Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26

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Lots of news today, but shall we start with the simultaneous sip?

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Now that was really good.

But let's talk about the news.

So, I assume all of you know by now that there was some action in Venezuela.

So, I'll give you a little background on it as people storm in and then we'll talk about what does it all mean.

But I should tell you that after the show, so after the podcast, uh Owen and Gregorian will be hosting um a spaces afterparty.

Now, the plan was to um which is very nice of Owen to ask people how I had how I had influenced people, but I think the Venezuela story is going to overwhelm that and that would be okay with me.

So, don't feel bad if you think talking about Venezuela is more interesting.

So, I woke up this morning thinking, you know, maybe it'd be good for me not to be in the headlines for once because I've been in the headlines for a few days.

And uh I look on X and Dilbert is trending.

Venezuela gets attacked and Dilbert is still trending on X.

So, guess I'll have to go with it.

All right.

So, you know, I've often tell you that if Trump has multiple options for doing something, he typically picks the option that looks the strongest.

And he did it again.

So, I'm starting to think that you could predict his actions fairly fairly accurately by just saying what's the strongest thing you could do.

Now, you might say that the strongest thing would be to send in the whole military, but I would say stronger than that would be to send in special forces of some of some type and grab the leader of the country and take him back for uh for legal process.

To me, that seems like the strongest thing, I think.

So, that's what happened.

So late at night, um, Trump authorized the military, specifically some helicopters.

So I guess we set our 160th special operations aviation regiment called Soar known as the Night Stalkers.

So I guess we went in strong.

Uh there have been a lot of practice, a lot of preparation and allegedly um no casualties on the American side.

None.

Now I have not heard if there were casualties on the Venezuelan side, but I imagine there were.

So Trump watched the whole operation from, you know, some undisclosed place and watched them, you know, I guess we have the ability to go through metal doors um and get people.

So Maduro and his wife have now been arrested and brought back to America.

Now the all the people who don't know anything about the Constitution um are going to be arguing with other people who don't know much about the Constitution.

And I I'm sort of in that category.

I'm no I'm no constitutional expert when it comes to uh you know what we can and cannot do militarily.

But the argument is that this is not a military action.

is a legal action and that we can go anywhere to pick up a criminal or a accused criminal, alleged criminal and that this should be seen as a uh a Department of Justice action that happened to be supported by a number of entities including the military.

So Pam Bondi is telling us what the charges are.

So the charges against Maduro that the ex head of Venezuela um he's being charged with narco terrorism conspiracy uh cocaine importation conspiracy possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.

But that last one's weird.

But apparently that gives uh that gives enough cover that Trump can do what he did.

But if he had remained there and you know fought militarily and tried to defeat their army or something that would be an entirely different conversation.

Now, people who are my age um or in that zone, you might remember that the US did this in 1989 um against the Panama uh leader Noriega.

And we went in, but there was some there was violence and death there.

Um and we grabbed Noriega.

We brought him back to the United States and he was prosecuted and put in American jail.

So this has some precedent in the sense that if you can if you can sell it as a um a legal system and not a military system, you can get away with it.

Yeah, there's some precedent that Obama uh went after some individuals.

So, it's different to go after an individual than it is to go after a country.

All right.

So, apparently the operation was paired with a bunch of strikes on their military and um intelligence operations, but that might have been a decoy.

Um is maybe just a suppression suppressive action.

The reporting which you can't yet trust.

Remember, it's still fog of war, right?

Fog of war.

So, you can't trust everything you hear about this.

So, be cautious.

Fog of war.

Um, but the the reporting, at least on Fox News, is that the Venezuelans put up no resistance and that some of them just went home.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that the Venezuelan military put up no resistance and they just sort of walked away?

Maybe.

I don't know.

That one's a little hard to believe.

There may have been some people who walked away.

All right.

Well, so Maduro is being in a larger sense accused of being the head of a cartel called the cartel of deos souls.

So the the accusation is that he was never a legitimate leader.

Um so he's it's also is not a true decapitation strike some would say because he was never really the leader of the country legitimately.

That's more of an argumentative thing.

All right.

So there was tons of um coordination between the DEA and the military and the CIA and the Department of Justice.

So that part's impressive.

And waiting in the wings is his probable or at least possible replacement, a woman named Maria Karina Machado, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize already for being sort of the opposition, but um she would not really been able to take over the country until Maduro was gone.

So allegedly there will be an election allegedly that election will be unrigged.

The reality is that especially if Trump believes Venezuela was involved in rigging our elections, and he might, I don't know if he does, uh there might be a little payback happening here.

The payback would be, oh well, good luck with your next election, but we're going to make sure that it goes our way.

And when I say our way, I mean America gets a a leader that will, you know, be on our side essentially.

She will be called a puppet.

And maybe that's true.

Feels like it would be.

Yeah.

Marco Rubio has told us that Maduro is not the legitimate leader.

So that's kind of important.

All right.

Um, now let's talk about the chessboard.

This is the part I find fascinating.

How long will it take before some part of social media says this is all Israel and blames Israel?

I woke up this morning thinking, well, at least this won't be blamed on Israel.

But but it might be it might be blamed on Israel.

We'll take you through it.

Excuse me.

Um, so there are a number of chess pieces and one of them is that Venezuela and Iran have been historically they've supported each other to get around sanctions and to get around other big economic problems.

So Iran would be weakened um by Venezuela falling.

it would lose an ally.

It would lose one way that they could have, you know, made some money in case their other sources got dried up.

Um, at the same time, by coincidence, there's all these uprisings in Iran and uh Trump has said he would if the if the uh protesters get shot that he would intervene militarily.

Now, that didn't sound like as much of a uh it didn't sound like as much of a threat until you see what he just did in Venezuela.

So, if you're Iran and you're the leaders of Iran and you're wondering, huh, will Trump really do that?

Would Trump actually attack us and depose our leader?

Well, nobody knows.

It could be a bluff, but if you just watched Trump go into Venezuela as strong as you possibly could, it would be reasonable to worry about it if you were ran.

So, could it be that, you know, that uh Trump's timing is either lucky because it would make things go better in Iran, at least for the American side, uh or is that, you know, is it planned or just purely coincidence?

I don't know.

But it's definitely going to make people sort blah blah blah.

You know, he only did it for Israel.

You know, that's coming.

So, that's not my claim, by the way.

So, I'm not making the claim that I know why it happened or what the timing was or anything.

But I do wonder if the only reason is about the drugs because so far the Trump administration is making it all about the drugs.

But I've seen push back where people will say, "No, Venezuela is not our biggest problem when it comes to drugs.

So you wouldn't do all this if it's only about the drugs." I don't know.

He might remember I always say he takes the strongest path.

So the strongest path would be this.

So that would predict that uh that maybe it was about the drugs and this is just the strongest path.

Don't know.

Then there's the Cuba connection because Cuba apparently relies on Venezuela for, you know, some of their um energy slasheconomic survival.

I'm a little bit skeptical that Cuba will fall because of this, but things will get a lot tougher, but maybe.

So my guess is there's not about Cuba, but it might be just might be one of the side benefits that could happen if you believe that Cuba's um government falling is a benefit.

It would create a lot of pressure for uh the United States.

However, also on the chessboard uh and this is not my own great idea.

uh it could strengthen Trump's support among Latino voters.

So, especially the older ones, they might say, "Finally, somebody did something about Venezuela and that would that will weaken Cuba and that's what we've been waiting for." But I don't think you would do it just for votes.

Again, it could be that that would just be a side benefit.

So, what's what's so hard about figuring this out is that all these countries are connected and it's not entirely obvious if uh doing something with one country is intentionally about the other countries or it just works out that way.

I don't know.

And then there's the China connection.

So, China gets energy from uh let's see, Iran supplies 10 to 15% of China's oil.

Uh and Venezuela supplied or did about 5% of China's oil.

Now, if you added them together at the high side, would that take China's oil oil supply down by 15 20%.

I don't know.

And and is that a goal or could could China easily replace that much oil?

Maybe they just get more of it from Russia or something.

So I don't know.

But uh next on the chess board is Mexico.

So the the head of Mexico who is also credibly being accused of being um in the pocket of the cartels is of course reject rejecting this military action and uh but not very hard.

So there's a there's an objection to it, but they're not going crazy about it.

And it could be that the leader of Mexico is wondering if she's next because it does seem to me that if they if the US put together a set of indictments, I guess that's what it would be against Maduro, don't you think they're also looking at um misbehaving by Shan Bob, the head of Mexico?

