ssian regime. That's not too bad.

All right, let's talk about Elon Musk. So Elon Musk tweets his suggestion for a Ukraine-Russia peace plan. Do not get mad at me for reading it, okay? If anybody has a Ukraine flag in their profile, don't get mad at me. I'm just reading it. You can get mad at me later, and you will be. Boy, will you be. But don't get mad at me yet. This is just Elon's idea.

So he says for Ukraine-Russia peace, it's a one, two, four-point plan. Four bullet points. Redo the elections of the annexed regions under U.N. supervision, and then Russia leaves if that is the will of the people. Crimea, which was not one of the recently annexed ones but was annexed earlier, he says Crimea, formerly part of Russia as it has been since 1783, says Elon, until Khrushchev's mistake, which is what he called it. And we'll talk about, I'll give you some background on that. And number three, water supply to Crimea assured. I didn't know that was a problem, but apparently the water supply issue is probably a big one. And then Ukraine remains neutral. I guess that means no NATO.

Now what do you think Ukraine said when Musk offered his peace plan? Did they say thank you for weighing in and helping out? No, they told him to fuck off, right? And so their diplomat did, and then Zelenskyy himself did. Basically, yeah, Zelenskyy did too.

So Elon pointed out that he's already spent $80 million giving Ukraine Starlink satellite communications. Elon Musk has already given them $80 million worth of resources for nothing and help, basically. Probably made a big difference, I'm guessing. I haven't heard, but I think Starlink probably made a big difference.

So they attacked him for suggesting. Now the reason for it is that apparently a lot of Ukrainians believe that Crimea is not up for negotiation. So really it's all about Crimea is where they're interested in.

Would you like a little background on Crimea? I think you would. So is it true that Crimea had been part of Russia since 1783 up until 1954? I think it is, right? Now shall we go back before that, before 1783? I don't know. It just depends where you want to start.

Now why did Khrushchev give Crimea to Ukraine back when he did? Do you know the reason for that? Why did Russia, and specifically Khrushchev, why did he give Crimea to Ukraine? Here's the answer. Nobody knows. I was just reading up on it. Nobody knows. It didn't make sense. There was no reason. No, I mean there must have been a reason, but history does not record what the reason was. Isn't that interesting? Now I think people will offer reasons, but they're speculative reasons. There's no actual reason that history records. Anything you say would be guessing. History doesn't know. But isn't that interesting that we don't know that? Yeah.

Now somebody says Khrushchev was from Ukraine. That may have something to do with it, right? Or it may have been some other secret deal. Who knows? Could have been anything, but we don't know.

So do you think it's fair that if Russia owned Crimea since 1783 but not since 1954, do you think a border should change since 1954? Well it did. So now Russia has it since 2014, right? So since 2014 Russia has had it.

Do you know the percentage of ethnic Russians in Crimea? What percentage of them are ethnic Russian? They don't speak Ukrainian, I think. I think most of the Ukrainians can understand Russian though, but it's not their primary language. It's high as like 81 percent. So they're not Russian citizens, they're ethnic Russians. So if you were to do a real poll, I don't know if you could do it, but if you did a real vote in Crimea, would they say they want to be part of Russia or would they say they want to be part of Ukraine? What do you think? I don't know the answer to that. Do you? If they're ethnically Russian. Not a — well we don't believe any referendums over there. It doesn't matter if there was one. Yeah, it wasn't the U.N. referendum, right? It wasn't done by the U.N., so it doesn't matter if the Russians did a referendum. That doesn't mean anything. That just means that they rigged a referendum. So I don't know.

So I guess from a non-Ukrainian, non-Russian perspective, yeah, there's no objective outside way to say who should own Crimea. Is that fair to say? There's no objective standard that anyone else outside of the region could apply to say, well, the way this is usually decided or international standards would require. There's no standard. Basically it's a power play, right? It's not about who is right or wrong or who has the most moral claim. It's just going to be negotiation and power play.

