Episode 3027 CWSA 11/23/25

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All right.

Well, let's jump into the news.

It'll be so good.

Uh, did you know, so this is so Trump Trump's going to his helicopter, I think he was, and one of the reporters asked him, uh, if he would reconcile with Representative Marjgery Taylor Green, you know, the same way he did with Elon Musk.

What do you think?

He said, "Well," he said, "Uh, sure, why not?

I get along with everybody.

Is that the perfect answer?

I get along with everybody." Because you want to argue with them, right?

You're like, you don't get along with everybody.

What about What about Oh, okay.

Well, I guess you do kind of get along with them, but what about what about So, first of all, it makes your hair catch on fire if you don't think it's factually true, but it's close enough to be factually true that, you know, I I I will allow it.

But I love the fact that he has created this persona for himself where he can absolutely maul somebody in public verbally and then five minutes later he can say, "Yeah, why don't you go on over?

We'll have dinner.

we'll be best friends and that everybody goes, "Oh, okay.

I get it.

It's part of the show.

It's just part of the show." Once you realize it's part of the show, you can just lean back and enjoy it the way it was meant to be.

So, yes.

Do we want Trump to dislike Marjgery Taylor Green?

No.

We want her to be a productive part of society, a patriot.

Uh, would you not want her on your team?

Think about it.

Now, I get that she disagrees with you on some policy stuff, right?

Or maybe she doesn't, but you wouldn't want her on your team.

Think about it.

If you were picking teams for anything, you wouldn't want her on your team.

Yeah, of course you would.

So would he.

So, he plays it just right in the way that Trump can.

Um, so hurricane season is winding down and Axios is reminding us that there have been uh how many named hurricanes have made made uh landfall in the US in the mainland.

Anyway, how many hurricanes this year do you know the number?

The answer is zero.

Now, there usually aren't that many.

You know, like a normal normal year might be two, but we're talking about two major storms that would, you know, cost billions of dollars.

This year, none.

Do you think that all the news is talking about is how climate crisis has been avoided and maybe it was never real in the first place?

No, that's not going to happen right away.

But we're heading in that direction.

Uh, I will tell you again how to run the entire country.

You ready?

If you wanted to take charge of the whole country and you didn't have a elected position, you're not a billionaire.

You just want to figure out some clever way where you, and I mean you, like specifically you, could take over the whole country.

There is a way to do that.

And uh this hurricane situation reminded me of it.

I've talked about this before.

In the corporate world, the way we think of things is that there's a a line of executives and somebody reports to somebody reports to somebody.

So if you see one of those executives giving a uh Power.

Point slideshow to maybe that executive's boss, you think to yourself, well that executive giving giving the presentation is in charge of that domain and uh is giving a presentation to someone who's in charge of him, you know, because he's got to get approval or something.

So it looks to you like the normal corporate structure is working the way you think.

However, having worked in the corporate world and having put together quite a number of slides for other executives or just executives, uh, here's something I learned that everyone who's been in that same position probably learned the same way.

Whoever comes up with the best slide or you could replace slide with idea or framework or reframe or way to look at something or relevant data.

This this will all be the same for my purpose.

That person's actually in charge.

Let let me plump this out a little bit and you'll see what I'm talking about.

If I wanted to run the world and wasn't already, I'll just let that sit there for a while.

If I weren't already, the way I'd do it is I would try to figure out what the top 10 climate variables are that people would agree, all right, if that's changing, there must be a problem with climate and and humans behind it.

and I would get the top 10 and then I would create an ongoing uh what do you call it a dashboard a dashboard sort that's sort of a corporate talk a dashboard would be usually one page uh on a screen that very quickly tells you some set of information that makes sense together.

So, I would say, "All right, let's figure out the 10 things you should look at for climate change." And hurricanes would be one of them.

But you'd also have the temperatures.

You'd have the the water level at certain places.

So, I don't even know if they're 10.

Maybe they're five, but I think they're at least 10.

So, you'd have So, you would be the one who pulls together this dashboard and then you just put it on X.

What would happen if you did a good job?

What would happen?

People would pass it around and they would say, "Whoa, I'm smarter now because I know that these 10 things are important.

I know the order in which they're important because you would also rank them from which one's the most predictive, right?

Maybe which one is the most, you know, dangerous, but most predictive as well." And then if you did a good job, people would want to uh bookmark it and they would ask you to update it when there was new information and it would take on a life of its own almost immediately.

Do you know why you could totally disrupt this mature science area without actually having any science background?

Do you know why that would be so easy?

Because no one else is trying.

There's no one even trying.

Do you know of anybody who put together the uh a really easy to read everybody agrees, yeah, these these 10 things are the things we should be watching?

No.

And part of the reason that nobody's doing it is that the people who have access to it, the information that would make that dashboard are probably not getting the the results that they wanted to get.

So if they were a little bit more, let's say, capable at describing what's actually happening in the world, their capability would destroy their own their own industry because they would end up proving that uh maybe you didn't have to worry so much about this stuff.

But since I'm not a climate scientist, I would not be bound by that.

I could just tell you what you need to know as best I could do it.

So I'd just start publishing it.

Then what happened when it started working?

What what happens when people start recognizing all right uh we need an update on this climate story.

Uh no matter what no matter what the story is, wouldn't it make sense to have the climate dashboard referenced as just part of the story?

Could be a story about uh the coral reefs, but also let me show you the dashboard.

could be a story about the hurricanes, but you know, proper context.

Let me show you, you know, the console.

So once you did this for climate, you don't think people would ask for it for crime.

You don't think people would ask for it for other big topics?

They would.

And if you were the one who could do it best and had some reputation for, you know, being a straight shooter, pretty soon you would be the one who decides what information is relevant to this domain and what isn't.

You might be right, you might be wrong, but it's not objective.

There would be a lot of subjectivity in deciding what's even on the list.

And then there'd be a lot of subjectivity in deciding how to measure it properly, etc.

And that would be enough subjectivity, I say, that it would put you essentially in control of the entire domain.

Nobody would necessarily know it.

They would just think that you were a useful person who had something to say about the data, but you would actually be running the whole show because you would determine what data anybody saw.

And if you became credible, they'd kind of have to reference your data every single time they did anything important in that domain.

So that's how you do it, people.

You become the the Power.

Point slide expert.

And if you become known as the only person who can describe this complicated thing in a very transportable, viral way, you're going to run the whole show.

There you go.

Uh, I wonder if there's any backward science.

Oh, here we go.

Cambridge University Press found that uh, there's a study that watching less TV could cut your depression risk by up to 43%.

Does that make sense to you?

Sort of.

Yeah, you you can see how watching less TV would Oh, no you don't.

No, it's backwards.

What do you do when you're depressed?

You watch more TV.

Do you know why?

Well, part of being depressed is you didn't have an awesome thing to be doing instead.

Would you be depressed if, let's say, uh, I don't know, the president invited you to the Oval Office?

No.

You'd be all excited.

You'd be excited.

Watching TV is sort of the default.

Uh, I got nothing going on in my life.

I might as well turn on the TV.

See if there's a game.

No.

So, it might also be true that watching TV makes you a little more depressed, but I guarantee you that being depressed is going to make you reach for that clicker faster than not being depressed.

All right.

Um, I can't remember how much or if I talked about this before, but I'm sure I did.

So, this is a from a story back in April and the New York Post.

Uh, I saw I saw the New York Post talking about it today.

Um, and it was Bill Maher who was talking about way back in April when uh his friend and uh I guess Hollywood uh Hollywood partner uh Larry David, not partner but you know another person who works in the entertainment industry.

So Larry David was not happy when Bill Maher went to dinner with Trump.

And so Larry David wrote a humorous piece, an op-ed about uh my dinner with Adolf.

So he did a funny piece mocking essentially mocking Bill Maher for imagining that there was a you know good reason to ever have dinner with Hitler meaning that he was you know calling Trump Hitler.

What did Bill Maher say about this now that he's had several months to marinate on this situation?

He said that uh Larry David was being dumb and unhelpful.

Dumb and unhelpful.

And uh then Bill Maher went on um to do what he's been doing lately, which is uh explained that you should always talk to people.

And what Trump does, and I the example with Marjgery Taylor Green is a perfect example.

What uh Trump does is that he's willing to talk to everybody.

And Bill Maher is now a complete uh complete convert.

Maybe he always was.

uh to you can talk to anybody you want and we're better off if we talk than if we don't talk.

Now, you can imagine I'm 100% in agreement with Bill Maher.

However, there was a specific quote that apparently Bill Maher used when he talked to Piers Morgan at about the same time as the, you know, he was talking about the 20 the uh dinner with Trump.

Listen to this quote.

quote, "But I think the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument." Now, he was talking about um the op-ed by Larry David.

I think the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument.

What does that sound like?

How many of you remember my debate, but it wasn't really a debate with Sam Harris at around 2016 that became super viral and probably just about every one of you heard it, right?

Did you hear me say that at the beginning of the debate because I think it was like 60 seconds into my uh talking to Sam Harris, probably a minute.

Yeah, of course I'm remembering it, so I may be remembering it wrong.

Um, he brought up Hitler, compared Trump to Hitler, and and I said, "Ah, we're done here." I said some version of basically, you know, that's the end of the debate.

Whoever brings up Hitler, you just lost.

And then years go by, because that was probably back in 2016 or so.

Now remember I keep telling you that what defines not defines but a difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats try to tell you what to think.

You know this is moral, this is immoral, this is right, this is wrong and Republicans try to tell you how to think.

Which one is Bill Maher doing in this example where he says the minute you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument.

That's telling you how to think.

That's not telling you what to think.

So, you can see the transition, right?

And when he looks at Larry David, Larry David's just Hitler, no Hitler.

Hitler, no Hitler.

Doesn't that just seem stupid?

I mean, that's basically what what Bill Maher was saying.

It just looks stupid.

Um, yeah.

So um uh so this is also what uh Bill Maher said on the same topic and he said and also I must say you know come on man Hiller Nazis nobody nobody has been harder about and on and more preient I must say about Donald Trump than me.

Bill Maher says I don't need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is.

Just the fact that I met him in person didn't change that.

And the fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.

So what is it when he says met him in person and reported honestly on it?

That's process.

Again, he's totally right on process.

