t what they were funding was going to cause massive property damage, is that enough to make it a RICO case where it's an organized criminal activity? I don't know. I will leave that to the lawyers.

According to Scott Presler there's a problem in Pennsylvania, as he says on X. So apparently some Republican voters got their mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and their mail-in ballots are dated for 2024, so last year. In other words they're not even legal. At least the way they're dated. And I guess Scott Presler has heard from several other Republicans who also received last year's ballot. Now again I don't know if it's really last year's ballot or if they just have a typo in the date, but either way it would suppress your voting, wouldn't it? Because you wouldn't know for sure if it's the right thing. Maybe you'd try to get the right one but you'd run out of time. You'd be confused.

So the open question is whether it only happened to Republicans. So if you want to go full conspiracy theory, is it possible that all the fake ballots went to Republicans? Now I would guess it's more of a general problem, maybe just a printer glitch or something, a typo. So it probably affected everybody, but we'll get to the bottom of it. We don't know yet.

According to the Washington Examiner, I don't know how new this is because it sounds like something I talked about before. China kind of quietly exempted some things from tariffs because it found it couldn't get them anywhere else. So I guess when it comes to US-made semiconductors, chipmaking equipment, medical products and aviation parts, China took off the tariff that they put on it. And they made the exemptions barely after realizing that they didn't really have a way to get that stuff any other way. Now they haven't publicly announced that, so they're kind of flying quiet. But what do you think? That the Trump administration is actually talking to Chinese officials about a deal? Do you think that secretly there's a conversation going? Because Trump is saying yes, oh yeah we're getting close, we're having conversations all the time. And China is still hanging tight with nope, nope, there's no negotiating, it's not happening at all. It doesn't feel like something that Trump would just completely make up. So my guess is we're talking to somebody, but I don't know if that somebody has the authority of President Xi or not. So maybe they're getting close to something and we'll be surprised.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Russia's made a deal with Iran that Russia would fund construction of a new nuclear plant in Iran. I guess they've funded one already and it's already built. And that Russia would supply Iran with 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year. So it's starting to look like Russia has done a good job of pulling the bad guys together onto one team. He's tight with China, he's tight with Iran, tight with some other smaller countries, but those are the ones that matter. So Russia's done a good job. I hate to say it, but Russia's done a hell of a good job of circumventing the United States interests and building their own little fortress.

I told you before that Trump was asked by Time magazine if he would be dragged into war with Iran if Israel wanted to happen and they couldn't make a deal. And Trump said no, that he didn't say that he would get dragged in but that he wouldn't have to be dragged because if they don't make a deal he would willingly want to go in and have a war. Now that's the right thing to say. I don't know if he would actually do it or if we would ever be done negotiating. It would sort of make sense for him to just keep kicking the can down the road and saying I'm still negotiating so don't go in militarily.

Trump is also saying out loud that he's worried that Vladimir Putin is maybe not so interested in peace and maybe stringing Trump along because as Trump points out Putin is bombing some civilian areas in Ukraine and there just doesn't seem to be a reason for it unless he's trying to kill the peace. And so Trump is calling that out and he says quote on Truth Social, Trump said quote it makes me think that maybe he meaning Putin doesn't want to stop the war. He's just tapping me along, tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently through banking or secondary sanctions.

So it looks like Trump is thinking if you just keep with me, which Putin is doing, that he's just going to go heavy on sanctions, heavier than he already is.

David Sacks was on the All-In pod and he was saying that Zelensky seems to clearly not be interested in peace because if he were he wouldn't be insisting on getting Crimea back because there's no practical way that's ever going to happen. And Sacks said made his bed, let him sleep in it. And that's sort of where I'm at, without being any kind of an expert on Ukraine, which I'm not. But if he's not willing to talk about the areas which are very solidly under Russian control and it's not going to change, if he's not willing to accept that, he must want the war more than he wants the peace because it's the only path to peace. And he's said no. So I do think there's a good chance that Trump might just sa