ed pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens right now. Go.

So good.

Well, you probably heard by now actor Val Kilmer has tragically died at age 65 from pneumonia in Los Angeles. I don't have anything to say about that, but when people who are younger than me die, it bothers me a little extra, I have to say. So rest in peace, Val Kilmer.

All right. Shall we do some fake news? Let's look at some fake news.

According to Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupree is writing that after a single concussion, kids are 15% less likely to go to college. Does that sound like real science to you? After one concussion, kids are 15% less likely to go to college.

Do you know what else could be behind that number? Could it be that smart kids get fewer head injuries? I'm just asking. If I showed you a bunch of mathletes and they were standing next to a bunch of athletes, the athletes are probably going to bang their heads up a little bit more often. And the mathletes are probably going to be joining the band and maybe working on the, I don't know, working on some clubs. I hate to be all stereotypical, but I'm pretty sure that intelligence is highly correlated with protecting your head. What do you think?

Yeah. Do you think that people of all intelligence levels are equally likely to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle? It's not been my experience. My experience is the dumber you are, the less likely you'll wear a helmet when you're riding your bicycle. Anyway, I thought that was funny.

Well, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election didn't go the way a lot of Republicans wanted it to go. So the Democrat Crawford won, which means that there will likely be some reapportionment, which means Wisconsin will subtract some Republicans and add some Democrats to the House, which means the Republicans could lose the majority in the House. Now, I don't know how close it is to guaranteeing that that will happen. How close are we to guaranteeing that we lose the majority or Republicans lose? Is it just very likely or is it guaranteed now? Because anything could happen.

But let's talk about why that happened. Why the heck did that happen? According to The Hill, they say that Elon Musk might be toxic to elections. Charlie Kirk says that the low-propensity voters, a lot of low-propensity voters voted for Trump, but if Trump's not on the ticket, are they really going to show up for a local election? That might be part of it.

I think a lot of it is that the Democrats had nothing else going for them. So they had this one thing that if they could find this clever way to sort of beat the system, that they wouldn't have to act like they live in a democratic society. They'd rather live in a lawfare-driven kleptocracy or something. So they found this little weaselly way to win if they could put all their energy into it. But they didn't have anything else to put energy into. They had no policies, no ideas, but they sure liked this idea of reapportionment so they have power. So some of it is due to the fact that nothing else was happening and so they could put all of their hopes and dreams and energy into this one little weaselly thing.

And I'll tell you, Democrats love weaselly. It's like lawfare. Sign me up. Reapportion to win. Absolutely. So it's all trickery, trickery and schemes.

But do you think Elon Musk is toxic to elections and that that might lead to the midterms? Do you think the midterms will go poorly because of Elon? Well, that might. The interesting part is that he'll be done with his role. It's supposed to only last 130 days. So he'll be done, I don't know, for the summer or something. And he thinks he can get his trillion dollars of savings before he's done.

Now, if he does that, if he succeeds, and you know, the major news sources agree that, okay, he did find a trillion dollars, didn't think he could do it, will that still make him toxic? Well, maybe. But it seems like after he's no longer working on the government, isn't it going to be harder to say it's his fault? Because the actual cuts are going to be made by cabinet heads and group leaders who are in the government. So are you really going to blame DOGE or Musk if they get a trillion dollars and every one of the cuts, every one of them at this point would be approved by people who are at least, most of them I think have to be at least approved by Congress before they can get in their job? I don't know. It could feel completely different in six months. Just the fact that you don't see his face associated with it all the time.

And the main thing is when it comes to Democrats, I saw Dr. Insensitive Jerk on X saying that you won't understand Democrats until you understand that they're thieves and they like letting people out of prison and they like prisoners having freedom because they relate to the thieves. That's pretty harsh. But it does seem a little bit like when you show them a, let's put it this way. It seems to me that Democrats are about transferring wealth from people who made it and Republicans are about creating wealth. So you've got one party that creates wealth and that's their main thing and one party that wants to just take it away from them. I don't know how that could even be a thing, but it feels like that's what it is.

Well, today's Liberation Day, April 2nd, and President Trump will be announcing at 4:00 p.m. I think in East Coast time from the Rose Garden. He'll tell you what exactly the tariffs are going to look like. Will they be just straight reciprocal? Will they be done with a scalpel or a jackhammer? It doesn't matter what he does. The press is going to say they hate it because what else do they have to do except say they hate everything he does? So we'll see how that goes.

That's what's roiling the stock market today. The stock market's going to react to the uncertainty.

