Scott Adams (11:15)
See mint mobile.com well, speaking of the big beautiful bill, Speaker Johnson is warning people to warn his own team, the Republicans, not to get all worked up about the salt deductions. Now, if you're not in a state where that matters. You don't know what salt stands for. So it's S A L T and it stands for state and local tax, which is, at least historically had been a deduction. So if you paid a lot of taxes in your states like California does, you would get to deduct that from your federal taxes. But. So there's a version of that. It went away, but there's a version of that being put back into this big beautiful bill with some caps. So it's not like it used to be. So, for example, in my case, it would make almost no difference because there's a cap on it. But here's what you need to know. Speaker Johnson wants to know that if you mess with salt, you're going to get peppered. That's right. You're going to get peppered by other politicians who say, hey, stop it, we got to get this bill passed. The other thing Trump introduced, by the way, he seems to be slowing down the executive orders, which is probably good because I don't know how you could do that many executive orders as he did in the first hundred days and just like keep going. So we're in a little bit in the summer, the summer doldrums. So my show won't be as long and the topics will be artificial, like the riots. We'll talk about that. But Trump has introduced the idea, I guess he signed something that would provide $1,000 per American baby and that would be pegged to some index, so it's automatically invested and I assume it'd be like the S and P index or something. And then it would be open to other people making donations. And the idea would be to make children investors from day one. Now, it's not necessarily going to teach those children anything, but by the time they reach 18, especially if their relatives or their business or something else has donated to the accounts, it should be non trivial. You know, it's not going to pay for college, but we might not be going to college by then. It might pay for virtual college. I think a lot of the college will be online, so it might pay for that. So I like the idea. I just said $1,000 and then maybe another thousand dollars of bitcoin. What do you think would be better for a baby born today? US$1,000 or $1,000 worth of bitcoin? Well, I'll tell you which way I'm going to go. I would definitely go with the bitcoin. Now, the bitcoin could be worth Nothing in these 18 years, because who knows, quantum computing might make it too hard to hide your stuff. I don't know. So there might be something coming that makes bitcoin worth nothing. But if I had to bet $1,000 of Bitcoin today, that's more likely going to pay for your entire college than if you put in $1,000. Anyway, let's check in with the word play of our favorite people. We're watching the Democrats. So here's a post from Bernie Sanders. He says Dr. King defeated racist government officials and ended segregation through disciplined, non violent resistance. But he goes on, he says defeating Trumpism, oligarchy and authoritarianism requires that same level of discipline. Then he points out that violent protests are counterproductive and play right into Trump's playbook. So Bernie is completely aware that the current situation is highly beneficial to Trump's reputation and not the Democrats. So I always have to give Bernie some credit. As crazy and useless as he is, sometimes he does at least tell the truth when other Democrats are having trouble doing it. This would be one of those times. Yes, this is very good for Trump. It's very bad for the people who are trying to make a point on the street. And we'll talk about that because, you know, it doesn't matter until the last inning who's ahead. But here's what caught my attention in Bernie Sanders post. He started out with oligarchy. So AOC and Bernie were going to go fight the oligarchy. And I thought that was funny because nobody knows what the oligarchy is. But now he's a priest. Now we've got Trumpism, oligarchy and authoritarianism. And you're going to need discipline to defeat them. What kind of discipline are you going to need to defeat them? And how many people could define them? If you were to stop a Democrat on the street and say, can you define Trumpism? What exactly would they say? I think they might say, oh, Trumpism is authoritarianism and oligarchy. And then you'd say, all right, well, what is oligarchy? And somebody would say, well, oligarchy is, you know, when you put Trumpism and authoritarianism together, well, what is authoritarianism? Well, it's like Trumpism plus oligarchy. All of this is this big circular word soup where they've got words, but nothing seems to carry any real meaning or policy or ideas or preferences or anything. They're just these big words. So at least I got that going for them. So Bernie Sanders want you to worry about Trumpism, oligarchyism. No, Just oligarchy and authoritarianism. Those will really get you going, won't they? If