Transcription
[Music] All right, let's check our stocks. And they look like they're in a healthy situation today. Yeah, Tesla's up. All right, let's have a show. Going to check my comments. There we go.
[Music] Good morning everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can understand with their tiny shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mug or a glass, tankard, or gels to stay in a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. Well, I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it happens now. Go. Perfect.
Well, let's see if there's any science that they could have skipped just by asking me. Oh, here we go. Uh, my favorite writer lately, Eric Dolan and Cypost. He's uh, reporting that uh, women with ADHD have less consistent orgasms during partnered sex. I'm glad they said partnered. Now, do you think they needed to do that study? Now, I don't know the answer to this because of my personal exploits. I know the answer to this because I know what ADHD is and I know what an orgasm is. And I'm pretty sure that if you're thinking about something else while you're having sex, your orgasm will not be so powerful or likely to happen. So yeah, next time uh, you need to know if ADHD is going to interfere with anything, including sex or anything else, just ask me. Um, yes. I think their minds would wander a little bit.
Here's another one. Also, Eric Nolan, also Cypost. Um, apparently psychedelic experiences are linked to long-term improvements in psychological flexibility. You know who else they could have asked that question of? 100% of people who have ever had a psychedelic experience. That's the main thing it does. The main thing it does is make you see the world as sort of subjective, and then you get flexible because if the world is subjective, you don't have to be locked into any one way of thinking or one way of perceiving. So yes, next time you want to study something about psychedelics, just ask me. I got the answers.
Well, because I have to know this, uh, I'm going to make all of you know it, too. If you were trying to avoid the Diddy the Diddy trial because you'd hear something that would uh, that would destroy your brain forever. Uh, you might want not want to listen to this next thing. Okay. It's not funny. It's not funny. Stop it. It's not funny because there was a serious crime alleged here. But now there's a new lawsuit. According to uh, Breitbart News, there's a new lawsuit of a woman who says that Sean Denny Combmes um, tried to rape her. Uh, but that she was not that afraid once she once he whipped out his manhood because she described it as Tootsie Roll sized. Now, are you ever going to be able to imagine him in any context again without imagining the the Tootsie Roll? No. That's the most devastating thing you could do to him is do the the Tootsie Roll thing. Oh my goodness.
But in related news, the New York Post is reporting that uh, Justin Bieber's rep, his rep, not him, his rep um, said that he was not a victim of Sean Combmes. So if you're worried about Bieber being a victim of Sean Cones, his rep his rep says it didn't happen. Now, if you can't trust a celebrity rep, who can you trust? Yeah. So, we're not going to believe the rep. I I I hope it's true that he was not victimized, but you're going to need to do better than the rep.
According to Brendan Carr at the FCC, Verizon has now agreed to end its DEI policies. Um, and uh, that's good news. Now, you might know that uh, I was a victim of DEI back in my phone company working days. I never worked for Verizon or any of the companies they absorbed, but um, I did experience the DEI effect. So, this one makes me a little extra happy because it feels personal. So, Verizon, we'll see if you actually really get rid of your DEI policies or are you just going to change the names? They might just change the names. We'll check in with them later.
All right, here's the uh, the the big story everybody wants to talk about today. So, apparently James Comey, ex-head of the FBI, has arranged some seashells on the beach and then took a picture of them, and the shells were arranged in four digits 8647. Now, 47 we assume refers to Trump. He's the 47th president. 86 is a food services reference to getting rid of something. So, Secretary Christy Gnome as um, she she posted an ex-disgraced former FBI director James Comey just called for the assassination of Trump, and uh, she says that the Department of Homeland Security is and Secret Service are going to investigate this threat and will respond appropriately. Likewise, FBI Director Kash Patel, he's all over it. He says, "We are aware of the recent social media post by Comey and uh, directly at Trump." He says, "And we're in communication with the Secret Service and director current primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service, but the FBI will provide necessary support."
Now, if you were not aware that 86 has a meaning beyond being a number, you might not have worked in a food services kind of job as I have. Uh, I spent years working for in kitchens, and I was a dishwasher, and I was a line cook, and I was a salad cutting guy. Uh, so I was always in and then I owned a couple of restaurants. So 88 86 was a common phrase. And so if my boss told me to 86 the lettuce, I knew that that meant get a high-powered rifle and hide it in the bushes near the golf course and then shoot that lettuce when it came by. Right? That's what that means. It means assassinate the lettuce. Right? This this story strikes me as so dumb that on one hand it's deadly serious because all it takes is one crazy person to say he sends the signal he sends the assassination signal. On the other hand, the odds that he will get in any kind of serious legal trouble for using a common word that means get rid of something really low. Uh, I don't think he's going to jail because he used a common food services term with seashells. So, we can speculate what he was thinking, and we could speculate what other people might think when they see it and whether he thought that they would think that. But I think he is in probably safe territory. He's not going to go to jail for using a food services term for getting rid of something. Yeah, we we never thought of it as assassinating the food. So, I don't think he's in trouble. But, of course, the news will be all over it today, and you're going to hear that story so many times, and people will act terribly shocked and offended, and and it's the worst thing in the world. They use that term 86.
