hoax. And he of course couldn’t help himself. So he posted today, “We won the war on climate change hoax.” And he said that this is what Trump said on X. “Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely wrong on the issue. It took courage to do so and for that we’re all grateful. MAGA.”

So Trump got one of the biggest wins of all time. Imagine how he feels. Is there anything that Trump has been more mocked for besides his haircut than the fact that he called climate change a hoax? I think that was always besides the trivial stuff like hair and girlfriends and stuff. I think that was like the biggest knock against him, right? That he was anti-science and he didn’t understand what all the smart people did that we were all going to die in a climate crisis. Well, people, fast forward. He was right. He was right.

So what happened between the years 2020 and 2025 that would have caused people to have less belief in climate change? Is there anybody who got involved in that conversation around 2015? Well, you could do the math.

ABC’s Jonathan Carl was interviewing Gavin Newsom. This is funny. So you would think that ABC might be sort of pro-Democrat, especially in their news division. But here’s what Jonathan Carl actually did in a recorded podcast with Gavin Newsom. This is almost hard to believe. This is a real thing. He held up a picture of the character from the movie *American Psycho* and held it next to a picture of Gavin Newsom and told him that even his supporters note that he looks like a comic book villain from central casting.

Imagine being in an interview with a legitimate news source and the legitimate news guy holds up a picture of you as a character in a movie who’s literally a psychopath and it has no news value whatsoever except to point out that he looks like a psychopath. Now that’s funny. That’s just funny. However, you know, I have to support Jonathan Carl on this. The way people look totally matters, right? That’s something I can say because I’m just a guy on a podcast, but you can’t say that if you’re legitimate news, but he did. I mean in his own way, he’s saying it as a legitimate news guy. The way you look matters a lot.

AOC’s look. Do you think that makes a difference? Of course it does. President Trump’s height, does that make a difference? Of course it does. Of course it does. Yeah. The way people look is hugely influential. And I do believe I agree that Newsom does look like a movie or a comic book villain. He looks exactly like the Joker, doesn’t he? He’s even got the Joker’s haircut. He could walk into a role as the Joker on a Batman movie with almost no makeup. I’m not wrong about that. So if people can’t notice that, I don’t know.

Meanwhile, here’s a shock. According to the National Pulse, I guess Elise Stefanik, a Republican, just pulled the highest for a potential future governor of New York. And they haven’t had a Republican governor in New York in twenty years. So I don’t know if that’s real. That’s just one poll. You can’t really believe one poll, but it’s a new poll from the Manhattan Institute shows Elise Stefanik, Republican, leading both the current governor Hochul and Lieutenant Governor of New York too, who’s also a Democrat. So hypothetically, if they ever ran, she would win. That would be amazing. Wouldn’t expect that.

Meanwhile over in Gaza trying to figure out how to get that all settled out. Axios is reporting that there’s lots of conversations and progress I think has been made figuring out who’s going to run that place in terms of physical security. And at the moment it looks like the idea, I don’t know if this is going to work but the idea is that the US, Egypt and Jordan alongside some other, this Axios is reporting on this, along with some other Arab and Muslim countries that might include Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Egypt and Turkey might be all part of this security deal. But it sounds like if they’re talking about maybe this country, maybe that country, that sounds a lot like they don’t they’re not that close to getting any kind of a thing going. But here’s the most interesting thing that happened.

Well, let me just say this. I’m sure they’ll get it. So I don’t think there’s any risk that they won’t be able to figure out how to get some countries that want to do security there. It’s just going to take some grinding. It just looks like it’s going to be hard, but totally doable. So they’ll get there. But as you know, there have been some breaks in the ceasefire, which everybody expects. You know there are always going to be minor breaks in the ceasefire, but so far it’s holding. And even though there are breaks, that gets back on plan when it does.

But I didn’t know this, but apparently Israel had planned as sort of a retaliation for the ceasefire break that they say Hamas did, they were going to retake some part of Gaza and reoccupy it. And the reporting is that Trump said, “No, you’re not. You are not going to take more of Gaza. Stay where you are. We’re just going to sort of tap this along and act like the break of the ceasefire wasn’t the biggest deal in the world so that we can get to the phase two.” Whereas Israel might have wanted to grab some land or just move the IDF into more occupying of Gaza than they’re occupying right now, which would have just caused a giant problem and maybe derailed the entire thing. And the reporting is that Trump said, “Nope.” And he said, “No, you’re not. You’re not going to redeploy and take over that space. Even though you have a good argument for it, you’re not going to do it.”

Now, here’s my question to you. Did that really happen? Because you know it’s the news. You never know if it really happened. Did Trump really tell them not to do it? And is that really the only reason they didn’t do it? Because if the reporting is accurate, it’s kind of a blow to the Israel controls the US narrative, isn’t it? Kind of a big blow. Does it not seem to you that at least with our current president, while it will always be true that Israel does an amazingly good job of influencing the US for their own national purposes, which is their job. You know, if you’re an Israeli government, well, even if you’re just a citizen, it’s sort of your job to make sure that your country does well. Does Israel do a good job of making sure their country does well? Yeah. Yeah. A really good job. Very good job. Do we like it all the time? Not if we think that it included manipulating or pushing the US around. We don’t like that part.