So the Ukrainians, who are apparently winning militarily, do not want to be even talking about peace because as long as they're winning it doesn't make sense. Do you think the Ukrainians should be even talking about peace? What do you think from the Ukrainian point of view? Should they even have a conversation about peace? No, they should not. Not while they're winning. And they're not just winning by a little bit. It looks like they're rolling up the entire Russian army. It looks like it. I mean we could be surprised by tomorrow of course, but no, Zelenskyy should not negotiate. Shouldn't have any conversation at all. They should just use power. So in these cases where power will be decisive, might as well use it. And that's the way international relations work.

So of course Ukraine is against it. And I guess Tesla stock, which I own, so just so you know I have an interest in here, so I do own Tesla stock, and it went down because people were angry that Elon was trying to give away Crimea. And it's not his to give away.

Now let's grade Elon on persuasion. How'd he do? First of all, did he do something useful or was it counterproductive? And if it was useful, did he execute it well? Here's my take. Some of the best persuasion you've ever seen in your life. Perfectly timed, perfectly timed, and perfectly executed. Here's why. And I've taught you this before. So he's using a play that I've actually taught you is a strong play. And the play is whoever writes it down first, and especially if they can simplify it into four bullet points — and really it comes down to one because it's, you know, Crimea will end up being the hard part — whoever goes first owns the argument. Because forevermore any future conversation will be a variation on the Musk plan, right? So he basically owns the first draft. Whoever writes the first draft owns the conversation.

The second thing he did is he brought all of the attention to himself. What's the first rule of persuasion? You have to bring all the attention to yourself. Trump did it to become president. I just told you I'm doing it with this hiring thing and the black versus white stuff. I'm doing exactly the same thing right now, right in front of you. And I'm proud. I'm provoking to bring attention to myself. Once I have attention, then I can persuade. But I can't do it until I have attention. So he's bringing all the attention to himself. A plus, right? A plus. He got all the attention. It worked.

Then he puts it into a four-point bullet plan. Just the right number. Just exactly the right number of bullet points. Do you think he couldn't have added a few bullet points? Of course he could.

All right, I'm going to get rid of all the NPCs who want to say that I'm Musk's biggest sycophant, because that would be the most obvious thing to say here, right? So if you're going to say the most obvious thing and help yourself as an NPC and not like an organic human or anything, go ahead. But just know, just know that you're the most boring person on the internet now that you found the most obvious thing to say in this conversation. Good, good job. Good job. You've made all of us pause to look at the most obvious thing that anybody could ever say.

All right, so we've got simplicity. He got a four-point plan. He went first. He got the first draft. He brought all the attention to himself. He also made you think past the sale. Do you know what the sale is? What's the sale? He made you think past it. The sale is land for peace. The specifics of it is what you're arguing about. If you're arguing about the specifics, he already got you. He's done. He already made you talk about the specifics. Do you think that the specifics are the part he cares the most about? No, no, I don't think Elon Musk cares about any of those specifics. But he wants you to care about them so that you can argue past the question of should you be negotiating. Do you see how good this is? You couldn't do better than what he did. This is some of the strongest, best communication for the public good. Unambiguously for the public good. Is it good for Tesla? No, it's terrible for Tesla. It's terrible for me. I own stock in Tesla. I hate it. But you can't ignore how good it is, and you can't ignore that it has to be well intended. Meaning that there's no way he thought he would get some advantage out of it, right? There's no advantage to Elon Musk except world peace. Of course that's a pretty big one.

So Elon Musk, A plus plus plus. And anybody who doesn't recognize how good this was, well, maybe you got educated. Maybe you learned something.

So I saw a tweet from Constantine Kisin. It's kind of a funny tweet. He says, forgive me, but the fact that a lot of Americans at least on Twitter seem to believe you can hold legitimate referendums in a war zone under hostile occupation, it's difficult to take seriously. You can't agree who won your last two elections.

