, I moved to my left hand. But more

recently in the last month or two, my

left hand has become paralyzed from

presumably a I don't know, I'm guessing

a tumor that's laying on some nerve or

something. So try to calculate these

odds. What are the odds that I would be

first of all uh obsessed with not having

a problem with my hands and that I would

have two separate problems at the same

time. They had nothing to do with each

other.

What are the odds of that? Because I'll

bet not one of you wakes up in the

morning worried about your hands. I'm

the only one. The only one worrying

about it. And both hands got taken out

at the same time by completely different

situations.

But if you know anything about me, I'm

not much of a quitter.

So, I'm [clears throat] going to try to

get rid of this cancer if I can see see

if anything normalizes. I don't know.

I'm not expecting it to, but it might.

All right, moving on.

Why do I have that on my list? That

wasn't interesting.

>> [snorts]

>> Oh, I told you some uh incorrect things

about the new law about hemp. There's

some apparently

Congress was looking at making hemp

illegal and I thought, "Oh, this is some

trick they're using just to make

marijuana illegal and that was my take

on it." That was all wrong. That was all

fake news. Uh there is a change on hemp,

but I'm told that from somebody named

Ben Groves. Hm. Is that a real name? Um,

who told me on X that the real purpose

of it was to close some loopholes.

Apparently, people were using the hemp

uh agricultural laws to uh do some

things that were more about THC than

hemp. And if you were using the hemp

laws to get around some THC regulations,

that's not cool. So, it looks like

that's what they were after. But we'll

see.

Um,

you know what? Uh,

do you ever wonder how the average

person understands the world? Because I

feel like most of you are above average.

You know, if if you can find this

podcast and this is the kind of content

you'd want to watch, if you're even

listening to this content, you're you're

above average in intelligence. This is

not I mean honestly this is not really

the podcast for the average people. We

talk about some some uh some

intellectually interesting things. So

most of you are smarter than than normal

but even so the government has turned

into a confusopy a word that I invented

I don't know 25 years ago. And a

confusopoly means that um the consumer

doesn't know what's a good deal and

what's a bad deal because everything's

too complicated. And that's where we're

at where the government has become a

confusopy.

Now, why does that work so well for the

politicians?

Because the politicians only have to

confuse you to stay in power. If they

did not confuse you, then you would know

exactly what they were promoting and you

might even know if it worked or it

didn't work. That's no good. The the

politicians don't want you to be able to

measure their effectiveness

because you would measure it maybe, you

know, less than they would. So, they'd

rather have a big confusing situation

where both sides could say they have the

better health care plan. both sides

could say they've got the better idea

for bringing down prices, right? So, as

long as both sides can make claims that

are confusing and you can't discern

what's true, then everybody can stay in

power. So, confusion is not an accident

in government or in business. Confusion

often, probably more often than any

other reason, is for the purpose of

making you unable to discern what's

going on. That's his purpose.

Anyway,

I was waiting for uh either uh Jonathan

Turley or Durowitz to weigh in on this

um British broadcasting story. Trump is

apparently going to sue them for I don't

know, a billion dollars. He hasn't

decided yet. Probably be a lot. And uh

Turley says that uh they disagrees with

friends and colleagues who have

suggested that this would be an easy

case to prove in a US court. So what

would be proven or not is Trump would uh

say that they defamed him. I guess

that's the right word, defamed. And that

they did it intentionally. So the

intentional part or at least they should

have known. I think that ends up being

the same. It's either intentional or you

should have known it was going to

happen. I think they both apply. Uh, but

this is legal stuff. I'm not good at it.

So, listen to listen to your podcasters

who have also been lawyers because it

turns out there's a lot of them. There's

there's a lot of podcasters, especially

on the right, who at one point were

lawyers. I guess they're still lawyers.

Um, but do you agree? Do you think it

would be difficult to make the case? I

believe it might be nearly impossible.

So, I'm going to agree with Turley,

which I always do, by the way. You know,

full disclosure, if I had a different

opinion than Jonathan Turley on a legal

question, I would immediately

uh abandon my position. [laughter] The

the minute I found out he had a

different opinion, I'd be like, "What's

his opinion?" Okay, that's my opinion

now. Same with Duruititz. I would just

abandon my opinion immediately if they

disagreed. But I also think that the

problem here is not that it happened.

That part will be easy to demonstrate

and not that they didn't know about it.

They might be able to prove that whoever

did it was completely aware of what they

were doing in the sense that they knew

it wasn't an exact quote. But I think

you have to go further to make your

case. And I believe you have to show

that you intentionally were trying to

cause damage.

As far as I know, there's no document

that shows that, right? Is is there any

BBC email or text that says anything

like uh well, we'll do it this way to

damage Trump? I don't think that exists.

And without that,

I don't really know how you could win

that case. But does Trump need to win?