Don't you think that some part of the US machinery already has evidence that she's part of the cartel?

So, she's probably looking at this and saying, "Wait, are you saying that they're going to go nab the head of a country because they can they have a good case against that person?" Because that would be her.

So, whether or not we plan to do that, it would put a lot of pressure on her to do whatever we wanted.

So we might say, well, you know, maybe you're next.

How about you give us a good trade deal?

Or maybe you're next.

Maybe you pay for the wall, whatever it is.

So that's part of the chess board.

And then Colombia, which has so far not been part of the military action, is probably a bigger source of drugs than Venezuela.

So Colombia would be also be in the chess board would also be wondering if they're next and I think they also have a leader who might be implicated as part of a cartel, right?

I think so.

Yeah, it puts command on notice.

It basically puts all these countries on notice.

is so this action has been compared to the fall of the Berlin wall in that it could have this ripple effect um that's pro-democracy or at the very least pro uh pro-American isn't fun I I hate to say how much fun it is trying to figure out what's going on but there's a lot of moving parts Then let's talk about Taiwan also on the chessboard.

If you were if you were China and you watched what Trump is doing right now, would you get going and attack Taiwan or would you say, "Holy we'd better wait at least three years until Trump's gone and then figure out what we can do." I feel like if China is smart, and they are, that they say, "Well, step back.

Step back.

this would not be the time to piss off Trump because he always acts in the strongest path.

So that they wouldn't be able to counter on him standing down.

I don't know if he was he would attack China if Taiwan was attacked, but they would have to be worried about it.

All right.

Apparently, the Venezuelan defense chief uh put out a quote that said, quote, "We will now surrender.

We will now surrender.

Your leader is gone.

You don't need to surrender." Did we ask you to surrender?

I don't remember anybody asking, but he has to say something.

All right?

So you might wonder in the broader context um what is the economic impact of this?

So I went to Grock and asked that you know what's the economic impact on Venezuela?

Yeah.

This this situation.

So apparently you know lots of energy implications.

uh it would allow other countries to be less able to evade sanctions because Venezuela would help other countries evade sanctions if they didn't like America and uh let's see the geopolitical importance this is from Grock so I just asked Grock you know give me the context um Venezuela has been a key part of an anti-American coalition so that would have include, you know, Russia and China.

Uh, but if you take out Venezuela, uh, it doesn't take out the whole coalition, but it weakens it.

Um, we didn't want Iran to have some kind of a friendly presence this close to our country, and apparently they did because they were friendly with Venezuela.

So, if we remove the option for Iran to have some kind of a fuller um anti-American presence in our hemisphere, that seems like a good idea.

Then there's a military importance.

Did you know that Iran transferred drone making technology to Venezuela and they're training the Venezuelans since 2006?

Um, so that's not good.

So that would weaken uh one way that Iran could get at us.

Yes, my voice does seem raspy.

You're just noticing a good observation.

Yes, my voice is raspy.

Yeah, you may not have heard the news.

All right.

So, um, Jonathan Turley is reminding us that constitutionally this this should be fine, but people are going to argue that it isn't.

All right.

Um, there will be lots more developing, but did I hit I hit the high points, right?

So, I was trying to give you the quick, you know, chessboard view of it because it's going to be the only news today.

The news is just going to be about that.

Um, however, you come here for more than just news about one story.

So, with your permission, because I don't have much to add to that besides what I said, uh, I'm going to talk about some other fun news stories.

I know, I know this story is so interesting.

the Venezuela one that it's hard to imagine if there's anything else happening.

But you want to spend a full hour here with me, right?

So, we'll do some other stories after I take a sip.

Pause for a sip of whatever you got.

Sip it if you got it.

All right.

Um, so some other stuff.

I'm going to be at the risk of boring myself, but it'll give us something to hang out and talk about.

Okay.

Anyway, uh Katherine Herage, who many of you know as a you know notable uh um important journalist, um she's talking about why X became the center of real journalism and that the mainstream media is no longer the dominant source of news basically.

So here's her take on it which I liked that reach meaning who sees what the reach is no longer about cable slots or front pages.

Uh it's about access to decision makers and business leaders and highly engaged readers in the same place at the same time.

And that's why independent journalism didn't just survive the collapse of trusted corporate media.

It moved to X and took the audience with it.

Uh now she says there's no question that X is the platform with the greatest reach.

Now I agree with all that and here's the part I didn't fully understand that independent media could never have grown unless they also had access to important people and and that they also had a way to publish to everybody who wanted to see them.

So X allowed them to have a way to get to everybody.

So that was automatically going to be better than you know a uh a media source you have to watch a commercial.

I would add to this that on X it's very easy to not see any commercials.

So if you give me a choice of looking at the news with commercials or looking at the news without commercials that's not a contest right.

So X has an automatic you know business business business model advantage but the part about access to decision makers that is entirely because the podcasters did a good job and they did a good job of networking and especially on X uh they would get boosted.

So, do you think that Benny Johnson would have had such a big impact or Megan Kelly or you more controversial Tucker Carlson?

Do you think any of that would have happened without X?

I don't think so.

And then once she gives him credibility because you're doing good work, then suddenly you can ask President Trump for an interview and he says yes.

Or you could ask, you know, lower level um admin people and they'll say yes because they're not going to be um they're not going to be stabbed in the back like the mainstream media would.

And they have huge audiences now bigger than the networks.

So yeah, this is a good observation, Katherine Herage.

And it doesn't look like there's any way that's going to reverse, right?

And again, like so many stories, you you have to add to it.

It's only possible because of Elon Musk.

Think about how many stories you have to say that about now.

All the Doge stuff, all the fraud stuff.

Um, only possible because Elon exists and was doing the right thing.

Well, here's a story from the college fix that that more than half of UC Berkeley disability accommodations are based on emotional reasons.

Emotional reasons.

Half.

Right.

So, there are lots of legitimate reasons for people with disabilities to want accommodations.

So, if you want a ramp, that's a good reason.

if you need a wheelchair access.

Yeah, th those are perfectly acceptable and desired uh accommodations.

But apparently people are coming in with psycho psychological and emotional disabilities.

Uh one student famously got got approval to bring his mother to class.

uh and it's the most disabled people registered at UC Berkeley since they started collecting data.

Now, the reason I bring this up is not this particular story.

The reason I bring it up is that uh looking for scams and frauds is now the new national sport.

So, at least in my bubble, every day I wake up, there's somebody searching for a new scam or uncovering a fraud.

I'm really happy about that because that's the only way any of this gets fixed.

The only way it gets fixed is if people start thinking it's important to find fraud.

Even I didn't think it was important a few years ago.

If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would said, "Yeah, I think I would have said something like Governor Divine Dewine Divine Dewine said that it was just the cost of doing business." You know, I would have looked at it like a 7-Eleven store and I said, "Yeah, of course there's theft." Yeah, 7-Eleven store.

Of course, there's theft.

But, you know, it's not that big a deal.

But today, what we know is that it's the biggest deal.

It's a existential threat to the entire civilization.

And if we don't pay attention to it, that's on us.

Do you know why we're paying attention to it?

I already gave you a hint.

His name is Elon Musk who boosted uh um recent reports.

Well, he he's boosting a lot of reports from independent media about how bad things are.

Would we be in this situation where people are really really paying attention to fraud if Elon Musk did not do that or did not exist?

No.

I think he gives full credit for that.

Again, it's really amazing.

Um, and then then I'm having a problem reading the news lately because there are so many stories that look like what I've already seen but might not be.

So, can you tell me is this a news story or did we already know that according to news nation that the assisted living facilities Oh, Gateway Pund is writing about this um that the assisted living facilities are often just somebody's house and there's no service there at all.

Did we already know that?

Because it feels like a repeat.

But on the other hand, maybe it's just a new place and a new new set of data.

But in my bubble, every time I wake up, somebody Republican usually is uncovering something fraudulent, and that's a good thing.

Next, you you may or may not be following the story of Act Blue.

If you went onto the street and randomly stopped people and said, "Tell me what you know about Act Blue, how many people could answer that question?" Now, you're my audience is very uh plugged in.

So probably half 3/4ers of you would know Act Lewis, but if you don't, they are a Democrat organization that raises money for a variety of Democrat candidates.

But what they do that's special is that they take small donations.

I know.

I'll get to it.

I'll get to it.

They allegedly allegedly take only small donations from American American sources and then they distribute it to candidates.