So watching Bill Maher try to navigate this situation and try to get a foot in both worlds is really fascinating and I give him a lot of credit because um it's a pretty rocky road.

You know, having been down that road in a more extreme version myself and finding out what happens when you say anything positive about the way Trump does business.

Uh, I know how tough that is.

And he's going through he's taken on some water.

I guarantee it.

This is not easy.

So, I'm gonna uh in the past, you've seen me sometimes say some good things about Bill and sometimes be critical.

Today, I'm going to be completely supportive.

Not of his opinions.

He he's allowed to have different opinions, but of his uh apparent focus and how he's essentially training his audience the way I'm trying to train mine into how to approach a problem and not so much what the answer is.

The answer is up to you.

But how to approach it?

Well, you want to do that, right?

Right.

All right.

Well, along those lines, and I've often said, this is sort of a related topic, that having Elon Musk on what I would call the common sense uh side of things.

I wouldn't call him, you know, Republican or anything like that, but he's squarely on the common sense side of things.

And I was thinking today how many things Elon Musk has changed and how in the process of that he's also teaching us how to think and how to act.

He's kind of teaching us how to be engineers.

Not the actual skill of engineering but how an engineer would approach a problem.

Have any of you noticed that?

that if you simply watch how Elon Musk approaches any problem, and I would argue that maybe the all-in pod guys, they do the same thing.

If you simply observe them over time, you learn how to approach problems.

And you would say to yourself, "Oh, that's that's like that time, I know, Chimoth did this or that, or it's like the time that Elon did this or that." And then you can take that model and and build it, you know, put it into your own world.

Tremendously valuable.

But on top of that, um I saw that uh RFK Jr.

was saying at some event that he believes that Elon Musk rescued free speech by buying uh what was Twitter?

Would you agree with that statement that he rescued free speech by buying Twitter?

I I think so.

I think that's completely fair.

That would put him, if you buy that as a true statement, and I do, that would put Elon in the founding father's category like with without, you know, the the time of course is different, but that would put him squarely right in the middle of saving the republic.

And I and I think he gets complete credit for that.

But back to my overarching theme, he didn't just say free speech is good.

Hey everybody, why don't you practice some free speech?

Nope.

He showed you how to get it.

He showed you how to get there.

Sometimes you got to buy the company.

Now, he could do it.

You couldn't, but he showed it.

He He showed you how to rescue free speech.

And in this case, he did it through a I guess I'd call it a free market approach.

And so you can learn that if you if you use the free market appropriately, you can get to where you want to get, which is free of speech, in a way that teaches people how to think.

Hey, the only way you're going to have real free speech is if there's a free market platform that lets you say what you need to say without getting cancelled.

And then he proved it by building that platform you know modifying a platform then and that's just the beginning just he was talking today about his chip design that Tesla will be the biggest chip designer in the world in a fairly short period of time.

He's also taught you how to start companies at some kind of record speed that we've never seen before.

Uh, and now he's decided that Tesla has to be the big uh, hey, let's get rid of a counterbalance.

Counterbalance, you're going to disappear from uh, I think you're on the You.

Tube platform.

But that's that's the second time I've seen that comment.

So, you're going to disappear now.

Um, maybe today, but we're going to get you.

Um then so so this is just you know a little one small part of what Musk and Tesla are doing but he'll probably teach you that America can build um chips.

So so you're going to learn a whole bunch about manufacturing and chip design and all that just because he's doing it and he's transparent about how he's doing it.

Then there's the uh I saw him a clip I think he was on Joe Rogan talking about the economics of homelessness.

And a lot of people don't understand that homelessness isn't so much just about giving people homes.

They wouldn't want to live in those homes if you gave them to them because they're mentally insane or they're on drugs or whatever else.

Um, and he also pointed out, I didn't know this, that the economics of homelessness in California is that there's this whole industry of people get paid to take care of the homeless, as long as they don't solve their problem.

If they solved their problem and these people were no longer homeless, which is sort of undoable, uh then they wouldn't get their collectively a million dollars a year to keep the people alive but homeless.

So if you followed the money, you would completely understand why there's so much homelessness.

And that would be a way to think about it, wouldn't it?

It's not the answer.

It's a way to think about it.

So if you change from, hey, if only we give these people homes, you know, then they would be on their way.

They could do the rest.

That way of thinking is a complete failure because it doesn't recognize that uh the whole industry is propped up by people trying to steal your taxpayer money and give you nothing in return.

Once Elon explains that we're trapped in this little system where the people who are running it are making a lot of money as long as they don't solve the problem, then everything makes sense, doesn't it?

Now, that doesn't mean that we immediately have a solution, but at least you'd be solving the right problem, right?

That that's a big difference uh when you see the problem clearly as Elon, you know, explains it to us.

Um then I saw Elon talking about how the only only the interesting simulations because you know he believes that we're part of a simulation as do I that reality is a simulation.

Um he points out that only the interesting simulations would survive.

Uh and and then he gives the reason because if we had a boring simulation uh we'd stop doing it because it wouldn't be doing anything for us.

just boring us.

So, the interesting ones are the only ones that can survive and therefore it's logical to assume that they're the only ones that do.

And I've got a version of this.

So, this this is part of his explanation of why the world seems so interesting, I think, or why you could predict something based on how interesting it is.

I do a I have a version of that, but it's different, which is I believe that reality follows the three the threeact movie form.

Now, that's something I've been saying since 2015, I think.

Uh, and here's why I think it follows a threeact movie form.

It's because we've all been trained in the three-act form.

If we had not been trained in it, I don't know that it would happen.

But you take a bunch of human beings and you put them in a situation.

Let's say Trump is nearly jailed and impeached.

That would be a classic movie third act where, okay, there's no way he can get away from that.

And then if I said, but what would it look like if it were a movie?

And we would all have the same answer, which is, well, he would somehow not go to jail.

somehow the impeachment wouldn't take hold and somehow he would win re-election because that would be the most satisfying movie.

Sure enough.

Sure enough, that's what happened.

Now, I think that we live in a simulation and our expectations collapse reality.

And so, if enough of us are simply expecting things to go a certain way that it actually collapses reality in that direction.

Now I I wouldn't bet my life on it that my interpretation is correct but just so you know.

So um also I've noted that uh you know how we all understand NOS's now we didn't know what an NGO was a couple years ago and that's because of Elon Musk and it's because of Doge and Doge even exists only because of Musk.

uh the the concept of Doge which has taken root in the government.

Um, so if you look at all the things that just Elon has done, there's the one I've mentioned and of course Mike Benz is, you know, a champion of the NGO explainer class, but uh I don't know if you'd even know about it without Elon Musk, but uh let's see.

He's I I think that Elon Musk is the most important person in the climate crisis conversation because he he can basically describe a world where you use solar power to get everything you want.

They might be solar panels in space, but he already told you how to do it.

We have all the technology we need to put solar panels in space and have all the energy we want.

And he can show you how.

Uh he's got the neurolink, the interplanetary travel.

He's figured out how to uh get around our energy shortage.

He he talks about how the robots will be free doctors.

So, he's solving health care.

Uh he's giving America dominance in the most important industries, right?

You want to live in the country that is dominant in the most important industries.

Well, he gives us that.

We're dominant in the most important industries.

Half of that is him.

uh you got the Starlink and then the but I think that all of these have one thing in common that can't be underestimated.

If if you if you look at the collective work that Mus does and how he's good at explaining to us what why he's doing it, why it's good for the world, how he does it.

He's teaching us how to think.

Now, how many of you have felt that like you actually feel that oh, he's not just teaching us about his company, although he's doing that, too.

He's teaching us how to think about these situations and then apply some kind of an engineering framework to it, which usually ends up to be the right one.

All right.

Um, jumping to a new topic, we might pop back to that.

Uh, I think it was, uh, Hakee Jeff who said that Obamacare will be unaffordable to a great number of people by the end of the year.

How did it ever where does all the money go?

Have you ever wondered that?

Like it seems to me that the health care situation must necessarily be a gigantic fraud environment because if you told me that um health care costs would go up 10% because of this or that I would say some version of well I guess the price of everything goes up inflation's bad you know I wish it didn't go up 10%.

But when you start talking about doubling, all right, we're talking about like doubling and stuff for some people.

Isn't that always fraud?

That's just too much.

Like your inst your instinct says I'm pretty sure that the entire problem is fraud.

Now, I'm going to give you a little update.

Yesterday, I had to I had to uh get a uh catheter removed because I was infected and blah blah blah blah.

So, I ended up in the emergency room.

Most of yesterday I probably came in contact with 20 people and maybe one of them did something that I needed an unbelievable um amount of I don't know if all you did was look at the number of people who asked me my name and my birthday once you get into the emergency room.

unbelievably uh inefficient.

And and I'm not mocking my specific healthcare provider.

This just looks like what we've we we've sort of evolved into an insanely insanely over um over something like I I can't believe that if you started from scratch, you would build anything like that.

Now, fortunately, I spend a great amount of money every month so that when it's Friday night, I can talk to a doctor.

How do you think that went?

Do Do you think I can find a doctor to talk to on a Friday night?

No.

And if you find that doctor to talk to uh within my health care system, what will that doctor tell me to do?

And it almost doesn't matter what the problem is.

They'll tell you to go to the emergency room because there's nothing the doctor can do for you.

So, I have this weird health care situation where for reasons I don't understand, I only get really bad problems on weekends.

Do you have that, too?

You you only get really sick or hurt on weekends.

And then there's nobody whose job it is to take care of you.

You have to go to the emergency room.

So, it's an hour to the emergency room.

It's three hours waiting to see somebody.

Uh then maybe uh I think they lost us twice.

Lost us twice.

So I probably spent an extra I don't know half an hour at the start and an extra hour at the end because they literally didn't know what room we were in.

So uh I did get everything taken care of.

So instead of being in screaming pain every day, which I had been for a month, um I've got a new catheter in and doesn't hurt.

It's much better.

So anyway, if you spent any time in our health care system, you would say to yourself uh this is not a problem of reducing costs by 10%.

This entire thing has to be rethought and uh I would like an AI doctor who just followed me around and did the stuff that my healthcare provider wouldn't do.

And then, by the way, there there's always an there's always a variety of things which you know need to be done, but the whoever you're talking to isn't allowed to do it.

It's like, yeah, I know you need that, but I can't do that.