He does not.

And Trump does not need to win. He's

created a situation where the threat

alone might cause them to settle.

And even if they don't settle and they

decide to fight it out, uh, everybody

else is going to look at it and say,

"Oh, that's some trouble I don't want."

So, I think Trump wins

in every scenario

simply by putting the the fear of

lawsuits into his enemies. That feels

like a really useful thing to do if

you're him. You know, in general, I

would think it would be a little

unethical to just use the the fear of

the courts as your main tool. But in his

specific case where he's been lawfared

from top to bottom and impeached and

every other weasel thing happened to

him, in his case, yeah, he can use the

threat. I think that would be totally

appropriate,

even if he makes some money on it.

Well, you've all been wondering why

Trump had been so worthless on

healthcare, right? And you kept saying,

"Well, you know, it's not enough to say

Obamacare is bad.

We we're going to agree with you on

that, but you're going to have to

suggest something that's not bad, i.e.

your job as the government." And so

Trump now has an outline

for replacing what he calls a stupid

Obamacare.

And the key to that, according to

modernity, Steve Watson's writing about

it. The key to it is instead of giving

money to insurance companies, he would

or to Yeah. he would give it to the um

patients and then they could shop around

and then the free market would kick in

because uh because the customers would

have some kind of uh transparency on

prices. I think that's part of it

somewhere. And they the free market

would lower costs. Do you believe that?

Do you believe that if the only thing

that he did was change who has the money

in their pocket that that would change

the cost of healthcare?

Maybe over time,

but probably not. [laughter]

It doesn't really look like it would is

a game changer, does it? To you. All

right. So, I feel like that's a little

less than uh we need.

Um,

and then other people said if you get

rid of Obamacare,

then uh insurance companies won't take

the high-risisk people because they

wouldn't have to. Part of Obamacare is

that they have to take the high-risisk

people, right? They have to. And that's

partly what raises costs. Well, so that

would just recreate that problem. if

Obamacare is scrapped. I don't know what

we do about that. Um, and then I'm going

to go back to my confuseopoly theme. All

right. So, now I've described to you a

Trumpian kind of approach,

which is free market and who you give

the money to and then you wait blah blah

blah. Now, there are other parts to it,

but do you think you could actually

compare that to the alternative, or

would it all just be confusing?

I can't do it. I mean, I I feel like I'm

reasonably bright and I actually care

about the topic and I've looked into it

at various times at various depths, but

I have no idea. I have no idea how to

fix it. I have no idea if Trump has the

best idea I've ever heard. I have no

idea if there's some better way to fix

Obamacare. And neither do you.

Do we agree that we we're just out of

our depth? But so is everybody else. And

if somebody if someone were not out of

their depth and they really really

understood this and had a great idea and

brought it to you, you wouldn't know it

was a great idea.

So, how do you get from here to there if

none of us could even evaluate the

quality of the idea, which I think is

where we're at? It wouldn't be enough

that there are some experts who could

tell the difference. I don't even know

if that's true. I I kind of doubt it. I

think even the experts would be guessing

on this one. But a very interesting h

thing happened yesterday.

I don't know if any of you noticed.

So yesterday on my podcast, do you

remember what I said about healthcare?

So get the get the timing of this just

because this is more fun this way. I I

was sort of frustrated and I said the

only way I could even imagine

we would get affordable health care

without ruining the country is that uh

Tesla would start a robot hospital, a

robot hospital. Because, you know, Elon

had said we're getting closer and closer

to the the robot surgeon that will be

way better than a human. Well, I don't

know how far away we are, but if we

could save ourselves on healthcare

within several years, would that be soon

enough? Could if if we could get way

lowcost healthcare with robots in, let's

say, five years,

would we already be bankrupt by then?

be kind of close. So, here's what I'd

like to see. I've I've taught you this

persuasion trick before, right? Here's a

really important persuasion trick. I

hope I hope someone in the

administration is paying attention. Um,

and I'm going to I'm going to put this

in the

So, so this is something I learned in my

corporate days, and it goes like this.

Whoever does the best job of making a

picture about the situation

essentially rules the day. If you could

come up with a graph of let's say

climate change, would that change

anything? Oh yeah, those climate change

graphs changed everything. [laughter]

Just everything. When you see a graph of

our national debt going through the

ceiling, does that change anything? Oh

yeah, it does. It does. Because when you

see the picture, it just changes

everything. Now, let's talk about health

care. Who who has a picture of health

care as a solution? Nobody. There's no

picture that would show how we could

ever survive health care costs the way

they are and the way they will be.