All right, so that's coming. Um, Joe Rogan had a Harvard uh, I guess a persuasion mind control expert, and uh, I saw a good summary of that on X by the Vigilant Fox, who's a good account to follow. You should follow the Vigilant Fox, and uh, the expert, her name is Lemoff. She talked about how uh, back in 2012 there was a an experiment done on Facebook where they uh, they achieved mass emotional contagion at scale. So whatever what they did was they uh, they give one group of people without them knowing it. By the way, this experiment was done on users of Facebook without the users knowing they were part of an experiment. Um, some of them were given all these negative words, and the other was were fed a stream of positive words. And then they found out that the group that was exposed to more positive news feed uh, also had a measurably statistically significant effect of more positive emotional response, and the control group was unaltered by this. Now, did they really need to run that experiment? Was there anything they could have done that would have been cheaper and faster than running that big somewhat unethical experiment because the people didn't know that they were part of the experiment? Yes, they could have just asked me because every hypnotist and everybody in advertising would have known what would happen. If you give people a bunch of negative words, they feel negative. If you give them a bunch of positive words, they feel positive. And it's not that complicated. It's probably the the single most well-understood thing in all of the in all of persuasion. You know, I doubt you could find even one hypnotist who wouldn't tell you, "Oh, you don't need to do that experiment." Yeah. All the negative words would make one group feel bad, and the positive words would make the other group feel good. Yep.
Um, but here's what you need to know. That's basically CNN and MSNBC every night. Now, they're not running it as an experiment. It's just how they operate. So, you know that word chaos. Do you think it's an accident that they all use that word and then when they they get a new word, they all use it? It's the same thing. Basically, the news is a you know, persuasion tool, and they use negative or positive words based on the story, and uh, it's very persuasive that that's why people who watch any one of those news shows at the expense of watching the others seem to you to be emotionally unbalanced, and and it's because they are, and you would be too if you only watched one news source, you would either get, you know, unrelenting good news about one side and unrelenting bad words about the other side, and and you'd be quite triggered.
Well, Trump is back from his successful Middle East trip, and I got to say it is one of the most impressive, you know, successes that I've ever seen. Uh, I don't think we've seen a president just dominate the news and do such a you know, impressive job in other countries, but I I saw a Joel Pollock of Breitbart did a little summary of what was achieved, and I think maybe the list is even longer than this, but uh, Joel's list is uh, that Trump got us respect and gratitude from the Arab world. Yes. Investment deals for the USA. Yes. Big ones. Release of the American Israeli hostage. Well, that timing was pretty good, huh? Clear statements of US interests and values. Yes. Uh, tough message to Iran. Yes. Uh uh, a distinct though linked path from Israel. You know, a little bit of distance from Israel, but we can see how we're connected. Yes. Bipartisan praise at home. Yes. and a strong personal image. So yes. Now, do you remember that it was only oh, I don't know two weeks ago when if you would ask Democrats they would have said that it's quite obvious to everybody that President Trump is the laughing stock of other countries? Do you remember that? And does anybody remember me saying that no, other countries are transactional. If Trump offers something that they want, they're going to love him. If he offers them something they don't like, they're going to demonize him. And all all this stuff you think about how, oh, they just have an impression of him and it's negative and they think these none of that's real. That it's all about what he can do for him. And apparently they think he can do a lot for him in the Middle East because they really really put out the red carpet.
But uh, I would say that the biggest thing he accomplished is that he reframed war as commerce. And I'm going to say it in my own words, but this is what I got out of it. You know, mostly from his speech, but also from just the way he did business. I I think I think he just thinks that war is just the worst thing ever, and he's very consistent about that. You know, when he talks about it, we just want to stop the killing, etc. But, uh, in a world where everybody has to be connected commerce-wise, I think he just sees that commerce is the better tool. Do you want to be part of the world economic global economy? Yes. Well, then you're going to have to stop killing people. If you don't want to be part of the world economic global community, basically the only way you could ever thrive, you don't have to be. And we'll be happy to cut you out, and you can just suffer and starve. And it feels to me like he's this is his greatest accomplishment. I'm going to go a little further and say it might be the greatest accomplishment of any leader in any time in American well, no human history, not American history, human history.