You're going to have to talk to a doctor.

Then you talk to a doctor and the doctor says, "Yeah, you probably do need that, but I can't do that.

You have to talk to a specialist." Right.

That that's healthcare in America 2025.

Anyway, um I will tell you that uh Kaiser's doing it.

They're trying very hard to make sure I don't die because that would be bad for business.

That would be very bad for business.

Uh what is that about?

I don't know.

Um, apparently, uh, according to Newsmax, Meta, the company Meta, uh, several years ago, they did a study in 2020 to find out if, uh, using the using their product, using Facebook and Instagram, if that, uh, cause any harm to people.

And guess what they found?

Yes.

Yes, it does.

Apparently, using their products causes a lot of harm.

um and that uh if you deactivated Facebook and Instagram, you would be mentally healthier.

What do you think they did when they found out that their product was injuring the country?

Did they say, "Oh, no.

We're going to have to discontinue this product." No, they discontinued the study.

You already knew where that was going.

They discontinued the study.

So Meta called off further work on that.

So So apparently they've been busted for that.

Uh Newsmax has that story.

Are you watching?

Are you following the uh the story about uh Attorney General Leticia James and uh so now she's she's the one who lawfared Trump, but now she's being lawfared in essentially exactly the same way.

Um, so people would argue whether it's the same way, but it's the same way.

Uh, how much are you enjoying that?

I I'm having a little problem that I'm enjoying it too much because I've never seen anybody deserve what they're getting as much as she deserves what she's getting because it's so precise.

Um, the fact that it's you, if it were some just random bad thing happening to her, I don't think I'd be feeling the same.

It's the fact that she's being she's being charged with the same crime that typically nobody would be charged with, but she went after Trump with it.

Man, if you go after my guy, if you go after my guy and it doesn't work out for you, he's going to come for you.

That's one of the reasons he's my guy.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

He's going to come for you.

And he's coming.

Uh and and if you if you also feel like this is too heavy-handed, you know, for the president to be coming after Leticia James, a mere attorney general, just think about this.

I'm going to give you something to think about that will make you happy that her life is not going well at the moment.

It goes like this.

For how many months did Melania and Baron have to wonder if they'd be visiting uh their husband slashf father in prison for the rest of his life.

Imagine waking up with that in your head.

Like if you're just watching on the news, you don't quite appreciate uh how awful this must have been.

Now, the Trumps are unusually good at being stoic and and kind of acting like, you know, I'll get through this.

You know, this is my problem.

Don't worry about it.

I got this.

So, they're really good at that.

And they're really good at in this case the the fact that we didn't hear uh any of them complaining about the fact they had to live in a world they had to live in a reality where they're the key person in their family might be in jail any time now.

That that must have been awful.

Like just imagining it every time you woke up it's like gh a year from now am I going to have to get up and put on my makeup and drive to a prison?

Is that actually going to happen to me?

And it almost did.

It almost did.

And now uh now that fate has been returned to Leticia James who probably has to wake up every day and wonder what things look like a year from now if she gets convicted.

Now probably there's no jail, but the conviction is going to be plenty bad if she gets it.

Well, according to the center square, Andrew Rice is writing that California loses one taxpayer per minute and Florida gains a taxpayer every two minutes.

Does that sound true?

Do do you believe that California is losing a taxpayer every minute while Florida is gaining two?

Well, let me tell you something also from my perspective as the guy who used to make the Power.

Point slides.

As I said earlier, this is not the sort of thing anybody can really measure, I I would not believe the accuracy of these numbers at all.

Now, could it be true?

Yeah, it could be.

It could totally be true.

Do you think that any of us could really measure that in a way that you'd feel comfortable you'd measured it correctly?

Nah.

No.

Th this is a classic uh I'm going to make a story.

Nobody's gonna ask too many questions.

Sounds right.

And since it sounds right, people will assume it is right.

But I'm here to tell you that's not the sort of thing that anybody can actually accurately measure.

Um, apparently the Texas Governor Abbott, according to Center Square, also um he wants to issue some directives to make uh I think he's trying to make uh what do you call that?

Sharia law illegal in in Texas.

What do you think?

Do you think Sharia law, the Islamic version of a justice system, do you think that that should be made illegal or is it good enough that we live in a system where that's not your system?

Well, I like the instinct to make it illegal because you don't want to play with, you know, you've got two systems.

Uh, you know, they're about equally good.

Why don't we use this this one sometimes and this one another time?

No.

No.

You you gotta you gotta nip that in the bud.

You got to get that early.

You you cannot allow that to progress to, oh, we got two systems.

Well, why do we always have to use the one?

How many people do we have in the state that would like that other system?

Well, look at that.

Look at all those people who would be happy to use that other system.

We'll just use it a little bit.

We won't use the whole thing.

We'll just take a bite out of it.

No.

How about no hard?

No.

No.

No.

No.

None.

You You You can't start mixing those systems.

It doesn't mix.

You You You got to commit.

Um so I think Texas has the right instinct there.

Um I saw an article that didn't seem like it would be relevant to the United States, but now I'm thinking maybe it is.

So apparently Poland, which is doing well sort of in general, it's one of those countries that um has not been, let's say, too impacted by immigration because they've been tough on migrants.

But even they are running out of money.

So apparently they're trying to give a hund00 million dollars to Ukraine to Zilinski, but at the same time they don't have enough money for some I don't know hundred billion dollar Polish hospital somebody's complaining.

Um and their budget is is under uh it's under duress as well.

And I'm thinking to myself, is every large everything fraud?

because I'm starting to think it is.

You know, when you look at the $ 37 trillion deficit, I think it's 38 now.

How in the world do you get to 38 trillion unless you're stealing as as fast as you can?

Does that look like somebody just ran the numbers wrong?

It's like, oh, uh, here's the budget.

All right, great.

Uh, how close are we to balancing?

Wait, what?

off by three.

We're off by three trillion in one year.

We're off by three trillion.

Can you even tell me how you could spend $3 trillion above the baseline?

Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a lot.

We are talking about trillions.

Trillions of dollars that somehow we accidentally overspend.

I don't believe it.

I just believe that everything big that's got that $100 million or more, maybe $10 million or more, I think it's all fraud.

And I think it's all fraud for the same reason across all the domains.

Do you know what the reason is?

You can get away with it.

We we somehow have a political and financial system where whoever gets to, you know, allocate the funds and whoever gets to be the mayor and, you know, whoever gets to be in charge of whatever, they can apparently really easily hide a trillion dollars and just keep it or launder it or something.

But it's very much looking to me like 100% of our system is corrupt and all for the same reason because we don't have any transparency and the people in charge over time you get people in charge who are willing to steal it because it's stealable and they just notice and so they do.

Um, on the same point, Remix is writing that almost every German city is now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Almost every German city.

Do you think that Germans don't know how to do a spreadsheet?

Do you How in the world could all the Germans miss the budget?

All the Germans.

Have you heard of Germany?

Have you heard of Germans?

You know, by pure chance, a few Germans would would hit the budget.

You do you think that Germans want to have a balanced budget?

Yeah.

Yeah, they do.

I'll bet the Germans want to have a balanced budget more than just about anybody except maybe Japan, you know, and I'm talking culturally.

Do you think Germans want to be overspending their budget?

I don't think so.

And yet every single every single one almost everyone did in fact do it.

How do you explain that except corruption and fraud?

I don't have a way to do it.

I I I think it's literally just corruption and fraud.

That's what I think.

Anyway, there's uh some whispers.

The Daily Express US is writing about this that the US is preparing or getting closer to every moment some kind of a military operation in Venezuela.

I don't know if it'll be a quote allout invasion or maybe a head fake, we don't know.

But uh we're definitely moving continuing to move resources there.

What do you think we should do?

Um, do you think that we're simply putting pressure on the powers that be?

And, uh, it's just one of a variety of ways we're negotiating by essentially suggesting that if they don't give us what we want, uh, there'll be a military invasion.

We don't really have to say it.

We just have to prepare for it.

And then you don't have to say it.

But do you do you notice that there's something missing in this whole Venezuela story?

What what is the dog not barking?

What's the thing that's missing?

The thing you would always have, but at the moment it's missing.

I would say the thing that's missing is who are we negotiating with and what are we asking for?

Do any of you know my because I'm a little worried.

It appears my country is is getting ready to attack a sovereign country and I don't even know who they're talking to.

I don't know what they've asked for.

What would it take for them not to do it?

Is there a specific ask?

Cuz it doesn't look like it to me.

How do you get this far?

And if I were to stop you on the street and say, "Are you American?" Yes.

Uh are you familiar with the the Venezuela situation?

Yes.

Who are we talking to?

Cuz I don't think it's Madura.

I don't think we're talking to the head guy.

Who are we talking to?

And what are we asking for?

And and what are they saying about giving it to us?

You know, part of the reason I wonder is I wonder if they've already offered to give us what we've asked for.

Do you ever wonder about that?

Because didn't we hear early on, I didn't believe it.

So maybe it's the believing it part that's missing.

But doesn't it seem like we made some threats and then Venezuela some said some version of okay let's talk.

Didn't that happen?

I don't believe there's been a phase where they said let's talk and then we talked and then we asked for some stuff and then they said oh no we can never give you that.

Did that ever happen?

So, I I feel like we're on some kind of weird autopilot where we know what it looks like when when the uh the fake news starts moving the country toward war.

Doesn't it feel like we're just you, we residents of the country, we're just part of the machine and and we're just moving along.

Oh, I guess we're moving toward war.

Does anybody know why?

No, you don't know why.

I mean, I could I could tell the story of why.

I mean, I could say we don't want these drugs coming in, but but what would happen if Venezuela said, "All right, you got it.

We will totally shut down the drug trade, but just don't attack us." What would we do?

Would we say, "All right, you got to prove it, but that's a deal." Or would we keep pushing?

I don't know.

Do you?

I kind of want to know.

Then then apparently according to Fox News and and other news um President Trump says the the residents of Chicago are chanting bring in Trump.

Do you think that's happening?

Do you think that anywhere in Chicago there's a group of residents who are chanting we want Trump.

We want Trump.

I think it's hilarious that it doesn't matter if they're doing that.

The the fact that Trump says they are makes you want to argue about it.

Well, show me that video, right?

You really believe that they're chanting that?