somebody came to your house and said, hey, join me in the streets, we're going to be protesting the Trumpism, oligarchy and authoritarianism, would that get you going? Would you be all, yes, finally somebody's going to protest the things I care about the most. Not feeding my family or being safe from crime, but Trumpism? And then Nancy Pelosi weighed in, so she's got her own little word play here. And she says the Trump administration's escalation and provocations in California inflames tension and incites violence. Now, the President of the United States said he would arrest a sitting American governor just for disagreeing with these actions. Okay, that. Obviously, that didn't happen, not with. Not the just for disagreeing part. This is a hallmark of authoritarianism on the road to tyranny. And all Americans should be shocked and appalled by the president's blatant disregard for our constitutional system. So, again, it's just words. So it's a hallmark of authoritarianism on the road to tyranny. So somebody knocks on your door and says, we got a big problem in this country. We've got the hallmarks of authoritarianism on the road to tyranny. Really? That sounds terrible. What are they doing exactly? Well. Well, they're sending the military to reduce the odds that will lose property that belongs to the public and reduce the odds of violence. But you said there was a hallmark of authoritarianism. Well, that is. That is. They're also threatening to arrest the governor, who is begging to be arrested. Except when Trump says that, he's kind of smiling. So how many of you saw what Trump actually said, his actual words? Because he didn't really say he wants to arrest Gavin Newsom. He was kind of joking about it. We'll get to that. Anyway, so you got your tyranny and your authoritarianism, so that'll get your blood run. And then, of course, the Democrats have this one play that they use for everything. It's just one play. They sue. So Newsom and California are suing the Trump administration for deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles. Now, let me ask you this. If you were a property owner or a business owner of any of those businesses that are where the protests are happening, do you think you'd want the National Guard there a little bit? I think you would. I think you would, yeah. So this, the suing is over some kind of process question that the governor should have been informed or should have signed off on it or something like that. But if you were just to ask the public, do you want the National Guard to be there just to make sure things don't get out of control, and there were people lighting cars on fire and throwing rocks from overpasses onto cars, do you want more of that or do you want some National Guard to, you know, make sure there's at least a military, well, let's say law enforcement, in this case, presence. I think most people would agree with Trump. Would they? So let's look at. All right, just one more thing. I saw a video on the Maze account on X, and it's a 2007 video of Joe Biden before his brain was totally fried. You should watch a old video of Biden under today's understanding of how bad it got. He used to be a fast talking, reasonably smart guy. So here's something he said. In 2007, he was asked, if he were president, would he allow sanctuary cities to exist? This is 2007, his answer was no. He said that sanctuary cities turned into dumps and the only reason they exist is because the federal government doesn't enforce the law. So in other words, Biden was exactly where Trump is, basically, and that's back when his brain was working. It's really the sort of thing that tells you that whatever did happen with Biden later, he wasn't running anything. There's just no way that the Same Biden from 2007 was the open border Biden. Sanctuary cities are great. I mean, something happened to him that was just terrible. Anyway, so from a persuasion perspective, the LA riots are pretty much everything Trump would want. It's the gift that keeps on giving. The Democrats just haven't figured out how any of this works. It's like they just keep doing things that are the dumbest thing you could possibly do in that situation. So, first of all, I think all the polls show that the public by majority supports what Trump wants to do for immigration. So they're working against the majority. Next, the law apparently is on Trump's side on this one. Now, the lawsuit thing had to do with some technicality, but in terms of law, Trump has the legal right, under certain circumstances that seem to have been met, to add some military and take control of the National Guard for exactly this sort of situation. So he's got the law on his side, he's got the public on his side. And then if I ever taught you well, I guess everybody who has read my book, Win Bigley, knows this. But if I were to Ask you, what are the two most powerful methods of persuasion? Would you know the answer? The top two methods of persuasion. Now, it's kind of a trick question because, you know, there's a little bit more to it, but