Now, part of it is because he's he's born in a specific time. You know, uh, 300 years ago, you didn't need to maybe do some international trade, but you can't really survive unless you're plugged into the international commercial network of everything. And I think Trump is the first one to say war is obsolete. It's obsolete because in theory you could get almost anybody to do almost anything to, you know, bring them from some extremist situation into the fold by just making it clear that the only way you'll ever thrive is to act like a responsible country, and then you could be part of the world commercial situation. Now, he hasn't said that directly, but that sure feels like where he's heading with Iran, with Russia, etc. He's not saying, "If you don't give us what we want, we're going to bomb the hell out of you." He doesn't take it off the table. It's not off the table. But he said clearly that the the alternative for Iran would be being crushed economically, and the alternative for Russia was to be further sanctioned. So I feel like it's one of the greatest accomplishments of any leader in the history of humanity really if he pulls this off. It's not completely pulled off, but he seems to have reframed it in a way that we can all understand.
Well, according to the uh, Kobe Kobes letter on X, uh, Trump's investment, he raised uh uh, $2.5 trillion in capital for the US. Now, we don't know over what time period, but uh, UAE was in for 1.4 4 trillion that they want to invest in the US. Saudi Arabia 600 billion. Qatar 500 billion. Um, these are the very big numbers, but they're not as big as what Trump says it is. So those are the numbers based on news reports and what those countries have said out loud. But uh, Trump says that his his trip is worth 12 to 13 trillion and includes deals already announced and some that will be, you know, outlined shortly. So, and he's going to be sending out letters to nations for trade deals soon. So, I don't know. So, somewhere between 2.5 and 13 trillion is what he came back with. But I I don't know how much of this to believe because when you look at the uh, what the Arab nations said they would contribute or actually invest not contribute um, I don't know is that over 10 years or 20 years. So I don't even know how to how to say if that's important or not. Um, I don't feel it like nothing in my life changed. Um, so I'm going to say I'm not 100% sure anything in your life will change either, but it's way better than not getting those deals.
So a lot of what Trump does is salesmanship and selling the country and, you know, creating an image and, you know, just making people think differently. You know, that's what he does best. So, if what he's done is created this situation where all the smart people are putting massive amounts of money into the United States because it's the best place to invest, and it probably is. It's probably the best place to invest. Um, that would be amazing. So, I can quibble about what the real number is and how big it is, but what he's done is make everybody think in that way. uh, meaning that if he visits your country, you better open your wallet, and I think people will.
So, not only did uh, Republicans think he did a great job in the Middle East, but Fox News and others reporting that uh, former Biden officials, people who would be, you know, deeply critical of Trump are also saying, "Wow, like he he seems to have accomplished a lot in one trip. And so podcasters are saying it. Axios spoke to several Biden administration officials. Um, and some of them are saying that Trump's audacious foreign policy moves were um, pretty pretty amazing. One official anonymously said, uh, gosh, I wish I could work for an administration that could move that quickly. So even if he didn't love everything that Trump has done everywhere, you look at this and you say to yourself Biden could not do this, I don't think there is a single Democrat who actually knows what they're talking about who would say, "Oh yeah, Biden could have done that. I, you know, he probably almost did." Nope. I think people are absolutely recognizing that he's a singular personality and that he can literally do things that other people can't do. And when you start imagining a world in which you're not locked into all the same choices and that when Trump shows up, you have more options and some of them look pretty good. He's sort of someone who can make something happen that all the smart people thought couldn't happen. And that the value of that is incalculable. Just think about that. There's one personality really just one in the whole world where if he aims his airplane at your country, things can happen that just couldn't have happened without him. Nobody else is like that. I I don't even know historically if anybody's ever been like that. So, the fact that he's not afraid of anything, he's not afraid to take you in a different direction, he's not afraid to upset you, he's not afraid to try something that might fail, he's not afraid to try something and it doesn't work, then he has to quickly pivot and change it. His lack of fear combined with his common sense, we've never seen this. We've just never seen this. So, you know, uh, I do I do appreciate that the Democrats are not blind to it. They can see it, too.
Now, there's a uh, a rumor that I'm pretty sure is false that uh, Trump is at least considering the idea of promoting a two-state situation and backing Palestine, Palestine as a its own country. I don't think that's going to happen. What do you think? I feel like he would have already signaled that. Now, we're seeing that Trump is uh, made it very clear that Israel is not going to be yanking his chain. So, he's created some distance from Israel without creating any kind of a, you know, major economic or other problem. Um, but he's very clearly signaled that he's going to do what's good for the US and that's it. If Israel doesn't like it, Israel just has to deal with it. So, we we haven't seen that before.