Now, Israel quite cleverly got out in front of it and dropped all their duties and tariffs on American goods. To which a lot of us said, "Wait a minute. They had tariffs on American goods? I thought they were our friends and they had tariffs on American goods." They weren't very high and there wasn't much of it. So they didn't give up much by giving up their tariffs. But it's so smart to do it before the tariffs kick in. Given that there wasn't much money involved and Israel is very free market oriented, it was just a clever move to get ahead of it and be one of the first. Let's call it a victory for Trump because sure enough he threatens and Israel just says okay we'll drop ours. So that's how the negotiation is supposed to work.

India did the same. Somebody says I haven't seen that in the news. Did India drop all of its tariffs? I think they only reduced them. So I'll have to check on that. But give me a fact check on that. Did India drop their tariffs in anticipation of the US tariffs or did they only adjust them downward? I think they only adjusted them downward, which would be not nothing. So we'll see how that goes.

You know, the funny part is people are still treating it like it's intended to be permanent. And it doesn't matter how many times it's explained. No, the point of this is to not have tariffs. The end goal is that we don't have tariffs. They don't have tariffs. So we'll see.

Unusual Whales on X, that's an account on X, said that tariffs would add as much as $10,000 to the cost of the average new home. What do you think of that as a data point? That the costs of tariffs, the extra cost would add $10,000 to the price of building the average new home? Now that's per CNBC.

Here's what I say. What's the first thing I teach you when they show you a number without a percentage or a percentage without a number? What does it mean when the news gives you a number without the percentage or the percentage without the number? Because you don't know how much the average house costs to build, do you? You don't know if that's 20%, 2%, 1%. Do you?

So this is propaganda or just really lazy work because I had to go to AI and say what's the cost of the average house and somewhere in the 300,000 range would be the average cost of a new house. So $10,000 added to that would be about 3% extra.

Now, would it be fair to say that now that we know the number and the percentage, would it be fair to say that the tariffs will add 3%? No. No. Because the point of the tariffs is not to leave them in place. The point of the tariffs is to negotiate. So what we don't know is where it all shakes out. But what we do know for sure is that nobody, including the administration, plans for them to be permanent and to just add costs to the US consumer. So everything about that estimate is misleading. First of all, that it would last and or even ever. It's possible it will never even touch us because maybe things will happen so quickly. It's possible. And the other thing is it's 3%. $10,000 sounds like a lot. 3%, I don't know that you would notice it. Would you on a house? I mean, nobody wants to spend 3% more, but would you even know the difference? If I told you that the cost of a new house was 300,000 blah blah blah versus the first time I ever talked to you about it, I told you it was 3% higher. It wouldn't make any difference to your decision, would it? 3%. Almost certainly no.

All right. According to Mario Nawfal and he's quoting somebody named Alec Stapp. So I guess Mario thinks this is a real number. Maybe it is, but the stat is that the US is now producing 50% more oil than Saudi Arabia. Does that sound right to you? Does it sound right that the US is producing 50% more oil than Saudi Arabia? I think I'm going to need a fact check on that one too. If it's true, it's amazing.

So I guess Saudi's share of the world oil has declined steadily and anyway so the US is leading the world accounting for 16% of the total global output whereas Saudi is 11% and Russia is 12%. Now, if this is true and it's newish, I also don't know how newish it is, but if we suddenly have created a surge in oil production, wouldn't that tell you that that would make a bigger difference to lowering prices than the tariffs might have to increasing prices? If it's true, let's see. I've got. Yeah.

All right. So I'm not even sure I believe that. It sounds like almost too good to be true.

Well, as you know, Senator Cory Booker, he broke the record for talking nonstop in Congress or at the Senate. But they're calling it a talkathon, not a filibuster. Because it's not a filibuster because he wasn't trying to stop any particular legislation. So why was he doing it? I don't know. I've been watching this news for like two days and it's a headline story. I don't even think the news told us why he did it. I feel like he just needed some attention and so he just put on a play. What are we going to do? I don't know. How about I put on a play and I'll pretend to be the very tired senator who cares a lot and talks for 25 hours and breaks the record. And I'm thinking it's pure theater. There's not even a specific thing he wanted. Somebody said they had something to do with immigration, but what exactly is he disagreeing about immigration?

So the ridiculousness of it, the complete weakness of it can only be beaten by the fact that apparently his really good friend who works for him sometimes was led into the building around the security check and then later he told people he had a gun. He was immediately arrested because no guns are allowed in the Senate. But there's a little, it's a little unclear whether Senat