aine, Lisa Murkowski Alaska, and Mitch McConnell Kentucky. Mitch McConnell anyway.

Bill O'Reilly had some interesting things to say on NewsNation with Cuomo about MSNBC's fate. So it looks like Comcast who owns both NBC News and CNBC and MSNBC, it looks like they might be looking to spin off MSNBC and CNBC. And that makes sense because MSNBC's audience took a big hit. It'll probably come back after Trump gets in office because he'll have something to yell about but it doesn't look like it's a good business. So they're going to spin it off. And what Bill O'Reilly said made a lot of sense to me. That MSNBC takes advantage of NBC's news business so that they can add the credibility of the real news to their opinion pieces. But if you separate them they are no longer connected to any real news collecting entity and it would be massively expensive to create one from nothing. MSNBC doesn't have anything to sell because all they have are these amazingly overpaid pundits. But they wouldn't be a news organization. It would just be a bunch of opinions because they'd lose the news.

Now I don't know if that's real but it's the first take I've heard on that that's interesting. And O'Reilly thinks that ABC will have to dump The View for the same reason. Now O'Reilly's take is that MSNBC's big problem is that it was nothing but hate and that The View has a similar problem. That they're spewing hate. Audiences don't like hate apparently. Hate doesn't sell as much as you want it to. And I think Bill O'Reilly is pretty close on this. At least it's an interesting speculation that MSNBC doesn't have any value outside of NBC News apparently.

Rachel Maddow has renegotiated her outrageous 30 million a year pay for being on the air only one night a week. So obviously you can't go on forever getting 30 million a year if you're only on one night a week. So she had to lower her pay to 25 million a year one day a week.

I've got a suggestion. I'm not a huge fan of Rachel Maddow, her politics, but I will note that you can't take away from her that she's unusually smart, right? She's just if you hook her up to an IQ test she's going to beat me. Really smart. But now we learn she might be the best negotiator you've ever heard of in your life. Who in the world can negotiate 25 million a year for one show a week? That's really good. When your network is failing how do you do that? So they're trying to sell this network and it's got this big expense that couldn't possibly make sense but she must be one good negotiator.

There's an MSNBC headline that will remind you why they're full of hate and they're losing. It was an opinion piece but the headline was "Laken Riley's Killer Never Stood a Chance." For all the political controversy surrounding Jose Ibarra the outcome of this trial was never in doubt. Does it sound a little bit like MSNBC was glad the migrant killed the American citizen? Like what is wrong with them? His killer never stood a chance. That the MSNBC is worried about the killer getting a fair trial. There was so much evidence of his guilt it wasn't like a close call was it? Poor MSNBC.

I saw NPR says most of the country shifted right in the 2024 election. Did we? Did the country shift right? I'm not sure that's what happened. Here's what I think happened. I think the right kind of stayed the same. You know in other words policies and stuff didn't change much and the left became batshit crazy. When batshit crazy clearly stopped working, it worked in 2020 but when it stopped working they started becoming more common sensible. Is that a word? Common sensible. Common sensical. Pick one. But I think all they did was stop being crazy and start being a little bit more normal and that looked like a move to the right.

I heard somebody else say on social media that nobody moved to the right. They just didn't have a rigged election this time so it looks like it. I don't buy that. You know whether or not there was rigging I don't buy that explanation. I think that the left had enough people in it that understood that the left had just gone crazy. It was just bat bonkers stuff and they just said we've had enough of this. We're going to give the other side a chance because the other side is at least trying to sell common sense. You could disagree with it but Republicans are trying to sell common sense.

Now this connects me to a topic I've mentioned before. As you know I've been at least listed as a Democrat most of my life and for my early years, say my 20s or so, I was pretty sure that the Democrats were the smart ones and the Republicans had a religious base that wasn't translating into policy so well. So that seemed like a little disconnect to me because I wasn't religious so I didn't see that religion should be playing so much of a part in these decisions. But the Republican party has evolved into more of a common sense. You know we love our religion but we'll keep that separate for our policy. We'll just do what makes sense.