Um, so I went to Grock and I wondered how many of the Palestinians themselves want a two-state solution. And it turns out it's just wildly difficult to get any kind of a read on that uh, according to Grock. But the numbers range from 24% to 74%. So we don't know exactly because the range is so big. We don't know exactly if even the Palestinians want a two-state solution. I just assume that they all did. But maybe not. Or maybe it's just that the limitation in the polling over there is so bad that you know it's 74% plus could be. But then I wondered how many of the Israelis want a two-stage solution. Um, according to Gallup in 2024 only 27%. And if you looked at the only the Jewish Israelis it's as low as 17%. Um, so I I don't even know how many people want it. You know, if you say a two-stage solution to the Palestinians, do they say to themselves, "Oh, no. We really want to own the whole thing, so we want a one-state solution where we're in charge." Is that what they're thinking when they answer the question? So, that would be, you know, yet another reason why you can't trust the polls on any of this. So, but here's what I do think. I I think the opinions in the region would be so far all over the place that if you propose any kind of two-stage solution that even the people who said they were in favor of it would be opposed to it because of the specific way you said you wanted to do it. All right. Two-state solution. But who's in charge? Where is it? Which, you know, which real estate are you talking about? I don't think you could ever get much of an agreement on that. So, I'm going to I'm going to assume that Trump will either stay away from that question, as in this is your problem, not mine. Uh, but I don't think he's going to come out strong in favor of a Palestinian two-state solution. Just a guess. I don't think he will. I could be wrong.
Well, as you know, there was a what's being called a top Iranian official, but really is an adviser. He's well connected, but I don't know if he's a top official. He said that uh, Iran would be willing to make a deal with Trump in which there would be some limits on their uranium enrichment and there would be some agreement not to make nuclear weapons and there would be some kind of an inspection to make sure that didn't happen, and they might destroy their existing um, yeah maybe maybe get rid of some of their stockpiles, but uh, I don't think that gets close to what the US wants. So the US not only wants, you know, something in the nuclear realm as part of the deal, but they also want Iran to stop supporting their terrorist proxies, you know, Hamas and Hezbollah. And uh, I haven't seen that even discussed. So would we make a deal if they were going to just keep funding Hamas? Doesn't feel like Trump would. So, we're pretty far away on that. And then uh uh, Wititov recently said that uh, what the Trump administration wants is a full dismantlement of Tran Tan's uh, nuclear program. So that would include three main nuclear facilities completely dismantled. I think if I'm right, Thrron wants to continue having the ability to refine uranium, but they would keep their refinement well under the the level that uh, you could make a bomb and that there would be some inspections on that. Now, I don't know if that would ever be enough because it would still leave them with the ability to kind of semi-rapidly change their mind and make a bomb. And I don't think Trump's going to live with that. So, Trump actually said that uh, there that there, you know, important talks that are happening right now, and uh, he had some he had some optimism that uh, maybe something will happen. But the alternative that Trump has laid out is that he will just turn off uh, oil sales from Iran. Now, right now, Iran is still selling oil and you know, to China mostly. Um, I I guess we would embargo that or uh, stop those ships in the water or something, but that would happen next if we don't get a deal. Uh, apparently oil prices have fallen in part because of uh, Trump's comments about Iran. And uh, so yeah, so if if oil prices fall, that would also mean that Russia gets less money to pursue their war. I don't know if it'd make enough of a big deal that Russia would want to make a deal, but that's happening.
All right. Uh, let's change the topic to AI. So according to Fortune, uh, a bunch of CEOs are saying that only a fraction of AI initiatives are delivering a return on investment. Now, you know that I've been more skeptical than most people about what AI will ever be able to do. And I've been skeptical that companies will be able to use it in production because I don't think they figured out how to get rid of the hallucinating the hallucinations, and they don't know how to make it reason yet, you know, and figure out things that it hasn't encountered before. It's just not good at that. So, so that seems to be a thing. Now, at the same time that the CEOs are saying, "hm, this has been a little underwhelming, Meta, one of the big players in AI," they've apparently delayed their rollout of their flagship AI model, the next level. And the insiders are saying it's because they don't think it is enough of an improvement, and there's a lot of insider fighting and stuff. So it's sort of suggesting and uh, other people are saying the same thing that AI might be plateauing, meaning that there will there will always be you know, new new models coming out that are better than the last one, but they're not going to be twice as good. You know, the next one might be 3% better. I'm just making that up. But that would suggest that
AI is reaching its total potential with the current technology. So even if you build a bigger data center and you train it even harder, there might not be that much extra that it can go to.
Now, if it's true that the CEOs are saying it's underwhelming and it's not really paying back and it's also plateauing, what is that telling you? That's that would be some bad news. Um, but then I see some uh big breakthroughs that AI is doing. For example, Google's deep mind AI is able to come up with algorithms that humans were not capable to come up with. To which I say, wait a minute, are you telling me that in the real world benefit of AI, the only thing they had to talk about this week is that it could come up with some algorithms that we couldn't come up with? And then I say, what would be those algorithms? And how how are those changing the world?
