e say, "Well, you had a choice of just doing it perfectly in the first place. Why didn't you just measure twice or thrice before you cut?" I mean there's a little thing that even says what you should do. Measure twice, cut once. Have you never heard that? I mean if you've heard it then I guess you would never make any mistakes. But it's a good thing that I'm cleverly telling you now with all my lack of experience how things work in the real world. Yeah. Do it without mistakes. I'm going to add that to my other thing that only inexperienced people say, which is you should have done it sooner. Do you know what else you should have done sooner? Everything. Everything that was worthwhile you should have done it sooner. What about DOGE? Should have done it sooner. What about tariffs? Sooner. What about tax cuts? Sooner. Everything should have been done sooner and perfectly. It should have been done sooner and perfectly. That's what all the dumb people will tell you.

Anyway, so I was looking at, PJ Media, Victoria Taft is writing about this, that Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and some Harvard professor are behind the training of people to resist DOGE and Tesla. So they're actually doing resistance training to get more people onto the streets. Resistance training. Now here's the fun part. I happened to be watching Jayapal getting interviewed live the other day and she said that this resistance training that they were giving was part of capacity building.

Now do you know where I'm going with this? If those of you have listened to Mike Benz, he talks about the CIA and often working with USAID in the past where they would do capacity building as part of the plot to overthrow other countries. Now capacity building would be things like making sure that you had co-opted the media or maybe introduced a new form of media that was going to say the right things, or you had trained people to resist on the streets, which is exactly what Jayapal is working on. And I said to myself, what are the odds that she would use that phrase? Have you ever heard any member of Congress talk about capacity building? Have you ever heard anybody in any context use the phrase capacity building? The only place I've ever heard it is from Mike Benz and he didn't make it up. He's training us to understand that that's a CIA phrase.

So do you think that Jayapal accidentally admitted that she's CIA influenced? I do. I don't have proof but that was a pretty big signal that she's had some kind of training that's either adjacent to or because of the CIA. And that would explain so much that I didn't understand about her. So much. So I can't say for sure, but if you see anybody who's training people to resist on the streets and they refer to their own work as capacity building, it probably means exactly what you think it means. And if I had never heard Mike Benz talk about it at length, I wouldn't have caught it. But that little, by the way this is a hypnotist thing. Hypnotists will tell you that people tell you exactly what their hidden thoughts are. They just don't know they're doing it. So I'm always looking for the hidden thoughts based on their choice of words. This one just jumped right out. So that was interesting.

All right, let me give you an update on tariffs. Now as if you're brand new to my live stream you don't know that I'm completely disgusting because I often mention that I have a degree in economics and an MBA from a top school. So a person like me should certainly understand tariffs. I mean with all of my sophisticated education background of course I understand everything about tariffs and I'm going to explain it to you now in the simplest possible way and then you'll be as smart as I am about tariffs. Wouldn't that be great? Don't you want to be as smart as I am? Well no. The real story is economics is not even real, but we'll get to that.

So when you see people complaining that the stocks went down and they lost money, that's not real. Nobody lost any money unless it stays down and never goes back up, which has never happened to the stock market in the history of the stock market. There's never been a time when it went down and just kept going down. Now if we ever do see that that will be the end of the United States. But in all likelihood there's a temporary uncertainty and things are likely to adjust.

So I was watching somebody, it doesn't matter who, just saying, you know, and I lost all this money in the stock market. No you didn't. Not only did you not lose it but your percentage of ownership of the country stayed about the same. Meaning that if you owned this tiny bit of stock you owned a tiny bit of the country because the country is mostly corporate wealth. And if everything went down you probably own just about the same percentage of the country as you owned before. So it's not as bad as it could be. I haven't sold any stocks. I'm just going to ride it out. I'm not terribly worried. I don't have an estimate of when it will bounce back. Could be sudden. Could be any time. I don't know. Could be months, could be longer.

But what do you think about the people in the news business? I think the people in the news business are not waiting for manufacturing jobs to come back so they can get one but they definitely have some money in the stock market. If you're in the news business you're well paid and you probably got a 401k. So the people in the news are going to obsess about the stock market because that's what affects them. They're not going to say, "Well thank goodness we have a plan in place to bring back those good manufacturing jobs so I can get one of those and stop being on MSNBC." No, they're only going to be worried about the stock because that's what affects them and it's also what they understand or they think they do.