There's no picture. And so that means

that that space is completely available

for persuasion,

which means that the team that's really

good at this stuff, which would be the

Republicans, they have a wide open space

and there's a specific picture that they

need to create. And I'm going to

describe it now, but you know, my hands

don't work, so I'm not going to draw the

picture. So I'd like to see somebody

take a run at it. And if several people

take a run at, we'll just pick the best

one. But here's what the picture should

show. It should show health care costs

in the United States with a little bit

of history so that you can see them

zooming to the sky.

Maybe maybe you also show the national

debt screaming into unsustainable

territory and that would be the do

nothing scenario.

But if you want to make a story where

we're saved by robots, which by the way,

I think is nearly guaranteed. It's

closer to guaranteed

if you wait long enough than it is to

maybe. Would you agree with that

statement that the idea of robot medical

care, it's not an if. It's definitely

coming. We don't know if it's a year or

five years or 10 years, but it's

definitely coming. So you pick a time

that seems reasonable, five years. Five

years, maybe 10.

And then you you show that the expenses

for healthcare are going through the

roof. And then in that fifth or 10th

year, whatever you thought was

reasonable. You you show a plateau.

You know, it's not completely flat, but

it flattens. And then you show it

dropping down.

Now, why why would you show that?

Because we feel right now the healthc

care is hopeless, that there's nothing

going to happen except it will go up

unless we just take people off of

healthcare,

which we don't really want to do, right?

We'd like everybody to be on there. So,

I'd like one good persuasive picture

that shows that we do have a path out

and it goes through probably Tesla.

I mean, you could even label it Tesla.

Now, I don't know that Elon would object

to the idea that uh either his company

or one like it or other companies in

that domain would be the only way out.

The only way out. There's no second way

to do this. If there were a second way

to do it, it'd be a whole different

situation. There's not. There might be

one way, and we might be lucky enough to

be alive when that one opportunity just

happens to come along.

So if you want to change the world, make

one persuasive picture that shows yes,

we're in total trouble. Now, in the

short run, we'll just fund it, as

expensive as it is, but we're going to

try as hard as possible to make sure

that Elon's vision of a robot nearly

free healthcare world happens. And that

might require some, you know, private

plus government uh coordination. I know

you don't like the government part, but

usually you need it. All right. What do

you think of that idea? So, you've been

living in this world where where

healthcare is the biggest problem, it

looks like. Uh, but I just offered you

something that looks like a solution,

but you still have to way overpay for 5

to 10 years before you got there. That's

still better than no solution, right?

even if it takes a few years because you

could you could subsidize it if you knew

we were rapidly approaching the place

where robots make everything almost

free. That's that's what Elon thinks

that we'll get to the point where of

such abundance because of robots and AI

that everybody will have everything.

So anyway, you you got really quiet in

the comments.

I can't tell if you think that's a good

idea or you're thinking about it.

Well, here's the way you should evaluate

it.

There there's some idiot who just keeps

writing in all caps, stupid idea.

So, you know, I know what the NPCs are

going to say. Scott, I'm an NPC and the

important thing is that the government

should not be involved in anything.

Scott, I'm an NPC and you can't give

Elon Musk any more any more sway over

the economy, Scott. All right, so we'll

forget forget about you all caps guy.

All right, let me just make sure I'm

seeing your comments here.

All right, but you here's the way to

evaluate that. You should not evaluate

it based on a perfect idea.

That's what the NPCs do.

Did I suggest a perfect idea? No.

No, it's not perfect.

Uh, did I sus Did I suggest an idea that

we hadn't seriously thought about? Yes.

Is it an idea that you could imagine?

It takes some imagination

that you could imagine it it could help

work things out and we'd all get

healthcare. Yes, you can imagine it,

right? So, if there's literally one and

only one plan on the table, and I

believe there is, it's this. We we

overpay for healthcare in the short run,

just we have it, but we work as hard and

as fast as possible to make sure that

the cost of health care drops to zero or

close to it with robots. You tell me you

have a better idea, and you know what

I'm going to say? That's a confusopoly.

Is my idea confusing? Does everybody

understand? Short run you overpay.

Everybody knows what overpaying is. Long

run robots come in and lower the cost.

Everybody knows what a robot is.

Everybody knows what lowering cost is.

So now I have the simplest idea, the

easiest one to explain. It covers the

short run, which is going to be

unpleasant, but that would be true of

every plan. In every plan, the short run

is unpleasant. So if you say to me, but

Scott, you've solved nothing in the

short run. I would say that is common to

all plans. Nobody has a nobody has a

shortterm plan. But if there's only one

long-term plan, you're going to have to

beat it, right? You're gonna have to

come up with an idea that's better than

that. Now, I haven't heard one. Have

you? So, here's the interesting thing

that just uh 3 hours after I said

the only way to solve this is Tesla

robot hospitals, uh that's basically

what Elon said at a convention he was

at. Um he said uh

ba basically he said that we'll you know

that doctors don't grow on trees but

that they will be built in factories

which is a great line. Let me let me say

it again. This is just a great line that

doctors don't grow on trees but in the

robot world they will be built in

factories.