Well, uh, Alpha Evolve, I guess that's the flavor of AI that's doing this, um, came up with more efficient algorithms for several kinds of computations. Several kinds, I say several kinds, not just one, several kinds. For example, it they came up with a method for calculating um that involve matrices that are a better better method for calculating matrices. Um and it's better than the Strawson algorithm that has been relied on for 56 years. So how good do you feel about that? I I tell you for 56 years I've been relying on the Strawson algorithm to calculate my matrices and the whole time I was well there's got to be a better way. Does anybody have a better and sure enough AI came up with a better way to calculate your matrices better than the Strawson algorithm. It improves the computational efficiency by reducing the number of calculations required to produce a result. So that's not nothing. Does it feel to you like all the little hints are suggesting that AI may be reaching some kind of a limit that we weren't expecting?
Now the next level of AI, you know, where it's uh super AI and AGI and all the whatever we're thinking is that next level. That really depends on us inventing things we don't know how to invent yet. How long does it take to invent something we don't know how to invent? Remember I told you the day that the estimate for when we would have humanoid robots that could live in your house and you just tell it, "Oh, I've got a new task for you. Uh, you've never done this before, but here's how you feed the dog." And then it would just watch you do it. And I go, "Oh, okay." We're not really close to that because you've never seen that even demonstrated, have you? Let let me give you the demonstration of apparently what is the best our current AI can make a robot do. If you're just listening to this, this is me dancing like a like a Jazz hands. Do you think it's a coincidence that every time we see a demo, it's doing something that you wouldn't need at all? Are are you going to buy the dancing robot or uh the robot that can do uh back somersaults or the one that can carry a a predetermined size box into a predetermined size place and not much else? Um and and then you saw, you know, some estimates that maybe it'll be 2 or 3 years before you buy a humanoid robot that can just do stuff around the house. Two or three years doesn't suggest that we have current technology that can do it. That that's not just tweaking it for two or three years until it works. That really depends on inventing something that we haven't invented. So, I'm uh I'm pretty skeptical on this whole AI thing. I think we may have we may be approaching a plateau, but you know, that could change in a minute if somebody's invented something new.
Well, are you uh are you watching the Supreme Court conversations? Um, let me try to explain the Supreme Court situation because, you know, you're not all lawyers and you don't have the deep understanding of law and the Supreme Court the way I do, you know, with my complete lack of experience in that domain. But apparently somehow, oh, let me just say this in case you can't pick up the sarcasm. There's nothing I say about the Supreme Court that you should trust. It's really complicated at the moment. So, apparently there are two questions. Birthright citizenship and then the universal injunction thing. That's the thing where a federal judge who in theory would be in charge of, you know, some small part of the country would make some kind of ruling that says the entire country can't do this thing. Now, it's been applied to a lot of the executive orders from Trump. So, all you need to do is get some lefty judge to say, "Oh, yeah. Uh, I I give you an injunction so that nowhere in the country can you do that." And then of course the people who are normal say why can this one judge who's only in charge of this little slice of the country tell the entire rest of the country what it can and can't do.
Now both of these questions you'd think would be good questions for the Supreme Court. But for reasons I don't fully understand. The only way to get it in there was to to jam them together and talk about how birthright citizenship have been blocked with an universal injunctive relief. So, it would cause the Supreme Court to have to deal with both issues in ways I don't quite understand. So, I listened to a bunch of the arguments. I didn't understand a damn thing I heard. Did anybody have the same experience? You know, some of you might be lawyers, so you understood it. But I didn't understand any of it. And I don't understand how they can just staple these two staple these two items together and take them both to the Supreme Court and expect that you're going to get some kind of answer to them individually. Don't get it at all. Absolutely baffled by the whole thing. But the smart people, the people who know way more than I do and uh Politico has some writing by Josh Gerstein and Hassan Ali Kanu. Um they're saying that the the birthright part is getting a frosty reception, meaning that don't expect the Supreme Court to come up with any ruling that says that birthight citizenship will go away or be limited. So it looks like maybe both the lefty and the righty parts of the Supreme Court are just saying, "Hey, we got president. We got clear writing in the Constitution. We're not going to change it." But the situation of the uh judges that are making these broad um rulings that affect the whole country, there does seem to be some wiggle room on that one. So, we don't know. You know, it's too early to know how anybody's going to vote, but there's a possibility that when they're all done, nothing about um birthray citizenship, which is you get to be a citizen if you're born in this country, probably nothing about that will change. But the idea that a judge can, you know, a federal judge in one part of the country can do something that affects the whole rest of the country. There might be some changes coming in that domain, but that's uh that's speculative at this point.