The reality and they're being uh investigated for this.

Uh I believe Trump has authorized the investigation.

Uh the reality might be allegedly that they're a fraudulent organization from top to bottom.

And what they really do is they take large donations, maybe from Democrat billionaires, maybe from overseas, and then they pretend with fancy bookkeeping that it came from uh individuals.

Now, that would be really, really illegal, but that's the accusation.

So, um, what if, and again, this falls into that category of every day I wake up and there's new alleged fraud of massive scales.

We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars here.

And I do believe that it's been demonstrated, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, there's plenty of evidence that, uh, one person's address has been used multiple times.

that would be illegal because it means so it's not real or that people who are not actively following politics have been donating allegedly small dollar amounts for years but they don't even know about it.

If you go to their house and say did you give money to um act blue they would say what's that?

No they didn't they didn't give any money.

So even though it's an allegation, yeah, it's called submerfing.

Um I feel there's a 100% chance that they're a massive criminal organization.

I also wonder if it's big enough that Democrats could not win anything without them.

What would the midterms look like without act blue being able to put big money into people's pockets?

Different, right?

Doesn't mean that, you know, it would go a different direction, but it wouldn't be the same.

So, that's happening.

Also, good news that's being investigated.

There's an article in hot air by David Stro that guess is something I've been saying.

I didn't know if anybody else would have the same observation, but he did.

It goes like this that sorry hiccups.

It goes like this that the psychology I'm this I'm going to paraphrase.

This is not what he said exactly, but the American um psychology is that things were pretty good and our systems mostly worked and that we were not in sitting inside a gigantic fraud.

Well, now that we know about the NOS's and we know about the all the Somalian fraud, um, our brains are primed in a way they've never been before to imagine mass conspiracies being true because the the scope of how big the fraud is with the with the fake daycarees and everything else.

The scope of that is so big that once you learn that was a real thing and that it's going on for years, years and it's right under people's noses and people can see all the signs.

You could see the the smoking gun and it didn't matter.

You know, there could be news reports and it didn't matter.

But now it matters.

And what does that do?

This is Stum's observation and mine as well.

What does that new psychology do to how we think about the election integrity?

It changes it.

And I think we need a new name for this.

A name for the phenomenon where there's a whole bunch of bad things happening individually, but when you catch them individually, they don't seem like a big enough deal to, you know, change the world.

So, if you looked at the uh let's say the uh Minnesota fraud and let's say you heard a report that there were some fraudulent uh children's charity, you would say to yourself, well, you know, happens.

Uh they should go to jail.

But you would think it would be isolated.

But what really is happening is this.

It's an immense diversified machine in which you can't even keep track of how many frauds there are within the larger scope of things.

Now, I would argue that the pandemic had that same quality that if you looked at the um individual bad actors, you would notice that there were people lying and maybe people doing things for, you know, for money, etc.

But you wouldn't necessarily see the scope of it.

The scope of it was unbelievable.

And also unbelievable.

I said it twice because it mattered.

You wouldn't that's that's the problem I had in the beginning of the pandemic.

I would hear reports of let's say data that was ignored and I would say yeah that can happen.

Data is ignored.

Somebody would say this study was suppressed and I'd say yeah yeah things happen.

study could get suppressed, but my brain was at the time incapable of imagining the vast scope of the fraud.

Did you have the same issue?

You could tell that something was wrong and you could see the buckets of the wrongness, but you just couldn't wrap your head around how big it was.

Now, that's the same as these NGO frauds.

you really couldn't wrap your head around how big it was and therefore you were frozen into inaction.

Well, back to David Stum's point.

Remember how there were many, many claims of election irregularity and I would hear them and I'm guilty.

That's totally guilty.

And I would hear a claim and I would say, "Yeah, yeah, maybe that really did happen.

Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but it was in this little bucket." Then you hear another one.

You say, "All right, well, there's more than one.

It's in this little bucket." But it wasn't until maybe this year that we could understand that all the different ways that the election was, I think, rigged in my opinion that you would never be able to put your head around how massive the attempt of rigging was.

And so you can't deal with it.

So you default to, well, happens.

It's in a little bucket.

If we catch people doing things, we'll try to take them to court.

But it's not really, you know, it's not about the whole system.

It is the whole system.

So, there needs to be a name for these gigantic frauds that we can't recognize because we're only seeing the tree and we're not seeing the forest.

Oh, wait.

We already have that.

All it is is another one of those.

You can't you can't see the forest for the trees.

So you look at a tree, you're like, well, you know, kind of sucks that that tree is unhealthy.

Hey, who cut down that tree?

But if you're looking at the tree, you're missing that it's the forest.

That might be a big deal.

So my recommend my uh prediction for 2026 is that the uh our understanding of the size of the election fraud and we might be finding this out through act blue for example is enormous.

We might find out that it's not a coincidence that electronic electronic voting machines are used in battleground states.

That might not be a coincidence.

It could be that one of the benefits that Trump will get out of attacking Venezuela um brought you up the wrong tree.

It could be that we'll learn if something changes in the leadership of Venezuela.

Imagine the imagine a new leader going in and then imagine Trump saying, "All right, we we helped install you.

We are going to be your friend.

will help you rebuild Venezuela.

But you're going to have to tell us, did your guys or any Venezuelans have anything to do with rigging our systems?

And then maybe we'll find out.

So prediction, this will be the year we find out that the election was more more than the trees, that it was about the whole forest.

Well, 2026 just started out interesting.

Uh Trump, well, in many ways, but Trump uh posted a meme that said we're entering the golden age and also separately that the hunter be the hunted becomes the hunter.

So, those are two big themes for uh 2026.

How many of you think I had anything to do with those two things?

because I've been saying for a while that uh we would be entering the golden age, but then the pandemic blew that off track.

And I've been saying for a while that Republicans would be hunted if um if Biden had won the election.

And sure enough, they were hunted January 6, etc.

Oh, add January 6 to the list of things that were too big to understand.

Yeah, the whole January 6 insurrection hoax um it's just bigger than we could imagine it could be a hoax, but that's what made it invisible.

Yeah.

the the scale of that hoax when in fact the real insurrection was Democrats trying to remove Trump.

But they did such a good job of, you know, creating a this fake January 6 select committee and hunting down all the the people that they took a thing that um they reversed it essentially.

They reversed reality because at the time they had the power to do that.

They were the insurrectionists.

And the best way they could cover up for the fact that they were the insurrectionists is by accusing the other side of being the insurrectionists.

And that's what they did almost successfully.

Well, believe it or not, time for a sip.

Yeah, the J6 thing was professionally produced.

That's another hint that it wasn't based on facts.

Well, amazingly, PG, the power company here in uh California, is for the fourth time in two years going to lower the rates.

So apparently they, you know, pulled a bunch of moves that allowed them to lower the rates.

So good for them.

I was not aware of that, but it will take it will allow Governor Nuome to say that he lowered costs.

Now, as far as I know, Nuome had nothing to do with the fact that PG& lowered their costs, but whoever's in charge always gets the blame.

Whoever's in charge always gets the credit.

And if if Californians think or even if the n if he runs nationally, he's going to be able to say he lowered rates and there's no indication that anybody but PNG Eene was behind the lowering of the rates, but I'm glad they did.

It's not a huge amount of money.

So, but it's just now up.

It seems like a big deal if it just doesn't go up.

New York Post is reporting that a court has ruled in favor of the Second Amendment uh and open carry in California.

So I guess there was a law um limiting open carry of firearms and the uh which court was it?

US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit by 2 to1 said that was too anticonstitutional.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Ninth Circuit is usually liberal leading?

That's true, right?

I don't really follow the course that much, but can you confirm this in the comments that the Ninth Circuit usually is left leading?

Is that true?

Um anyway, so it surprised me that they got a 2 to1 ruling in favor of the Second Amendment, I would say.

All right.

Um I'm going to file this next story under It is true.

Okay, I'm getting confirmation.

Thank you.

Yep.

Well, was sort of a surprise.

Um, did you know News Newsmax is reporting this that the Department of Justice uh I think you knew this part uh as requested Minnesota and uh I think 21 states in total.

They look like they're all lefty states.

I think they're all blue states.

I'm just looking at it quickly.

Either all or most are blue states.

But they've been asked by the Trump administration to produce voting records because we want to see if there are any fake uh voters on the roles.

What do you think happens when you ask for voting records?

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that Act Blue, they changed their accounting so you can't tell what they were doing.

So, as soon as the uh as soon as act blue was investigated, they immediately changed how they record things.

