Scott Adams (32:18)
Well, the. The big old Trump and Republican budget bill is sufficiently complicated that the public won't know what's in it. Now, if you were the Democrats, how would you treat that? If you knew the public would not be able to look at the details of the bill and really understand it, what would you do? Well, the first thing you do is say that it's stealing from the poor to give money to the rich. And you would just say that every day. Taking it from the poor and giving it to the rich. Taking it from the poor or giving it to the rich. And that's what they're doing. And by the way, that will totally work. It's the Hitler approach. Because what Hitler would do is just tell a big lie and then just repeat it endlessly. As long as the media was willing to show that story, they can do that. Now, they may not be completely wrong, by the way, they can make their case based on the details of the bill because they would say it cuts Medicaid. What would the Republicans say? Would the Republicans say it cuts Medicaid? No, they would say you can have Medicaid, you just have to get off the couch and either do some public service or go to school or get a job if you're able bodied. But that's complicated and not everybody will do it. So then that gives the Democrats the ability to say, hey, you're cutting Medicaid and nobody's going to listen to the Republicans when they say, no, no, no, you can still have all the Medicaid you want. You just have to make sure you're putting back into society something because society is paying for your medical care. Nobody's going to hear that. And they say it's cutting food aid. I don't even know what the details of that are. You know, I read about this all the time. I have no idea what the cuts and food aid are even about. But is it the same thing that you have to at least try to get a job or you can't get food aid? I don't know. And they said there would be tax cuts for the wealthy. Well, are there? Apparently there were some tax levels that are going to expire which were a little bit better for the wealthy than what it would automatically return to just because it's going to time out. So is that a tax cut for the wealthy? Well, it's complicated. You could argue it is. But also, what's the right tax rate for the wealthy? I don't know. Now, Trump is pushing for this. He wants to get this done before the midterms because it would look like a Republican win. He, and he says he's going to support primary challenges to Republicans who might oppose it. So I guess it includes eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits, getting rid of taxes on those as well, and boosting the child tax credit. Now that would all be good, except the Congressional Budget Office, who we don't necessarily trust to do this right, says that in 2027, the bill's combination of tax cuts and spending cuts would decrease the household resources, whatever resources are of the bottom 10% of households by 2% while increasing resources for the top 10% of households by 4%. So that would support the Democrat idea that it's good for the rich and bad for the poor. But they had to go down to the bottom 10% of households and decreased it by 2%. Would anybody notice that? Even if you're poor, would you even notice if your resources went down by 2%? I don't know if that's even noticeable. So. And I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea because it's complicated. So, as I've told you many times, whenever there's complication, there's basically fraud and deceit and gaslighting and everything else. Now, what do you think this budget would do to the national debt, which is the only thing that matters? Because if we don't put the national debt down, none of the rest of that matters. You know, you're not going to get tax on tips, because you're not even going to have a restaurant. There won't be any place to even work to get a tip. So the one most important thing, by far, the most important thing, by 100 to 1, the most important thing is that the new budget decreases spending enough so that our deficit and debt situation and the national reputation is preserved. So how does it do. Doesn't. It blows the. It blows the debt up, like, a lot. It's not even close. So if you were to rate this bill, you would say all the little shit. That doesn't matter. I like it. The little shit. I like that there's no tax on tips. I like it. But if you look at the one and only thing that matters, which is what does this do to the national debt? It absolutely destroys it. So Republicans have failed as hard as you can possibly fail. Trump is failing as hard as you can possibly fail. In fact, so hard, I would have to say his presidency will be judged a complete failure if this budget is passed. Is that too strong? You know me, I've been a huge supporter of the president since 2015. But I'm going to say it again, because I don't want you to miss it. If this budget passes, it's going to blow up the debt situation. And I would consider the Trump presidency a complete failure because it would destroy the country, and there's no question about it, by the way, nobody would argue with what I just said. Do you think they're going to do it anyway? It looks like it. Sure looks like it. Can we survive it? I have no idea how we could. So if Trump wants to destroy his legacy completely, he's