for discerning what's real and what isn't. So just stay with me. See if I can deliver that. Okay?

But first, some other things. I saw a tweet from Michael Sokolow on Twitter. He says it's interesting how NBC is plugging the Winter Olympics, and apparently they're not mentioning that it's in Beijing or China. So NBC is maybe at least allegedly, we don't know what's in their minds, but Michael goes on to say even the graphic they're showing has a big Winter Olympics with only a small Beijing in the lower corner.

Now, have we reached a point where willingly doing business with China is embarrassing? Yes or no? Have we reached the point where an American company doing business with China is literally embarrassing? Yeah, yeah, we're there. It's literally a corporate embarrassment to do business with China now.

I feel sorry for NBC because they make these deals years in advance. I imagine probably four years ago they knew they would handle the Olympics. Maybe they could have seen the signs then. But this is going to be, I think, a ratings disaster. Is that a pretty safe prediction? Do you think we'll be surprised and the ratings will be sort of normal? I feel like it's going to be, at least in America, I think it's going to be a disaster. We'll see.

China's got really big problems right now. I don't know if I've ever seen a country with bigger problems. So they've got that default of the big real estate company going on over there. They've got a demographic bomb. They're being blamed for the coronavirus. They've got the Uyghurs. So now they've got a giant karma problem. Uyghur karma. If the hashtag Uyghur karma ever gets traction, I don't know, even the government could fall in China. I know that seems really, really unlikely that the entire government could fall, but it could. It could.

Rasmussen did a poll, and they were asking people about their opinions of the FBI. And apparently 46 percent either feel strongly or somewhat agreeing with Roger Stone in the following sentence. Now this will blow you away a little bit. This will blow you away. This is the United States public, and 46 percent of them agree with Roger Stone. Quote: "That a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using it as Biden's personal Gestapo."

So the thought that Biden uses the FBI as his personal Gestapo is agreed to somewhat or a lot by 46 percent of the public. 46 percent of the public thinks it's fair to liken the FBI to the Gestapo. How many of you would agree with that? I think all 46 percent of you are on my live stream right now. Pretty wide agreement. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

You know, this is exactly the kind of accusation that I usually avoid. All right, is that fair? Maybe, maybe. I don't, that may be my own self-image, but I like to stay out of the this group is like Hitler and that group is like Hitler and who's like the Holocaust. I don't like to get in any of that stuff. It's just that's sort of what you argue when you run out of argument. But I find that characterization hyperbolic, of course, but not untrue. You know, it feels like a hyperbolic way to say it, hyperbole, but it isn't too far from what I see.

To me it does look like Biden has some control over the FBI and that they are doing some of his bidding, and that would look very disturbing. Now we don't know. We don't know. But maybe.

Elizabeth Holmes, who is on trial for defrauding people, I guess, got found guilty on several of the charges and looks like she's got some serious jail time or fines coming. And I don't know that there's much to say about this. John Carroll says in the comments the other 54 don't know what the Gestapo is. No, you're not totally wrong there.

You know, I'm only mentioning the Elizabeth Holmes story because it's in the news, but there's nothing interesting about it, is there? She broke the law, she got caught, she got prosecuted. I think that's the whole story.

Now there is definitely an element to this of how in the world did she convince so many people that she was legitimate. I think that Elizabeth Holmes convinced more smart people that she was real than just about anybody. How'd she do it? Is it because she's female? Now I don't think it was the sex appeal per se. I didn't see her really selling sex. Whenever I saw her she was dressed conservatively, etc. I think it's because she is a woman, not because of the sex part. You know, I don't think necessarily any sexual interest is why people believed her.

But how many investors do you think would love to have a successful female entrepreneur in their portfolio? I think it was a portfolio decision that they all need a successful black person that they're funding so they can say they are, which is not a bad impulse, right? You want your activities to have some correlation with the demographic of the country on average. On average. Not every person every time. But to me this looks like a gender preference thing, meaning that there were so many people who knew they hadn't invested enough in women's startups that they probably were just primed to throw money at her as soon as she looked legitimate. Unfortunately she wasn't totally legitimate. So that's that whole story.

There's an interesting part of the Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell story. So apparently when Epstein did a settlement back in 2009, he paid half a million dollars to, I guess, Virginia Giuffre's accusations. And apparently part of that agreement, because it was a civil lawsuit, is that it would basically keep everybody else quiet and they wouldn't be able to sue or something like that. In other words, we may have a perfect concealment of the truth.

