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Sublime. Well, I'd like to start the day with a quiz. This is for those of you on YouTube. What's the difference between an atmospheric river and Stormy Daniels? An atmospheric river and Stormy Daniels. The answer is one is wet and blows a lot, and the other is a lot of rain. So that's how we're starting the show.

Big question on the Fed rates. So I like to go directly from Stormy Daniels to Fed funds and interest rates. I saw a tweet by Unusual Whales quoting somebody named Nick Timiraos, and he says that the Fed faces one of the toughest calls in years: whether to raise the rates and fight inflation or take a time-out amid the most intense banking crisis since 2008.

All right, let me see. If you fight the inflation first, you destroy the banking system and we all die. If you lower the rates, it'll make inflation still out of control, but at least the banking system will survive so we'll be alive to fight inflation in the future. So is that a hard decision? Here's my recommendation: the tourniquet is always the right answer. The tourniquet is always the right answer. This one doesn't feel like a hard decision at all, does it? Is there anybody who would argue that we should risk the entire banking system, which is teetering, in order to buy six months of maybe a little less inflation but maybe not? Hello? Does that really look like a hard decision?

I think they'll get it wrong. If I had to guess, they'll probably get it wrong. But it's not a hard decision. One is an immediate problem and one is a long-term problem. How is that not an obvious decision? But I don't think they're going to make it. Even Elon Musk is saying they've got to lower the rates to save the banks. So I think we've left competence behind. That will be the theme for today.

Tucker Carlson said on his show that if the Democratic Party is allowed to take out the presidential front-runner, meaning Trump, who's the main threat to their power, with this bogus criminal case, as he calls it, and pretty much everybody calls it, that precedent will live forever. Voters will never determine the outcome of another election. Well, I think that's hyperbole. I wouldn't say never, but you could imagine how this would be a bad precedent. So I think the point stands.

What do you think? Do you think that this would be the end of the Republic or is it really just about Trump? I don't know. It could go either way. I mean, it's really risky stuff. But if they get away with taking Trump out on bogus charges, then they can take anybody out for any reason. If you don't draw the line at bogus charges — I mean really bogus charges — if you don't draw the line there, I'm pretty sure if you don't draw the line at bogus charges, Tucker's right. You won't draw the line at anything. There won't be anything that you won't be willing to accept if you accept this.

Now, obviously I'm not recommending any kind of weird insurrections or anything, but it's a good point. If they can get away with bogus charges right in front of you, charges that you know are bogus, the Democrats know are bogus, everybody would know are bogus, if this works, why wouldn't they do it every year, every election? Just put all the other side in jail. Just find some reason. Just take your misdemeanors up to felonies.

Well, at this point I believe every legal expert has weighed in and said the charges are bogus. It's purely political. It signals political in every possible way you can signal it. There's just nothing left to argue. Everybody can see it's just political. And the Democrats still like it. They're still in favor of it.

Now I feel actually embarrassed living in a country where tens of millions of people think that bogus charges are perfectly acceptable, or they haven't looked into it and they don't know that it's bogus. I don't know.

Well, let's say some more about this. In my opinion, Alvin Bragg, who's the prosecutor who's trying to get Trump, he's taken DeSantis out of the race, hasn't he? Is it my imagination that all energy for DeSantis just drained out immediately? There's nothing left. I mean, DeSantis went from the obvious next president of the United States — or optimists thought so — he went from "oh yeah, he's definitely going to be the leader of the United States" to now he just looks like the Fred Flintstone of Florida. I didn't make that one up. One of the locals members called him Fred Flintstone, and now I can't unsee it. All I see is Fred Flintstone when I see DeSantis.

But anyway, as Bill Maher said, nobody's going to want the tribute band, which is DeSantis, if they could have the real band, which is Trump. And the other thing that Alvin Bragg is doing is essentially confirming Trump's major message, which is they're not after him, they're after you, but they have to get past him to get to you. Now it's not literally true, but it feels so true now. It just took out the feeling of "okay, that's just a fact. They're trying to get him out of the way so they can get to you." It does feel exactly like that. Again, feelings being the dominant thing here. Facts, I don't know. Yeah, you could argue the facts, but the feeling — if you're going to read the room — yeah, it feels exactly like they're trying to get to us, meaning anybody who had been supportive of anything the left doesn't like. And it looks like he's in the way. That's exactly what it looks like.

I don't think this could be a more perfect situation for Trump's comeback. I feel like he's almost immediately forgiven for everything, because once you see a bogus charge trying to take him down, you just immediately say, "Wait a minute, that could have been me," right? Because you could have easily been at the protest and found yourself still in jail over basically nothing. You know, trespassing, I guess. So it's so easy to imagine myself in jail on trumped-up charges. Trumped-up charges. Did I mention trumped-up charges? Yeah, because the charges are trumped up. There he is.