No, they might be chanting something negative against Trump.

Show me that video.

I think you're making this up.

And of course, it's just a throwaway line that, you know, that they're chanting.

Now, that's just funny, isn't it?

I if you're looking at Trump in the proper frame of mind, this is just funny that he would put it in those terms when he knows how how that would upset some people.

All right, good job there.

Let's see how many people were injured in Chicago.

Uh there was there was some downtown riot that left eight people shot and one dead.

Jeez.

Um, now you you might say to yourself you might say to yourself, Scott, there is nothing funny about that.

There's nothing funny about people getting shot.

Let's agree to that.

Uh, at least that's what I thought until I got the end of the story, which says the riot, which followed a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

Come on.

I I'm trying to act like a good citizen and not laugh at violence, but but if Chicago had a riot over a Christmas tree lighting, uh I have some advice about traveling to Chicago.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

Stay away.

Yep.

Don't get near that Christmas tree lighting.

That sounds dangerous.

Meanwhile, Trump uh called the mayor of Chicago, Brandon, a low IQ leader.

He says, "I got a bunch of low IQ leaders." And uh but he also insults uh Governor Pritsker for being overweight.

So, he's going hard at Chicago.

Anyway, um let me ask you this.

Why is it that the Democrats are not making more hay?

Is that a thing?

Uh or why are they not making a bigger deal?

Uh the fact that Trump has now labeled a number of black leaders low IQ.

Has he labeled any white leaders low IQ?

Because if he hasn't, I would recommend you throw a few on the list.

You got to get at least, you know, at least one or two white leaders that are low IQ.

You must have that in Portland.

Portland, maybe.

There's got to be something.

But uh I I wonder if he's feeling so free at this point in terms of what he can get away with and what he can say that he doesn't care about making it, you know, DEI friendly and that if he thinks somebody's stupid, he's just going to say it and it has nothing to do with anything except that's what he was thinking.

He was just thinking, "Ah, you're stupid.

I'll say it." I don't know.

I think you'd be a little bit safer.

throw some crackers on that list if you know what I mean.

All right.

Uh here's the reframe that you need and you'll find that this fits with what I said earlier today and you'll be amazed how it it all fits together.

So, as you know, there's a 20 point Trump administration peace plan for Ukraine, but um nobody was born yesterday.

And so we don't think that we're just going to spray this plan out there and Zinski is going to say, "Oh, that's a great idea.

Why didn't we do this before?" And that Putin is going to say, "Well, thanks for the good work.

This is perfect.

We sign up." Nobody thinks people are just going to sign up for it.

It's a starting point.

And as I posted earlier today that uh let let me tell you what Marco Rubio said and then I'm going to put it in my words because I think he could have gone uh to one extra step that would have been really useful and maybe he will.

Uh so Marco said Marco Rubio uh said ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas.

you know, 28 points, that would be extensive.

And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions.

Of course, uh that is why we are and will continue to develop a list, listen to this, we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of the conflict.

Oh, that is perfect.

Once again, Marco Rubio is telling us how to think, not what to think.

Now, there is a list of 28 things that, you know, we want or we think would be good.

But when he describes it as a list of uh literally potential ideas from both sides, that's really moving forward.

Now, I'm going to put this in my own words and then when I put it in my words, see how it hits you.

Okay?

I'm going to say the same thing just my words.

I'm going to say that packetizing packetizing taking things and putting them in little packages which are the 28 points.

Each of the 28 points is like a little packet that once you've packetized it, what can you do with it?

Well, packetizing all the ideas into units that can be traded, compared, and easily communicated is the most important thing that needs to be done at this phase.

We're not talking about a any final agreements.

We're talking about some way to take this complicated situation and turn it into little packets where you can say, "All right, there's a there's a Donbass packet.

there's a Crimea packet.

You can still you can still play with the packets, but but you have to agree that there are packets.

Uh and you could call it something else, just 28 points or whatever.

But until you do that, you cannot really negotiate because there's nothing to give away and there's nothing to get.

You need to put them in discrete, easy to communicate packets.

And when I see Marco using his own words, speaking in those terms, pretty much what I said, but just, you know, his own way to say it, that gives me a lot of confidence.

I got to admit, that gives me a lot of confidence because if I just heard we want 28 things or uh uh there are five things we have to have, I wouldn't necessarily think we' made any progress.

But as soon as you tell me that the goal is to get 28 packets and we can still argue about what the packets are, excellent.

That to me looks like adults trying to figure figure out a really complicated problem.

I don't know where this approach came from or if it's really closer to a normal approach than I'm giving it credit for.

Is this closer to normal than I think it is?

It doesn't look normal.

Uh, it looks like a whole better way of doing it.

I don't know.

We'll see.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you really want is a reframe to wrap things up.

Would you like a reframe from my book?

Uh, my book is called Reframe Your I'm sorry, I accidentally picked up the 2026 Dilbert calendar, which you can only get on Amazon, and it's available now.

It's the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life.

And there are comics on both sides.

I didn't mean to pick that up.

That That was an accident.

We'll put that over there.

But my book, Reframe Your Brain, I'm going to give you an absolutely free reframe.

Wow.

Um I sure hope I put that where I wanted it.

Damn it.

I seem to have put my my bookmark in the middle of the book randomly.

That didn't help me.

All right, here's where I need to be.

Uh, we'll go into the uh social life reframes.

I need I know you need that.

All right.

Um, how many of you think that marriage is about finding a soulmate?

I I feel like, you know, TVs and movies and our sense of romantic entitlement uh kind of ruins our potential for happiness because we're we're sort of imagining that we can have that that kind of situation that they have in the movies.

But uh if you think that marriage is about finding your soulmate, you're going to have a little problem because at some point you're going to say, "How do I know that's my soulmate?

And why does my coworker act like my soulmate all the time?

What's going on here?" So the old frame or the usual frame is that marriage is about finding your soulmate.

Here's a reframe.

Uh marriage is about finding love with someone who values promises.

promises.

Yeah, that that's one you have to think about.

But I'll give you another one.

Uh how about uh how about if you you break up with somebody or maybe there's a tragic death in your in your life and uh you think to yourself, I've lost my soulmate.

Oh no, I've lost my soulmate.

Well, maybe you lost your soulmate.

But here's another way to look at it.

You have a million soul mates and you haven't you haven't met them all?

I mean, do you really think do you really think there's seven billion people and you've got exactly one soulmate?

Really?

Really?

Do you really believe that there just one?

Just one soulmate?

No.

There are probably a million different people that you could come to see as your soulmate and probably a million different people that you could come to trust with your life.

If you can find somebody you could trust with your life and they do what they promised to do over the entire course of your relationship and you're willing to turn them into your soulmate even if they weren't naturally that way just by being honest and uh let's say moral and ethical that would be an excellent situation.

So, I would worry a lot less about the magic of finding your soulmate, and I would worry a lot more about how to turn any good person into somebody that you see as your soulmate um just by the fact that you treat each other really well and that's your agreement.

So, I've always thought that relationships that are based on uh decision are more powerful than relationships that are based on um let's say some internal feeling, right?

If your relationship is based on a feeling, it could change.

It could change.

All right, people.

That's what I got for you today.

Um, I'm going to talk to the uh locals people, my beloved locals people.

Uh, I hope there's something you got out of today that was useful.

Um, you you could probably notice me trying to change the uh the direction of the country.

I think I've I think I'm doing a good job so far.

Uh, how many of you see my influence in other public figures?

I'll ask you a more specific question.

How many of you think you've seen that other public figures are thinking the way I'm thinking or using the tools that I use and you think to yourself, where'd they get that?

Did that come from Scott or somebody that somebody who got it from him?

that got it from someone else.

I don't know.

I'm looking at your comments now.

Yeah.

So, a lot of a lot of you can see it.

So, it's not imaginary.

I remember back in 2016 and I would suggest that maybe people were listening to me and people would say, "Uh, Scott, put your ego away." And I don't think I put my ego away.

But the point is, um, as I've said often, including today, the person with the best idea is always in charge.

So if I can teach you how to think about a topic better than you were thinking about it, and maybe you share that with somebody else and they share it with somebody else, then the way to think about a topic becomes the dominant force.

It's not even the personality.

It's not the person whose job it is to be in charge.

It's just the fact that there's something about the way somebody framed it that's so compelling that you could predict where it's going from that point on.

And that's what I shoot for.

Um, sometimes I hit it and sometimes I don't.

All right, locals coming at you.

Coming at you.

All right, we'll be on locals in 30 seconds.

Good morning everybody.

Come on in here. I want you to flow in

here like you're a you're attacking a

foreign country that really has it

coming. [gasps] And while you're doing

that, I will get ready to give you the

highest quality podcast you're going to

see today. Because not everybody's

working on a Sunday, but darn it, some

of you are, and I definitely

[clears throat] am. You ready for this?

Who's ready?

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, yeah, you

want to take a chance on elevating your

experience to levels that nobody can

even understand with their tiny shiny

human brains. Well, for that all you

need is

a cuper mug or a glass of tanker challen

jug or flask a vessel of any kind. Fill

it with your favorite liquid. I like

coffee. And join me now for the

unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine hit

of the day thing makes everything

better. It's called the simultaneous

sip. in it.

Sorry, I accidentally picked up the

incredible 2026 Dilbert calendar like

it's some kind of commercial or

something instead of the coffee cup.

What I meant is the coffee cup. Here it

comes. The simultaneous sip. Go.

[sighs]

Well, that won't happen to you because

you can only buy this the calendar at

Amazon. But you knew that. You knew it.

You knew it.

All right. Well, let's jump into the

news. It'll be so good. Uh, did you

know,

so this is so Trump Trump's going to his

helicopter, I think he was, and one of

the reporters asked him, uh, if he would

reconcile with Representative Marjgery

Taylor Green, you know, the same way he

did with Elon Musk. What do you think?

He said,

"Well," he said, "Uh, sure, why not? I

get along with everybody.

[laughter]

Is that the perfect answer? I get along

with everybody." Because you want to

argue with them, right? You're like, you

don't get along with everybody. What

about What about Oh, okay. Well, I guess

you do kind of get along with them, but

what about what about So, first of all,

it makes your hair catch on fire if you

don't think it's factually true, but

it's close enough to be factually true

that, you know, I I I will allow it. But

I love the fact that he has created this

persona for himself where he can

absolutely maul somebody in public

verbally and then five minutes later he

can say, "Yeah, why don't you go on

over? We'll have dinner. we'll be best

friends and that everybody goes, "Oh,

okay. I get it. It's part of the show.

