but I'll give the win to Trump. Trump gets the win because he had the location advantage. Not because he had more skill, but he had an advantage before the game started and he played his advantage correctly.

So the other thing that's happening here is they have to know that the other one is their sort of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. They are each other's biggest challenge and each other's most capable other. Xi is pretty capable, but Putin's more fun. I think he's just more fun. President Xi looks like he's not much fun, but Putin, even if he's evil all the time, he's still kind of fun. He's got sort of that impish smile and stuff. And you could imagine that if in a different situation, you could easily imagine Trump and Putin being buddies. I don't believe Putin golfs. Am I right? They've never golfed. So it's too bad. If Putin spoke perfect English and golfed, we'd be in good shape.

All right. So then the European leaders have backed Trump. So they seem happy about what's happened so far as long as the Europeans and Zelensky get involved and they are now. And apparently the US is prepared to give security guarantees to Ukraine, which is what Ukraine wants. I don't know what that would look like, but let's see.

Bill Maher had his show last night and I continue to marvel at the fact that he's becoming more and more of a Republican right before our eyes. But probably never will get there. But it's just fun to watch the gravity is just pulling him so hard that just a little by little he's like, "Well, okay, maybe he has a point on that thing, but let me tell you all these other things I still disagree with." And then he'll mention some hoaxes and some things he doesn't understand.

So I guess it was Friday night last night. Bill Maher said that Trump wasn't wrong on tariffs and he wasn't wrong on forcing NATO to pay more. And then he gave Trump some more credit kind of weirdly. He said, "I'll tell you one thing about him, about Trump that I know. I'm not going to tell you how I know." That part's weird. He goes, "But a lot of people have seen the same thing." And Maher says he really does hate war. He really does not like it when people die in war. Now, how would Bill Maher know that? Would it be the same way that every one of us knows it? Because it's the most consistent thing he said since he's been in public life that he wants the war to stop. He wants the killing to stop. Yeah. And the other thing that people say about Trump, even his critics, is that he's exactly the same opinion in private as he is publicly. So if publicly he's been saying consistently and loudly and often as possible, he doesn't like people to die, doesn't like war, avoiding war is sort of his greatest accomplishment and he should be proud of it. Yeah. So why would you imagine that he says something different in private? Do you imagine that in private he says something like, you know, I really don't care if those people from other countries die, you know, as long as it doesn't come over here. I doubt it. If every other topic in private is the same as it is in public, yeah, he doesn't like war. That's the most obvious thing you could possibly say. But Bill Maher is acting like the rest of us didn't notice and they have some insider knowledge that Trump doesn't like war. Okay.

And then Bill Maher also notices, because how could he not, that the Democrat leaders like Hillary and Kamala were too afraid to come on his show, but the Republicans generally say yes. And as Bill Maher says, they take their beating like men. I don't know if they take a beating, but they do go into an environment that's not in their favor and they do it easily, regularly, without hesitation. Now, that is a really fair observation. That is a real good observation. There is something fundamentally different about the Republican and Democrat approach to something like going on his show. Now obviously he gets a lot of left-leaning people on the show more than right leaning but not the top leaders you know not the ones that are afraid of saying something wrong like Hillary or Kamala anyway and of course they do get invited all the time as he points out but he says Democrats appear to be afraid of everything. Maher says they're afraid of COVID. They're afraid of their own kids, which he overlaps with the trans topic. And then he has to say some negative stuff about Trump because he just has to. So Maher says that Trump was overly friendly to Putin for a very long time considering that Putin is a thug. Now, does Bill Maher really not know that international relations work better if you don't demonize the person that you're forced to negotiate with? Is he the only person in the world who doesn't know that? I mean, that's what's left of his criticisms of Trump are stuff like he was overly friendly to Putin. That's it. That's not even a flaw. That's just somebody who knows how to do his job really well.

Anyway, Walter Kern, I guess, was on the show and pointed out that in 2015, Obama met with Putin and nobody said anything about it. And then Bill Maher says he met him, but he didn't praise him. He didn't say he's the greatest guy in the world. I could read 20 compliments that Trump has given to him. He said he's a fun guy to be with. And he go, "Oh, he's making an Epstein joke there." But again, how does Bill Maher, how can he be the only person on earth who doesn't know that complimenting the person you're trying to influence is good form and that insulting him makes it much less likely you'll get anything? How does he not know that? I think he's pretending not to know because there's no real possibility