and they've got time for comment, it becomes literally impossible.

So it's not just that it didn't happen. It's that the system was impossible. So anybody who tried to apply to be one of the people who executed on these funded projects couldn't get through it. It would take you the rest of your life if you got through it at all. So there is no way to actually execute on these well-meaning Democrat gigantic projects. There is no way.

Now, what is it I always say about the difference between Republicans and Democrats? Democrats are really good at goals. High-speed rail, that's a goal. I like it. Rural internet broadband, I like it. Nationwide charging stations for electric cars sounds pretty good. Those are good goals. I like it. But they also developed a system that made it impossible.

Now let's compare that to the Republicans. Republicans would say get rid of all this red tape and then it works. That's it. So the Republicans have a system which is in general get rid of the red tape. Now beyond that, if you got rid of enough red tape, maybe you don't even need much government funding. Maybe the private sector can do it. But the Republicans consistently have systems that would work, and the Democrats consistently have pretty good goals. We'd like everybody to do well. We'd like the schools to do well. Take public education. The Democrats have a very good goal that no matter what your income is or what your situation is in life, you should get a good education and the government can help you on that. But then they overlay it with the Department of Education, which was a problem. They overlay it with the teachers union, and you very quickly get to the point where the system for providing that thing, which is a good, it just doesn't work. And that's what we observe. Scores are going down in every way. Whereas the Republicans would say, well, nothing works unless there's competition. So let's make sure there's a lot more competition for private schools or alternative schools. So again, in every domain it's the same. Democrats good on goals, don't have a system.

Let's check in on DEI. Charlie Kirk has a post where he's talking about a Daily Wire story by Luke Roszak. I guess he did a great job on this. And the story is about a group called the National Diversity Council. Now remember I tell you that it turns out that you can tell all the fraudulent organizations because they string together words that sound good. So instead of the National Diversity Council, it could have been the American Fairness Initiative. You can just put any words together. The Freedom Diversity Association. And then you start getting money.

Well, one of the founders, Dennis Kennedy, allegedly paid himself $450,000 a year for 10 hours of work a week. But then in 2022, allegedly at the peak of DEI mania, he and a few other executives decided that they really owed another $3 million in back pay. And so they looted the organization, is the accusation. And now the organization is filing for bankruptcy, with the board saying that Kennedy systematically looted it by funneling its assets to a for-profit firm controlled by himself. Does that sound familiar? That's exactly what we were finding out with all the NGOs. If the NGO gets a lot of funding, let's say from the government, could be private donations, then the first thing they'll do is say here's how we're spending that money. We're going to hire this for-profit entity that just happens to be my wife or just happens to be me with another name, and we're not going to have any accounting so that it's not as obvious what we're doing. It's the same scam everywhere. And once you realize the pattern, you can just pick it up instantly. It's like, oh, you got a bunch of money. You gave yourself a generic name like the National Diversity Council. And you can protect yourself by accusing any of your critics of being racists. Ah, see, that's important because if you don't have an audit process and you're planning to loot the organization, you want to make sure that if anybody blames you of anything, you could say, oh my God, what are you, some kind of white supremacist who hates diversity? Don't you see that diversity is in the name of our organization? Of course it's good because it says diversity right in it. It's right in the name, you racist. I think we're on to it now. I think we can spot these a little easier.

Well, Mario Nawfal is reporting that Trump has threatened to defund the Smithsonian over what he calls divisive narratives, and he's ordered JD Vance to go clean house, whatever that means. And what he wants to do is remove what he calls improper ideology or else lose federal funding. And he accuses the museum of pushing a decades-long effort to rewrite U.S. history with distorted ideological narratives instead of facts. So they're going to have to get rid of all the divisive content or else the government won't fund them anymore.

And to me, I can see why they're doing it. I'm sure it's a good idea. But history has always been fake. So when you take one version of fake history and somebody's trying to rewrite it to another version of fake history, it doesn't make it more accurate. But there is a version of history that's better for the country. And if you're deciding to change the history to "white people suck," now I haven't seen what the Smithsonian is up to, but I'm just going to take a wild guess that what they're saying is that white people are the problem. They killed all the Native Americans. They created all the slavery. They stole all the money. And white people are bad. Just a guess. I don't have any information that that's what this Smithsonian was doing. But what do you think? What else would it be? So yeah, it's very, very damaging to have a fake history that says the people who live here today are part of the problem. You don't want that. So it is better, even if it's fake history, to say that your country was awesome and you're still awesome. It's better.

