ined for deportation. 300. So these were two businesses. They were both pot farms and collectively they had 300 people who were undocumented and working there. What kind of pot farm needs 300 people? I would say that's a 10 robot situation. So eventually robots. But apparently one person died in the process of these raids. I didn't see the details of how they died or what they died of but that's tragic. And I guess one of the cannabis farms had been donating to Governor Newsom. So but that doesn't mean anything. The thing that bothered me is that the price of weed in California is going to go up now. Hey I thought Trump was going to reduce the price of my essentials but no. No. Apparently the supply of marijuana will go down quite a bit and prices might go higher. I don't know if you know this but the prices for marijuana have dropped quite a bit in recent years since it was legal. When it was first legalized I think an ounce cost sometimes $400 or $500. And at the moment the same amount and same quality would be $250. So the price of weed did in fact respond to supply and demand and at least there was no inflation on weed. But maybe there will be.

There's a new poll that says Democrats look out of touch and woke and weak. We may have talked about this one and there was a super PAC who did the poll and they've decided that the Democrats focusing on fighting for democracy, it was still popular within the party but not in the general electorate. How much are you surprised? Remember how many times I told you that it was ridiculous that the Democrats thought that fighting to maintain our democracy was not going to resonate with the public. That's just something that news geeks say. But I don't know anybody who's just living their life who is worried about democracy being taken away by Trump. And here's the poll that supports my hunch that the public didn't really care about the stealing democracy part because they didn't see it as real. They also didn't care about the oligarchy. I'm seeing in the comments. Yeah they didn't care about the oligarchy either. If you're really into politics that's the stuff you debate. But if you're just a casual citizen and somebody said maybe your biggest problems, how many soccer moms and dads who are not paying attention to politics, how many of them would say well I'm worried about the oligarchy or I'm worried about the attack on democracy? Probably none.

But when you see that Mamdani guy when he gets all this purchase and all this attention because he said the right thing which is we're going to work on affordability. Affordability was really a good kill shot. You know I'm not a Mamdani fan because he's a socialist but when he found a message he just had energy and the right policy message. He didn't even have solutions really. I mean not practical ones but it reminded me of Trump. When people looked at Trump in the very beginning they just said oh there's no way. I mean we see that he's exciting and he's bringing a lot of energy. We get it. And when he talks about the border and the wall those are popular with his base but that's not enough. You're going to have to be an experienced politician to win an election. That's what people said. But it turns out that Trump needed two things. The right policies and the right amount of energy. And everything else we were willing to forgive or just enjoy as a show in my case. And I think that Mamdani is another example of that. He definitely got the right policy, affordability, better than I've seen anybody do it really. So he nailed the policy, not the solutions, but at least he said I feel your pain. You know sort of the Bill Clinton thing. I feel your pain. It's affordability and then he brought the energy. You could talk about all different things that he did that you might like in both cases Trump and Mamdani but I feel like it just came down to that. Do you have the right policy? I mean have you even identified the problem? And then do you have the energy to make it happen? And they both fit that energy plus the right policy according to their base.

Anyway Jen Psaki and her TV show on MSNBC that replaced Rachel Maddow's time slot is doing terrible in the ratings. Lost 44% of her audience. You know I'm always surprised. Was Rachel Maddow so popular that if you replace her with somebody who is in my opinion a bit of a clone, you know it's not like Jen Psaki is a completely different person than Rachel Maddow. So why would the viewership go down so much? It doesn't seem like that much of a change but one of my favorite hobbies is looking at Fox News and what they do right and comparing it to MSNBC and what they do wrong. MSNBC and CNN appear to be under the impression that news is something informing people especially about the bad news. So if you turn on CNN or you turn on MSNBC you're mostly going to get some bad news. And it's not all political. Some of it might be natural disasters and stuff and those will be on every network. But the thing that Fox News has been getting right for a long time is the understanding that people watch news as entertainment. How many of you are in that category? When I turn on the news I'm sort of a little bit trying to find out what's new but mostly I'm looking to be entertained. And when I'm watching Fox News I'm often entertained depending on what show I'm watching. And if I turn on CNN or MSNBC, because I do cycle through the three of them, they're not trying to entertain. They're trying to get you worked up or angry. And I can feel the difference.