So, they wouldn't be able to tell if they're up to anything bad.

Now, that's pretty on the nose, isn't it?

Yeah.

By the way, Marcella, remind me that the on the nose thing is something I use a lot.

On the nose.

So that would certainly suggest a uh possibility of guilt.

But what do you think is going to happen when the states are asked quite reasonably quite reasonably to produce records that show that their voters are real eligible voters?

Well, we don't know yet, but they have 15 days to produce it.

And I'm going to guess it will be less produced than the Epstein files.

I do not think they'll produce it.

I think they will do everything they can to and lose the records.

You know, maybe maybe what will really happen is uh they'll say, "Oh, we lost those records." All all 50.

I think all 21 states are going to suddenly have a problem.

Oh, yeah.

We had those records, but yeah, they they weren't backed up.

But what I don't expect to happen is that the federal government will get the records.

And why?

Well, obviously.

Why?

Because it's fraudulent.

Obviously.

So, I don't think there's any other way this could go.

There's no way they're going to give them records that prove that their their voters are not real, right?

There isn't any chance that they'll do that.

So, they're either going to fight it infinitely in court or they're going to have a have a water leak or something.

But we're not gonna see this.

Here's a weird story.

Um I talk about this a lot lately, but you know the defense um the defense company called Enderil that Palmer Lucky um is the head of apparently he's made the claim that Enderil has some kind of technology called the Endril's Seabed Century.

And he says, and I quote, I swear I'm not making this up.

He said, "I can know where all the whales are, the submarines, boats, where all the divers are." Do you believe that?

Do you believe that he has in place technology that can identify where all the whales are and all the boats?

Wouldn't that make it?

Um, he also says submarines.

Now, obviously, there's a great military value to that, but here's my question.

Are submarines stealthy enough that uh we or anybody else could make one that's invisible to this technology?

Or can he see everything?

And if he can see everything, does that mean we already know that there are no alien bases under the ocean?

Because I don't believe he believes there are alien bases.

Maybe one of the reasons he doesn't believe it is that he can see everything under the ocean and if any alien craft had uh had enter um he would have seen it.

Is that possible?

Oh, that's a really interesting little story.

Well, the Washington Examiner Naomi Lynn Lim is writing about how the midterms usually go to the party that's not in power.

And uh Trump has has questioned why that happens.

You why why does the other side almost always not always but almost always, how do they almost always win the midterm?

And I don't know if we know the answer to that exactly.

It might be psychological.

It might be because people only cared about the head of the ticket and if there's no presidential race, you know, the devoted people don't show up.

Is that it?

Might be some combination of things.

But here's the interesting part.

So his um chief of staff, Susie Wilds, who gets a lot of credit for being smart, they say they want to put Trump on the ballot, you know, in the conceptual way, not the actual way.

And her thinking is that the Democrats are going to put him on the ballot by just saying, you know, you have to thwart him or defeat him because he's still president.

And the best way to do that would be to, you know, elect a bunch of Democrats in Congress.

So Susie says she wants to put Trump on the ballot.

I think she said she hasn't told Trump yet, but what she wants is for Trump to um campaign like he is on the ballot, but you know, he'd be campaigning for surrogates and proxies and stuff.

Um that will probably happen.

But in this story was a little piece of data that I think was contradicted later in the story, but I'd never heard this before.

uh that people will vote for who they think understands their problem, not who has the best solution.

Have you ever heard that?

It's the first time I've ever heard that.

And I I question whether that's true.

But even if the Republicans came up with a great plan, um, if they didn't show that they really cared or really understood, let's say, affordability.

So, you could argue that if Trump does a great job on affordability, it wouldn't matter to us to uh the midterms partly because that would be in rearview mirror by the time it happened.

Right?

So, people don't vote for the past.

They vote for do you understand what I care about as their their way of understanding whether something would be done about it.

So at the moment the Democrats were doing a better job of acting like affordability is the main thing that would beat the Republican plan of saying oh we did a good job on energy and eggs and a few other things.

So that would be a winning position.

So, can Trump reverse that?

Can he can he show enough empathy and enough of a plan going forward such as healthcare?

Uh, also in the article was the idea that if the Republicans don't have a health care plan, any kind of healthare plan or one that doesn't sound good, they can't win because that would show a lack of empathy.

The Democrats still have the option of saying, "We understand your pain.

Uh, you know, we're going to do something about it, and what we're going to do about it is throw massive amounts of money at it, and you know, that'll fix it." Now, if you're a voter, you say to yourself, "Oh, I don't like overspending." But if they can immediately solve my problem, and they immediately understand it, which is what it would sound like, that's a winning play, winning proposition.

So, at the very least, Trump would have to have a Republican plan that doesn't sound bash or crazy.

and he would have to show that even though he got a few victories on affordability that uh he has so much more to do.

So if he if he can sell both of those ideas, we have so much more to do.

It's a top priority.

I I totally understand why you want more affordability.

You know, we're going to make it happen.

Here's one of the things we're going to do for healthcare.

But short of that, the Republicans have a lossy path.

All right.

Um, I saw this quote today from Elon Musk once again, always in the news.

He thinks that Neurolink, the chip you put in people's heads, um, in the future there's nothing physically to stop them from being able to restore full bodily function.

So, in other words, if you had, let's say, a break in your spinal cord, at the moment, there's nothing we can do about it.

But if you had a neural link chip, not yet.

Not yet.

They can't do it yet.

But in the future, it will be able to bypass the uh the disturbance in your um your existing nerves and just send the signal to where it needs to be.

And that people who are paralyzed, completely paralyzed, could get back 100% of their function.

Isn't that amazing?

That's so amazing.

Now that they'll be too late to help me, of course, but uh just the fact that he's got that as a target and he usually hits his targets.

Yeah, it's just amazing.

So, thank you for that, Elon Musk, on behalf of all paralyzed and semi paralyzed people like me.

All right.

Um, immediately after the show, uh, Owen Gregorian will be setting up a spaces event on X.

Spaces, if you didn't know, is the audio only.

Doesn't cost anything to participate.

Uh, it's audio only and uh, people will be invited up to make their points and say things.

Now, uh, this will happen immediately after I'm done.

You have to give them a few minutes just to fire it up.

So immediately is not exactly immediately.

Um but if you want to find it, you if you follow me in X, I've reposted it the link to it.

And if you don't see that, just look for Owen Gregorian and you'll find it quickly.

Now the the original plan that Owen had was to ask people if I've helped them in some way and make that the theme, but that was before Venezuela.

um got attacked.

So I would not be I would not be insulted if the spacious event is more about Venezuela because that's sort of a you know top of mind at the moment.

But uh a lot of people love the spaces.

They sometimes they'll run two or three hours because people just want to keep going and it's amazing.

All right, so that is all I have for you.

I think I made it about an hour, didn't I?

pretty good.

Timed it perfectly.

All right, I'm going to go private just for a minute with the locals.

Um, like I said, people locals probably want to head over to to spaces pretty soon, so I'll keep it Oh, hiccups.

So, I'll keep it short.

But thanks for joining.

locals, I'll be with you just to wrap things

Come on in.

We'll check our comments.

Make sure they're working on locals.

Boom.

There we go.

Come on in.

It is good to see all of you.

I apologize again for my sketchy voice.

I will do the best I can.

All right. Once we get about a thousand

people in here. Oh, looks like we have

what?

Only three people on YouTube.

All right, come on in.

Lots of news today,

but shall we start with the simultaneous

sip?

That's a yes.

All right, people. If you want to join

the simultaneous sip, all you need is a

copper mug or a glass of thanks

of any kind. Fill it with your favorite

liquid. I like coffee. And join me now

for the unparallel pleasure. The

dopamine hit the day. The thing that

makes everything better. It's called the

simultaneous sip and it happens. Now

that was really good.

But let's talk about the news.

So, I assume all of you know by now that

there was some action in Venezuela.

So, I'll give you a little background on

it as people storm in

and then we'll talk about what does it

all mean.

But I should tell you that after the

show, so after the podcast, uh Owen and

Gregorian will be hosting

um a spaces afterparty.

Now, the plan was to um which is very

nice of Owen to ask people how I had how

I had influenced people, but I think the

Venezuela story is going to overwhelm

that and that would be okay with me.

So, don't feel bad if you think talking

about Venezuela is more interesting. So,

I woke up this morning thinking,

you know, maybe it'd be good for me not

to be in the headlines for once because

I've been in the headlines for a few

days. And uh I look on X and Dilbert is

trending.