Well, here's a story that really sounds great for America. Just listen to this. According to Interesting Engineering, an enormous, massive lithium deposit has been discovered in the U.S. worth $540 billion, so much that it would vastly reduce China's grip on the United States for lithium. So I'm reading this. I'm like, wow, $540 billion worth of lithium and it seems to be accessible. Isn't that the greatest story? The only thing that could be bad about this is if it's in California. Don't be in California. Please don't be in California. Please, please don't be in California. It's in California, beneath the surface of the Salton Sea. So I guess the value is not $540 billion. It would be closer to, let me call up Ezra Klein. Ezra, there's $540 billion worth of lithium in California under the Salton Sea. Do you think we can... okay, calm down, Ezra, calm down. Okay, yeah, I know we'll never get it. Yeah, I know, 14 steps. Okay, we'll just leave it there. Never mind. Thank you. Goodbye. Yeah, that's a complete waste of time because it's in California. I'd love to be wrong. I would love to be wrong. But no, it's worth nothing because it's in California. That's all you need to know.

Trump has floated the idea of maybe easing off on tariffs, according to Reuters, on China if China approves the sale of TikTok to an American entity. What do you think of that idea? Going easy on tariffs on China if they approve a TikTok deal? Here's the problem. That would be transferring wealth from the citizens of the United States to the rich people in the United States who bought TikTok. So the benefactors would be the billionaires who buy TikTok, and that would be paid for partly by money that would have otherwise gone into the treasury. So how is Trump going to... did he think this through? Now I'm not saying it's a bad idea, by the way. What I'm saying is how do you sell it? Because it's total oligarch-friendly, citizen-unfriendly, America last. I mean, to me it looks like it'd be kind of good for China and good for a few oligarchs who buy it who were his buddies. And I don't see how you sell this thing.

Now I will give you one possibility. One of the things that Trump said was that the U.S. government, if it's being helpful and making the deal happen, should get a percentage of TikTok. Oh, now that was not part of this story, but remember Trump has floated that idea and he was serious about it. And it makes sense. If the government is doing something important to make a private investment worth something, from zero to maybe be worth a trillion dollars someday, why don't we get a piece of it? If you give me a piece of it, meaning the citizens, I'm all in. Yeah. If you say we're going to reduce tariffs a little bit on China to get this deal done, but in the end the United States, let's say our sovereign fund, you know, I think we're going to have trouble funding the sovereign fund. There's some technical reason why the sovereign fund might be in jeopardy. But this seems like a perfect use for a sovereign fund where we invest literally zero and we get a percentage of TikTok. I'd be happy with more of that. So if Trump combines two things he's floated, one is the reduction of tariffs, get the deal done, and the other is U.S. gets a piece of the deal, you can sell that. That would be sellable.

Well, the House, according to Just the News, the House passed legislation to keep foreign influence out of higher education called the DETERRENT Act. And let's see what it does. It mandates that schools have to report foreign gifts. I think this is mostly universities and colleges have to report foreign gifts of at least $50,000 or more. And they have to report it to the... checking notes... they have to report that to the Department of Education. Huh. Do you see anything, see any problem with the legislation? Because the Department of Education is being closed. Don't they need to update that? I swear I don't even know what I'm reading at this point. Is this true? Did they just yesterday, the Republicans, this would only be through the House not the Senate, but did they really just pass some legislation in the House that says somebody has to report to the Department of no longer existing? There must be something wrong with the story, but maybe not.

Well, RFK Jr., who I thought was being a little bit quiet until he got his sea legs and figured out what was what, but boy he's not quiet now. I saw Wall Street Apes had a video. I couldn't tell how old it was, but he was talking how BlackRock owns all of the meat packers in the United States. There are only four big companies, but BlackRock owns them all. And they, according to RFK, they also own a lot of the big pharma. Now I don't know if "own" is the right description. They might own a percentage, but does BlackRock own a controlling interest in pharma? Because that would be something I'd never heard before. I definitely knew that they were heavily invested in everything that matters, you know, pretty much every industry that matters. But a controlling interest? I don't know. And do they have a controlling interest or already own the meat packers? So I have some questions about that, but that's something RFK Jr.'s bringing up. Seems important to me.

Then he also reported that some of the career civil servant bureaucrats were keeping RFK Jr. from accessing databases that would have information about risks and dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions. Can you imagine that? And RFK Jr. says that these bureaucrats are seemingly only serving the industries they were supposed to regulate. So everything that RFK Jr. has been telling us before he got the job, you know, to be in charge of all this stuff, it looks like it's all true. It looks like these are completely broken industries that are just serving the pharma industries. It just seems broken entirely.

But RFK Jr. was on Chris Cuomo's show on NewsNation, and he said the CDC, so that would be under him, is launching a new sub-agency to specialize in vaccine injuries. So that should make you happy. Now he's very careful about the fact that it's not going to be based on hearsay or anecdote. They're going to look into it with the best gold standard science that they can, which has not been applied to this question yet. So if the only thing he does is apply the best science to it, even if it finds out that the vaccines weren't as bad as you thought, you're going to be a lot happier. Now I think most of you are expecting to find out that the vaccinations, various ones, not just COVID, but I think you expect, at least this audience does, that it's going to find out that they were much more dangerous than you thought. But either way, we need to know. We need to know. I'm open to the fact that it might go either way. But we definitely need to know. It's right at the top of things we should be caring about.

And then RFK Jr. was talking about Elon Musk using AI to improve health and efficiency