the top two are fear. Fear and visual persuasion. So if you want to persuade somebody of anything, if you can say, if you don't do this or you do this, you'll all die. If you can scare somebody, that is really good persuasion. So look at the all the recurring video of the riots. What does the news want to show you? Well, the news wants to show you whatever's spectacular and, you know, flaming and dangerous and whatever. So the news is going to loop all the dangerous stuff. So that picture of the one young man holding the Mexican flag while standing on a burning American car, how many times have you seen that so far? A lot. Right now, that's a really scary image because you think to yourself, uh, oh, there's people here willing to burn things and, you know, create some degree of violence, and at least some of them are waving a flag from a country that's not yours. Now, how scary is that? Like, even if you've rationalized it as a, you know, as a, let's say, a jaded viewer of the news, and you just said to yourself, oh, this will pass, you know, it's not going to last forever, there's something that just sort of reaches your animal core when you see somebody burning stuff that belongs to your government or your country, and they're waving a flag of another country. So the fear persuasion is pretty high, just naturally baked into the situation. So that works really well for Trump's perspective. And then, as I said, the visual persuasion is always at the top of the list. So if you were trying to influence somebody with sound, you know, just words, it wouldn't work nearly as well as, you know, the right kind of pictures. And these are definitely the right kind of pictures if you're Trump. So you got the two strongest forms of persuasion working in Trump's favor to make the sanctuary cities look like they're dangerous and chaotic, which would make you want to not have a sanctuary city or not want to live in one. And it's going to be endless. It's just going to be loop after loop of loop of these scary visuals. There's the gentleman on the motorcycle with the Mexican flag. So that's all working for Trump. So Trump's got the American public on his side, he's got the law on his side, and he's got the two strongest Forms of persuasion that just sort of naturally exist. It's not like anything he did that are very much in his favor. It also keeps the topic of immigration in the news, which is probably the one topic where Trump consistently is in the majority. So if you were the Democrats, would you want to keep the topic of immigration as the number one news item all summer? That would be the worst thing you could do because that topic is not in your favor. But that's what's happening. So he's got the. So Trump has the news cycle in his favor. It also gives Trump an opportunity to show his main theme, which is you're not going to need any violence if you have strength. So he comes in hard and fast with lots of strength. The National Guard and I guess submarines are being operationalized. And will it work? Well, it will, but there's a risk, right? The risk is that somebody gets carried away and one of the military people with a scary rifle ends up shooting someone. And it won't matter what the circumstances are. It won't matter how guilty that person is. It will only matter that it happens or it doesn't happen. Now, so far, it would appear that the National Guard and the military don't have any kind of orders to shoot anybody for anything. So we don't know what the actual orders are. But if it does have the effect, which is most likely, it might go the other way. But most likely you're going to see that strength and fast action are effective. And that's what Trump would like you to know about dealing with crime, dealing with the border, dealing with Ukraine, dealing with China. It's always the same thing. It's like, let's have overwhelming power and then nobody needs to get hurt. So that's working in his favor. And then the images of the Mexican flags and the people standing on the burning cars, I don't think that could possibly be better for Trump than anything I could think of. It's the flag that really just sends it into the next level of, you know, anti persuasion. So there's that. So there you go. So Trump has working in his favor the majority of the American people, the laws on his side. He's making Newsome and Bass look like idiots because they can't stop this on their own. He's making the sanctuary cities look bad. He's not doing anything to make it look bad. It's just the situation does that. He's showing he's keeping immigration in the news, which is good for him. He's got the strongest forms of persuasion working aside, and he's demonstrating his key principle of overwhelming strength to avoid violence. How does this get better? No, honestly, I saw. Was it Bernie or somebody said that the high ground. Oh, no, it wasn't him. We'll get to him. So let me get to that in its normal way. All right, so 700 Marines deployed, and we might get up to 5,000 troops. There would be a combination of mostly National