That's a really good reframe. All right.

There was a whole bunch of other Tesla

news I thought was interesting. I didn't

know this, but apparently Tesla is

moving quickly toward its Americanbuilt

cars having no Chinese parts. Now,

that's only for the Americanbuilt cars.

How smart is it that uh Tesla is moving

first to make just the Americanbuilt

cars have no Chinese parts? Well, I

think that's really smart because if

something blows up in the supply chain,

you'd certainly want America to be

something you could um let's say retreat

to and say, "All right, well, we still

have America, you know, so it' still be

a viable company and you could build

from there." So, yes, that's exactly

where you want to start with no Chinese

parts, Americanbuilt cars, because they

build cars in other countries.

Um,

and uh,

also Elon Musk says that they've mapped

out a plan to put a 100 gigawatts per

year of solar powered AI satellites into

orbit. Um, I saw this on a post by Nick

uh, Cruz Patane, who's a real good

follow on all the Tesla stuff. Nick Cruz

Patane. [snorts] Anyway, um, this is

what Elon said. He said, "We see a path

to putting a 100 gawatts per year of

solar powered." I think that's like a

quarter of all the energy used in the

entire country. And he's looking to put

that much up per year because the amount

[clears throat] of energy we're going to

use is almost incalculable. So, we're

not we're not going to have too much.

Um, and apparently what they can do is

just put a bunch of satellites in the

air and network them together, which

they already know how to do. they have

all the components for that. And uh and

he pointed out that the United States

consumes roughly 460 gigawatts on

average per year. So he wants to put a

100red gigawatts

into the air every year

over the United States when we're only

using so it's like a little more or a

little less than a quarter of that. Uh

anyway, and he says we have a plan

mapped out to do it. So it gets crazy.

So this is not hypothetical.

It's not hypothetical. He's literally

going to make Tesla the biggest energy

company in the world. It looks like it's

going to happen any moment now.

Now I [clears throat] I want to give

credit to the person who made this uh

recommendation to me several years ago,

but I think I'll wait to talk to him to

see if he wants his name mentioned. But

a very successful investor once said on

X that you should look at Tesla as a

energy company.

And I thought to myself, what an energy

company? I don't quite get that. Now I

get it. [laughter]

Now I get it. It could very easily the

energy company could be I don't know. It

could be bigger than robots, I imagine.

Uh, so we'll see. Anyway, I'll ask if I

can use his name because that was that

was a really interesting reframe that

that Tesla was an energy company.

Well, also Tesla uh they're designing

something called the A5 chip that they

will use in their robots in their cars.

But what's interesting is I guess they

had some problems trying to make this

chip and they had two chip projects

going on at the same time and Elon

decided to collapse them into one

program which is now doing better. I I

think he got involved directly as he

likes to do and maybe work that out. But

he actually predicts that their chip

would be better than Nvidia's

and that it would be 10% the cost of an

Nvidia chip and two to three times uh at

least he said two to three times better.

What? [laughter]

Wait, what? Are are you serious? Are you

telling me that Nvidia is like the the

class of all chipm people? Like nobody

can nobody can even copy them. They're

so good. They're uncopyable. The entire

country of China with all of its

technical prowess can't match Nvidia.

And Elon just sits there in a chair.

They turn the camera on. He's like,

"Yeah, we're building one that's two to

three times better and it'll be about

10% of the cost." Wait, what? [laughter]

What? Are you serious? 10% of the cost

and two to three times better than the

best thing that's ever existed.

Is that even possible? Yes. Yep. If

anyone else said that, wouldn't you say,

"Yeah, sure. Prove it." You might not,

you know, bet against it, but you

wouldn't think it's likely, would you?

But when Elon Musk, who as far as I know

is not known as a chip designer,

manufacturer fab kind of a guy, he just

enters the market and he's going to

completely dominate it in how long? A

few months. How long is that going to

take? I I don't even know how to

evaluate that. That That is such a big

claim, but yet

possible.

So everything that you think you can

predict about AI and robots in the

future and healthcare, I don't think any

of this is predictable because who saw

this coming? Who saw that coming?

Anyway, so at the same event, that's

where Elon said that uh they do plan to

build robbo robboles.

So I I wasn't crazy

that that might be our only path out.

Now, I think Elon's been quiet about

this. He's got so many things going on

that he has lots to talk about, no

matter where he is and what he's talking

about. So, it could be that he's just

waiting for the right time. Maybe this

is the right time. But my goodness, he's

going to solve healthcare, energy, and

chips

and robots and self-driving cars.

And that's just this year. What's he

going to do next year? Good lord.

Anyway,

um

so that's happening.