Now obviously Republican policy is still well informed by religion but it's not the leading voice, right? It seems like when I was in my 20s they'd start with the religious part and then tell you why they had the policy. And then that would turn me off because I'd say hey what if people have a different religion? You know don't start with that. Now look at how Trump handles abortion. He doesn't start with the religion. He starts with a process. He says well having the states decide is a better process. There you go. Now that's my common sense. Common sense says put the decision where it's best to make the decision and then it's easier to defend no matter what happens because at least it was made in the right way.

So watching Trump turn the religious first people into still religious, doesn't change their belief but he's found a way to put process ahead of it and the process does all the work. You don't need to appeal to God, the Bible, because the process does what it's supposed to do. So I think that made it safe for people like me who were uncomfortable with the religion first but like religion. I'm very pro religion for other people. If you have one keep it. I like it. I like you to have one. Just doesn't work for me. Which by the way is a fault. If I could get the benefits of religion and I had a way to believe I would do it because it's pretty obvious that the religious people have some advantages anyway.

Here's some new news. We keep talking about Mike Rogers as being one of the possibilities for the head of the FBI and all the smart people were saying my God no that would be a huge mistake. No no Mike Rogers according to people who know more than I do was part of the industrial censorship thing and he was pushing the Russia collusion hoax and did some other things that Republicans think is not too compatible with the Trump movement. But it turns out it was all fake news. So Trump just messaged that he's never even considered Mike Rogers, even thought about it once, and he's definitely not going to be the head of the FBI.

Now remember how I said when Jeff Bezos says four words you just say oh that's true. Like you never even for a second do you doubt his veracity. But when Trump says it you know Trump has a little bit more of a history of hyperbole and bending the fact check a little bit. So when he says I never once even considered Mike Rogers you have to wonder is that exactly true or maybe his name came up at a dinner and Trump maybe didn't respond to it one way or another and then somebody left the dinner saying oh Mike Rogers' name is on the table. So you could easily imagine that the rumor would start without Trump starting it just by Trump maybe not responding to that suggestion or something. But he's saying very clearly it's not going to happen.

Now why did Trump say it's not Mike Rogers? Because normally you only announce who it's going to be. Isn't that uncommon? Sort of uncommon right to announce who it's not? That was weird. But here's the other thing. Do you know why Trump said it's not Mike Rogers? Because Trump tapped into his base, listened to what they were saying, heard there was all this don't pick Mike Rogers chatter going on and realized that he needed to tell us that that was off the table. Now whether it was always off the table or he just saw the chatter and said oh let me take this off the table now I don't really care because it gets us to the same place. But once again it's another example of Trump being absolutely tapped in and responding to reasonable criticisms about the direction that people think he's going. I love that.

I mean there are so many positive things happening in the government, in the country. It's kind of incredible. Like the optimism people are feeling etc. But when I see even these little corrections you know like the Bezos Musk thing that to me that's just a perfect moment in human behavior. When I see Trump listen to the public and say oh you're having a problem with this Mike Rogers thing so let me fix that. That's perfect. I'm not asking for anybody to be right about everything in the first draft. Not even the second draft. But if you respond to the situation and you respond in a common sense way and you show respect to your base and you're listening to what they're saying and you hear what they're saying that's kind of perfect. I'm not looking for no mistakes. That's not my standard. Mistakes are ordinary. I'm looking for do you have a system that can quickly identify and correct a mistake? Yes Trump has a system. He listens. He pays attention. And here's the important part. He knows which part of his base are credible. So if you've got a Glenn Greenwald and you've got Mike Benz and half a dozen other people I think Mike Cernovich if you've got those kind of people on the same side and they're making a big deal about it it's not a small point it's a big point and then the boss says okay I hear you. That's exactly what I want. Like that's the country I want to live in. I want to know that ordinary people can influence the influencers. It happens to me all the time where people who are not famous make a good point and I say oh that's a good point and then I say it out loud and some other influencer hears it and repeats it.