Guard, but some of these Marines as well. All right, so we got that going for us. So there was a big back and forth between Gavin Newsom and Trump on this question of arresting him. Now, Gavin, being the theater kid that he is, wanted to make a big deal out of. You want to arrest these people? You arrest me, come arrest me. You know, so he was trying to be the hero. Now, it doesn't really work on him because there's something so, you know, non genuine about anything he does that it's really hard to believe that he would really want to take the punishment for somebody else or arrest me first. But we do assume that he would love the visual of it because it would look like authoritarianism and then they could use those videos forever. So it doesn't make sense for Tom Holman to arrest Newsom. And remember, Newsom was originally talking to Tom Holman, so he wasn't talking to Trump when he said, arrest me. And Tom Altman, I think, has been consistent, which is that it wouldn't matter who it is if somebody is breaking the law, which would include preventing them from doing their job, that there might be a case where somebody might get arrested and it could be a governor. So it's, it's just sort of sitting out there as a threat and something to talk about. I don't think it's. Doesn't seem very likely it's going to happen, but. So Trump was asked, should Tom Holman arrest Newsom? Now, remember, they're not asking if Trump would do it as president, order it. They asked if Tom Holman should do it, which suggests to me, without saying it, should he do it? If the situation called for it, not just for fun, but if the situation clearly called for it and Newsom was clearly violating some law, then would it make sense for Tom Holman to make his own decision about arresting him? Anyway, Trump said, I would do it if I were Tom. Now, I always tell you that Trump always finds the most provocative thing to say, so that you can't forget anything he ever says. Well, the most provocative thing you can say is, I would do it if I were tomorrow what he's not saying is that he would order as president or that he would do it as president. He's just saying, if I were in that job and he obstructed my legal authority to do this work, I might arrest him. Now, I think the reality is the odds of them arresting a sitting governor, especially this one who likes the publicity, pretty low. But, but I, I do kind of like the fact that he puts it out there, like he, he's not taking it off the table. But I also don't take it seriously. So if you're a, a very casual watcher of the news, you might take it seriously. But if you're, let's say, a news junkie like most of you are, how many of you take that seriously that Governor Newsom might get arrested? I mean, you could imagine it if he, you know, really ran down and started pushing ICE officers out of the way to, you know, to rescue some, somebody who was being arrested. You could imagine that. But really, I mean, not really. It's not even a real thing. So it's sort of summer news. Summer news is someone might arrest the Governor of California. Real news, nobody's going to arrest the governor of California unless he really, really tried hard to get arrested. And that would just look different. But then Trump says, after Trump says, I would do it if I were Tom, he says, gavin likes the publicity, but he's done a terrible job. So the fact that Trump knowingly says that Gavin would like the publicity, it means they're all operating with the same understanding of what this really is. It's not really a law enforcement question. It's not. Is not even a serious hypothetical, really. It's just something to talk about in the summer anyway. So then Gavin Newsom decides to leap on what Trump says. He says, the President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting governor. No, he didn't. He was asked what he would do if he were in a different job. He did not call for the arrest of a sitting governor. That would look very different, and you would know it if he did it. So Gavin starts out with a lie that's close enough to the topic in question that people aren't going to maybe even notice this lie. So they're going to say, wow, the President of the United States called for the arrest of a sitting governor. Not really. But he goes on, this is a day I hoped I would never see in America. Now we're going to see some theatrical drama. You ready? I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican. This is a line we cannot cross as a nation. This is an unmistakable step toward, guess what? Authoritarianism. That's right, authoritarianism. So apparently the new word of the day is authoritarianism. Pelosi is using it and Bernie's using it, and now Newsom is using it. And I guess their idea is that if they show a bunch of, you know, armed people in the city, that at least maybe Democrats will say, well, look at those armed people in the city that are being ordered there by Trump. Only an authoritarianism. Oh, no. Only somebody interested in authoritarianism would do such a thing. But