Venezuela gets attacked and Dilbert is

still trending on X.

So, guess I'll have to go with it. All

right. So, you know, I've often tell you

that if Trump has multiple options for

doing something, he typically picks the

option that looks the strongest.

And he did it again. So, I'm starting to

think that you could predict his actions

fairly fairly accurately by just saying

what's the strongest thing you could do.

Now, you might say that the strongest

thing would be to send in the whole

military, but I would say stronger than

that would be to send in special forces

of some of some type and grab the leader

of the country and take him back for uh

for legal process. To me, that seems

like the strongest thing,

I think. So, that's what happened. So

late at night, um, Trump authorized the

military,

specifically some helicopters. So I

guess we set our 160th special

operations aviation regiment called Soar

known as the Night Stalkers. So I guess

we went in strong. Uh there have been a

lot of practice, a lot of preparation

and allegedly

um no casualties on the American side.

None. Now I have not heard if there were

casualties on the Venezuelan side, but I

imagine there were.

So Trump watched the whole operation

from, you know, some undisclosed place

and watched them, you know, I guess we

have the ability to go through metal

doors

um and get people.

So Maduro and his wife have now been

arrested and brought back to America.

Now the all the people who don't know

anything about the Constitution

um are going to be arguing with other

people who don't know much about the

Constitution.

And I I'm sort of in that category. I'm

no I'm no constitutional expert when it

comes to uh you know what we can and

cannot do militarily. But the argument

is that this is not a military action.

[clears throat]

is a legal action and that we can go

anywhere

to pick up a criminal or a accused

criminal, alleged criminal and that this

should be seen as a uh a Department of

Justice action that happened to be

supported by a number of entities

including the military.

So Pam Bondi is telling us what the

charges are.

So the charges against Maduro that the

ex head of Venezuela

um he's being charged with narco

terrorism conspiracy

uh cocaine importation conspiracy

possession of machine guns and

destructive devices and conspiracy to

possess machine guns and destructive

devices against the United States.

But that last one's weird. But

apparently that gives uh that gives

enough cover that Trump can do what he

did. But if he had remained there and

you know fought militarily and tried to

defeat their army or something that

would be an entirely different

conversation.

Now, people who are my age

um or in that zone, you might remember

that the US did this in 1989

um against the Panama

uh leader Noriega.

And we went in, but there was some there

was violence and death there. Um and we

grabbed Noriega. We brought him back to

the United States and he was prosecuted

and put in American jail. So this has

some precedent

in the sense that if you can if you can

sell it as a

um a legal system and not a military

system,

you can get away with it.

Yeah, there's some precedent that Obama

uh went after some individuals. So, it's

different to go after an individual than

it is to go after a country.

All right. So, apparently the operation

was paired with a bunch of strikes on

their military and um intelligence

operations, but that might have been a

decoy.

Um is maybe just a suppression

suppressive action. The reporting which

you can't yet trust. Remember, it's

still fog of war, right? Fog of war. So,

you can't trust everything you hear

about this. So, be cautious. Fog of war.

Um, but the the reporting, at least on

Fox News, is that the Venezuelans put up

no resistance and that some of them just

went home. Do you believe that?

Do you believe that the Venezuelan

military put up no resistance and they

just sort of walked away?

Maybe. I don't know. That one's a little

hard to believe. There may have been

some people who walked away. All right.

Well, so Maduro is being in a larger

sense accused of being the head of a

cartel called the cartel of deos souls.

So the the accusation is that he was

never a legitimate leader. Um so he's

it's also

is not a true decapitation strike some

would say because he was never really

the leader of the country legitimately.

That's more of an argumentative thing.

All right. So there was tons of um

coordination between the DEA and the

military and the CIA and the Department

of Justice. So that part's impressive.

And waiting in the wings is his probable

or at least possible replacement, a

woman named Maria Karina Machado, who

has won the Nobel Peace Prize already

for being sort of the opposition, but um

she would not really been able to take

over the country until Maduro was gone.

So allegedly

there will be an election

allegedly that election will be

unrigged.

[gasps] The reality is that especially

if Trump believes Venezuela was involved

in rigging our elections, and he might,

I don't know if he does, uh there might

be a little payback happening here. The

payback would be, oh well, good luck

with your next election, but we're going

to make sure that it goes our way. And

when I say our way, I mean America gets

a a leader that will, you know, be on

our side essentially.

She will be called a puppet.

And maybe that's true. Feels like it

would be.

Yeah. Marco Rubio has told us that

Maduro is not the legitimate leader.

So that's kind of important. All right.

Um,

now let's talk about the chessboard.

This is the part I find fascinating.

How long will it take before some part

of social media says this is all Israel

and blames Israel?

I woke up this morning thinking, well,

at least this won't be blamed on Israel.

But

but it might be it might be blamed on

Israel. We'll take you through it.

Excuse me.

Um, so

there are a number of chess pieces and

one of them is that Venezuela

and Iran

have been historically they've supported

each other to get around sanctions and

to get around other big economic

problems. So Iran would be weakened

um by Venezuela falling. it would lose

an ally. It would lose one way that they

could have, you know, made some money in

case their other sources got dried up.

Um,

at the same time, by coincidence,

there's all these uprisings in Iran and

uh Trump has said he would if the if the

uh protesters get shot

that he would intervene militarily.

Now, that didn't sound like as much of a

uh it didn't sound like as much of a

threat until you see what he just did in

Venezuela.

So, if you're Iran and you're the

leaders of Iran and you're wondering,

huh, will Trump really do that? Would

Trump actually attack us and depose our

leader? Well,

nobody knows. It could be a bluff, but

if you just watched Trump go into

Venezuela as strong as you possibly

could, it would be reasonable to worry

about it if you were ran. So, could it

be that, you know, that uh Trump's

timing is either lucky because it would

make things go better in Iran, at least

for the American side, uh or is that,

you know, is it planned or just purely

coincidence? I don't know. But it's

definitely going to make people sort

blah blah blah. You know, he only did it

for Israel.

You know, that's coming. So, that's not

my claim, by the way. So, I'm not making

the claim that I know why it happened or

what the timing was or anything. But I

do wonder if the only reason is about

the drugs because so far the Trump

administration is making it all about

the drugs. But I've seen push back where

people will say, "No, Venezuela is not

our biggest problem when it comes to

drugs. So you wouldn't do all this if

it's only about the drugs." I don't

know. He might remember I always say he

takes the strongest path. So the

strongest path would be this. So that

would predict that uh that maybe it was

about the drugs and this is just the

strongest path. Don't know. Then there's

the Cuba connection [clears throat]

because Cuba apparently relies on

Venezuela for, you know, some of their

um energy slasheconomic

survival.

I'm a little bit skeptical

that Cuba will fall because of this, but

things will get a lot tougher, but

maybe. So my guess is there's not about

Cuba, but it might be just might be one

of the side benefits that could happen

if you believe that Cuba's um government

falling is a benefit. It would create a

lot of pressure for uh the United

States. However,

also on the chessboard

uh and this is not my own great idea.

uh

it could strengthen Trump's support

among Latino voters.

So, especially the older ones, they

might say, "Finally, somebody did

something about Venezuela and that would

that will weaken Cuba and that's what

we've been waiting for." But I don't

think you would do it just for votes.

Again, it could be that that would just

be a side benefit.

So, what's what's so hard about figuring

this out is that all these countries are

connected

and it's not entirely obvious if uh

doing something with one country is

intentionally about the other countries

or it just works out that way. I don't

know. And then there's the China

connection.

So, China gets energy from uh let's see,

Iran supplies 10 to 15% of China's oil.

Uh and Venezuela supplied or did about

5% of China's oil. Now, if you added

them together at the high side, would

that take China's oil oil supply down by

15 20%.

I don't know.

And and is that a goal or could could

China easily replace that much oil?

Maybe they just get more of it from

Russia or something. So I don't know.

But uh next on the chess board is

Mexico.

So the the head of Mexico who is also

credibly being accused of being um in

the pocket of the cartels

is of course reject rejecting this

military action and uh but not very

hard.

So there's a there's an objection to it,

but they're not going crazy about it.

And it could be that the leader of

Mexico is wondering if she's next

because it does seem to me that if they

if the US put together a set of

indictments, I guess that's what it

would be against Maduro,

don't you think they're also looking at

um misbehaving by Shan Bob, the head of

Mexico? Don't you think that some part

of the US machinery already has evidence

that she's part of the cartel? So, she's

probably looking at this and saying,

"Wait, are you saying that they're going

to go nab the head of a country because

they can they have a good case against

that person?" Because that would be her.