I I would go further and say that unless

we use robots to solve our health care

and our affordability that we're heading

towards certain doom. that civilization

is on a path toward guaranteed

destruction by essentially overspending.

If if we just keep doing what we're

doing or if we even try to tweak it a

little bit, we're all dead. Basically,

it's not a tweakable situation, you

would have to do something so

fundamentally different than what the

economy is doing now or you'd have no

chance of survival really.

You would just spend ourselves into

oblivion. But with robots,

suddenly we do have a path out. And it's

not a crazy path. It's it's one that

looks like something the smart people

can figure out.

So watching the smart people try to save

civilization

is kind of inspiring. You know what I

mean? Because you know if le let's say

you were one of the captains of industry

you know you're a a Musk or a Bezos or

you're a Mark Cuban or you know you can

throw in some other names wouldn't you

feel a responsibility to save the world

because it looks like it's not going to

save itself and there's a very small

group of people who might have the

capability to really get in there and

re-engineer things.

If I were in that situation, I would

feel that I had to get involved. It

looks like that's what's driving Elon.

That he must be completely aware that

nobody else is going to solve this

problem. I [clears throat] mean, maybe

maybe somebody else could, but I

wouldn't be betting on it.

Any robots coming.

Um

Elon also said he doesn't own any

vacation homes. He just has one

medium-sized house in Austin and a tiny

one at Starbase. And when he takes his

friends there, they don't believe it's

real, that they think it's a prank. Uh,

really? This is your house? How much

would you love to see his medium-sized

house?

I would love I would love that. That

would be like better than a museum. Like

just just look around. It's like, okay,

what kind of games you got? Be so

interesting. Well, Bill Maher was on

last night and then we can all be mad at

each other because mentioning Bill Maher

gives him more attention. Some of you

don't like it if he gets too much

attention. But I love watching his, you

know, his arc of uh figuring out what is

real and what isn't. That's really

interesting to me because he's doing a

really good job of trying to burrow

through the to get to some kind

of truth. He's not at truth. He's

definitely not there. But the amount of

effort and risk he's putting into trying

to find there is actually inspiring and

I I appreciate I appreciate the risk he

takes to try to find it. So last night

on his show he went after Zoran Mumami

pretty hard with a brutal history

on socialism and how it always fails and

ends up in disaster.

And he was very clear

that Madani is a disaster waiting to

happen.

That's their side right now. Do you

respect that? Do you respect that Bill

Maher is taking the the darling of his

own team and saying, "Don't you

understand that this is not just a

problem,

but you're talking about the end of

civilization if this kind of thinking

takes over?" And that's exactly what I'd

like to see coming from the the people

who can make a difference. and Mar is

somebody who could make a difference.

Um, so I guess President Trump said he's

withdrawing his support from Marjorie

Taylor Green because she's not she's not

supportive enough of him. And uh, I

wasn't sure what that was all about

besides the Epstein files. She wants all

the Epstein files released. He doesn't,

but also the Democrats don't want them

released. The Democrats just voted

against releasing them, right?

So, in what world

do Trump and the Democrats come down on

the same side that they both don't want

to release the Epstein files? Now, I'm

told that the Democrats have some, you

know, word salad

negotiating thing that's the reason they

said no to releasing them. Like they're

they're trying to guess something in

return. But that didn't sound real to

me. It sounded like an excuse not to

release them.

Everything sounds like an excuse not to

release them actually, no matter who

you're talking to. Anyway, so the other

differences with Marjorie Taylor Green

and the president are uh involvement in

foreign wars such as Gaza,

um the Epstein files, healthc care.

She's she thinks she he should do more

in healthcare as do all of us and

inflation and prices and stuff like

that. But I don't know what else he

could be doing. Frankly, don't know what

he could be doing. But here's my take on

all that. I I feel like I'm not going to

take sides on any of that.

Um I just don't like taking sides when I

like both sides. I like President Trump

and I like Marjorie Taylor Green and I

like a lot of the people who are

battling each other, you know, Candace

against whoever and uh Tucker against

whoever and you know, so it's hard for

me to get past especially the ones I've

met. You know, there a few of them I've

met personally. Once you meet somebody

personally and they're nice to you and

they're warm and they're completely open

to you, it's really hard to slam them in

public.

I know that's you could argue that's,

you know, sort of what I should be

doing, but I don't know. I just can't do

it. Just can't do it. So, I'm going to

I'm just going to say of all the all the

personal drama,

you might want to pay attention to it

for fun, but I wouldn't take it too

seriously. It it just weakens your own

team. So, don't take it too seriously.

Um, do you know who Kelly means is? I

guess he would be an activist.