on a path to do that. And I don't give one fuck about anything else he did. I don't care about his clever tweets. I don't care that he stopped a war in a country I don't live in. I don't care. The bolster. The. Well, I do care that he did the border, but it's nowhere near as important as this. Not even close. Although maybe it is. But if you don't. If you don't get the budget right, that is a failed presidency and a failed country, and there's no way around it. Now, if he's got some secret plan to switch or make so many robots that it all works out, I don't know. You could try. But at the moment, let me say as clearly as possible, it looks like a completely failed presidency. Now, if he can answer that question, how is it that you're going to blow up the deficit and call yourself a Republican? I'm open to listening to it. Could he change my mind? Maybe. But he'd have to say something I'd never heard before, because everything I've heard so far would suggest complete failed presidency, which is weird, because I'm not sure it had to happen that way. I'm just not sure it had to happen that way. So that's tragic. According to neuroscience news, propaganda and persuasion are core civic skills in the digital age. So I guess they're proposing that students learn the basics of propaganda. And there's a Professor Crick who's got a book called Propaganda the Basics, and he says it's not merely a tool of deception, but should be understood as a fundamental aspect of mass communications. Yes. So everything that's sort of in the news and on social media, especially if you see it more than once, is propaganda. Almost always. But the faster way to say that is that your opinions are assigned to you. Once you realize that people don't come up with their own opinions, you'll see it everywhere, and you'll never be the same. Every time you see it, you'll be like, wait a minute. Your opinion sounds like exactly what I just heard on msnbc. Is that a coincidence? That is msnbc, so right. No, it wouldn't matter what they said. The people who watch it would repeat that as their own opinion. So once you learn that your opinions are assigned to you and not just other people's opinions, but yours, too, then you understand the world a lot better. Well, Representative, here's a good example of that. Representative Lamonica McIver. So she's the one. She's the representative who may have put some hands on an ICE federal agent, they say, striking. Striking. I don't know if she struck anything, but she was arrested for striking a federal agent at the ICE facility with her other representatives. Were there to protest and do some oversight. Now, I think I heard her say that after the noise went down, they gave them a tour of the facility. And if they wanted another tour, they could just schedule it. So none of it was necessary. It was just completely unnecessary that anybody got a physical because they just had to schedule it. There was nothing stopping him from having a tour of the facility. But here's where the propaganda comes in. I don't know if this is happening only to me or is it happening to you as well, but almost every day if I go on the X platform, I'll see video of overweight black women having fist fights. And sometimes it's on a cruise ship, and sometimes it's at a Target store, and sometimes it's at a fast food place. But almost every day. And, you know, obviously I know that this does not apply to all black women or all black people or all anybody. Like it's, you know, out of context. But if you see enough of it and then there's a story in the news of this Lamonica McIver striking an ICE agent, aren't you going to think she probably struck the ICE agent? Like, isn't your brain going to connect all these videos you've been watching and you're saying, oh, overweight black woman, they're punchy. Now, even though there's no statistical. I'm not aware of any. Not aware of any statistical evidence that that's true. Your brain doesn't know the difference. If you've been inundated with this one kind of image, and then suddenly there's something in the real world that reminds you of it, that's propaganda. So we all have to be a little bit careful of taking what we've seen on social media, which is not. Has nothing to do with this one person. She. She hasn't been, you know, Lamonica McIver was not fighting on a cruise ship. She was not fighting in McDonald's. She was not fighting in Walmart. None of those videos have anything to do with her. She's her own individual person. So. But your brain will say, ah, I'm seeing a pattern here. And that would not be fair to Lamonica McIver. Now, I don't know if she's, you know, guilty or not guilty. I don't have an opinion on that. I thought the videos were a little indistinct, but it's a good example of where propaganda. You have to be really careful because it's. It would be so easy for social media to just assign you an Opinion. Well, there's another example of the same thing I saw in the McDonald's, so be careful about that. Meanwhile, the governor of Maryland, Wes Moore. Now correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Wes Moore the guy that George Clooney thinks would be a good president? And was that just because Clooney wants to, you know, pick a black guy? Because it seems right to him. But anyway, the story on him is that he was pushing