So first thing you need to know is that Jim Cramer thinks these tariffs are a terrible idea. Now if you spend any time on the internet you know that Jim Cramer is famous for being a contra indicator of what's gonna happen. So if he thinks it's a bad idea, might be the best idea ever. We'll see.

Apparently General Motors says they're going to dramatically increase car production in the US. And that's directly because of the tariffs because it'll make foreign cars more expensive. So GM is thinking, "Oh good. We're going to sell more." Likewise Ford is rolling out what they call employee pricing. So they're going to allow anybody to buy a Ford for what would have been the same price that their employees could get them. I don't know how good a deal that is or not but it doesn't count with some of their best cars. It doesn't count like the Raptor or the Mustang or the Bronco or the Expedition or the Navigator or the Super Duty trucks. So it's not the best offer in the world but it'd be great if you're looking for an ordinary Ford car and you just want a good price. But I think the low-hanging fruit here is US companies that will benefit from the tariff and already have facilities. So all they have to do is increase production at the existing facilities. So when you see that kicking in that's probably a good sign.

Here's something just so predictable. Republican Chuck Grassley is working with a far-left Democrat Maria Cantwell. That sounds like the worst name for somebody who's trying to get something done. Can you do this? Well, can't. Well anyway the two of them are working together in a bipartisan way to try to wrestle control from Trump about tariff decisions and make sure it's in the Congress. So they want to make some new legislation that basically codifies the fact that Congress is the one who can raise taxes and decide on tariffs. So this would be game over. Now I don't know what the odds are that this gets passed. I think low, probably pretty low odds that it gets passed, but this would be terrible. It would be basically neutering Trump's ability to negotiate, to do anything useful with tariffs. But there we are, Chuck Grassley trying to take control of that for the Congress, which as you know is worthless according to The Economist magazine.

All right, here we go. Now The Economist magazine would be written by people who really understand economics. So whatever their take on this would be the smart take, right? So they put out a magazine. And did I mention that they're called The Economist and they think that magazines are still a good business model? That's sort of disqualifying from being an economist. What's your business model? Well we've got a magazine. Okay. But what they say is that this is right on the cover of their new magazine that Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said on history, economics, and the technicalities of trade was utterly deluded.

But if you want to hear the counter to that, All-In pod and entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya commented on that and he called them a mouthpiece of globalist rhetoric that is literally always wrong. So Chamath was kind of commenting that the more The Economist hates it the more likely it's a good idea. I don't think he's wrong.

You may have heard that Trump's getting some pushback because Russia and North Korea, Cuba, and Belarus are not on the tariff list. And you might say to yourself, "Wait a minute, is it because he's Putin's secret lover that he doesn't want to put them on there?" But anyway the White House clarified that those countries and Russia in particular are already so restricted. So they've got high tariffs already and all kinds of sanctions and so there's not any meaningful trade with those countries. I think there are some things like potash or something that we trade with Russia but nothing meaningful that would be worthy of derailing any peace talks. So it makes sense they left them off.

China has responded to the tariffs on them with a reciprocal tariff. So they matched it with a 34% tariff on imports of all US products beginning April 10th. So that matches the US. Is that the beginning of negotiations? Maybe. We'll see.

New York Post is saying that your iPhone could get a lot more expensive because of the tariffs if they stayed in place, especially the China stuff because it would make your iPhone be over $2,000 they think. Would it? I don't know. And if it were maybe Apple would work hard to bring it to the United States. I don't know if they could make it cheap enough in the United States but maybe that'll happen.

Then the New York Post is talking about the cost of buying your Air Jordans shoes that are made in Vietnam which is also getting a big tariff and that your Air Jordans that used to cost $180 might cost $18 more. A lot of things that are optional purchases. I'm not terribly worried about an optional purchase expensive sneaker. Seems like you could live without one.