So you've got Epstein who's dead, you've got Ghislaine Maxwell whose records are sealed, and now it looks like there won't even be maybe the option for civil settlements because that may have been preempted by other agreements. Whoever worked on this and was virtuous behind this 2009 thing, do I have that right? I know Dershowitz was involved with defending Epstein at one point. But this is kind of brilliant. I would say that whoever was behind it, if somebody was behind it, if this is a cover-up, is really, really good. Because it looks like they're covering it up right in front of us, totally getting away with it.

Does anybody think they won't get away with it if what we're seeing is exactly what it looks like, which is it looks like a massive cover-up? It looks like it's working, right? What do you say? And the weird thing is that they're doing it right in front of us. I don't think there's anybody who thinks, oh, they're playing it transparently or anything. No, they're covering it right in front of us and there's nothing you can do about it.

And it's the kind of issue where because it doesn't affect most of us except in the general way that you want criminals to go to jail, but because I don't have any connection to anything in this story, I can watch the powers that be apparently covering up horrible activity by famous people and I just say, huh, well that's suboptimal. And then I go on with my life.

The fact that almost nobody else really, really cares about the case allows them to do this right in front of us. And we're like, ah, suboptimal. I got other things to worry about. It's kind of amazing. Usually these things at least have a little bit of a cover story that oh no, there's nothing like that going on, goodness no, nobody's covering anything up, here's what's really happening. But this doesn't even have a cover story, does it? There's not even a cover story. It's like no, we're just going to cover this up.

Pelosi is probably going to step down as speaker no matter what, and the speculation has begun about who will replace her. Isn't this the same problem that the Democrats have about running a candidate for president, which is they don't have any talent? It really, you don't really notice until they need a leader. Yeah, no bench. You don't really notice until it's like, well, who the hell are they gonna run for president? Like name a name. Like who would even be a legitimate candidate? And now they speak of that same thing and you look at the names that they're floating and I'm thinking, do any of them look like they could do what Nancy Pelosi did? They don't. They don't really look like they have the weight that she had, if you know what I mean. The gravitas or something. Newsom maybe. I think Newsom is too polarizing, but I suppose you could say that about everybody you've heard of.

All right, you saw the story about the major interstate in eastern Virginia. So snow closed the road while people are on it. So it snowed until people couldn't move. And there were people who were stuck on the road for 19 hours. They were in their car on the road. Now obviously many of those cars ran out of gas. So you know they were stuck and then there was snow and then the cars out of gas. And so even Senator Tim Kaine was in that and he spent 19 hours on the road.

Now you should read some of the threads of people. There's one by I think a news person who was stuck there. It's really scary. Now somebody says, where do you go to the bathroom? I have to think there was a lot of yellow snow by the end of two days because it was sort of like an overnight, almost two days. I don't even think it's resolved yet. It's not resolved, right? There's still some of them still there. But there had to be a lot of yellow snow. Some people didn't bring food, some did. People ran out of gas. It was amazing.

Now I'd like to answer a question that many of you have asked me many times. I've been asked the following question: Scott, how could you live in California with all the problems there? Well, I'll tell you the number one reason I live in California. That generally speaking I do not risk death by walking outdoors. That's it. That's my reason. I have lots of other reasons, right? But that's the reason I moved here. Because I once had my car break down, I've told this story before, in the middle of the winter just about now. I think it was February-ish in my senior year of college. And I was miles from civilization in a snowstorm like this one. But I was the only car and my car broke and there was no other cars. And I didn't bring a jacket in the middle of the winter because I was just going to be in my car and I was in college, right?

If you're 19, what was I, 20 I guess. If you're 20 years old and you're just going from your car to a building, you don't really need that jacket until your car breaks down 25 miles from civilization. So when I read this story I am super triggered by this, I gotta tell you, just personally. Because if you haven't almost died from exposure you don't quite understand how scary this was. Really, really scary.

Do you carry a jacket or blanket in my car? Yeah, yes, there is a spare jacket in the back of my car. That is correct. And that's in California. But as soon as the weather turns below 70 there's a spare jacket in the back of my car. Yes. And always probably will be.

Well, here's the topic that you're sick of hearing about, but I'm going to try to give you some value. So those of you who are tired of hearing about this, I'm not going to be offended if you want to do something else. But I'm going to try to give you something you haven't seen yet. Okay?

You've all heard now about mass formation psychosis. And Dr. Malone talked about it. He's not the creator of the idea but he was popularizing it. And the idea is that we're all so uncertain and confused and scared that our minds are not working correctly. Is that good enough for a summary? That we're all so isolated, scared, and we don't know what's true because the news is so confusing that we're in a state of easily being persuaded but also simply not thinking correctly. Like we've lost our ability to reason. Does that seem like what we're in? Do you feel that we're in that now?

I've said to it we're alw