h minerals.

Also, Trump says that there will be a mineral deal with Ukraine despite what the news is reporting, because I thought the news was saying the mineral deal was dead. But Trump is reporting it is very much alive and might be signed soon. So I don't know which one of those is true, but it does suggest that Trump's looking everywhere and anywhere for rare minerals, which I like.

You might know that Congo, the country of Congo, is in such a bad state in terms of war that they've offered that they will share their rare earth mineral wealth with the United States if we could help them militarily essentially survive. And apparently that's on the table. I don't think a deal has been made, but Congo is one of the places that the U.S. is looking at as a source. So I don't know what that would look like.

And then part of the reason Trump liked Greenland is because of the rare earth minerals. So we're also looking at federal lands for mining rare earth minerals. We're looking at loans, federal loans for companies to get involved. And let me summarize that. We have long said one of our biggest vulnerabilities to China and one of our biggest limiting factors to all kinds of technological progress is our shortage of, or let's say the risk to our supply chain, of rare earth minerals. This looks like exactly the right response, doesn't it?

So again, I'm just going to give you all the good news. If I were to design the perfect response to we don't have enough rare earth minerals in our pipeline that are secure, it would look exactly like this. It would be the War Powers Act. It would be federal lands. It would be we're going to get it anywhere. We're going to increase the rate of approvals. We're going to give loans. This is everything. This is right on point. Excellent.

And other good news. Trump is backing every form of efficient energy. So he's not big on windmills because they haven't really proven themselves, and he's not anti-solar, but solar is going to do its thing. But he is pro-nuclear. He's pro-drilling like crazy. He's pro-getting rid of regulations. He's pro, I think there was something about drilling in the Antarctic. And he's even pro-coal.

Now, if I were going to tell you that you had a president who was just super pro-energy and he was going to do everything he could to make energy just bigger in the United States, what would you think are the prospects of the United States for thriving in the future? And the answer is really, really good, because if you could only use one thing to predict how a country is going to go, it would be their access to energy. It would be the one thing that largely predicts the future of the economy. And Trump is seemingly all in on doing exactly the right stuff in exactly the right area of the economy: energy. So he is right on point on that. So that looks good.

Here's some probably fake news from The New York Times. So The New York Times got an anonymous American official. So it's The New York Times. It's a story that's bad for Trump if it were true, and it comes from anonymous American officials involved in the military industrial complex. So does that sound like it's going to be true? I haven't even told you what the story is, but without even knowing what the story is, do you think that The New York Times with a negative story for Trump from an anonymous American official, probably in the Pentagon or somewhere close to it, does that sound like a real story?

Well, according to Musk and Trump, it's not a real story. And also according to the Pentagon, it's not a real story. But the story was, the story that I'm not going to give any respect whatsoever, I guess anything's possible, but this one doesn't even sound like a good try. So the story was that Elon Musk was going to be briefed on the battle plans with China. The battle plans with China. Do you know what the battle plan with China is? We're all dead, pretty much, because if we had a real war with China, China's dead, we're dead, the world's dead, everybody's dead.

We're not going to have a war with China, in my opinion. In my opinion, the odds of a war with China are really, really low. Really low. Because China doesn't want a war and we don't want a war with China. It would be the most destructive thing that the world has ever seen, and neither the United States nor China is crazy. So even if it looks like you're getting close to war with China, China doesn't need a war. China can just wait. Their strategy of just being bigger than other countries and having a big manufacturing base and just keep building things and getting technologically more capable and controlling resources and markets and building their Belt and Road thing, that all works. That is a really good plan for future Chinese dominance.

Now we're not going to attack China with the risk that that would be to the existential risk of the highest order. So in my opinion, if you're worried about war with China, it's the last thing you should be worried about. Literally the last thing.

But anyway, so the rumor was from the anonymous American officials that the Pentagon was going to brief Elon Musk on the war plans with China. But Musk says that's not true. The Pentagon says that's not true. Trump says total lie, not true. Make up your own mind.

But let me tell you what does make sense. It does make sense that if Musk is in charge of figuring out how to cut the budget and the military is an enormous part of the budget, at some point Musk would need to know the general direction of the Pentagon. Meaning, is the Pentagon going to turn into a drone-only kind of a military? Is it going to double its number of nuclear subs? Is it going to get rid of its tank expenses because who needs a tank? If the United States got into war with anybody capable, tanks wouldn't last five minutes. So at what point does Musk need to know not the war plan with China, you don't need to know that detail, but you would certainly need to know the budget direction of the Pentagon so that you could ask the right questions. Like, all right, if you have all these drones, why do you need tanks? There might be a reason. I'm not saying there's no reason. But those are the questions you've got to ask. Like, well, do you really need this if you've got that? Can you make a robot army? I mean, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered to handle the budget and the budget cuts.