how much of the country do you think thinks that way? Especially after living through the Floyd riots and the BLM and the antifa and even the Tesla burnings? I feel like most of us would like to see more law enforcement, as long as they're in the right place, doing the right stuff, which apparently they are. It's not like you randomly put the military into Detroit or something. There was a specific risk of violence, and there was a known way to handle it, which is put in enough law enforcement. And so Trump did that. I don't think that's going to work in Newsom's favor. And then J.D. vance weighed in and posted on X at Newsom, he said, do your job. That's all we're asking. Do your job. That's all we're asking. Now, that made me wonder the following. Do you think J.D. vance needs to get permission from Trump's team before he does a post like that? Because when he says, do your job, that's all we're asking. He's basically downplaying the we're going to arrest you thing, you know, as if they were never serious in the first place. Just do your job. Like, we're. We're not asking anything extraordinary, just, you know, do your job. So that's a pretty good post. But don't you wonder if JT has the trust of the administration to do that specific kind of a post, or does he have to run it by somebody? I would say I don't know, but I'm going to make a guess. And my guess is that JT has proven himself to the point where he does not need to run that by anybody because he is such a good guy communicator, and he understands perfectly what the president intends, and he understands the base perfectly. So this was a good post because it took it out of that will arrest you mode and took it down to just do your job. So then Gavin Newsom falls into the trap and he goes with the job theme. So he responds back to J.D. vance. He says, do your job. We didn't have a problem until Trump got involved. Rescind the order. Return control to California now. Rescind the order. I think means the National Guard order. So JD Vance effectively changed the conversation from arresting a governor to, are you doing your job or not? And then Newsom fell into the trap of, instead of saying, no, no, the real issue is somebody trying to arrest the governor for no reason, he just went with the job thing and just said, you know, about your job. Do your job. Do you think that many Americans believe that Trump is a reason that the protests are getting out of hand? Well, maybe if they have just a very pro sanctuary city idea, it kind of makes sense. But I don't think most people are going to think that, are they? It doesn't really look like National Guard causes riots. Don't you think riots cause the National Guard to show up? Or are there people in the United States who are actually thinking, you know, what, if that. If that darn Trump deploys, the National Guard riots are going to break out? Does anybody think that backwards? Now, I realize it's just team play. So there's going to be plenty of people who come up with a tortured explanation of why Trump is the cause of sanctuary city riots because he's trying too hard with immigration enforcement, et cetera. Well, anyway, Senator John Fetterman posted this. He said, I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration. But this is not that. He said, this is anarchy and true chaos. So it kind of looks like he's blaming his own side for anarchy and true chaos. And then he says, my party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement. So there he is again. Fetterman finds that kind of commonsensical American middle. But I think he missed the moral high ground. He's saying the moral high ground would be to condemn the setting of fire of cars and the violence and stuff like that. Now, I think that would be a good thing to happen. I would love to see the Democrats condemn all the forms of violence, but it's not the highest high moral high ground. The higher moral high ground is you need to get your team to stop funding and organizing riots. You're not going to convince me that the real problem is that you're observers. The Democrats are not observers. They're members of a large political party whose allies almost certainly are behind all of us. Now, I'm not saying the Democratic Party is behind it, but their allies are. I mean, pretty obviously and clearly. And yeah, so the high moral high, the moral high ground is to stop funding it. If you don't fund it, it's probably not going to happen. Because I like to say again, how many of the people who were, you know, at the protests were thinking to themselves even two months ago, you know, the most important thing I could do is risk my freedom and my health to protest sanctuary cities being. Being violated? Probably very few. Very. A few, you know, not zero, but very, very few. So this could not be more artificial. And for Democrats to pretend that it's just sort of breaking out on its own, it's not. We're watching this as wise, seasoned observers of the news, and we knew this would happen, what, a year ago? We can predict every summer