So, whether or not we plan to do that,

it would put a lot of pressure on her to

do whatever we wanted. So we might say,

well, you know, maybe you're next. How

about you give us a good trade deal? Or

maybe you're next. Maybe you pay for the

wall, whatever it is. So that's part of

the chess board.

And then Colombia,

which has so far not been part of the

military action, is probably a bigger

source of drugs than Venezuela.

So Colombia would be also be in the

chess board would also be wondering if

they're next and I think they also have

a leader who might be implicated as part

of a cartel, right?

I think so. Yeah, it puts command on

notice. It basically puts all these

countries on notice. is so this action

has been compared to the fall of the

Berlin wall in that it could have this

ripple effect

um that's pro-democracy or at the very

least pro uh pro-American

isn't fun

I I hate to say how much fun it is

trying to figure out what's going on but

there's a lot of moving parts

Then let's talk about Taiwan also on the

chessboard. If you were if you were

China and you watched what Trump is

doing right now, would you get going and

attack Taiwan or would you say, "Holy

we'd better wait at least three

years until Trump's gone and then figure

out what we can do." I feel like if

China is smart, and they are, that they

say, "Well, step back. Step back. this

would not be the time to piss off Trump

because he always acts

in the strongest path. So that they

wouldn't be able to counter on him

standing down. I don't know if he was he

would attack China if Taiwan was

attacked, but they would have to be

worried about it.

All right.

Apparently, the Venezuelan defense chief

uh put out a quote that said, quote, "We

will now surrender. [laughter]

We will now surrender.

Your leader is gone. You don't need to

surrender." Did we ask you to surrender?

I don't remember anybody asking,

[clears throat]

but he has to say something.

All right? So you might wonder in the

broader context

um what is the economic impact of this?

So I went to Grock and asked that you

know what's the economic impact on

Venezuela? Yeah. This this situation. So

apparently

you know lots of energy implications.

uh it would allow other countries to be

less able to evade sanctions because

Venezuela would help other countries

evade sanctions if they didn't like

America

and uh let's see the geopolitical

importance this is from Grock so I just

asked Grock you know give me the context

um Venezuela has been a key part of an

anti-American coalition so that would

have include, you know, Russia and

China. Uh, but if you take out

Venezuela,

uh, it doesn't take out the whole

coalition, but it weakens it.

Um, we didn't want Iran to have some

kind of a friendly presence this close

to our country, and apparently they did

because they were friendly with

Venezuela. So, if we remove the option

for Iran to have some kind of a fuller

um anti-American presence in our

hemisphere, that seems like a good idea.

Then there's a military importance. Did

you know that Iran transferred

drone making technology to Venezuela

and they're training the Venezuelans

since 2006?

Um, so that's not good. So that would

weaken

uh one way that Iran could get at us.

Yes, my voice does seem raspy. You're

just noticing

a good observation.

Yes, my voice is raspy.

Yeah, you may not have heard the news.

All right. So,

um, Jonathan Turley is reminding us that

constitutionally this this should be

fine, but people are going to argue that

it isn't.

All right. Um, there will be lots more

developing,

but did I hit I hit the high points,

right? So, I was trying to give you the

quick, you know, chessboard view of it

because it's going to be the only news

today. The news is just going to be

about that. Um, however,

you come here for more than just news

about one story. So, with your

permission, because I don't have much to

add to that besides what I said, uh, I'm

going to talk about some other fun news

stories. I know, I know this story is so

interesting. the Venezuela one that it's

hard to imagine if there's anything else

happening. But you want to spend a full

hour here with me, right?

So, we'll do some other stories after I

take a sip. Pause for a sip of whatever

you got.

Sip it if you got it.

All right.

Um,

so some other stuff.

I'm going to be at the risk of boring

myself, but it'll give us something to

hang out and talk about. Okay.

Anyway, uh Katherine Herage, who many of

you know as a you know notable uh um

important journalist,

um she's talking about why X became the

center of real journalism and that the

mainstream media is no longer the

dominant source of news basically. So

here's her take on it which I liked that

reach

meaning who sees what the reach is no

longer about cable slots or front pages.

Uh it's about access to decision makers

and business leaders and highly engaged

readers in the same place at the same

time. And that's why independent

journalism didn't just survive the

collapse of trusted corporate media. It

moved to X and took the audience with

it.

Uh now she says there's no question that

X is the platform with the greatest

reach. Now I agree with all that and

here's the part I didn't fully

understand that independent media could

never have grown unless they also had

access to important people and and that

they also had a way to publish to

everybody who wanted to see them. So X

allowed them to have a way to get to

everybody. So that was automatically

going to be better than you know a uh a

media source you have to watch a

commercial. I would add to this that on

X it's very easy to not see any

commercials. So if you give me a choice

of looking at the news with commercials

or looking at the news without

commercials that's not a contest right.

So X has an automatic you know business

business business model advantage but

the part about access to decision makers

that is entirely because the podcasters

did a good job and they did a good job

of networking and especially on X uh

they would get boosted. So, do you think

that Benny Johnson

would have had such a big impact or

Megan Kelly or you more controversial

Tucker Carlson? Do you think any of that

would have happened without X? I don't

think so. And then once she gives him

credibility because you're doing good

work, then suddenly you can ask

President Trump for an interview and he

says yes. Or you could ask, you know,

lower level

um admin people and they'll say yes

because they're not going to be um

they're not going to be stabbed in the

back like the mainstream media would.

And they have huge audiences now bigger

than the networks. So yeah, this is a

good observation, Katherine Herage. And

it doesn't look like there's any way

that's going to reverse,

right?

And again, like so many stories, you you

have to add to it. It's only possible

because of Elon Musk.

Think about how many stories you have to

say that about now. All the Doge stuff,

all the fraud stuff. Um, only possible

because Elon exists and was doing the

right thing.

Well, here's a story from the college

fix that that more than half of UC

Berkeley disability accommodations are

based on emotional reasons.

Emotional reasons. Half. Right. So,

there are lots of legitimate reasons for

people with disabilities to want

accommodations. So, if you want a ramp,

that's a good reason. if you need a

wheelchair access.

Yeah, th those are perfectly acceptable

and desired uh accommodations. But

apparently people are coming in with

psycho psychological

and emotional disabilities. Uh one

student famously got got approval to

bring his mother to class.

uh and it's the most disabled

people registered at UC Berkeley since

they started collecting data. Now, the

reason I bring this up is not this

particular story. The reason I bring it

up is that uh looking for scams and

frauds is now the new national sport.

So, at least in my bubble, every day I

wake up, there's somebody searching for

a new scam or uncovering a fraud.

I'm really happy about that because

that's the only way any of this gets

fixed. The only way it gets fixed is if

people start thinking it's important to

find fraud. Even I didn't think it was

important a few years ago. If you'd

asked me a few years ago, I would said,

"Yeah, I think I would have said

something like Governor Divine Dewine

Divine Dewine said that it was just the

cost of doing business."

You know, I would have looked at it like

a 7-Eleven store and I said, "Yeah, of

course there's theft." Yeah, 7-Eleven

store. Of course, there's theft. But,

you know, it's not that big a deal. But

today, what we know is that it's the

biggest deal. It's a existential threat

to the entire civilization.

And if we don't pay attention to it,

that's on us. Do you know why we're

paying attention to it? I already gave

you a hint. His name is Elon Musk

who boosted uh um recent reports. Well,

he he's boosting a lot of reports from

independent media about how bad things

are. Would we be in this situation where

people are really really paying

attention to fraud if Elon Musk did not

do that or did not exist? No. I think he

gives full credit for that. Again, it's

really amazing.

Um, and then then I'm having a problem

reading the news lately because there

are so many stories that look like what

I've already seen but might not be. So,

can you tell me is this a news story or

did we already know that according to

news nation that the assisted living

facilities

Oh, Gateway Pund is writing about this

um that the assisted living facilities

are often just somebody's house and

there's no service there at all. Did we

already know that? Because it feels like

a repeat. But on the other hand, maybe

it's just a new place and a new new set

of data. But in my bubble, every time I

wake up, somebody Republican usually is

uncovering something fraudulent,

and that's a good thing.

Next, you you may or may not be

following the story of Act Blue.