But I also note that Greg Gutfeld completely changes the nature of Fox News in a way that's made them dominant. I think he more than anybody else he's proven that people will watch for the entertainment which is why he has two shows. You know he's on The Five which is the top ratings thing at that time slot and then he's got his own show Gutfeld which again is tops in the ratings. So he's now got three hours every night during the week in which it's unambiguously true that you know you're going to get entertained if you watch either of those or any of those shows. And it's amazing to me that CNN and MSNBC have not taken any kind of a learning from that. CNN I think they're still doing it. Maybe they had a show that was like a game show in which they would make fun of the news and Michael Ian Black was on that and some other people and I never found it funny because it was a little too forced. So I don't know if that's even still on but they tried.

There's some crypto executive orders that are expected from the White House. And I always have trouble following this topic but the reason that Bitcoin is going up in value, it had a good run this week. I didn't know why. But apparently it's in anticipation of it becoming a better I don't know if I want to call it an investment. I guess I would because of the upcoming executive orders and they would among other things ban a central bank digital currency. I guess that would be taking away a competitor to Bitcoin. Would protect self-custody so you don't have to keep it in the bank. And stable coins which are coins that are pegged to the dollar meaning if the dollar goes up they go up to the same amount would be backed by treasuries and then there'd be some market structure blah blah blah. So some of it I don't understand but Grok is reporting this. So there might be something big coming with crypto.

If you're watching the Trump and Jerome Powell saga which is always fun. So of course Trump wants Jerome Powell to quit as soon as possible or better yet just lower interest rates because that's what he really wants. But The Gateway Pundit is reporting that Jerome Powell is getting some pressure now and that according to Bill Pulte who's chairman of the board of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bill posted on X quote, "I'm encouraged by reports that Jerome Powell is considering resigning. I think this will be the right decision for America and the economy will boom." Now I don't know what those rumors are. And I'm not sure that rumors can necessarily be trusted but there's quite a push and I think Bill Pulte is the right person to be pushing this because he's in the domain where the interest rates are going to affect affordability of housing in a big way. So he certainly has a dog in this fight.

Intel CEO was talking to his own company and told them it's too late for Intel to catch up in AI chips. What can you imagine? You're CEO of a chip company saying yeah it's too late. And that the big companies like AMD and Nvidia basically have already captured the market. And he said on training I think it is too late for us. So Intel, that's a little too honest. He must have been an engineer before he was the CEO. That's a little bit too honest. Yeah it's too late for us. We'll never catch up. So we're doomed. He didn't say they're doomed but it feels like it.

Well in good news the US is opening its first rare earth mine in more than 70 years and apparently it will provide six of the 17 rare earth materials and has tons and tons of supply. Now it has to be refined. I don't know who's going to do that or if we've solved that. But if you're wondering is the US moving in a useful way to be free of China's control of rare earth minerals? The answer is yes at least for six of 17. And I expect we'll see more movement there.

All right let me give you a lesson in economics so that I can say that you were smarter when you left. I had made the observation that if it's true that Trump has decided that Russia and Ukraine will never agree to a ceasefire and it does look true. I don't know that that's true but from my perspective it looks very much like Trump has given up and probably should that at least for now Russia and Ukraine prefer to fight. Now a bunch of people said to me Scott you stupid freaking idiot. Ukraine isn't choosing to fight. To which I say did they stop? If they didn't stop they choose to fight. Now what you really mean is they have a good reason to fight. I'm not talking about the reason and I'm not arguing that they don't have a good reason. I'm just saying that neither side has made a decision to stop and they would prefer fighting over whatever they see as the reasonable alternatives. So as long as they both want to fight what would be the best thing for the greatest president in our history to do?

Let me tell you if you know you can't fix it you should monetize it. And it looks like Trump might be doing that. So what he's done is he's providing weapons to Ukraine but he's making NATO pay for it. Now what's the next thing you're going to say to me Scott you idiot. I thought you understood things like this. You know that we're one of the biggest funders of NATO so it's not like it's free. We're putting the