It's just part of the show." Once you

realize it's part of the show, you can

just lean back and enjoy it the way it

was meant to be. So, yes.

[clears throat] Do we want Trump to

dislike Marjgery Taylor Green? No. We

want her to be a productive

part of society, a patriot. Uh, would

you not want her on your team?

Think about it. Now, I get that she

disagrees with you on some policy stuff,

right? Or maybe she doesn't, but you

wouldn't want her on your team. Think

about it. If you were picking teams for

anything, you wouldn't want her on your

team. Yeah, of course you would. So

would he. So, he plays it just right in

the way that Trump can. Um, so hurricane

season is winding down and Axios is

reminding us that there have been uh how

many named hurricanes have made made uh

landfall in the US in the mainland.

Anyway, how many hurricanes this year do

you know the number? The answer is zero.

Now, there usually aren't that many. You

know, like a normal normal year might be

two, but we're talking about two major

storms that would, you know, cost

billions of dollars. This year, none. Do

you think that all the news is talking

about is how climate crisis has been

avoided and maybe it was never real in

the first place? No, that's not going to

happen right away. But we're heading in

that direction.

Uh, I will tell you again

how to run the entire country. You

ready? If you wanted to take charge of

the whole country and you didn't have a

elected position, you're not a

billionaire. You just want to figure out

some clever way where you, and I mean

you, like specifically you, could take

over the whole country. There is a way

to do that.

And uh this hurricane situation reminded

me of it. I've talked about this before.

In the corporate world, the way we think

of things is that there's a a line of

executives and somebody reports to

somebody reports to somebody. So if you

see one of those executives giving a uh

PowerPoint slideshow to maybe that

executive's boss, you think to yourself,

well that executive giving giving the

presentation is in charge of that domain

and uh is giving a presentation to

someone who's in charge of him, you

know, because he's got to get approval

or something. So it looks to you like

the normal corporate structure is

working the way you think. However,

having worked in the corporate world and

having put together quite a number of

slides for other executives or just

executives,

uh, here's something I learned that

everyone who's been in that same

position probably learned the same way.

Whoever comes up with the best slide or

you could replace slide with idea or

framework or reframe or way to look at

something or relevant data. This this

will all be the same for my purpose.

That person's actually in charge.

Let let me

plump this out a little bit and you'll

see what I'm talking about. If I wanted

to run the world and wasn't already,

I'll just let that sit there for a

while. If I weren't already, the way I'd

do it is I would try to figure out what

the top 10 climate variables are that

people would agree, all right, if that's

changing, there must be a problem with

climate and and humans behind it. and I

would get the top 10 and then I would

create an ongoing

uh what do you call it a dashboard a

dashboard sort that's sort of a

corporate talk a dashboard would be

usually one page

uh on a screen that very quickly tells

you some set of information that makes

sense together. So, I would say, "All

right, let's figure out the 10 things

you should look at for climate change."

And hurricanes would be one of them. But

you'd also have the temperatures. You'd

have the the water level at certain

places. So, I don't even know if they're

10. Maybe they're five, but I think

they're at least 10. So, you'd have So,

you would be the one who pulls together

this dashboard and then you just put it

on X. What would happen if you did a

good job? What would happen? People

would pass it around and they would say,

"Whoa, I'm smarter now because I know

that these 10 things are important. I

know the order in which they're

important because you would also rank

them from which one's the most

predictive,

right? Maybe which one is the most, you

know, dangerous, but most predictive as

well." And then if you did a good job,

people would want to uh bookmark it and

they would ask you to update it when

there was new information and it would

take on a life of its own almost

immediately. Do you know why you could

totally disrupt this mature science area

without actually having any science

background? Do you know why that would

be so easy? Because no one else is

trying. There's no one even trying. Do

you know of anybody who put together the

uh a really easy to read everybody

agrees, yeah, these these 10 things are

the things we should be watching? No.

And part of the reason that nobody's

doing it is that the people who have

access to it, the information that would

make that dashboard are probably not

getting the the results that they wanted

to get. So if they were a little bit

more, let's say, capable

at describing what's actually happening

in the world, their capability would

destroy their own their own industry

because they would end up proving that

uh maybe you didn't have to worry so

much about this stuff. But since I'm not

a climate scientist,

I would not be bound by that. I could

just tell you what you need to know as

best I could do it. So I'd just start

publishing it. Then what happened when

it started working? What what happens

when people start recognizing all right

uh we need an update on this climate

story. Uh no matter what no matter what

the story is, wouldn't it make sense to

have the climate dashboard referenced as

just part of the story? Could be a story

about uh the coral reefs, but also let

me show you the dashboard. could be a

story about the hurricanes, but you

know, proper context. Let me show you,

you know, the console. So once you did

this for climate, you don't think people

would ask for it for crime.

You don't think people would ask for it

for other big topics? They would. And if

you were the one who could do it best

and had some reputation for, you know,

being a straight shooter, pretty soon

you would be the one who decides what

information is relevant to this domain

and what isn't. You might be right, you

might be wrong, but it's not objective.

There would be a lot of subjectivity in

deciding what's even on the list. And

then there'd be a lot of subjectivity in

deciding how to measure it properly,

etc.

And that would be enough subjectivity,

I say, that it would put you essentially

in control of the entire domain. Nobody

would necessarily know it. They would

just think that you were a useful person

who had something to say about the data,

but you would actually be running the

whole show because you would determine

what data anybody saw. And if you became

credible, they'd kind of have to

reference your data every single time

they did anything important in that

domain. So that's how you do it, people.

You become the the PowerPoint slide

expert. And if you become known as the

only person who can describe this

complicated thing in a very

transportable,

viral way, you're going to run the whole

show.

There you go.

Uh, I wonder if there's any backward

science. Oh, here we go. Cambridge

University Press found that uh, there's

a study that watching less TV could cut

your depression risk by up to 43%.

Does that make sense to you? Sort of.

Yeah, you you can see how watching less

TV would Oh, no you don't. [laughter]

No, it's backwards. What do you do when

you're depressed? You watch more TV. Do

you know why? Well, part of being

depressed is you didn't have an awesome

thing to be doing instead. Would you be

depressed if, let's say, uh, I don't

know, the president invited you to the

Oval Office? No. You'd be all excited.

You'd be excited. Watching TV is sort of

the default. Uh, I got nothing going on

in my life. I might as well turn on the

TV. See if there's a game. No.

So, it might also be true that watching

TV makes you a little more depressed,

but I guarantee you that being depressed

is going to make you reach for that

clicker faster than not being depressed.

All right.

Um, I can't remember how much or if I

talked about this before, but I'm sure I

did. So, this is a from a story back in

April and the New York Post. Uh, I saw I

saw the New York Post talking about it

today. Um, and it was Bill Maher who was

talking about way back in April when uh

his friend and uh I guess Hollywood uh

Hollywood partner uh Larry David, not

partner but you know another person who

works in the entertainment industry.

So Larry David was not happy when Bill

Maher went to dinner with Trump.

And so Larry David wrote a humorous

piece, an op-ed about uh my dinner with

Adolf.

So he did a funny piece

mocking essentially mocking Bill Maher

for imagining that there was a you know

good reason to ever have dinner with

Hitler meaning that he was you know

calling Trump Hitler. What did Bill

Maher say about this now that he's had

several months to marinate on this

situation? He said that uh Larry David

was being dumb and unhelpful.

Dumb and unhelpful.

And uh then Bill Maher went on

um to do what he's been doing lately,

which is uh explained that you should

always talk to people. And what Trump

does, and I the example with Marjgery

Taylor Green is a perfect example. What

uh Trump does is that he's willing to

talk to everybody. And Bill Maher is now

a complete uh complete convert. Maybe he

always was. uh to you can talk to

anybody you want and we're better off if

we talk than if we don't talk. Now, you

can imagine I'm 100% in agreement with

Bill Maher. However, there was a

specific quote that apparently Bill

Maher used when he talked to Piers

Morgan at about the same time as the,

you know, he was talking about the 20

the uh dinner with Trump. Listen to this

quote. quote, "But I think the minute

you play the Hitler card, you've lost

the argument." Now, he was talking about

um the op-ed by Larry David. I think the

minute you play the Hitler card, you've

lost the argument.

What does that sound like?

How many of you remember my debate, but

it wasn't really a debate with Sam

Harris at around 2016 that became super

viral and probably just about every one

of you heard it, right? Did you hear me

say that at the beginning of the debate

because I think it was like 60 seconds

into my uh talking to Sam Harris,

probably a minute. Yeah, of course I'm

remembering it, so I may be remembering

it wrong. Um, he brought up Hitler,

compared Trump to Hitler, and and I

said, "Ah, we're done here." I said some

version of basically, you know, that's

the end of the debate. Whoever brings up

Hitler, you just lost. And then years go

by, because that was probably back in

2016 or so. Now remember I keep telling

you that

what defines not defines but a

difference between Republicans and

Democrats is that Democrats try to tell

you what to think. You know this is

moral, this is immoral, this is right,

this is wrong and Republicans try to

tell you how to think.

Which one is Bill Maher doing in this

example where he says the minute you

play the Hitler card, you've lost the

argument.

That's telling you how to think. That's

not telling you what to think. So, you

can see the transition, right?

And when he looks at Larry David, Larry

David's just Hitler, no Hitler. Hitler,

no Hitler. Doesn't that just seem

stupid? I mean, that's basically what

what Bill Maher was saying. It just

looks stupid. Um, yeah.

So

um

uh so this is also what uh Bill Maher

said on the same topic and he said and

also I must say you know come on man

Hiller Nazis nobody nobody has been

harder about and on and more preient I

must say about Donald Trump than me.

Bill Maher says I don't need to be

lectured on who Donald Trump is. Just

the fact that I met him in person didn't

change that. And the fact that I

reported honestly is not a sin either.

So what is it when he says met him in

person and reported honestly on it?

That's process.