The other thing Trump said which was interesting, you remember I told you that China is unlikely to agree to a TikTok sale because I think they'd want to see Trump fail and it would be worth a few billion dollars to do it. Trump hinted that without actually committing to it, he just said it was an example, but he was clearly hinting that China might want to negotiate a better tariff situation in return for saying yes to a sale of TikTok to a US buyer or a buyer, a team of buyers. So clearly Trump knows that China saying yes to any kind of a TikTok sale is going to be a hard sell and that if you didn't bring in a completely unrelated piece of business which is the tariffs you probably couldn't get it done. So I think he understands that China is probably a hard no. Even if they lose billions of dollars I think that they would let that go. I think they'd spend billions to embarrass Trump and make sure he didn't get their crown jewel social app. We'll see. But it's interesting that Trump did set that up as a bargaining chip kind of situation.

Well I saw one theory that Trump's real play with the tariffs is to lower interest rates. And the way that would go is that the tariffs would scare the stock market and then people who took their money out of the stock market wouldn't want it to be idle. So they would put it in bonds. And if a lot of people buy bonds that would lower the interest rate on bonds because supply and demand. And then if interest rates come down then the Fed might lower interest rates. And then suddenly when we go to get our debt refinanced we would be doing it at a much friendlier interest rate which could be tremendously useful to the country. I don't know that that's the plan. It's just something that might happen.

So the reason that no economist knows what's going to go on is there are way too many moving parts. So you've got your interest rates and you've got, well here's other stuff. The Wall Street Journal is talking about the impact on the value of the dollar, right? So you've got the interest rate issue that's hard to predict. And on top of that there's the value of the dollar that's hard to predict. And there's not even an agreement about whether a strong dollar is good for the country or a weak dollar is good for the country. So economists can't even decide do we like a strong dollar or a weak dollar. But it is likely that the dollar will weaken if the tariffs stay in place and it continues to rile the market. So that's another thing.

Then I saw according to Spectator Index on X the price of oil went down 4%. Also probably because of the tariffs but I'm not sure. So if oil goes down that should trickle into all the other costs. So you've got the uncertainty of whether a strong or weak dollar is good or bad. You've got the interest rate effect that's unpredictable. You've got the energy cost that should lower prices but would it be enough to compensate for the rise in prices? You've got the question of who's going to absorb various tariffs? Will it always be the importing company or in some cases will the exporter absorb some of it? Then you've got how long will it take to get manufacturing coming back to the United States? How many adjustments can the industry make quickly? We don't really know.

So the number of unknowns involved in this are just through the roof. But one thing's for sure, the people who know the least about economics are very certain that they know a lot about economics. I think the more you know about economics the less confidence you would have on which way things are going to go. Because if it turns out that it's just a good negotiation that's going to be great. You would just get better deals. If it turns out it's going to go some way that nobody could predict, well anything could happen. We'll see.

But here's what you need to know. Economics is more art than science. All right? You think economics feels like it's some kind of a hard science. It's not. It's more of an art. The second thing you need to know is that art is, so let's see if you can follow this. Economics is more art than science and art is, economics is largely, nobody really knows in a situation like this what's going to happen. We just really don't know. But we'll act like we do.

So here's something that I saw some of the non-economists talking about. I saw somebody saying that the reason they're mad at Musk is that he and Trump don't pay federal income taxes. What do you think of that? That Musk and Trump don't pay federal income taxes. Therefore they're sort of parasites on the system. Well here's what you need to know. First of all I think it's not true. I think Musk has actually paid more federal income taxes than any living human. It's just that it depends on the year. So he's had one or two years where he had enormous payments because of the financial situation and then some years where it was zero. Trump of course as we all know has found ways to avoid taxes wherever he can because he's in the building construction real estate business and the tax law is sort of designed to encourage that kind of a business.

So here's what I would say. The reason that anybody can avoid taxes, be it Musk in some cases and Trump in some cases, is that the government wants this situation. They would rather promote the growth and the success of a gigantic business than they need specific taxes from that business as it's young. Now think about all of the federal income taxes that are created by having a gigantic company with lots of employees. All the employees are paying federal taxes. The businesses themselves probably have enormous property tax burden on them which is a state tax but still it's part of the productive taxation of the citizens. They create things that have sales tax associated. Again it's not federal but it's adding to the system. And if you add together all the sales tax, property tax, employee taxes, and then the employment itself, and the fact that if people are employed the government doesn't have to take care of them, the benefit that anybody with a large business that's successful is adding to the country is so great that the government is okay with you not paying federal income tax every single year if you're investing money into your company and that's why you're not paying taxes. So the people who know the least just say, "Oh they're not paying federal income tax so that's unfair. The billionaires are taking our money." That's not really what's happening.

