tened to remove all American support if he didn't agree to the mineral deal. Now I don't know about the details of the mineral deal but he had to agree to a mineral deal or Trump was just going to pull the rug out.

And what I love about this is that Trump doesn't bluff. I absolutely believe that if Zelenskyy had said no no no there's no way we're going to do the mineral thing I believe that Trump would have started pulling out our funding right away. Now he might have reversed himself if Zelenskyy also reversed himself and changed his mind but he actually would have. I believe he would have pulled the funding. And what matters is that Zelenskyy believed it. When I say he doesn't bluff I mean that he makes threats that he can actually do and he will. Now usually the threats are so bad that if he started to implement the threat the other side would immediately cave. So the caving is what he wants. He doesn't want to do the threat. So these are real. He doesn't bluff.

The longer that the rest of the world realizes he doesn't bluff because he doesn't need to. He just doesn't need to. I mean he might do it if he needed to but he doesn't need to. He's got real tools. Let's call it tools not weapons.

But here's a little wrinkle. According to the Financial Times, you know how none of the news is real. If you knew the real secret behind the news it would just be completely different every time. According to the Financial Times Zelenskyy is the one who proposed that the US take a stake in Ukraine's rare minerals. So the Financial Times says it was Zelenskyy's idea all along and he brought it up back in September. Now that was long before Trump first said let's do something with the rare earth minerals.

Right now I'm not going to say the Financial Times reporting is correct. I'm just going to point that it exists. Wouldn't that be wild if we got to this point thinking that Zelenskyy was trying to hold down on the rare earth minerals and Trump was trying to get him but the entire time it was Zelenskyy's idea and he always liked it from the start. He just wanted to make sure it was good for Ukraine. I don't know. Don't know what to believe anymore.

Meanwhile Britain and France trying to be helpful. According to the Wall Street Journal they think they've got an idea that they would deploy Britain and France 30,000 European peacekeepers in Ukraine but only if there's a ceasefire that looks like it would stick. And they would ask for the United States to backstop them. In other words if Russia attacked while they had their forces in Ukraine that the United States would get involved. To which I say are they just reinventing NATO? Let's see NATO. European people coordinating to defend against Russia when US is the biggest footprint there but they don't want to do NATO because that's what Russia objects to. So they create a little like proto NATO. They just don't call it NATO. Oh no it's not NATO. It's just two of the most important countries and being backstopped by the most important country. Okay well that's not NATO but it's very NATO like. So maybe this is how you solve international things. You do things that maybe don't make sense on paper but you can sell it. If you can sell it to the public it's good enough.

Anyway here's what sounds like a tiny story that could be a big one. According to The Guardian there's a research group that figured out how to add some microbes or something to soil and it allows it to absorb nutrients so much better that they could use a lot less fertilizer. So a lot less nitrate and phosphate. Now you might say Scott that's the boringest smallest story I've ever heard. I never even think about nitrate and phosphate. But you would if you knew that phosphate in particular, fact check me if I'm wrong but I think this is true, the phosphate you know one of the main fertilizers we have, a global shortage and we don't really know how to make up the difference. So the food supply is in a genuine threat because if fertilizer goes away or we have to use less of it you'r