Again, he's totally right on process. So

watching Bill Maher try to navigate this

situation and try to get a foot in both

worlds is really fascinating and I give

him a lot of credit because

um it's a pretty rocky road. [laughter]

[clears throat] You know, having been

down that road in a more extreme version

myself and finding out what happens when

you say anything positive about the way

Trump does business. Uh, I know how

tough that is. And he's going through

he's taken on some water. I guarantee

it. This is not easy. So, I'm gonna uh

in the past, you've seen me sometimes

say some good things about Bill and

sometimes be critical. Today, I'm going

to be completely supportive. Not of his

opinions. He he's allowed to have

different opinions, but of his uh

apparent

focus and how he's essentially training

his audience the way I'm trying to train

mine into how to approach a problem and

not so much what the answer is. The

answer is up to you. But how to approach

it? Well, you want to do that, right?

Right.

All right. Well, along those lines, and

I've often said, this is sort of a

related topic, that having Elon Musk on

what I would call the common sense uh

side of things. I wouldn't call him, you

know, Republican or anything like that,

but he's squarely on the common sense

side of things. And I was thinking today

how many things Elon Musk has changed

and how in the process of that he's also

teaching us how to think and how to act.

He's kind of teaching us how to be

engineers. Not the actual skill of

engineering but how an engineer would

approach a problem. Have any of you

noticed that? that if you simply watch

how Elon Musk approaches any problem,

and I would argue that maybe the all-in

pod guys, they do the same thing. If you

simply observe them over time,

you learn how to approach problems. And

you would say to yourself, "Oh, that's

that's like that time, I know, Chimoth

did this or that, or it's like the time

that Elon did this or that." And then

you can take that model and and build

it, you know, put it into your own

world. Tremendously valuable. But on top

of that, um I saw that uh RFK Jr. was

saying at some event that he believes

that Elon Musk rescued free speech

by buying uh what was Twitter? Would you

agree with that statement that he

rescued free speech by buying Twitter? I

I think so. I think that's completely

fair. That would put him, if you buy

that as a true statement, and I do, that

would put Elon in the founding father's

category like with without, you know,

the the time of course is different, but

that would put him squarely right in the

middle of saving the republic. And I and

I think he gets complete credit for

that. But back to my overarching theme,

he didn't just say free speech is good.

Hey everybody, why don't you practice

some free speech? Nope. He showed you

how to get it. He showed you how to get

there. Sometimes you got to buy the

company. Now, he could do it. You

couldn't, but he showed it. He He showed

you how to rescue free speech. And in

this case, he did it through a I guess

I'd call it a free market approach.

And so you can learn that if you if you

use the free market appropriately,

you can get to where you want to get,

which is free of speech, in a way that

teaches people how to think. Hey, the

only way you're going to have real free

speech is if there's a free market

platform that lets you say what you need

to say without getting cancelled.

And then he proved it by building that

platform you know modifying a platform

then and that's just the beginning just

he was talking today about his chip

design that Tesla will be the biggest

chip designer in the world in a fairly

short period of time. He's also taught

you how to start companies at some kind

of record speed that we've never seen

before. Uh, and now he's decided that

Tesla has to be the big uh, hey, let's

get rid of a counterbalance.

Counterbalance, you're going to

disappear from uh, I think you're on the

YouTube platform. But that's that's the

second time I've seen that comment. So,

you're going to disappear now. Um, maybe

today, but we're going to get you.

Um

then so so this is just you know a

little one small part of what Musk and

Tesla are doing but he'll probably teach

you that America can build um chips.

So so [clears throat] you're going to

learn a whole bunch about manufacturing

and chip design and all that just

because he's doing it and he's

transparent about how he's doing it.

Then there's the uh I saw him a clip I

think he was on Joe Rogan talking about

the economics of homelessness.

And a lot of people don't understand

that homelessness

isn't so much just about giving people

homes. They wouldn't want to live in

those homes if you gave them to them

because they're mentally insane or

they're on drugs or whatever else. Um,

and he also pointed out, I didn't know

this, that the economics of homelessness

in California

is that there's this whole industry of

people get paid to take care of the

homeless, as long as they don't solve

their problem. If they solved their

problem and these people were no longer

homeless, which is sort of undoable, uh

then they wouldn't get their

collectively a million dollars a year to

keep the people alive but homeless.

So if you followed the money, you would

completely understand why there's so

much homelessness. And that would be a

way to think about it, wouldn't it? It's

not the answer. It's a way to think

about it. So if you change from, hey, if

only we give these people homes,

you know, then they would be on their

way. They could do the rest. That way of

thinking is a complete failure because

it doesn't recognize that uh the whole

industry is propped up by people trying

to steal your taxpayer money and give

you nothing in return. Once Elon

explains that we're trapped in this

little system where the people who are

running it are making a lot of money as

long as they don't solve the problem,

then everything makes sense, doesn't it?

Now, that doesn't mean that we

immediately have a solution, but at

least you'd be solving the right

problem, right? That that's a big

difference uh when you see the problem

clearly as Elon, you know, explains it

to us. Um then I saw Elon talking about

how the only only the interesting

simulations because you know he believes

that we're part of a simulation as do I

that reality is a simulation. Um he

points out that only the interesting

simulations would survive.

Uh and and then he gives the reason

because if we had a boring simulation uh

we'd stop doing it because it wouldn't

be doing anything for us. just boring

us. So, the interesting ones are the

only ones that can survive

and therefore it's logical to assume

that they're the only ones that do.

And I've got a version of this. So, this

this is part of his explanation of why

the world seems so interesting, I think,

[laughter] or why you could predict

something based on how interesting it

is. I do a I have a version of that, but

it's different, which is I believe that

reality follows the three the threeact

movie form. Now, that's something I've

been saying since 2015, I think. Uh, and

here's why I think it follows a threeact

movie form. It's because we've all been

trained in the three-act form. If we had

not been trained in it, I don't know

that it would happen. But you take a

bunch of human beings and you put them

in a situation. Let's say Trump is

nearly jailed and impeached. That would

be a classic movie third act where,

okay, there's no way he can get away

from that. And then if I said, but what

would it look like if it were a movie?

And we would all have the same answer,

which is, well, he would somehow not go

to jail. somehow the impeachment

wouldn't take hold and somehow he would

win re-election because that would be

the most satisfying movie. Sure enough.

Sure enough, that's what happened. Now,

I think that we live in a simulation and

our expectations collapse reality. And

so, if enough of us are simply expecting

things to go a certain way that it

actually collapses reality in that

direction. Now

I I wouldn't bet my life on it that my

interpretation is correct but just so

you know. So

um also I've noted that uh you know how

we all understand NOS's

now we didn't know what an NGO was a

couple years ago and that's because of

Elon Musk and it's because of Doge and

Doge even exists only because of Musk.

uh the the concept of Doge which has

taken root in the government. Um, so if

you look at all the things that just

Elon has done, there's the one I've

mentioned and of course Mike Benz is,

you know, a champion of the NGO

explainer class, but uh I don't know if

you'd even know about it without Elon

Musk, but uh let's see. He's I I think

that Elon Musk is the most important

person in the climate crisis

conversation

because he he can basically describe a

world where you use solar power to get

everything you want. They might be solar

panels in space, but he already told you

how to do it. We have all the technology

we need to put solar panels in space and

have all the energy we want. And he can

show you how. Uh he's got the neurolink,

the interplanetary travel. He's figured

out how to uh get around our energy

shortage. He he talks about how the

robots will be free doctors. So, he's

solving health care. Uh he's giving

America dominance in the most important

industries, right? You want to live in

the country that is dominant in the most

important industries. Well, he gives us

that.

We're dominant in the most important

industries. Half of that is him. uh you

got the Starlink and then the but I

think that all of these have one thing

in common that can't be underestimated.

If if you if you look at the collective

work that Mus does and how he's good at

explaining to us what why he's doing it,

why it's good for the world, how he does

it. He's teaching us how to think.

Now, how many of you have felt that like

you actually feel that oh, he's not just

teaching us about his company, although

he's doing that, too. He's teaching us

how to think about these situations and

then apply some kind of an engineering

framework to it, which usually ends up

to be the right one.

All right.

Um,

jumping to a new topic, we might pop

back to that. Uh, I think it was, uh,

Hakee Jeff who said that Obamacare

will be unaffordable to a great number

of people by the end of the year. How

did it ever

where does all the money go?

Have you ever wondered that? Like it

seems to me that the health care

situation must necessarily be a gigantic

fraud environment because if you told me

that um health care costs would go up

10% because of this or that I would say

some version of well I guess the price

of everything goes up inflation's bad

you know I wish it didn't go up 10%. But

when you start talking about doubling,

all right, we're talking about like

doubling and stuff for some people.

Isn't that always fraud? That's just too

much. Like your inst your instinct says

I'm pretty sure that the entire problem

is fraud. Now, I'm going to give you a

little update. Yesterday, I had to I had

to uh get a uh catheter removed because

I was infected and blah blah blah blah.

So, I ended up in the emergency room.

Most of yesterday

I probably

came in contact with 20 people and maybe

one of them did something that I needed

an unbelievable

um amount of I don't know if all you did

was look at the number of people who

asked me my name and my birthday once

you get into the emergency room.

unbelievably

uh inefficient. And and I'm not mocking

my specific healthcare provider. This

just looks like what we've we we've sort

of evolved into an insanely insanely

over

um over something like I I can't believe

that if you started from scratch, you

would build anything like that. Now,

fortunately, I spend a great amount of

money every month so that when it's

Friday night, I can talk to a doctor.

How do you think that went? Do Do you

think I can find a doctor to talk to on

a Friday night? No. And if you find that

doctor to talk to uh within my health

care system, what will that doctor tell

me to do? And it almost doesn't matter

what the problem is. They'll tell you to

go to the emergency room because there's

nothing the doctor can do for you. So, I

have this weird health care situation

where for reasons I don't understand, I

only get really bad problems on

weekends. Do you have that, too? You you

only get really sick or hurt on

weekends. And then there's nobody whose

job it is to take care of you. You have

to go to the emergency room. So, it's an

hour to the emergency room. It's three

hours waiting to see somebody. Uh then

maybe uh I think they lost us twice.

Lost us twice. So I probably spent an

extra I don't know half an hour at the

start and an extra hour at the end

because they literally didn't know what

room we were in.

[laughter]

So uh I did get everything taken care

of. So instead of being in screaming

pain every day, which I had been for a

month, um I've got a new catheter in and

doesn't hurt.