If you went onto the street and randomly

stopped people and said, "Tell me what

you know about Act Blue,

how many people could answer that

question?"

Now, you're my audience is very uh

plugged in. So probably half 3/4ers of

you would know Act Lewis, but if you

don't, they are a Democrat organization

that raises money for a variety of

Democrat candidates. But what they do

that's special is that they take small

donations. I know. I'll get to it. I'll

get to it.

They allegedly

allegedly take only small donations from

American American sources and then they

distribute it to candidates. The reality

and they're being uh investigated for

this. Uh I believe Trump has authorized

the investigation.

Uh the reality might be allegedly that

they're a fraudulent organization from

top to bottom. And what they really do

is they take large donations, maybe from

Democrat billionaires, maybe from

overseas, and then they pretend with

fancy bookkeeping that it came from uh

individuals. Now, that would be really,

really illegal,

but that's the accusation.

So, um,

what if,

and again, this falls into that category

of every day I wake up and there's new

alleged fraud of massive scales. We're

talking about hundreds of millions of

dollars here. And I do believe that it's

been demonstrated,

correct me if I'm wrong, uh, there's

plenty of evidence that, uh, one

person's address has been used multiple

times. that would be illegal because it

means so it's not real or that people

who are not actively following politics

have been donating allegedly small

dollar amounts for years but they don't

even know about it. If you go to their

house and say did you give money to um

act blue they would say what's that? No

they didn't they didn't give any money.

So

even though it's an allegation,

yeah, it's called submerfing.

Um I feel there's a 100% chance that

they're a massive criminal organization.

I also wonder if it's big enough that

Democrats could not win anything without

them. What would the midterms look like

without act blue being able to put big

money into people's pockets?

Different, right? Doesn't mean that, you

know, it would go a different direction,

but it wouldn't be the same.

So, that's happening.

Also, good news that's being

investigated.

There's an article in hot air by David

Stro that guess is something I've been

saying. I didn't know if anybody else

would have the same observation, but he

did.

It goes like this that

sorry hiccups.

It goes like this

that the psychology I'm this I'm going

to paraphrase. This is not what he said

exactly, but the American um psychology

is that things were pretty good and our

systems mostly worked and that we were

not in sitting inside a gigantic fraud.

Well, now that we know about the NOS's

and we know about the all the Somalian

fraud,

um, our brains are primed in a way

they've never been before to imagine

mass conspiracies

being true because the the scope of how

big the fraud is with the with the fake

daycarees and everything else. The scope

of that is so big that once you learn

that was a real thing and that it's

going on for years, years and it's right

under people's noses and people can see

all the signs. You could see the the

smoking gun and it didn't matter. You

know, there could be news reports and it

didn't matter. But now it matters.

And what does that do? This is Stum's

observation and mine as well. What does

that new psychology

do to how we think about the election

integrity?

It changes it. And I think we need a new

name for this. A name for the phenomenon

where there's a whole bunch of bad

things happening individually,

but when you catch them individually,

they don't seem like a big enough deal

to, you know, change the world. So, if

you looked at the uh let's say the uh

Minnesota fraud and let's say you heard

a report that there were some fraudulent

uh children's charity, you would say to

yourself, well, you know, happens.

Uh they should go to jail. But you would

think it would be isolated.

But what really is happening is this.

It's an immense diversified machine in

which you can't even keep track of how

many frauds there are within the larger

scope of things.

Now, I would argue

that the pandemic had that same quality

that if you looked at the um individual

bad actors, you would notice that there

were people lying and maybe people doing

things for, you know, for money, etc.

But you wouldn't necessarily see the

scope of it. The scope of it was

unbelievable. And also

unbelievable. I said it twice because it

mattered. You wouldn't that's that's the

problem I had in the beginning of the

pandemic. I would hear reports of let's

say data that was ignored and I would

say yeah that can happen. Data is

ignored. Somebody would say this study

was suppressed

and I'd say yeah yeah things happen.

study could get suppressed, but my brain

was at the time incapable of imagining

the vast scope of the fraud. Did you

have the same issue? You could tell that

something was wrong and you could see

the buckets of the wrongness, but you

just couldn't wrap your head around how

big it was. Now, that's the same as

these NGO frauds. you really couldn't

wrap your head around how big it was and

therefore you were frozen into inaction.

Well, back to David Stum's point.

Remember how there were many, many

claims of election irregularity

and I would hear them and I'm guilty.

That's totally guilty. And I would hear

a claim and I would say, "Yeah, yeah,

maybe that really did happen. Maybe it

did, maybe it didn't, but it was in this

little bucket." Then you hear another

one. You say, "All right, well, there's

more than one. It's in this little

bucket." But it wasn't until maybe this

year that we could understand that all

the different ways that the election

was, I think, rigged in my opinion that

you would never be able to put your head

around how massive the attempt of

rigging was. And so you can't deal with

it. So you default to, well,

happens. It's in a little bucket. If we

catch people doing things, we'll try to

take them to court. But it's not really,

you know, it's not about the whole

system. It is the whole system. So,

there needs to be a name

for these gigantic frauds

that we can't recognize because we're

only seeing the tree and we're not

seeing the forest. Oh, wait. We already

have that. [laughter]

All it is is another one of those. You

can't you can't see the forest for the

trees.

So you look at a tree, you're like,

well, you know, kind of sucks that that

tree is unhealthy.

Hey, who cut down that tree? But if

you're looking at the tree, you're

missing that it's the forest.

That might be a big deal. So my

recommend my uh prediction for 2026

is that the uh our understanding of the

size of the election fraud and we might

be finding this out through act blue for

example is enormous. We might find out

that it's not a coincidence that

electronic electronic voting machines

are used in battleground states. That

might not be a coincidence.

It could be that one of the benefits

that Trump will get out of attacking

Venezuela

um

brought you up the wrong tree. It could

be that we'll learn if something changes

in the leadership of Venezuela. Imagine

the imagine a new leader going in and

then imagine Trump saying, "All right,

we we helped install you. We are going

to be your friend. will help you rebuild

Venezuela. But you're going to have to

tell us, did your guys or any

Venezuelans have anything to do with

rigging our systems?

And then maybe we'll find out. So

prediction, this will be the year we

find out that the election was more more

than the trees, that it was about the

whole forest.

Well, 2026 just started out interesting.

Uh Trump,

well, in many ways, but Trump uh posted

a meme that said we're entering the

golden age and also separately that the

hunter be the hunted becomes the hunter.

So, those are two big themes for uh

2026.

How many of you think I had anything to

do with those two things?

because I've been saying for a while

that uh we would be entering the golden

age, but then the pandemic blew that off

track.

And I've been saying for a while that

Republicans would be hunted if um if

Biden had won the election. And sure

enough, they were hunted January 6, etc.

Oh, add January 6 to the list of things

that were too big to understand.

Yeah, the whole January 6 insurrection

hoax

um it's just bigger than we could

imagine it could be a hoax, but that's

what made it invisible.

Yeah. the the scale of that hoax when in

fact the real insurrection was Democrats

trying to remove Trump. But they did

such a good job of, you know, creating a

this fake January 6 select committee and

hunting down all the the people that

they took a thing that

um they reversed it essentially. They

reversed reality because at the time

they had the power to do that. They were

the insurrectionists.

And the best way they could cover up for

the fact that they were the

insurrectionists is by accusing the

other side of being the

insurrectionists. And that's what they

did almost successfully.

Well, believe it or not,

time for a sip.

Yeah, the J6 thing was

professionally produced. That's another

hint that it wasn't based on facts.

Well, amazingly, PG, the power company

here in uh California, is for the fourth

time in two years going to lower the

rates.

So apparently they, you know, pulled a

bunch of moves that allowed them to

lower the rates. So good for them. I was

not aware of that, but it will take it

will allow Governor Nuome to say that he

lowered costs. Now, as far as I know,

Nuome had nothing to do with the fact

that PG& lowered their costs, but

whoever's in charge always gets the

blame. Whoever's in charge always gets

the credit. And if if Californians think

or even if the n if he runs nationally,

he's going to be able to say he lowered

rates and there's no indication that

anybody but PNG Eene was behind the

lowering of the rates, but I'm glad they

did. It's not a huge amount of money.

So, but it's just now up. It seems like

a big deal if it just doesn't go up.

New York Post is reporting that a court

has ruled in favor of the Second

Amendment

uh and open carry in California. So I

guess there was a law

um limiting open carry

of firearms and the uh which court was

it? US Court of Appeals of the Ninth

Circuit by 2 to1 said that was too

anticonstitutional.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Ninth

Circuit is usually liberal leading?