But so far, we’ve heard several anecdotes that seem to suggest that at least Netanyahu is going to, I don’t want to say bow to Trump, but he’s definitely going to take very seriously what Trump wants to the point of maybe just doing what he wants. So are we watching any kind of great reversal where the power influence structure is changing or has it always been this way but we were maybe less aware of it because I’ve described in the past the US and Israel relationship to me it looks less like Israel controlling everything in America and more like a sibling situation which is that you know we have this love for them as siblings. You know, you could argue whether we should or should not, but we do. You know, Israel’s kind of special to a lot of people in the US. Not everybody, obviously. But I think we influence each other. When it matters more to the US, then we push. When it matters more to them, maybe they push harder than we push back. Sometimes they win, sometimes we win. But if it’s true, and I’ll put a big if because if you wanted to argue with the if, I wouldn’t have a response to that. If it’s true that Trump is telling them what to do in some of these situations and they’re just doing it, that would look very different, wouldn’t it? That would look very much more sibling like sometimes your brother wins, sometimes your sister wins, but it’s not really winning. It’s more like just working with each other. That’s what it looks like. I’m not close enough to the situation to know what it really is like, but it looks like that.

Homeland Security, according to NewsNation, is rolling out new rules requiring photographs and in some cases fingerprints of all non-US citizens entering the US. To which I say, wait, what? We’re only now requiring fingerprints and photographs for coming into the country? We weren’t already doing that? That’s one of those stories where you go, “What? I thought we always did that.”

Let’s see what’s happening overseas just for a minute. Over in Germany, the right-wing party has got now forty percent support which is actually more than any of the other individual parties. So the dominant party only by a little, forty to thirty-eight percent, is anti-immigration. So does that mean that Germany will start deporting people and closing their border if the biggest political entity, only biggest by a little bit, but they’re the biggest, is against it? Do you think that Germany has time to roll back their immigration standards to save Germany as whatever they want Germany to look like? Probably not. Yeah, I’m seeing in the comments too late. Feels too late, doesn’t it? Feels too late.

But speaking of that, Elon Musk who says in his provocative way, Elon said that civil war in Britain is inevitable. I think he said that on X, of course. Do you think so? Do you think that a civil war in Britain is inevitable? What he’s talking about is the native born versus the immigrant population. I think maybe he’s talking about the Islamic immigrant population specifically. He’s not being specific, but do you think there’s going to be a civil war in Britain? I’m going to say no because what would that look like? They don’t have guns. What would civil war even look like? They’re completely neutered. Who would they fight? What are they going to go out with butter knives and baseball bats and have a civil war? I don’t think there’s going to be a civil war. I think that whatever it is they wanted to preserve, they already lost. And for them, it’s probably a major tragedy. But I don’t think they can civil war their way out of it. I don’t see that happening.

And I guess Trump’s also going to end the Biden policy of automatically extending work permits. Breitbart News is reporting on this, John Binder. And that makes sense. They’re just going to make sure that the people who are working here have been vetted properly. They won’t like it.

Meanwhile, also in Germany, they’ve developed a twenty kilowatt laser for shooting down drones. Now, this will be like the twentieth time I’ve told you a story that there’s a brand new device laser for shooting down drones or other things. But what I want to add to this is that apparently if this works, and they’re already testing it and it does work, so it’s a real thing, that it will lower the cost of defending against drones dramatically. And when I’m looking at war zones, because I have an economics background, I tend to look at the economics of it to predict what’s going to happen. You know, the best economy almost always wins in war. I don’t know if you knew that, but the strongest economy usually can afford the best weapons and over time the best economy usually wins a war. But related to that would be the cost of their weapons. You know, if you’re the smaller economy, but you can figure out how to do your weapons really cheap, you effectively can punch above your weight.

So if it turns out that our adversaries are really good at building drones, but we get even better at anti-drone lasers and shooting them out of the sky for twenty cents a drone instead of a million dollars to take out a drone, we win. So it could be that the economic race to have the cheapest anti-drone defenses and also the cheapest drones, just the economics of that, that might determine who wins everything. And Germany’s got a nice little device there that might make a difference.

Well, here’s something for the Democrats to talk about for the next few weeks. According to the Guardian, the Pentagon is telling the National Guard to organize quick reaction forces for all the major parts of the US. So there’d be twenty thousand National Guard who would be trained, but no more than say five hundred for any one location. So it’s not you’re not going to see twenty thousand people in the same place, but five hundred apiece for various places. And they would be a quick reaction force for if there’s social unrest. So if there’s something that you quickly need to quell like a riot, there will always be somewhere reasonably close in every state, you’d have five hundred well-trained anti-riot people.

Now, what do you think the Democrats are going to say about that? This is weeks of content for the anti-authoritarian people. Oh, there it is. Told you. Told you. He’s organizing his private army now. If we protest, he’s going to come and get us with his five hundred National Guard people. So they’ll have something to talk about for a few weeks. We don’t want them to be bored.

All right, that’s all I have for today. I’m going to talk to the local subscribers, my beloved local subscribers. A little special. By the way, if you were a member of Locals, you’ve been watching me draw Dil