All right here's my favorite thing about the Doge thing where Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are going to try to cut the fat out of the government and reduce our costs. We're going to watch two of the smartest most effective operators that we've ever seen, Vivek and Elon, and we're going to watch them attack an impossible problem because I literally can't think of any way you could do this. I can't think of any way they could succeed because the big things to cut are the sacred cows. So when we watch their strategy as they approach this you're going to see the smartest people in the world do the smartest things against the most impossible task. How fun is that? Like I wouldn't even know how to bet on this thing because on one hand it's definitely an impossible task. On the other hand it's Vivek and Elon. How do you bet on that? I mean seriously how could you place a bet on that they could actually get this done? I don't know how but that's the fun part. The fun part is I don't know how this is possible but they might.

Now I don't think they have it solved. I think they're still walking around the car and kicking the tires and finding out what works. They're putting up some test balloons you know some statements a little bit of an article in the Wall Street Journal someplace and then people react to it. So one of the things they're doing is they're going to do a blog where they're fully transparent. Now what would make you comfortable with two unelected people and not even nominated, they're not elected and they're not nominated but having this massive control over the country, the world and you? How would you feel comfortable with that? Only one way. Full transparency. So that's what they're giving us. They're telling you how they're doing it. They're modeling it in advance. They're telling you what they're thinking. They're telling you their early thinking which might change.

And one of their early thinkings is that if they simply make the government go into the office instead of work from home there would be a huge number of people who just resign because they don't want to commute. To which they would say good. That's part of the job done. Then their next play and again this is stuff that smart people come up with that I don't know if I would have. They say that there are a lot of the red tape and rules and regulations that the government has that were not passed by Congress. They're not in executive order. It's just these entities are coming up with their own rules. And if you simply get rid of all the rules you don't need that are more problem than they are solution then all the people who work on those rules don't need to be employed because there must be a massive number of people who make sure that the rules are being followed. So instead you just say we don't need all these rules. Get rid of them. And then you can get rid of the staff that enforced the rules and made the rules.

But if you add all those things together that might be 1% of what they want to get done but they're leading with that. Why would they lead with that? Because it's common sense. Because they're thinking about it. They're being transparent and it is something that looks like it would work. The most important thing they have to do is make something work early. Could be small but has to work. So if the first thing they did was say all right here's a batch of rules that we think we can just get rid of them and here's the team of people that's going to leave as soon as those rules leave. Boom. Look at us two weeks in and we just got rid of 300 administrators who weren't useful.

So what you see early you should interpret as the new CEO move. Meaning that by far the most important thing. I'm seeing something about Mike Rogers here. Yeah it's Dan Scavino who said that Trump was not considering Mike Rogers. So it didn't come from Trump directly. It went through Dan Scavino but you can trust Scavino on that. If you didn't know Dan Scavino is like one of the longest closest Trump supporters. So if Scavino says that Trump said something or didn't say something you can take that to the bank. You don't have to ask any more questions. Yeah he's 100%.

So anyway the hard part as you all know is that you can't touch the Medicare and Social Security and it's going to be tough to touch the military. Although interestingly Jen Weagor offered to Elon to help him cut the defense budget because he said hey Democrats have wanted to cut the defense budget forever. Why can't I help? Then immediately Jen was piled on by Democrats saying what the hell are you doing helping these Republicans? And Jen quite reasonably said why can't we do the thing we all agree on? What exactly is the reason I should not be putting my time and energy and reputation into the thing I've most wanted to do for years which is get rid of unnecessary defense spending? And Elon's reaction was he's open to suggestions. Now I don't think that Jen was offering to join the committee exactly or join Doge but he might have some ideas and Musk says sure we like ideas. So we'll see if that goes anywhere.