That's true, right? I don't really

follow the course that much, but can you

confirm this in the comments that the

Ninth Circuit

usually is left leading?

Is that true?

Um anyway, so it surprised me that they

got a 2 to1 ruling in favor of the

Second Amendment, I would say.

All right.

Um I'm going to file this next story

under It is true. Okay, I'm getting

confirmation. Thank you.

Yep. Well, was sort of a surprise.

Um, did you know News Newsmax is

reporting this that the Department of

Justice uh I think you knew this part uh

as requested Minnesota

and uh I think

21 states in total. They look like

they're all lefty states. I think

they're all blue states. I'm just

looking at it quickly. Either all or

most are blue states. But they've been

asked by the Trump administration to

produce voting records

because we want to see if there are any

fake uh voters on the roles. What do you

think

happens when you ask for voting records?

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you

that Act Blue, they changed their

accounting so you can't tell what they

were doing. So, as soon as the uh as

soon as act blue was investigated, they

immediately changed how they record

things. So, they wouldn't be able to

tell if they're up to anything bad. Now,

that's pretty on the nose, isn't it?

Yeah. By the way, Marcella,

remind me that the on the nose thing is

something I use a lot. On the nose. So

that would certainly suggest a uh

possibility of guilt. But what do you

think is going to happen when the states

are asked quite reasonably quite

reasonably to produce records that show

that their voters are real eligible

voters? Well, we don't know yet, but

they have 15 days to produce it. And I'm

going to guess it will be less produced

than the Epstein files. I do not think

they'll produce it. I think they will do

everything they can to and lose the

records. You know, maybe maybe what will

really happen is uh they'll say, "Oh, we

lost those records." All all 50. I think

all 21 states are going to suddenly have

a problem. Oh, yeah. We had those

records, but yeah, they they weren't

backed up. But what I don't expect to

happen is that the federal government

will get the records.

And why? Well, obviously. Why? Because

it's fraudulent.

Obviously. So, I don't think there's any

other way this could go. There's no way

they're going to give them records that

prove that their their voters are not

real, right? There isn't any chance that

they'll do that. So, they're either

going to fight it infinitely in court or

they're going to have a have a water

leak or something. But we're not gonna

see this. Here's a weird story.

Um I talk about this a lot lately, but

you know the defense

um the defense company called Enderil

that Palmer Lucky um is the head of

apparently he's made the claim that

Enderil has some kind of technology

called the Endril's Seabed Century. And

he says, and I quote, I swear I'm not

making this up. He said, "I can know

where all the whales are, the

submarines, boats, where all the divers

are." Do you believe that? Do you

believe that he has in place technology

that can identify where all the whales

are and all the boats?

Wouldn't that make it? Um, he also says

submarines. Now, obviously, there's a

great military value to that, but here's

my question.

Are submarines stealthy enough

that uh we or anybody else could make

one that's invisible to this technology?

Or can he see everything?

And if he can see everything, does that

mean we already know that there are no

alien bases under the ocean?

Because I don't believe he believes

there are alien bases. Maybe one of the

reasons he doesn't believe it is that he

can see everything under the ocean and

if any alien craft had uh had enter

um he would have seen it.

Is that possible? Oh, that's a really

interesting little story.

Well, the Washington Examiner Naomi Lynn

Lim

is writing about how the midterms

usually go to the party that's not in

power. And uh Trump has has questioned

why that happens. You why why does the

other side almost always not always but

almost always, how do they almost always

win the midterm?

And I don't know if we know the answer

to that exactly. It might be

psychological.

It might be because people only cared

about the head of the ticket and if

there's no presidential race, you know,

the devoted people don't show up. Is

that it? Might be some combination of

things. But here's the interesting part.

So his um chief of staff, Susie Wilds,

who gets a lot of credit for being

smart, they say they want to put Trump

on the ballot, you know, in the

conceptual way, not the actual way. And

her thinking is that the Democrats are

going to put him on the ballot by just

saying, you know, you have to thwart him

or defeat him because he's still

president. And the best way to do that

would be to, you know, elect a bunch of

Democrats in Congress. So Susie says she

wants to put Trump on the ballot. I

think she said she hasn't told Trump

yet, but what she wants is for Trump to

um campaign like he is on the ballot,

but you know, he'd be campaigning for

surrogates and proxies and stuff. Um

that will probably happen. But in this

story was a little piece of data

that I think was contradicted later in

the story, but I'd never heard this

before.

uh that

people will vote for who they think

understands their problem, not who has

the best solution.

Have you ever heard that? It's the first

time I've ever heard that. And I I

question whether that's true. But even

if the Republicans came up with a great

plan,

um, if they didn't show that they really

cared or really understood, let's say,

affordability.

So, you could argue that if Trump does a

great job on affordability, it wouldn't

matter to us to uh the midterms partly

because that would be in rearview mirror

by the time it happened. Right? So,

people don't vote for the past. They

vote for do you understand what I care

about

as their their way of understanding

whether something would be done about

it.

So at the moment the Democrats were

doing a better job of acting like

affordability is the main thing that

would beat the Republican plan of saying

oh we did a good job on energy and eggs

and a few other things. So that would be

a winning position. So, can Trump

reverse that? Can he can he show enough

empathy

and enough of a plan going forward such

as healthcare? Uh, also in the article

was the idea that if the Republicans

don't have a health care plan, any kind

of healthare plan or one that doesn't

sound good, they can't win because that

would show a lack of empathy.

The Democrats still have the option of

saying, "We understand your pain. Uh,

you know, we're going to do something

about it, and what we're going to do

about it is throw massive amounts of

money at it, and you know, that'll fix

it." Now, if you're a voter, you say to

yourself, "Oh, I don't like

overspending."

But if they can immediately solve my

problem, and they immediately understand

it, which is what it would sound like,

that's a winning play,

winning proposition.

So, at the very least, Trump would have

to have a Republican plan that doesn't

sound bash or crazy. and he would have

to show that even though he got a few

victories on affordability that uh he

has so much more to do. So if he if he

can sell both of those ideas, we have so

much more to do. It's a top priority. I

I totally understand why you want more

affordability.

You know, we're going to make it happen.

Here's one of the things we're going to

do for healthcare. But short of that,

the Republicans have a lossy path.

All right. Um, I saw this quote today

from Elon Musk once again, always in the

news. He thinks that Neurolink, the chip

you put in people's heads, um, in the

future there's nothing physically to

stop them from being able to restore

full bodily function. So, in other

words, if you had, let's say, a break in

your spinal cord, at the moment, there's

nothing we can do about it. But if you

had a neural link chip, not yet. Not

yet. They can't do it yet. But in the

future, it will be able to bypass the uh

the disturbance in your um your existing

nerves and just send the signal to where

it needs to be. And that people who are

paralyzed, completely paralyzed, could

get back 100% of their function.

Isn't that amazing?

That's so amazing. Now that they'll be

too late to help me, of course, but uh

just the fact that he's got that as a

target and he usually hits his targets.

Yeah, it's just amazing.

So, thank you for that, Elon Musk, on

behalf of all paralyzed and semi

paralyzed people like me. All right.

Um, immediately after the show, uh, Owen

Gregorian will be setting up a spaces

event on X. Spaces, if you didn't know,

is the audio only. Doesn't cost anything

to participate. Uh, it's audio only and

uh, people will be invited up to make

their points and say things. Now, uh,

this will happen immediately after I'm

done. You have to give them a few

minutes just to fire it up. So

immediately is not exactly immediately.

Um but if you want to find it, you if

you follow me in X, I've reposted it the

link to it. And if you don't see that,

just look for Owen Gregorian and you'll

find it quickly. Now the the original

plan that Owen had was to ask people if

I've helped them in some way and make

that the theme, but that was before

Venezuela.

um got attacked. So I would not be I

would not be insulted

if the spacious event is more about

Venezuela because that's sort of a you

know top of mind at the moment. But uh a

lot of people love the spaces. They

sometimes they'll run two or three hours

because people just want to keep going

and it's amazing. All right, so that is

all I have for you. I think I made it

about an hour, didn't I?

pretty good. Timed it perfectly. All

right, I'm going to go private just for

a minute with the locals. Um, like I

said, people locals probably want to

head over to to spaces pretty soon, so

I'll keep it Oh, hiccups. So, I'll keep

it short.

But thanks for joining.

locals,

I'll be with you just to wrap things