It's much better. So anyway, if you

spent any time in our health care

system, you would say to yourself uh

this is not a problem of reducing costs

by 10%.

This entire thing has to be rethought

and uh I would like an AI doctor

who just followed me around and did the

stuff that my healthcare provider

wouldn't do. And then, by the way, there

there's always an there's always a

variety of things which you know need to

be done, but the whoever you're talking

to isn't allowed to do it. It's like,

yeah, I know you need that, but I can't

do that. You're going to have to talk to

a doctor. Then you talk to a doctor and

the doctor says, "Yeah, you probably do

need that, but I can't do that. You have

to talk to a specialist."

Right. That that's healthcare in America

2025.

Anyway, um I will tell you that uh

Kaiser's doing it. They're trying very

hard to make sure I don't die because

that would be bad for business.

That would be very bad for business.

Uh

what is that about? I don't know. Um,

apparently, uh, according to Newsmax,

Meta, the company Meta, uh, several

years ago, they did a study in 2020 to

find out if, uh, using the using their

product, using Facebook and Instagram,

if that, uh, cause any harm to people.

And guess what they found? Yes. Yes, it

does. Apparently, using their products

causes a lot of harm.

um and that uh if you deactivated

Facebook and Instagram, you would be

mentally healthier. What do you think

they did when they found out that their

product was injuring the country? Did

they say, "Oh, no. We're going to have

to discontinue this product." No, they

discontinued the study. [laughter]

You already knew where that was going.

They discontinued the study. [laughter]

So Meta called off further work

on that. So So apparently they've been

busted for that. Uh Newsmax has that

story.

Are you watching? Are you following the

uh the story about uh Attorney General

Leticia James and uh so now she's she's

the one who lawfared Trump, but now

she's being lawfared in essentially

exactly the same way. Um, so people

would argue whether it's the same way,

but it's the same way. Uh, how much are

you enjoying that? I I'm having a little

problem that I'm enjoying it too much

because I've never seen anybody deserve

what they're getting as much as she

deserves what she's getting because it's

so precise. Um, the fact that it's you,

if it were some just random bad thing

happening to her, I don't think I'd be

feeling the same. It's the fact that

she's being she's being charged with the

same crime that typically nobody would

be charged with, but she went after

Trump with it. Man, if you go after my

guy,

if you go after my guy and it doesn't

work out for you, he's going to come for

you.

That's one of the reasons he's my guy.

You know what I mean? [laughter]

Yeah. He's going to come for you. And

he's coming. Uh

and and if you if you also feel like

this is too heavy-handed,

you know, for the president to be coming

after Leticia James, a mere attorney

general,

just think about this. I'm going to give

you something to think about that will

make you happy that her life is not

going well at the moment. It goes like

this. For how many months did Melania

and Baron have to wonder if they'd be

visiting uh their husband slashf father

in prison for the rest of his life.

Imagine waking up with that in your

head. Like if you're just watching on

the news, you don't quite appreciate

uh how awful this must have been. Now,

the Trumps are unusually good at being

stoic and and kind of acting like, you

know, I'll get through this. You know,

this is my problem. Don't worry about

it. I got this. So, they're really good

at that. And they're really good at in

this case the the fact that we didn't

hear

uh any of them complaining about the

fact they had to live in a world they

had to live in a reality

where they're the key person in their

family might be in jail any time now.

That that must have been awful. Like

just imagining it every time you woke up

it's like gh a year from now am I going

to have to get up and put on my makeup

and drive to a prison? Is that actually

going to happen to me? And it almost

did. It almost did.

And now uh now that fate has been

returned to Leticia James who probably

has to wake up every day and wonder what

things look like a year from now if she

gets convicted. Now probably there's no

jail, but the conviction is going to be

plenty bad if she gets it.

Well, according to the center square,

Andrew Rice is writing that California

loses one taxpayer per minute and

Florida gains a taxpayer every two

minutes.

Does that sound true? Do do you believe

that California is losing a taxpayer

every minute while Florida is gaining

two? Well, let me tell you something

also from my perspective as the guy who

used to make the PowerPoint slides. As I

said earlier, this is not the sort of

thing anybody can really measure,

I I would not believe the accuracy of

these numbers at all. Now, could it be

true? Yeah, it could be. It could

totally be true. Do you think that any

of us could really measure that in a way

that you'd feel comfortable you'd

measured it correctly?

Nah. No. Th this is a classic uh I'm

going to make a story. Nobody's gonna

ask too many questions. Sounds right.

And since it sounds right, people will

assume it is right. But I'm here to tell

you that's not the sort of thing that

anybody can actually accurately measure.

Um,

apparently the Texas Governor Abbott,

according to Center Square, also um he

wants to issue some directives to make

uh I think he's trying to make uh

what do you call that? Sharia law

illegal in in Texas. What do you think?

Do you think Sharia law, the Islamic

version of a justice system, do you

think that that should be made illegal

or is it good enough that we live in a

system where that's not your system?

Well, I like the instinct to make it

illegal because you don't want to play

with, you know, you've got two systems.

Uh, you know, they're about equally

good. Why don't we use this this one

sometimes and this one another time? No.

No. You you gotta you gotta nip that in

the bud. You got to get that early.

[laughter]

You you cannot allow that to progress

to, oh, we got two systems. Well, why do

we always have to use the one?

How many people do we have in the state

that would like that other system? Well,

look at that. Look at all those people

who would be happy to use that other

system. We'll just use it a little bit.

We won't use the whole thing. We'll just

take a bite out of it. No. How about no

hard? No. No. No. No. None. You You You

can't start mixing those systems.

It doesn't mix. You You You got to

commit.

Um so I think Texas has the right

instinct there.

Um I saw an article that didn't seem

like it would be relevant to the United

States, but now I'm thinking maybe it

is. So apparently Poland,

which is doing well sort of in general,

it's one of those countries that um has

not been, let's say, too impacted by

immigration because they've been tough

on migrants.

But even they are running out of money.

So apparently they're trying to give a

hund00 million dollars to Ukraine to

Zilinski, but at the same time they

don't have enough money for some I don't

know hundred billion dollar Polish

hospital somebody's complaining.

Um and their budget is is under uh it's

under duress as well. And I'm thinking

to myself,

is every large everything fraud?

because I'm starting to think it is.

You know, when you look at the $ 37

trillion deficit, I think it's 38 now.

How in the world do you get to 38

trillion unless you're stealing as as

fast as you can? Does that look like

somebody just ran the numbers wrong?

It's like, oh, uh, here's the budget.

All right, great. Uh, how close are we

to balancing?

Wait, what?

off by three. We're off by three

trillion

in one year.

We're off by three trillion. Can you

even tell me how you could spend $3

trillion

above the baseline? Now, I'm

exaggerating a little bit, but not a

lot. We are talking about trillions.

Trillions of dollars that somehow we

accidentally overspend.

I don't believe it. I just believe that

everything big that's got that $100

million or more, maybe $10 million or

more, I think it's all fraud. And I

think it's all fraud for the same reason

across all the domains. Do you know what

the reason is? You can get away with it.

We we somehow have a political and

financial system where whoever gets to,

you know, allocate the funds and whoever

gets to be the mayor and, you know,

whoever gets to be in charge of

whatever, they can apparently

really easily hide a trillion dollars

and just keep it or launder it or

something. But

it's very much looking to me like 100%

of our system is corrupt and all for the

same reason because we don't have any

transparency and the people in charge

over time you get people in charge who

are willing to steal it because it's

stealable and they just notice and so

they do. Um, on the same point, Remix is

writing that almost every German city is

now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Almost every German city. Do you think

that Germans don't know how to do a

spreadsheet?

Do you [laughter]

How in the world could all the Germans

miss the budget? All the Germans. Have

you heard of Germany? Have you heard of

Germans?

You know, by pure chance, a few Germans

would would hit the budget. You do you

think that Germans want to have a

balanced budget?

Yeah. Yeah, they do. I'll bet the

Germans want to have a balanced budget

more than just about anybody

except maybe Japan, you know, and I'm

talking culturally. Do you think Germans

want to be overspending their budget? I

don't think so. And yet every single

every single one almost everyone did in

fact do it. How do you explain that

except corruption and fraud? I don't

have a way to do it. I I I think it's

literally just corruption and fraud.

That's what I think.

Anyway, there's uh some whispers. The

Daily Express US is writing about this

that the US is preparing or getting

closer to every moment some kind of a

military operation in Venezuela.

I don't know if it'll be a quote allout

invasion or maybe a head fake, we don't

know. But uh we're definitely moving

continuing to move resources there. What

do you think we should do?

Um, do you think that we're simply

putting pressure on the powers that be?

And, uh, it's just one of a variety of

ways we're negotiating by essentially

suggesting that if they don't give us

what we want, uh, there'll be a military

invasion. We don't really have to say

it. We just have to prepare for it. And

then you don't have to say it.

But do you do you notice that there's

something missing in this whole

Venezuela story?

What what is the dog not barking? What's

the thing that's missing? The thing you

would always have, but at the moment

it's missing. I would say the thing

that's missing is who are we negotiating

with and what are we asking for? Do any

of you know my because I'm a little

worried. It appears my country is is

getting ready to attack a sovereign

country and I don't even know who

they're talking to. I don't know what

they've asked for. What would it take

for them not to do it? Is there a

specific ask? Cuz it doesn't look like

it to me.

How do you get this far? And if I were

to stop you on the street and say, "Are

you American?" Yes. Uh are you familiar

with the the Venezuela situation? Yes.

Who are we talking to? Cuz I don't think

it's Madura. I don't think we're talking

to the head guy. Who are we talking to?

And what are we asking for? And and what

are they saying about giving it to us?

You know, part of the reason I wonder is

I wonder if they've already offered to

give us what we've asked for.

Do you ever wonder about that? Because

didn't we hear early on, I didn't

believe it. So maybe it's the believing

it part that's missing. But doesn't it

seem like we made some threats and then

Venezuela some said some version of okay

let's talk. Didn't that happen?

I don't believe there's been a phase

where they said let's talk and then we

talked and then we asked for some stuff

and then they said oh no we can never

give you that. Did that ever happen?