Well, as you know, there's this big Tesla takedown effort, and I guess they're getting really organized and something's going to happen at the end of the month. And they keep planning all these events that turn into domestic terrorism because there's always somebody bad at these events. And they're going after Tesla assets and Tesla dealerships and charging stations, and it's all about Elon Musk. And now actor John Cusack is involved with this. And once again we get back to this theater kids. John Cusack, I don't believe he's appeared in any top-grade movies lately. This is the only acting job he can get, which is pretending to be a leader of this anti-Tesla thing. And he's complaining that the United States is fascist and becoming more fascist every day. Is that because there's somebody who's making cars that somebody wants? Is that the fascist thing? Or is it possibly the people organizing the violence against them? Which one sounds a little more fascist to you? Tough question.

Anyway, if it's the only acting job you can get and you look crazy and you look like you might be on some kind of mental health drugs, I guess it's the best you can do. So the Daily Wire is reporting on that. So poor guy.

Anyway, so here's my opinion about the Tesla protests. Something like 30 to 40% of all Tesla owners are Democrats. If you own a Tesla, do you feel uncomfortable driving it in public? Because all you have to do is stop at some red light and if there's some bad radical, crazy leftist, you might get keyed. So if 30 to 40% of Tesla owners, who probably are quite happy with their automobiles because Tesla has a lot of happy owners, how are they going to feel finding out that their own party made it too dangerous to just drive down the street in the car they already own? That is an unrecoverable error. I don't think the anti-Tesla people have thought this through. It's not like all those people can immediately swap out their cars. That's a pretty big expense. So a few will, a few politicians will make a big show of it or whatever, but most people are going to keep the car they have no matter what's happening because changing out your car is sort of a big deal.

So if 30 to 40% of the Tesla car owners are finding that their own party made it too dangerous to drive to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread, how are they going to forgive their own party? I wouldn't. I would never forgive that. Because it's one thing to say blah blah, some policies happening that might not affect me. Blah blah executive order that might not affect me. Blah blah, the Congress is talking about something that will never affect me. That's really different from I can't drive my car without fear because the Democrats did that to me. That's non-recoverable. Terrible. It really is.

And the fact that the leading Democrats are silent on telling people to cool it against an American company, so forget about even the violent part. Don't you think that Democrats should be saying you don't take down American companies, especially ones that they would say are good for climate change? But nobody, it just completely reveals that their views are about power and about destruction. They're not trying to build anything. And when they do, they just take the money and nothing gets built. You know, like the California, the classic example of that.

So anyway, it seems that the Democrats have decided to define themselves as domestic terrorists. The Democrats have tried to kill Trump twice because we assume that those killers were left-leaning, and now they're trying to take out Musk. So they've literally become a party of anarchy. And I told you before, I think I told you that Mitch McConnell, not Mitch McConnell, Schumer, Chuck Schumer, when he was on one of the news shows, he talked about how the goal was to make Trump less popular. Now how could you belong to any kind of a group whose leader says our goal is to make the other side less popular so that we can get power back? No part of that sounds like what's good for the public.

How about we plan to lower your taxes? How about we plan to create more jobs? That would be good. How about we plan to find a way to get more rare earth minerals? Oh, that would be good. How about we have a plan for getting better trade deals? That would be good. Every one of the productive ideas is coming from Republicans. Now some of it is because Republicans have power and Democrats don't, but the complete inability to have a positive policy idea, combined with the, unfortunately, the authenticity of saying that what they want to do is destroy two of the most successful people in the country, how do you not understand what's going on? They are the party of anarchy, chaos, and destruction. They're not trying to build anything. They're trying to just completely destroy. And I just don't see how that could ever be a competitive political party at the national level. Of course they'll retain power in cities and states, but wow, I've never seen any group self-destruct so thoroughly without understanding that they're self-destructing thoroughly. It's like they don't even understand it.

Meanwhile, this is interesting. As you know, Trump was doing executive orders against a few law firms that he thought had acted inappropriately, meaning targeted Republicans or targeted him. But one of them has negotiated with him. The Paul Weiss law firm that had been one of the targets of Trump's executive orders that would take away their clearances and prevent them from doing work with the government, apparently they negotiated and they promised not to deny representation to clients based on political views. So that means they agreed to take on Republicans if it made sense. They promised not to use any diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. And they said they would dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services to support the Trump administration's initiatives, according to The Hill.

Now that sounds pretty extreme. How in the world, I mean did they offer that or did the Trump administration ask for it? Because it feels different if they offered it versus if they asked for it. If they offered it, well it just makes sense to say yes. But I hope they didn't ask for it because that would look a little like extortion if they asked for it. But if the law firm said, all right, we're just going to have to throw everything at this deal and we'll just offer this, and it might not be any more than they do for the other side of the political aisle, it's a pretty big firm. But anyway, that's an interesting situation. It also tells me that the law firm is very good at what they do, because if you had told me they could negotiate a way out of this, I would have said there's no way they're going to negotiate their way out of this. And then they did. So I guess I'm a little impressed. And probably they weren't crazy about the diversity, equity, and inclusion thing. They probably just did it because everybody was doing it, so they might have given away nothing on that. It might have been something they didn't want to deal with in the future anyway.

Well, let's talk about LA. LA reportedly has a billion-dollar deficit, just the city of LA. Now if you heard that, how bad would you think that was? What if I taught you about numbers without percentages or percentages without numbers? So there's a number without a percentage. So if I didn't tell you what is the total budget of LA, how would you know if tha