we'll have a new fake Democrat protest. Here is. And then Byron York points out in a post on X at the bottom of the riots in California, this is city and state officials there want to have their own immigration law, and they can't have their own immigration law. So, again, this is the lobbying on Trump's side. You can't really have the states deciding their own immigration laws, because imagine if that's the law, then it wouldn't matter if the federal government said things were illegal. You can't come across the border as long as, let's say, California said, yeah, come on in, border's open, no problem. Those, those cannot coexist. So somebody, some one entity needs to be in control of immigration because you just can't, you can't parse that out. Yeah. As soon as you say you do what you want and I do what I want, somebody's going to have a big open border and then another state is going to be, all right, we're going to try to stop everybody coming into our state, but it won't make any difference because people will just come in through the open part. So there really isn't any situation in which anybody but the feds are in control of immigration. Nothing else would work. All right. I saw pictures of an Apple store getting looted in downtown la, and I wondered if any of you have the same feeling. When I watch a crime happen, I generally feel revulsion, you know, like, oh, God, you know, these, these darn criminals and they should be caught and go to jail. And, you know, why didn't that retailer build a booby trap? Or, you know, so I'm always thinking the worst, worst case scenario, but for some reason, whenever I see an Apple store being looted. Because, you know, it's happened quite a few times now. I always think if you were a looter, that would be the most fun to loot. Have you ever watched the looters to a Apple store and they just go down the line, grabbing each phone and, you know, ripping it off its little, little cable? And I always, like, every, every handful is like a thousand dollars. It's like every phone they rip out and take with them is like a thousand dollars. But then I also wonder, does Apple not track every one of those phones? And can law enforcement not if they wanted to? I mean, probably wouldn't be worth the effort. Could they not hunt down every one of those fake phone? Well, every one of those stolen phones. Could Apple not send a code to each of those phones that just locks them up so they can't sell them? I got lots of questions about Apple, but I'm, I'm not proud to admit that when I watch the looters rob the Apple Store, I think to myself, huh, if I were a looter, that looks like a lot of fun. I'm not encouraging it. Do not loot an Apple store. But if you've paid for as many Apple phones as I have, you feel like Apple has been robbing you for years. I'm just saying I don't recommend robbing. I'm not in favor of it at all. But when I watch the looters take down an Apple store, it doesn't feel the same as when they're knocking off like a little grocery store or something like that. That really bothers me. Well, Robert RFK Jr. Has ousted every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices. So apparently there was an advisory committee that decided or at least recommended when vaccines were necessary and when they should be used. Now RFK Jr has got rid of every one of them. It makes you wonder, what was it about every one of them that made them so replaceable? Was it that they didn't use science or that they thought they did use science? Now, I could see why he'd want to change them out, even if you were putting equally qualified people to backfill. Because once people have made a certain decision, they're very unlikely to say, oh, your new argument changes my mind, and I guess I was wrong to recommend these vaccines for children or whatever. So it does make sense if you're looking to make potentially, and you don't even know for sure, but if you're potentially trying to make a big change, such as changing the vaccine recommendations you might have to get rid of all the people who have settled into a point of view, because I think they would be less likely to really take any new information and incorporate it. Now, that's just a statement about people in general. It's not a statement about any of these individuals. But. But in general, sometimes you just need a clean sweep, as I think Trump called it. Well, let's check on some of the dumbest Democrats. Whoopi Goldberg, she believes the Trump Musk feud was fake. And she said on her show, I love that y' all bought into it, the Trump Musk feud. And then Alyssa Florida Griffin said, oh, it's not fake. It's not fake. Whoopi said, I do believe it's fake. She said, yes, I do. It's too strategic. Now, how many of you, as of today, how many of you think that was a fake disagreement? And one fake disagreement involves. All right, here's the deal. You call me a pedophile, and I'll say, you have mental health problems. In what world do people make that agreement? I mean, seriously, I understand the general idea that sometimes