All right, so here's my big worry about the tariffs. Do we have enough of a runway that we'll know if they're working before midterms? Because if the economy is still roiling the way it is the Republicans are going to get wiped out in the midterms. And there's not really much time between now and the midterms for tariffs to do their magic. Not a lot of people are going to be reshoring their manufacturing. So I feel like Trump is risking it all. Now I think he had to because the current situation was untenable. So it's the right thing for the country that he's taken this risk. I think we don't know how it's going to turn out but I think it's the right kind of risk at exactly the right time to do it. But if it doesn't make the public think it's working by the midterms Republicans are going to get destroyed and then it's all gone. You're going to lose everything politically. You're going to lose everything. And then it could get worse because if this was the only thing that was going to allow us to balance the budget and have some kind of a strong economy going forward and the Democrats take it away, which they will because they're not going to just let it ride. This is a really big risk but again I would rather that he takes the real risk to really help the country than to do something that would be purely political which is paper over it and pretend it's not a problem that things aren't going right anyway. So worry about the midterms.

Matt Taibbi, journalist Matt Taibbi is suing a Democratic lawmaker for $10 million because she made the mistake of saying something on social media that she had said in the context of her job. If she said something in the context of her job apparently you can't sue her but she made the mistake of putting it on social media and I guess that opened the door for him to sue. And she made allegations that apparently are thoroughly debunked. I'm not even going to mention them because I don't want to put it in your head but go Taibbi. Yeah. I mean he was unfairly accused of something that didn't pan out whatsoever in the past. And this Democratic California representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove just decided to empty the barrel. Is that a thing? And just totally trash him in a public way including on social media. So yes she needs to be completely put out of business. I hope he succeeds.

I saw in a Mario and a recap of the news that the Houthis have shot down a number of drones now. And our drones cost $30 million a piece, the good ones, the Reaper drones. And they've shot down three of them. Two recently just this week. So we've lost 17 of them over time and each one cost $30 million. So they've managed to cost us $500 million worth of just drones they shot down in the last six months.

Now here's my question. What kind of technology do the Houthis have that they can so successfully shoot down our drones? I mean maybe they miss nine out of 10 times. I don't know. But they must have some pretty serious equipment over there that they can spot it and then get to it. So I don't know how long it's going to take for us to suppress the Houthis but looks like it could be a while.

All right, I'm going to claim the best predictor of what's happening in Gaza. Now those of you who've been watching me for a while you have to either back me or disagree with me on this. I'll tell you the current news and then you tell me, was I the best predictor of what would happen with Israel and Gaza.

Now if you're new to me I need to clarify that I do not support Israel. I observe it and I observe that they seem to have the power and they're using it. If the other side had the power they would be using it. So I'm not putting an ethical or moral label on any of this and I'm not saying what they should do or what they shouldn't do. I'm just telling you what they're doing. And one of the things I predicted was they were never going to let the Gazans move back into Gaza and that they would have to depopulate it and just move people somewhere else or keep them in camps or something. And it looks like that's exactly what's happening.

So the biggest mass displacement of the war so far, Israel is calling it creating security zones but one assumes the security zones will grow to the entire thing and they plan to be more aggressive for a year. But Hamas apparently has offered to release all the remaining hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire which suggests that Hamas knows that Israel's real aim is to depopulate the area, kill every member of Hamas even if it costs them their hostages. Now I don't think Israel is going to stop just because they have a chance to get the hostages back. They might keep negotiating but they're done with Hamas. Hamas will be trapped and destroyed in their tunnels and I don't think there's any way around it. And eventually Gaza will be just owned and operated by Israel. And I believe I'm the only person who told you that from the jump. Can you confirm or deny that that's true? I saw no other commentator say from the very first the Palestinians are not going to be living in Gaza when this is done.

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