So at first I was thinking, well, you know, maybe you're exaggerating. I think you're exaggerating. I think maybe there is a way the U.N. could do a referendum in a war zone. I think if they worked hard they could pull that off. And then his last sentence just slays me. He goes, you can't agree who won your last two elections. Well, yeah, that's a good point.

Oh, I love to have my mind changed within the space of one tweet. Because the first part I was going, no, no, you could do that. Oh, you could pull that off, I think. Me, okay, you win, Constantine. But I'm going to high-ground him. I'm going to high-ground his ass. You ready for this? Now I've told you the high-ground maneuver is the thing you say that once it's said, everybody who hears it goes, oh yeah, well that's true. Okay, yeah, we'll go with that.

All right, watch this. Now he's got a pretty good high ground, doesn't he? He's already at a pretty good high ground. Do you think I can high-ground him beyond that? Watch me. Elections are not about getting it right. Elections are about moving on. Do you know what we did with our last two elections that we dispute the outcome? We moved on. In both cases we elected a president. We moved on. Do you know what we need in Ukraine to move on? It doesn't matter what the referendum is. It doesn't matter if it says yes or no. It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not. It only matters if we use that as a tool to move on, right?

So when Elon Musk says we should do a referendum, do you think that he is in the weeds where Constantine is about whether you could do it accurately? No, I do not believe that Elon Musk is in the weeds. I do not believe that Elon Musk thinks it's necessary that the referendum be accurate. It only needs to help you move on. Because that's what they need. They need to move on. You have to have something stable, you know. And I'm not going to assume I know what that is or what they would like. But no, voting is not about getting the right answer. It really isn't. It's about finding a way that everybody can agree to just go to the next thing, just to move on.

I bet you didn't see that coming, did you? I like when the comments have a certain nature. They get quiet for a while because I know you're thinking about it. It's like, is that the high ground? It is. The accuracy of the votes don't matter as much as you hope they would. It's about moving on. A jerk.

All right, here's a funny thing I heard about Google that will become a Dilbert comic. I promise you. I promise you this will become a Dilbert comic. Now insiders at Google say this is true. They have something called LPA. LPA, and it stands for launch, promo, and promo for promotion, and then abandon. Launch, promote or promotion, and then abandon. And apparently it has to do with the fact that the only way you can get promoted at Google is if on your resume, your record, you say you launched a product. But it doesn't matter if it succeeded. What they care about is that you were a vital part of a launch of a product.

So the best engineers, they'll jump onto the new product and they'll work on the new product, and they're good engineers, so they finish it. And then as soon as they're done, they put it on their, I think they have a name for it like a promo, but there's something like a permanent resume basically. So that when they're ready for promotion they can say, hey, I just launched a product. Wouldn't you like me to be on the next product launch but at a raise? And so what happens is all the good people leave as soon as the product is launched. And that's why so many Google products get launched and fail. Because they launch with whatever imperfections all launches have. Some imperfections. But then there's nobody to fix them. The good people are all gone because they only did it to get a promotion. So they all want to launch things and leave. Launch and leave.

So Google has built an incentive system. They're incentivized to destroy all their new products. They're incentivized, the actual engineers are incentivized, to build faulty products that launch and then get the hell out of there as soon as possible. Oh, definitely going to be a Dilbert comic. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

All right, what about an election integrity? Rasmussen has a new poll. So nearly half, 49 percent of voters, think it's at least somewhat likely there'll be widespread cheating that will affect the outcome of the congressional elections. Half of the country doesn't trust our elections. But when it's done, do you think we'll be happy with the result and that the whole country will think, well, that looks fair? Of course not. Of course not. We will once again argue that the election was not fair, whichever way it went. You know, the other side will argue it wasn't fair. And then what will we do? What will we do when we're arguing that it wasn't fair? Then we'll move on. We'll move on. Yeah, that was the only point, to move on. It's not the only point, but you get my point.

And let's