Well, as you know, Trump's big beautiful bill is getting ready for the prime time. They're they're still marking it up and playing with it, but basically they've uh got the bill kind of close and uh I think Trump's kind of happy with it. But Ran Paul says uh quote, "It will be a record for Congress to raise the debt $5 trillion, but also it indicates that this year the deficit will be over two trillion, but it means they're anticipating close to three trillion for the next year. So, so Ran Paul is questioning the raising the debt ceiling by 5 trillion and uh so yeah and especially in the context of Doge was supposed to save us all this money but we don't see anything like that. We don't see anything that looks like a Doge saving. Where is it? What happened to it? Did we go through all that for nothing? Um, and uh, Paul says, he summarizes it by saying, "It's really a slap in the face at those of us who were excited about Elon Musk and Doge and all the cuts." Well, that's me. That's me. I was excited about Elon Musk and Doge and all the cuts, and I consider this bill a slap in my face. I feel insulted. Literally insulted. Um, and let me let me just put it this way. Congress had one thing that they had to get right. We'd like them to get everything right, but they had one thing they needed to get right, which is not to spend us into a certain death. And those Republicans, I'm only talking about you Republicans. You came up with a bill that will spend us into oblivion. And you know it. You know it. And you're doing it right in front of our faces. Am I insulted? Yes. Can I support Republicans when they're doing this? Right to our face. No. No. you. I'm out. I am so out. You need to at least put a little effort into it. Don't try to shove this up our asses one more time. Do Do you think you didn't get the message that the public is done with this? We're so done with this. Go back. Take five or 10% off or whatever you need to do. It's going to hurt.
Here's the problem. We have a goal which is to have fiscal responsibility. But we don't have a system that can ever get that for us because the problem is that if any politician cut anything enough to make a difference, they would not get reelected. So we shouldn't be surprised that the people who are in the system that they will be punished to do the right thing. They will be punished. They will be punished if they do the right thing, which is cut the spending. They will be punished. Even if they take something that only 10% of the public cares about, that's enough not to get a reelected. They would be punished. So, as long as we have a system that guarantees we're going to go down the drain, don't ask me to sign off on this. Don't ask me to pat you on the head. Don't ask me to say, "Good job, guys." No, this is an insult. This is an insult. Rand Paul, I'm on your side. And I feel like the public just has to take over this process. I feel like the public needs to just say, "We're going to get rid of everybody unless you can fix this." Now, I don't know any way that that can work, but I'll tell you one thing. The Congress can't do this thing, and it's the most important thing. And if you can't do the most important thing to keep us all alive, to keep us alive, you got to go. Something's got to change. And am I happy with President Trump, who apparently seems to be perfectly happy with kicking this can down the road at the age of whatever he is? Nope. Absolutely not. No. I I can tell you that Trump did amazing work in the Middle East. I I think really just historically amazing work. But if he gives us this budget, how am I supposed to support that? And it doesn't have anything to do with a Republican or Democrat. It's doom. It's the end of your life. Unless somebody's come up with some magical way that everything will be better. The the only thing I saw that was like this glimmer of hope was somebody in the comments on X said well you know nothing about the budget will matter when AI reaches you know this certain level AI will change everything so so debt won't matter etc really is is that why the uh the Fortune 500 companies say hm this AI isn't working out so much you're going to have to give us some kind of a plan that doesn't look like you're going to kill us. And this is absolutely a non-starter. So, every one of you you got something to explain to the public. You've insulted us. You've failed. You've set us on a track to absolute destruction. And you'd better figure it out.
Now again, I do have some sympathy for the fact that they're in a system where they will be personally punished for doing the right thing. I feel like the public or or maybe it's Trump. I mean, you know, he he's a singular character. He could he could do it. I just don't know that he would. I I think that it's political suicide to cut any part of the budget for any any reason whatsoever. Just absolute suicide. So, I don't know where this goes, but don't expect me to be mindlessly supporting Republicans when they're trying to kill us all. That That's not going to happen. That's just not going to happen.
Well, not only are they trying to take away all of our money and destroy the country, but uh now Senator Mike Lee, Republican, uh he wants to make porn a crime in the United States. So all pornography would be u basically become a crime. Now my first question about this was would that include only fans? Would the Only Fans be able to still do their Only Fans thing? Because if you got rid of all sort of classic porn, wouldn't men turn more to Only Fans? And wouldn't that turn women more into prostitutes online? I don't know. I would worry a little bit about the unintended consequences of this one. you know, I don't know enough about it, but um I don't know. It look it also looks like a limitation on free speech and everything else. So, you can have your opinion on that.