things are not what they seem, and sometimes people fake, you know, maybe fake a feud to get some attention. So, you know, it's not like those things don't happen. But in the history of fake feuds, has anybody ever said, I'll call you a pedophile? And you, you, you say that I have mental health problems? I don't think so. Or drug problems, even worse. So, no. Whoopi, I think we're well past, was it fake or was it real? It was real. And then Hakim Jeffries, speaking of dumb Democrats, he's still going after the masking of the ICE agents. And he actually said this in public. He said, if they are proud of what they're doing, meaning the masked ICE agents, if they're proud of what they're doing, why are they masked? He goes, this isn't the 30s. Why are they masked? To which I ask, why would you ask such a stupid question? Is there even one person who is listening to this who doesn't know why they're masked? It's not because they're embarrassed of what they're doing. Like, for a moment, I thought, oh, I should, you know, explain to my audience why they're masked. And then I thought to myself, oh, wait a minute there. There aren't any freaking idiots in my audience. Like, you were all smart enough to turn on a digital device and navigate to a show and then listen to it. No, every single one of you know why they need to wear masks. There's no mystery here whatsoever. I don't need to explain it. But Hakeem Jeffries, he doesn't understand. So Whoopi thinks that the Trump Musk thing was staged. And Hakeem Jeffries can't understand why people who would be at risk would want to cover their identities. Now, I assume he really does know, but he thinks the other Democrats won't. What kind of weird game would he be playing? I think he would be playing the stupid one. All right, so Microsoft has this big conference every year called the Build Conference, and I guess they used to do it in Seattle, but now, according to the Post Millennial, they've decided not to have them in Seattle anymore because Seattle has turned into a cesspool of homeless people and dirt and crime and whatever else. So Seattle lost one of its high profile events, and the issues cited were rampant homelessness, visible drug use, and urban decay. So just in case Seattle was wondering, what is the difference between managing the city well and just letting it run on its own? Well, apparently you lose the Microsoft money, so that's not ideal. There's some new good news on the economy. So almost all of the US Job growth under Trump is, is in the private sector, whereas 25% of that was under, under Biden, 25% of it was in the government jobs. Now, I was wondering, how exactly did Biden and or Trump determine where those jobs would be? You know, I guess I can see why the government would not be adding as much under Trump, but it's good news either way. And then let me read just a summary from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. So the economy's booming. She says jobs are up, unemployment is down, wages are increasing, and inflation is dead. More than 139,000 good jobs were added to the private sector, all accounted for by American born workers. Is all that true? I believe it is true. I believe that individual wages are up a little bit. Inflation seems to be, you know, under control relative to what it had been. Jobs are up, unemployment's down. Everything's good. Except for. Except for what? The debt. Every time I hear anybody talking about the economy, if they don't mention the national debt, you're not even talking about the economy. We'd better find a way to handle that debt. So the real question will be this. Did anything that the little squabble between Musk and Trump that they had, did any of that lead to anything good? It wouldn't, wouldn't express itself yet. But if in the subsequent budget packages that are upcoming. If it turns out that we do make some big cuts, and maybe even ones that people didn't expect, that might suggest that Musk made a dent and that Trump knew that having him on his side was better than not. So we'll see. I don't know what it would take to make Elon Musk, you know, not comment on this topic for however long, but I don't know that he would do it unless he had some kind of assurances that you and I don't know about. And I don't think he would do it for assurances about, you know, EV credits or assurances about SpaceX or anything, although those would obviously matter to them. I think it would have to be assurances that they would take more seriously the, the budget cuts in this upcoming process. So we'll see if that's the case. All right, who's the debt owed to? A lot of it is owed to Japan. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I've got for today. I'm going to talk to the folks on Locals privately. Hope you enjoyed the show. And we'll see you again tomorrow morning, same time, same place. And we'll see some more, some more persuasion lessons tomorrow. Accidental ones. All right, coming at you privately, Locals and the rest of you, I hope to see you tomorrow. Thanks for joining.