I hope that's the right word. He

wouldn't mind. an activist uh against

big pharma and big food and some of

their abuses. Anyway, here's a claim he

made. He was talking to Megan Kelly at

some event um about the Make America

Healthy Again movement. He said that

there's this is unbelievable. I mean, I

believe it because of the source, but he

says there's a CIA manual is being sent

to all employees in the Make America

Healthy sort of world. and they're

suddenly around this CIA manual called

[laughter]

I can't believe this is true. It's a

little too on the nose, but the source

is good. So, but it is too on the nose.

This uh allegedly the CIA manual is how

to be a bad bureaucrat and subvert an

institution from within.

Okay, I think I'm talking myself out of

believing this.

Isn't that a little bit too

a little bit too perfect. All right. So,

I'm going to put a question mark on

this. I do believe that Kelly means his

high high credibility. I don't believe

that he would mislead you intentionally.

That's not his thing at all. So, but he

could have some bad information. Anybody

could. Uh and uh apparently people are

saying that 90% of the employees at

Health and Her Human Services um are

talking about this thing and they're

afraid that RFK Jr. and Trump are

anti-science so they have to save the

planet from these anti-science guys.

I don't know. So I I guess I'm going to

put a question mark on this one. Uh, and

the question mark is not about the

people involved. I think they're all

high credibility and high value added

people. I just don't know if the

document is real. It might exist, but it

doesn't mean it came from the CIA. I

don't know if they would even deny it.

Anyway, as you know, there's a whole

bunch of Epstein files got released.

20,000 files with 1500 Trump mentions.

1,500 Trump mentions. Now, I realize

people talk about Trump a lot, but even

my emails don't have 1500 Trump

messages, and I talk about him all the

time. 1,500.

I don't know. Um,

and uh, Alan Dersowitz was saying on a

podcast that the media is intentionally

twisting the facts of the Epstein case

to smear Trump. And he gives an example.

Um he said that the newly surfaced

emails there's uh one detail that the

press leaves out.

Now when I tell you what the press

leaves out,

you're going to shake your head and some

of you are lost in the confusopy of this

story. So you may have missed this

little point here. Here's just a minor

point. One of the most damning and

provocative things so far is the claim

that Virginia Jeffrey Joffrey, she was

one of the known victims of uh of

Epstein, that there's a claim that Trump

spent hours with her.

It's also true that Virginia Joffrey has

said publicly that she never met Trump.

So her claim before she passed away

tragically recently is her claim is that

she never met him, but apparently

there's something in in some document

that said they spent hours together. Who

do you believe?

I I feel like I believe her

or at least it adds enough uh doubt into

the story that you should put that in

there. But can you believe that the

media doesn't mention

that she's denied ever meeting him,

much less spending hours with him.

So, I mean, it's not like you would

forget if you'd met Trump and spent

several hours with him. You wouldn't

forget.

So, I agree with Duruitz. That sounds

like a intentional smearing of Trump.

Um, I saw PJ Media saying, "This says it

all that the Democrats blocked the

release of the Epstein files." Matt

Margolus is writing about this. Um, do

you what do you think that's telling

you?

The fact that the Democrats

didn't want it released?

Is it telling you that there's nothing

damning about Trump? Because if they

release it, you could see there's

nothing damning or

uh or what?

Like why would they not release it? They

they would be better off with the

uncertainty that there's something in

there if they knew for sure there was

nothing in there. And as many have

pointed out, I think Matt does too, that

if there was anything in there that was

bad for Trump, you think the Democrats

wouldn't have already found it and

released it? So there's a strong

suggestion

that there's nothing about Trump that's

bad. So why would Trump

want it not to be released? Well,

Dersowitz gives you the perfect reason.

According to Duruitz, if you release

real information, the illegitimate press

will just change it and act like it's

something it's not. That's what they did

with the Virginia Joffrey thing. They

took a real thing and they just changed

it to a fake thing. And nobody's going

to research it. So, they're just going

to turn on the news. They're going to

hear MSNBC's version of it. They're

going to turn it off and think that's

the reality,

but not.

So, yeah. So, why would the Democrats

block it unless they were up to no good?

They wouldn't block it to protect Trump.

So therefore, there must be nothing in

there that would hurt him. But there

might be things in there that would hurt

other people, and there might be things

in there that could be misinterpreted

easily, which would be just as much a

problem.

Anyway,

um

anyway, so Trump apparently going on the

offense as he likes to. He's asking the

Department of Justice to look into a few

billionaires and other just rich people

uh who had connections to Epstein. He

actually named names. Now, I wouldn't

talk about this except the president

named the names. Uh to me, this sounds

totally inappropriate to accuse them

because as far as I know, there's no

evidence of specific wrongdoing. So

Trump named Bill Clinton, Reed Hoffman,

Larry Summers, and he called and he says

JP Morgan Chase. So I guess that means

some executives unnamed.