um US wholesale uh prices. So the according to the Daily Wire, so US wholesale prices had the biggest decline in 5 years, flying in the face of economist predictions. At the same time, the news is saying that Walmart's getting ready to raise their prices substantially because of tariffs. So if you're not, you're wellversed in economics, how can it be true that Walmart's going to raise its prices at the same time, which would be the signal for everybody else to do it really? Uh at the same time that we've seen the biggest drop in 5 years. And the answer is there's a timing difference. So the the tariff stuff hasn't really hit the economy yet and we don't know how big it will be. But uh nothing that has happened so far is predictive of what will happen over the summer. And the news is pretending it is. The news is pretending that that uh because there's some kind of weird disconnect between the Trump tariff uh action and the fact that prices are actually going down. I think the news is trying to convince you that there won't be a connection because there hasn't been a connection so far. That is not true. There is a timing difference. We might see some further decreases in prices, but when the tariffs start kicking in over the summer, it's only going to go in one direction. Now, it could be that the Walmarts are the ones where the prices happen. Maybe we won't see it in some bigger areas like tech and stuff like that. Maybe. But don't be confused. If Walmart's getting ready to raise prices and they've announced it, prices are going up.
Um, according to Politico, Joe Biden uh probably cost the Democrats the White House in 2024 through his feebleness and his insistence of being in the race anyway, but now they're thinking that he's going to uh completely hobble them in 2028. Uh, I'm going to push back on a little this. So, Politico's the writing is from Adam Bran and Holly Otterbine. Um, and I guess they're talking about the fact that the Democrats are still not coming clean about the fact that they were running a candidate who was mentally incompetent. And if they don't come clean on that and find some way to deal with it productively, it might hang over them all the way to 2028. I'm not so sure. because 2028 is so far away that we're going to have a whole bunch of other things to think about. And I was I was watching the news yesterday and have you had this experience yet? It'll be a podcast or a news show and they're just saying the same thing about Biden over and over. Well, they should have known. Well, the tapper book is really just trying to give the press some kind of ounce. Well, certainly the insiders knew. Why didn't the insiders tell us? And it's all the same. Now, I don't believe that the political right and their podcasters slash newspapeople, I don't think they can keep telling that same freaking story for four more years, can they? Three more years. So, even as powerful as that story is, I only kind of see it from the Republican side and then the Democrats are like, "Okay, you know, you got a pretty good point there." But I don't think it's got three years of legs. I I think it'll be based on how Trump did for the next three years and based the economy does. I just don't know that that's got the legs to make a difference in 2028, but we'll see. Um, at the moment, the books coming out are driving the headlines. And there will probably be some more books, and they will sort of all be the same. Oh, here's another insider who says that he noticed something was wrong with Biden. We know that. There's nothing new. Um, but uh, Governor Whitmer was on CNN. So, here's another example. So, even CNN is trying to get people to admit that they knew. But CNN is doing the trick where if they can get you to think that the problem was the Biden insiders were lying, then you won't notice that CNN is uh didn't somehow pick up on the fact that you could tell just by looking at Biden in public. Fox News knew it. How did Fox News know that Biden was mentally incompetent? And uh probably 70 million Republicans could tell every time they saw him in public and and CNN's trying to paper over that essentially change history. They're trying to rewrite history. So the problem was not their observational skills, which was the real problem. Well, it wasn't even their observational skills. it was her willingness to say they noticed. Um, so Whitmer was asked, you know, since she was very involved in the uh campaign, um, you know, if she didn't notice Biden's decline, and she said, "I was busy working. I didn't see the president directly." Are they going to really get away with that? that that all these people who are working on behalf of the president didn't really spend much time with him. Yeah, I didn't really see him much. I can't blame me. But again, they're trying to make it look like you couldn't tell every time he was in public. So yeah.
Anyway, um so there's a story about uh a Soros Foundation director. So, this is somebody who's literally the director of the Soros Foundation, like I just said, who uh who sort of admitting according to the national pulse that uh the NOS's were using a lawfare to protect illegals against public wishes. And so this uh fellow Greg uh Maniatis the director at the George Soros Foundation was saying that uh the sort of the activities of his organization um created chaos at the border. Now the reason I found this story interesting is that he's using the word chaos to describe what they had created. He said, quote, "Chaos is the defining story of failure among progressives." Uh, Manny Addis said, pinpointing the refusal of Democratic leaders to address a quote chaotic border system, particularly over the last decade. Is it possible that the Democrats use of chaos as their their one big word against Trump, is it possible now that the word has just become normalized to the point where they're using it against themselves? You know, it seems like the Democrats are now competing to see who can say the worst thing about Democrats, right? because there's a little bit of competition of who could be the most honest about knowing that Biden was mentally incompetent. But now there's further competition to say, "Oh god, we were bad about that border." Yeah, you got I got to admit, we sure were bad about the border. And they're even using their own code word chaos. I don't know. It struck me that that was fun.