So, I I feel like we're on some kind of

weird autopilot where we know what it

looks like when when the uh the fake

news starts moving the country toward

war. Doesn't it feel like we're just

you, we residents of the country, we're

just part of the machine and and we're

just moving along. Oh, I guess we're

moving toward war. Does anybody know

why? No, you don't know why. I mean, I

could I could tell the story of why. I

mean, I could say we don't want these

drugs coming in, but but what would

happen if Venezuela said, "All right,

you got it.

We will totally shut down the drug

trade, but just don't attack us." What

would we do? Would we say, "All right,

you got to prove it, but that's a deal."

Or would we keep pushing? I don't know.

Do you? I kind of want to know. Then

then apparently according to Fox News

and and other news

um President Trump says the the

residents of Chicago are chanting bring

in Trump. [laughter]

Do you think that's happening? Do you

think that anywhere in Chicago there's a

group of residents who are chanting we

want Trump. We want Trump.

I think it's [clears throat] hilarious

that it doesn't matter if they're doing

that. The the fact that Trump says they

are makes you want to argue about it.

Well, show me that video, right? You

really believe that they're chanting

that? No, they might be chanting

something negative against Trump. Show

me that video. I think you're making

this up. And of course, it's just a

throwaway line that, you know, that

they're chanting.

Now, that's [clears throat] just funny,

isn't it? I if you're looking at Trump

in the proper frame of mind, this is

just funny that he would put it in those

terms when he knows how how that would

upset some people.

All right, good job there.

Let's see how many people were injured

in Chicago.

Uh there was there was some downtown

riot that left eight people shot and one

dead. Jeez.

Um, now you you might say to yourself

you might say to yourself, Scott, there

is nothing funny about that.

There's nothing funny about people

getting shot. Let's agree to that. Uh,

at least that's what I thought until I

got the end of the story, which says the

riot, which followed a Christmas tree

lighting ceremony.

Come on. I I'm trying to act like a good

citizen and not laugh at violence,

but but if Chicago had a riot over a

Christmas tree lighting, [snorts] uh I

have some advice about traveling to

Chicago.

Don't do it.

Don't do it. Stay away. [laughter]

Yep. Don't get near that Christmas tree

lighting. That sounds dangerous.

Meanwhile, Trump uh called the mayor of

Chicago, Brandon, a low IQ leader. He

says, "I got a bunch of low IQ leaders."

And uh but he also insults uh Governor

Pritsker for being overweight. So, he's

going hard at Chicago.

Anyway, um let me ask you this.

Why is it that the Democrats are not

making more hay? Is that a thing? Uh or

why are they not making a bigger deal?

Uh the fact that Trump has now labeled a

number of black leaders low IQ.

Has he labeled any white leaders low IQ?

Because if he hasn't, I would recommend

you throw a few on the list. You got to

get at least, you know, at least one or

two white leaders that are low IQ. You

must have that in Portland. Portland,

maybe. There's got to be something. But

uh I I wonder if he's feeling so free at

this point in terms of what he can get

away with and what he can say that he

doesn't care about making it, you know,

DEI friendly and that if he thinks

somebody's stupid, he's just going to

say it and it has nothing to do with

anything except that's what he was

thinking. He was just thinking, "Ah,

you're stupid. I'll say it." I don't

know. I think you'd be a little bit

safer.

throw some crackers on that list if you

know what I mean. All right. Uh

here's the reframe that you need and

you'll find that this fits with what I

said earlier today and you'll be amazed

how it it all fits together. So, as you

know, there's a 20 point Trump

administration peace plan for Ukraine,

but um nobody was born yesterday. And so

we don't think that we're just going to

spray this plan out there and Zinski is

going to say, "Oh, that's a great idea.

Why didn't we do this before?" And that

Putin is going to say, "Well, thanks for

the good work. This is perfect. We sign

up." Nobody thinks people are just going

to sign up for it. It's a starting

point. And as I posted earlier today

that uh let let me tell you what Marco

Rubio said and then I'm going to put it

in my words because I think he could

have gone uh to one extra step that

would have been really useful and maybe

he will. Uh so Marco said Marco Rubio uh

said ending a complex and deadly war

such as the one in Ukraine requires an

extensive exchange of serious and

realistic ideas. you know, 28 points,

that would be extensive. And achieving a

durable peace will require both sides to

agree to difficult but necessary

concessions. Of course, uh that is why

we are and will continue to develop a

list, listen to this, we are and will

continue to develop a list of potential

ideas for ending this war based on input

from both sides of the conflict.

Oh, that is perfect.

Once again, Marco Rubio is telling us

how to think, not what to think. Now,

there is a list of 28 things that, you

know, we want or we think would be good.

But when he describes it as a list of uh

literally potential ideas

from both sides, that's really moving

forward. Now, I'm going to put this in

my own words and then when I put it in

my words, see how it hits you. Okay? I'm

going to say the same thing just my

words. I'm going to say that packetizing

packetizing taking things and putting

them in little packages which are the 28

points. Each of the 28 points is like a

little packet that once you've

packetized it, what can you do with it?

Well, packetizing all the ideas into

units that can be traded,

compared,

and easily communicated

is the most important thing that needs

to be done at this phase. We're not

talking about a any final agreements.

We're talking about some way to take

this complicated situation and turn it

into little packets where you can say,

"All right, there's a there's a Donbass

packet. there's a Crimea packet. You can

still you can still play with the

packets, but but you have to agree that

there are packets. Uh and you could call

it something else, just 28 points or

whatever. But until you do that, you

cannot really negotiate because there's

nothing to give away and there's nothing

to get. You need to put them in

discrete, easy to communicate packets.

And when I see Marco using his own

words, speaking in those terms, pretty

much what I said, but just, you know,

his own way to say it, that gives me a

lot of confidence. I got to admit, that

gives me a lot of confidence because if

I just heard we want 28 things or uh uh

there are five things we have to have,

I wouldn't necessarily think we' made

any progress. But as soon as you tell me

that the goal is to get 28 packets and

we can still argue about what the

packets are,

excellent. That to me looks like adults

trying to figure figure out a really

complicated problem. I don't know where

this approach came from or if it's

really closer to a normal approach than

I'm giving it credit for. Is this closer

to normal than I think it is? It doesn't

look normal.

Uh, it looks like a whole better way of

doing it. I don't know. We'll see.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you really

want is a reframe to wrap things up.

Would you like a reframe from my book?

Uh, my book is called Reframe Your I'm

sorry, I accidentally picked up the 2026

Dilbert calendar, which you can only get

on Amazon, and it's available now. It's

the best thing that ever happened to you

in your whole life. And there are comics

on both sides. I didn't mean to pick

that up. That That was an accident.

We'll put that over there.

But my book, Reframe Your Brain, I'm

going to give you an absolutely free

reframe. Wow.

Um I sure hope I put that where I wanted

it. Damn it. I seem to have put my

[laughter] my bookmark in the middle of

the book randomly. That didn't help me.

All right, here's where I need to be.

Uh, we'll go into the uh social life

reframes. I need I know you need that.

All right. Um,

how many of you think that marriage is

about finding a soulmate?

I I feel like, you know, TVs and movies

and our sense of romantic entitlement

uh kind of ruins our potential for

happiness

because we're we're sort of imagining

that we can have that that kind of

situation that they have in the movies.

But uh if you think that marriage is

about finding your soulmate,

you're going to have a little problem

[laughter]

because at some point you're going to

say, "How do I know that's my soulmate?

And why does my coworker act like my

soulmate all the time? What's going on

here?" So the old frame or the usual

frame is that marriage is about finding

your soulmate. Here's a reframe. Uh

marriage is about finding love with

someone who values promises.

promises.

Yeah, that that's one you have to think

about. But I'll give you another one. Uh

[clears throat]

how about uh

how about if you you break up with

somebody or maybe there's a tragic death

in your in your life and uh you think to

yourself, I've lost my soulmate. Oh no,

I've lost my soulmate. Well, maybe you

lost your soulmate. But here's another

way to look at it. You have a million

soul mates and you haven't you haven't

met them all? I mean, do you really

think do you really think there's seven

billion people and you've got exactly

one soulmate?

Really?

Really? Do you really believe that there

just one? Just one soulmate? No. There

are probably a million different people

that you could come to see as your

soulmate and probably a million

different people that you could come to

trust with your life. If you can find

somebody you could trust with your life

and they do what they promised to do

over the entire course of your

relationship

and you're willing to turn them into

your soulmate even if they weren't

naturally that way just by being honest

and uh let's say moral and ethical

that would be an excellent situation.

So, I would worry a lot less about the

magic of finding your soulmate, and I

would worry a lot more about how to turn

any good person into somebody that you

see as your soulmate

um just by the fact that you treat each

other really well and that's your

agreement. So, I've always thought that

relationships that are based on uh

decision

are more powerful than relationships

that are based on um let's say some

internal feeling, right? If your

relationship is based on a feeling, it

could change.

It could change. All right, people.

That's what I got for you today.

Um, I'm going to talk to the uh locals

people, my beloved locals people. Uh, I

hope there's something you got out of

today that was useful. Um, you you could

probably notice me trying to change the

uh the direction of the country.

[laughter]

I think I've I think I'm doing a good

job so far.

Uh, how many of you see my influence in

other public figures?

I'll ask you a more specific question.

How many of you think you've seen

that other public figures are thinking

the way I'm thinking or using the tools

that I use and you think to yourself,

where'd they get that? Did that come

from Scott or somebody that

somebody who got it from him? that got

it from someone else.

I don't know.

I'm looking at your comments now. Yeah.

So, a lot of a lot of you can see it.

So, it's not imaginary. I remember back

in 2016

and I would suggest that maybe people

were listening to me and people would

say, "Uh, Scott, put your ego away."

And I don't think I put my ego away. But

the point is, um, as I've said often,

including today, the person with the

best idea is always in charge.

So if I can teach you how to think about

a topic better than you were thinking

about it, and maybe you share that with

somebody else and they share it with

somebody else, then the way to think

about a topic becomes the dominant

force. It's not even the personality.

It's not the person whose job it is to

be in charge. It's just the fact that

there's something about the way somebody

framed it that's so compelling that you

could predict where it's going from that

point on. And that's what I shoot for.

Um, sometimes I hit it and sometimes I

don't.

All right,

locals coming at you.

Coming at you.

All right, we'll be on locals in 30

seconds.