And uh he says the record show they

spent a lot of time on the island. I

don't know if that's true. They might

have spent more time on the plane than

the island, but um

as far as I know, none of them have

specific claims of wrongdoing. Right.

There there are people who speculate,

but I don't believe there's any like

witness or whistleblower

or anything like that. So, I'm always

uncomfortable naming names when they're

there's just no criminal evidence or

anything. Now, I'm not comfortable

with the president asking the Department

of Justice to look for a crime

when there's not some smoking gun there.

And I don't know, is it is it a smoking

gun enough that they spend time

together?

Well, it would if you were in a cartel,

right? If you were a cartel member,

uh, or let's say somebody discovered you

were in a cartel, you don't think that

maybe they'd get a little extra

scrutiny? [laughter]

Yeah. [clears throat]

So, it makes sense that your

associations

might raise a red flag, but is this

enough of a red flag? Now, I'm curious.

So, I would like to know the answer,

too. But I don't know. This gets mighty

close mighty close to violating some

kind of basic right, but I'm no lawyer.

So, we don't know if Trump's going

strictly for revenge. It's a

distraction. It' be a good distraction.

Uh, or is it a warning to other people

who might be in the file that you better

help me keep that sealed? It might be a

warning to the people in the file. It

might be his way to tell these uh three

or four people uh on this on this

particular issue,

we're sort of on the same page. And if

you don't want to be the one who's

investigated, you might want to join me

in saying these should not be released.

But what did Reed Hoffman do? Cleverly

Reed Hoffen said today Trump should

release all the Epstein files,

[clears throat] every person in every

document.

And he sort of suggested that Trump was

using these rich Democrats as sort of a

stalling technique. So he was just

stalling

maybe. Maybe. So I think Reed Hoffman

played it right because he might know

that they're not going to be released.

uh which would be playing it right

because then he looks he looks innocent

because he's calling for full

transparency. Whoever it is who calls

for full transparency,

you just assume they must be innocent.

So if he knows then no matter what he

says or does they're not going to be

released anyway and he might know that

then the best play you could ever make

is to say release those files. They

should all be released.

That would be a good play. But again, I

say there is no evidence whatsoever that

any of the people named, including Reed

Hoffman, did anything inappropriate or

illegal on the island. All right.

Uh, apparently some prison staffers at

wherever

Galain Maxwell is being held at the

moment, they hacked into her emails. I

guess that would be prison emails. uh

and then gave the copies of her emails

to uh Representative Rascin.

Have you noticed that wherever Rascin

is, there's something sketchy happening,

[clears throat] every time you see his

name, you're like, "Oh god, this is

going to be sketchy." And sure enough,

he uh claimed to be a whistleblower. I

don't know if that's a legitimate claim,

but under that umbrella, he got these

emails. And what did it say? Uh,

and I I guess the staffers who did this

were fired, the ones who who who leaked

it. Um,

and it said something that was

interesting.

Um,

the release is

Was [clears throat] there nothing in the

emails?

Uh

maybe the emails were so uninteresting

that I didn't care. I went um

oh I guess the emails uh sort of

suggested according to Rascin that she

was angling for a pardon or to have her

sentence commuted. To which I say, how's

that a story?

If you were in jail for, you know, lots

of years and lots of years to go, aren't

you always angling for a commutation or

a or a pardon? Wouldn't it be more of a

story if she were not? Now, I'm going to

use my uh George Carlin example again

where he says, "You don't have to

actually say the words to somebody

you're colluding with if they know what

you need." Obviously,

the Trump administration knows she would

like a pardon or a commutation,

right? Obviously, you know it, I know

it, everybody knows it. Would they have

to say it? Would it be necessary that

she said it directly? Not really. We all

know that she wants one. Why wouldn't

she? There there's no argument in the

other direction. So yeah, of course she

wants one. So that's a nothing story

except for the Rascin part being a

weasel.

Uh Germany's buying $150 million of

weapons

to give to Ukraine.

Um it makes me wonder if the cost of

warfare is coming down over time.

Um because we're in a weird phase of

history where we're shifting from, you

know, tanks and artillery to more

drones. Are the drones cheaper? Are are

we getting as much of war done? Ukraine,

I guess. Are they getting as much war

done

as they would if they spent more money

and had more traditional weapons? So,

one of my questions is, is the general

cost of warfare, whether it's Ukraine or

anyone anything else, is the cost of

where warfare coming down because the

the tools are different? I don't know.

Maybe. And then I looked up the uh I've

been obsessed about this a little bit

lately. Why we don't see reporting on

the number of casualties anymore. Have

you noticed that?

So, we've got this big war. Ukraine and

Russia and we're worried that it might

turn into a world war and I don't know

how many people are being killed.

Isn't that like super obviously missing

in the reporting? What what would be the

more important number than well this

week x number of Ukrainians were injured

and killed.