for reparations, but he's decided to torpedo that because the state's in a fiscal crisis. Yes, they too have a deficit and they got a credit downgrade and they've got illegal alien problem, they've got violent crime problem, they've got businesses are leaving the state and potential for a lot of new taxes and a worsening power crisis. So the state's going to hell. At the same time, he was going to push for reparations. So I think it was a good choice to back off from the reparations. But I've got a feeling that George Clooney might be the worst picker of candidates of all time. I think. I think George Clooney is going to have to write another editorial. Okay. It turns out that Wes is not quite the leader that I hoped he was, so I wouldn't worry about him becoming president. Doesn't look like that's going to happen. Do I have the right name? I want to make sure I got the right name. That. That is who Clooney mentioned, right? Well, let's talk about Senator Ted Cruz. Yesterday he introduced a federal Universal School Choice Act. Now, it hasn't been voted in, but the idea would be that it would allocate up to 10 billion annually in dollar for dollar federal tax credits for people and businesses that contribute to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations. So that would be alternative schools. But here's what caught my attention. So Senator Cruz says, quote, school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Doesn't that sound exactly like something I once said? If I didn't say it, I sure thought it a bunch of times. Because I always look at, you know, black America in particular, and I look at, you know, what their school options are, and I think to myself, if you don't fix that, are you really even trying? And I don't know any way to fix it. Because what is it? The teachers unions are so strong that they kind of keeping things the way they are and they don't want to have any school choice because then they would have less power? I guess so, yeah. I do Think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. I think he's right about that. Have you ever met a smart person who was not successful unless they were a drug addict or something? It seems to me that regardless of race or demographics or income or anything else, that there's a certain level of smart that they all succeed. You know, I'm thinking of a few cases specifically where the intelligence just carved right through problems that other people would have thought was a brick wall, and they just like, just went right through it because they were unusually smart. But I agree with Dave Chappelle, who humorously says that because he's rich, he has more in common with rich white people than poor anybody. Now, he does the comedy version of that. But I'd say that smart has the same effect that the smartest black person and the smartest white person have more in common with each other than either of them do with the, you know, the dumbest people of any color. So. And we just ignore that like it doesn't matter. It's the most predictable part of life that smart people do better. There's nothing more predictable than that. And we act like it's this whole host of other things. Not really smart people are doing pretty well. But if we fix schools, it should help a whole bunch of people who are maybe below the smartest level. And all they need is a little boost that would make a big difference. So I'm all for it. Apparently Secretary Hagseth has ordered a comprehensive view of Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Do we really need that or is that just lawfare? I. I feel like we should know more about that. I worry about Mark Milley, and if I were the Secretary of Defense, I would want to know if I still employed somebody who was a complete moron and ruined things there and got people killed. So, yeah, I guess we have to look into it. Even if you. Even if you think you'd like to put it in your rear view mirror, you probably need to know. You probably need to know what went wrong. CNN is reporting that Israel is, quote, making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. To which I say that's not news. It would be news if they actually struck the nuclear facility. It's never news when a military prepares for the most obvious things that the military might be asked to do. And the most obvious thing that the Israel military might be asked to do is attack the Iran nuclear facilities. So when you say that they're preparing for it, I say that's just their job. Of course they're preparing. It doesn't tell you anything about whether they're going to do it. I would say it's probably a coin to us, maybe a 50, 50 that they would actually do it. And maybe that's just part of the propaganda so that Iran feels a little more pressure. But yeah, the, the United States. Have you seen these stories before? It'll be stuff like the US Is preparing a military option against Greenland. To which I say, of course they are. Do you know what else? They have a military option for everything. Probably not Canada, but yeah, I mean if there's any chance at all that they would be asked to do something, of course they've got it. What about Panama? Now it turns out we didn't need to get, you know, militaristic with Panama, but do you think the military prepared, do you think they prepared for military action in