Well, apparently Michael Cohen's ex-lawyer — this was the lawyer for the lawyer of Trump — says that Michael Cohen is a huge liar and he lied hundreds of times. He lied hundreds of times during the course of his investigation and trial and stuff. Hundreds of times. I don't think I could lie hundreds of times if I made it my job. I'd be like, what am I going to lie about now? I don't know, sky is pink. Like it would take me all day to make up hundreds of lies. But Michael Cohen, apparently according to his ex-lawyer, is the least credible person who's ever had human DNA. So basically the charges against Trump will largely depend on the biggest liar in the world, which is being pushed by a political D.A. who said he was running to get Trump and then had to make up some charges that everybody else who had any conscience whatsoever said that's not — there's nothing there — and then put them together and turn them into a felony. It's sort of the perfect situation for Trump. It's just perfect.

So DeSantis, by not giving a full-throated defense of Trump against trumped-up charges, makes him look weak, doesn't it? Just makes him look weak. And you don't want to look weak if you're competing against Trump, because the one thing Trump doesn't look is weak. Say what you will about any other parts of his record or his character or anything else, he's not weak. I mean, he didn't even get taken down by January 6th, which is remarkable if you think about it.

And I think Stormy Daniels is giving a full-throated — oh, that's another story. Sorry, I just got sidetracked there.

So here's why legalizing drugs won't work. I really felt good about — there was one experiment in Canada where they're going to give free fentanyl out to addicts. You have to have a prescription, but it was free and it was legal. If you've ever met an addict — and I'm happy to say I've known more than a few — here's why this isn't going to work. Turns out that the biggest new thing is mixing fentanyl with some kind of horse tranquilizer called xylazine. It's not even legal for humans, but the addicts have figured out how to mix it with the fentanyl to get you a longer high, which is also much more dangerous. The likelihood of it killing you is way up.

So even if — here's how to understand an addict. If you said, "Hey addict, I guess a free fentanyl. Do you want some?" They'd say yeah, that would be safer because it's monitored and everything. So they'll take your free fentanyl and then they'll mix it with their horse tranquilizers and die. Or if you say, "Hey, you can have this fentanyl," they're going to say, "I really like the fentanyl that's mixed with horse tranquilizers." "Well that's way more dangerous." "Yeah, yeah it is, but it's a way better high." "But it's way, way more dangerous." "Yeah, yeah, but did you hear the part about it's a better high?" "But it's like a hundred times more dangerous for like 20 percent better high." "Yeah, but did you hear the part about it's a better high?" That's an addict. That's all the addict cares about. And as long as there's stuff you can add to it to make it, according to an addict, more powerful, I don't think you can give the free stuff away and convince them to do the free stuff if it's not as good as the illegal stuff. And you can't legally give away fentanyl mixed with horse tranquilizer. There's no scenario in which that will ever be legal. So you just can't compete. You can't compete with illegal. It's just too good.

So I didn't see that coming, but apparently the law enforcement is saying that this mixture of tranquilizer with fentanyl is the new thing, and they found it in almost every state so far. It's growing.

Well, let's talk about Joe Biden and his crime family. Here's the thing that I keep thinking about: ESG, which is environmental, social, and governance. So the first thing you need to know about ESG is that it combines things which don't seem to be related. Some kind of diversity requirement — you know, social and governance, getting a lot of diversity in your management and in your employees — and then the other thing is the environment, you know, climate change stuff. And those two things are just two different things. If an outside organization were pushing for one thing, let's say either only diversity or only climate stuff, you can understand that, right? You can understand that this — oh, somebody has a special interest and they're pushing people to do it. Sort of the American system. I wouldn't complain about it at all.

But the moment you combine two things that are unrelated — diversity and climate — and then you turn it into a three-letter acronym, how much of the public in general understands what ESG is? If you were to go on the street away from most of your political followers, you know what it is because you talked about it, but maybe five percent, ten percent of the public. What's your best guess of how many could define ESG and tell you what's good about it and bad about it? Maybe 25 percent if it's in the corporate world. So much that everybody's seen it at their job. So I don't know the extent to which people in a corporate environment are just exposed to it, but I'm going to say less than 20 percent even know what it is.

So you've got this perfect storm of a thing that the public doesn't understand, but when they do hear about it, it sounds like good stuff. Diversity — oh, I like diversity. Environment — yeah, what's wrong with that? And how is that even different? You know, companies always had to meet environmental standards. It's no different. If you didn't know much about it, it would sound good. So then when you found out that the president vetoed a bill that would make it illegal to put your retirement in ESG-focused companies, you'd say, "Oh, well that's probably a good veto because we like diversity, we like the environment. You don't want those mean Republicans to tell you you can't have any diversity and you can't have a good environment." So it's a good thing that B