So here's what I'm most interested in. I do think that Vivek and Musk they have to have some idea of what to do about the big untouchable parts of the budget otherwise they wouldn't even try. Because if they thought the best they could do is take 200 billion out of the small part of the budget that doesn't get you anywhere close. I mean you've got to take two trillion out of your six trillion to get down to balanced budget and two trillion is not even close to what you can get from people quitting on their own because they don't want to commute plus we got rid of some regulations so we don't need this department. Not even close.

And a lot of things that would be eliminated doesn't mean that the funding is eliminated. For example if they take the Department of Education and they say let's blow this up and give it to the states the states would probably get most of that money except for the administrative part. So I don't really see a path how any of this can work and I would still bet that they can get it done because they're both of them operate at a level I can't quite get to and both of them seem to have optimism that they can make something happen.

So what would they do with health care and well let's just pick one. Not welfare or was it Social Security? So Social Security and health care. Do you think now and keep in mind that Vivek knows the medical world better than most people. So do you think that they could come up with something that would radically change what those things are so that the cost of them comes down and yet the public is still served? I think so. I don't know what it would be but like I can sort of smell it before I see it. I feel like there's a way to do it.

For example let's say they promoted, I'm just going to brainstorm for a minute so don't take any of this too seriously. Suppose they said AI is so close to being your doctor that if you want low cost health care we'll make sure that that health care AI sector gets really turbocharged so that there's basically a government doctor and everybody has instant access. So if you've got a smartphone you've got a doctor. It's free. Then what about medicines? Do you think they could figure out a way to bring down the cost of meds? Well here's the interesting thing. That's what Mark Cuban's business is trying to do. So Mark Cuban's had some success with specific drugs but it looks like that could increase and he has lowered the cost of some meds.

Now I think that Vivek and Musk along with Trump could negotiate with big Pharma to spread some of that cost to other countries because right now the US pays a premium for the drugs. Other poor countries get them for low cost because America's paying for all the overhead and development. Effectively we're subsidizing. So what if they figured out a way to stop subsidizing or just make it illegal? Make it illegal to sell it for more in the United States than other places and that would move this subsidy to the other places. How much would that save? A few hundred billion. It could be a pretty big deal.

So then what would be missing? Let's say if your drug costs come down through better negotiating and your cost of talking to an expert whether it's a doctor or a specialist drops to zero because that's possible. The cost to talk to a doctor could be completely replaced by AI. Then what you have is the physical manipulation part where if somebody has to put something on you you know like put a bandage on you or set your bone or something you still need to do that but I'll bet there's a way to make that more competitive as well. So I think it's going to have to be an entire re-engineering and restructuring of what health care looks like maybe with AI.

And then if you're looking at Social Security I'll bet there's a way to make sure that people are doing something useful for their money without being on Social Security. Suppose you said you could trade away your Social Security but there's this other thing you can get. How many people would say oh I don't need my Social Security. I did well in life but I like this other thing that you're offering so I'll take this other. Suppose he said that if you voluntarily give up your Social Security forever because you're rich that you'll be first in line for a trip to Mars. That's the bad idea. So that's an example of the bad suggestion that might make you think of a better one. Like what could you trade for people to give up their Social Security? It's possible.

Well speaking of Doge China apparently has an even bigger problem with red tape because a ton of the Chinese workers are involved in creating and maintaining red tape and reporting things. So I guess if you're in China business a whole bunch of your life is just doing reports on what's happening in your job. So even President Xi wants the country to learn how to not be that way because they also have huge overhead. So here's what they say. That they spend too much energy pretending they're implementing policy. This is according to one expert named Li. Centralization is good for political decisions however for economics you do need a certain kind of chaos. So their commercial stuff in China is so over regulated I guess you say that it's like a big wet blanket on it.

So as I've said before the Doge thing is not just about fixing our debt. If we can figure out how to have a more efficient