Why is everybody leaving that out? So I

went to Grock and started asking some

questions. But then I thought, oh, I

don't know if any of these answers are

real. I I don't know if it's

hallucinating. Grock did start off by

saying that the numbers are totally

unreliable.

Uh, no matter no matter what source you

use, you should take it with a grain of

salt. But I also wondered, what is the

range? Like, can you give me a range at

all?

Now, why is somebody writing N O O O L

over and over again in my comments.

Like, what's that?

Stop doing that. It's bugging me.

If it meant something, that'd be better.

But anyway, Grock tells me, and you can

fact check me on this, that uh something

like I don't know 3 to 10,000 people a

week are being killed. uh some

combination of Russians and Ukrainians.

Does that sound right to you?

Three Do you believe that 3 to 10,000

are dying per week and that they don't

report that?

That doesn't seem right. So, I have a

suspicion, which is completely

without data, that maybe the actual

death rate is way lower than we think.

Still terrible. is still bad. Still lots

of injuries. But it might be we might

have a drone war where there are far

more injuries than there are deaths

because a lot of the drone stuff is to

injure and maim.

It's not all deadly. So I wonder if we

went to well we didn't actually kill too

many Russians but we maimed 20,000.

Maybe they wouldn't report that would

they?

So, it's a little bit sketchy that

somebody, you know, Germany's giving

them 150 million, but they probably

don't have any idea how many Ukrainians

or Russians are dying. The most

important data.

So, um, and then I saw another survey,

again, you can't really trust anything

that comes out of that area, that said

that, uh, in Ukraine, something like 90%

of the population, uh, has some close

contact with somebody who was injured

during the war, injured or killed. 90%.

That'll that'll certainly have an

impact. Whereas uh a survey says Russia

has only 30% of its population had some

direct family tie

to some some death or injury. I don't

know if you can believe any of those

numbers,

but we'll see. Um I saw an argument

today that I thought was interesting.

There's a Yale professor

um whose name is

We'll get to it.

um Marovitz

and he's got this argument that merit is

a myth used to justify inequality

that the idea of merit is sort of a a

trick and that there's no such thing as

merit. Uh we just use it to justify our

own getting more than other people.

Oh, that that chat ended. That's what's

going on.

All right, let's try something else.

This will work.

Oh, that works. Okay, much better.

Anyway, so I wonder what what is the

argument that meritocracy is a myth?

Because most of my worldview is built

around meritocracy. [laughter] I I hate

to find out that my worldview is built

on a myth. So, I thought I'm going to

look into this a little bit. So there

might be a little bit of word salad

going on here because you know Yale law

pro professor but he says that quote any

idea that merit makes inequality

deserved is a circle. What merit isn't a

real virtue it's just an ideological

conceit constructed to launder otherwise

offensive inequalities.

What [laughter]

what

do any of those words mean? I I feel

like if I, you know, diagrammed it out,

I might be able to understand what he's

saying. But here here's a general

statement. If the clearest you can make

your argument is this, you don't really

have an argument. No. No. Unless you can

be a little bit clearer than that, I'm

sorry. I can't take it too seriously.

But then he had a good point that made

me reassess.

He he pointed out that uh merit is

highly driven not entirely but highly

driven by your parental resources.

And then I said, "Oh, okay. Now now

you're talking. That's a reasonable a

reasonable point of view." So if you are

rich, for example,

uh more likely you will be funded to go

to a good school. you'll be in a good

neighborhood, you know, less crime, less

drugs. I don't know about the drugs, but

uh there should be a gigantic difference

in meritocracy, meaning that some people

who have the the brains and the ambition

will also have the the parental backing

and some won't and that that difference

could make all the difference. That's

not a bad that's not a terrible opinion.

So, I started out thinking that I was

just going to sort of mock this point of

view because I like meritocracy and

anybody who's arguing against it is

going to be a fool. But that's actually

a reasonably good point, isn't it? That

your meritocracy won't go that far

unless you've got some resources behind

it. Now, in my in my case,

uh I came from a generation where you

didn't need that many resources behind

it. You could still work it out. Yeah,

that would that would have been my case.

But at the moment in the current world,

yeah, it does seem like the resources

your parents put into it are going to

drive your success of your meritocracy.

So, wasn't expecting to have my mind

changed by that, but maybe it was a

little bit. I mean, I don't know that I

would do anything differently, but it

changes my frame on it a little bit. And

uh we are done with the prepared part of

my presentation. Look at my timing. It's

amazing. And uh Owen Gregorian will be

setting up his spaceless event in a few

minutes. I'm going to talk to the uh

people on locals privately for a few

minutes and uh I will see you tomorrow.

Same time, same place. Okay. Everybody

in? Are you all in for tomorrow? Okay.

All right, locals. I'm going to come at

you privately

in 30 seconds.