I saw a story that at first I thought was terrible, but maybe it isn't. Um, Governor Nuome of California in his uh new budget, he's calling for closing yet another prison in California, which would be the fifth one that would have been closed during the Biden or the Nuome administration. Now, when you hear that he's going to close five prisons or or close the fifth one, four have already been closed. Doesn't that suggest to you that he's letting criminals out or or that somehow they'll just let the criminals run free and not put them in prison? Well, maybe. But his argument is that crime is down and they just don't need it. Is that possible? Do you think crime is actually down and falling and that it's falling at a predictable enough rate that he can close another prison? That would be kind of awesome. Do you think it would have anything to do with closing the border? Yes. So, it might be that closing the border, although I doubt that had anything to do with the first four that he closed. It could be that closing the border has a predictable effect on crime that the governor of California is saying, you know what, we might have too many prisons. I don't know if they're connected yet, so I'm just speculating.
Well, because Democrats uh can't they they seem to be unable to do anything right in terms of messaging. Uh now some Democratic lawmakers are pushing hard again for reparations. So uh Representative Summer Lee, Democrat Pennsylvania, she's going to reintroduce uh and this had been first introduced in 2023 by Cy Bush, but they're going to reintroduce some reparations um ideas and uh trying to make up for all those bad things in the past. What do you think about that? Do do you think that uh the thing that will help the Democrats uh in the midterms and in 2028 will be their push for reparations? I I'd love to see uh James Carville's opinion about that. Paging James Carville. Do you think this is the time to talk about reparations? Do do you think they seized the moment just right? I'm seeing something online. It's not a big trend yet, but it's going under the tag of uh black fatigue. Is that it? Black. Do I have that right? Black fatigue. But it's the idea that just people are getting tired of listening to uh black specific problems. And it does feel to me like this isn't the right moment for that. And you know, my take on it is I used to be um extra interested in black American problems most my adult life under the theory that if you could help the people who are in the deepest hole, uh that would be the best thing for the country. So if you could take somebody somebody from can't get a job to got a job or can't get into college to got into college or doesn't have a good education to got a good education that you get enormous benefits, you know, better than if somebody got a 10% raise at the job they already had. So my thinking was, well, it just makes sense. I mean, it just makes sense that you would focus in that area because that's where the the deepest problem is. You reverse that, you really get some some good societal gains. But I'm just so tired of it all. And now I just think everybody's got problems. There's nobody with special problems. And so when I hear any group saying, "I've got special problems and you should give me some money." I just think I'm bored and I don't care. You're boring me and I don't care. Do they have a point? I don't care. Do they have a a good historical argument for reparations? I don't care because everybody's got a good argument for why they should get some extra, too. So do I. I I've been discriminated against for 50 years. Do you care? No. Well, you don't care. Why should I care about anybody else? So, no. Uh, I have I have some kind of fatigue. Don't care. But I think James Carville will be funny if he weighs in on this because if the Democrats don't have anything that's working, that's the worst time to throw this into the mix. It's just not going to get you any extra votes.
Well, according to uh the news, um the the EU is going to put new sanctions on Russia because Putin skipped that peace talks in Turkey. So, poor little Zalinski um went down to Turkey and he thought he was going to meet with Putin and then Putin just ghosted him, which to me is funny. It's funny that he ghosted him, but then, you know, he sent some low-level people and then they all said, "Well, this is worthless." So, they just already ended the meeting. Um, Trump has said that he's already he's ready to meet with Putin to try to work things out, but apparently the EU is going to put some extra sanctions on.
Russia. So, we'll see if that makes any difference. Um, but it does suggest that the Trump approach of making all wars commercial wars, you know, he—if you want to be part of the world commercial system, you better stop your physical wars. Um, but we'll see if Trump can get something done there.
In other news, Newsmax is reporting that uh, Health and Human Services is going to stop advising COVID shots for kids and pregnant women. To which I said to myself, wait, they were still advising that? Are any of you surprised that they were still advising that? You don't have to be a doctor to know that that was a bad idea. You just have to be a little bit aware of the news. My god, really? And and they haven't stopped yet—that they've just announced that they're going to—How about just get this done? How about just saying, pick up the phone, or write a memo, or sign an executive order? How about stopping it right now? Why are you going to wait a week? Jesus. All right, got a little worked up today. That's all I got for you today.
See if you can embarrass your Republican representatives into doing their job for the first time ever. Um, see what we can do. I don't have a good idea there. Maybe you do. Maybe AI or something. Uh, but I'm going to talk uh, privately to the people on Locals. If you're on Rumble, or YouTube, or X, thanks for joining, and I will see you again same time, same place tomorrow. And Locals, coming at you privately.