Panama? Well, I hope so. That would be exactly their job to prepare even if they're not asked to do it. According to Arab news, I don't know how accurate that is, but US Expects Russia to make an offer to Zelensky for ending the war. Now, I can only laugh when I hear that. What kind of offer do you think Putin's going to make to end the war? It's going to be so outrageously one sided that we're just going to look at it and laugh. He doesn't want to end the war. If Putin wanted to end the war, it would have been ended a long time ago. He obviously wants to keep doing what he's doing and grind them down as long as it takes and keep making gains there one way or the other. So I'm not going to hold my breath and wait for this awesome offer from Putin. It's either going to never happen, which is pretty likely, or it's going to be hilariously ridiculous. The offer will be, well, number one, Zelensky has to take off his clothes and run around in circles in Moscow. It's going to be completely, you know, un untenable things. So look for that. If it happens at all, it'll be hilarious. Lockheed, Lockheed Martin is pretty happy that Trump is going to do the Golden Dome, which will be a layered defense to safeguard the homeland from nuclear attacks and I suppose, other attacks. What do you think of that? Do you think we have the technology to keep out nuclear attacks? Well, I would say that if we built a golden dome and I don't, you know, obviously I'm not a military expert, but I'll just speak from common sense. Doesn't it Seem like all of our major enemies could penetrate any defense. Now, maybe they have to put a nuclear submarine right off the coast so that there's not enough time for the golden dome. Maybe they have to, you know, shoot multiple fake ones. So the golden dome uses up all its ammo at the fake ones before the real ones come in. But doesn't it feel defeatable? I, I would worry a little bit if we got too calm. It's like, ah, I guess we can push these guys because, you know, we've got nukes and we've got a golden dome. They could never touch us whether a golden dome. But, you know, also, you know, who else has a golden dome? Trump. It's called his hair. Anyway, according to the Post Millennial, Trump's approval has surged to 55% after his middle east trip. That's according to Insider Advantage poll. 55% would be pretty good. Now, I wouldn't expect it to stay there because it's going to depend on the budget and everything else, but there it is. In other news, Australia is committing financial suicide. You're not even going to believe this. So this is an idea that in the U.S. sort of, it gets kicked around every once in a while, but it never gets beyond getting kicked because it's so, so stupid. But Australia looks like they've decided to do it. I don't think it's a done deal, but they're moving toward taxing unrealized financial gains for people who have over $3 million in their account. Now, in the United States, we get taxed on realized financial gains. So if I hold a stock for more than a year and then I sell it for more than I bought it, I think at the moment, I think I'd pay a 20% tax. Now, that's, that's a realized gain. I, I made, I made a bunch of money, and then I paid a percentage of that in tax. No problem. I don't have a complaint with that at all. But if you were in Australia and they, and this turns into law, because they're pretty serious about it, if your account did well, they would tax it while it's just sitting there in your account before you even sold it. And then if it goes down in value, well, too bad they already got their part. And the nature of investments is that they go up and down. They don't just go up. I suppose if they only ever went up, this would be a, you know, a workable idea. But. But in a world where stocks go up and down, can you imagine being taxed just because it happened to be up on the day that you were, you were required to pay taxes. The Australians, they're just trying to destroy their own country as hard as they can. I mean, they're, they're not trying as hard as we are. Or, you know, the budget deal should destroy the United States pretty, pretty thoroughly. But that was just so stupid. In other news, this sounds so dangerous that it's funny. There's a mysterious bacteria not found on Earth that's growing in China's space station according to the bite. And it's well adapted to off planet life, I guess. Samples taken from China's Tiangong Space Station. It's got this new mysterious microbe that hasn't been seen on Earth. And doesn't that sound like a movie that you've seen? It just sounds exactly like the first 10 minutes of sci Fi. Chang, come over here. I've just. We've discovered a mysterious bacteria that has never been found on Earth. It was made in the Wuhan lab in space. Nothing good can come from that. It's probably already evolved into some kind of a monster that's carved into their bodies and killed all the. Killed all the members of the space station by now. But don't worry, Pfizer already has a shot for it. Yeah, don't worry. Pfizer's got you covered. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's the stupid news for today. I'm going to talk to the locals people privately for the rest of you. Hope you enjoyed. Come back tomorrow, same time, same place and locals. I'll be private with you in 30 seconds. If.