A (25:44)
Well, here's another persuasion lesson. I hope you've been as amused as I am that Trump is good at cursing at just the right amount and Democrats are bad at it. So when Trump curses, it guarantees that that will be the big quote the next day. It puts a focus on things and he never overdoes it. You can tell the very carefully selected where he's going to put that F word. But it turns out that J.D. vance has the same skill. And why Democrats can't do this, I don't know. But the context here is that I guess J.D. vance was giving a speech. It was at. I think it was at Turning Point usa, and he was defending his wife because apparently both Jen Psaki and Nick Fuentes have said bad things about her. I don't know what Jen Psaki said, but Nick Fuentes is, let's say, a white supremacist. I'm not sure what he is, but he has some negative things to say about her ethnicity. And I, of course, do not approve of that. But J.D. vance, the first thing he did right is he directly defended his wife. You do that first. And here's what he said. He goes, let me be clear. Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. Oh, he said it at unheard in an interview. It wasn't during his speech. It was during an interview with Unherd. And then he went, even better. He goes, that's my official policy as Vice President of the United States. My official policy is that Jen Psaki and Nick Fuentes can eat shit. Now, the first thing that's brilliant about this is that he paired Jen Psaki with Nick Fuentes, which is just brilliant because they don't really have much in common, except maybe they said something about his wife. But putting them together really makes you go, what? What? And it. And it dismisses Nick, dismisses Fuentes in a way that Republicans wouldn't mind at all, which is really. You're like a Democrat. He's not like a Democrat. But it's a good. It's a good approach. And I think you can confirm that JD Vance is not noted as a prolific cursor. So when he pulls out the. The S word, it's in the context of protect. You know, defending his wife. Who minds that? Every one of you say, oh, okay, if you're defending your wife. Your spouse. If you're defending your spouse, yeah, there's no limit on the words. If you're defending your spouse, there's not really any limit on what you can do. We all get that. Let me make an appeal I think would be compatible with some of you, but not all. There is definitely an anti Indian American sentiment within the Republican Party. Would you agree. Would you agree that there's a sort of a rolling anti Indian American sentiment in the Republican Party? Well, I think that conflates people's complaints about employment, you know, the H1B stuff, and it conflates that with who they are as a people. I have lived in California for all my adult life, and so I'm always surrounded by and Especially now in my current neighborhood, a very large Indian American population. I can tell you, I promise you this is true, the Indian Americans are awesome people. And if you ever get to know your Indian American neighbor, you're going to be happy about it. They're actually just some of the best people in the world. They're funny, they're smart, they're hard working, great, great people. So do not conflate the ethnicity with the fact that we have an immigration issue. That you would prefer to be more pro American and not bringing in people who are from other countries as much. Now, that's a separate, it's a separate argument. So I'm not putting up an argument that we should be flooding the country with extra Indian technology workers. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying if you're looking at the ethnicity, they're amazing people. And if you, if you get to know them, you'll be happy. All right, So apparently speaking of JD Vance, people are chattering because Erica Kirk, who's taking over the Turning Point usa, and it just had a big event, she has come out and endorsed J.D. vance for 2028. Some people say it's too soon. Do you think it's too soon? It's not too soon. So let me give you the, I was trying to think, what weaknesses does J.D. vance have that would matter? So I'm thinking, All right, J.D. vance, she's an amazing speaker. She, so they wouldn't be able to match that. The Democrat candidate would not be as good a speaker as he is. No matter who it is, he's just going to be better. He's very quick minded. He's very smart, obviously smart. He also has all the right backers. So he's got some of the most powerful and smartest backers that the Republican Party can produce. But more importantly, he's probably going to have, we assume, Trump's support. Nobody, nobody's going to run for president as a Republican unless Trump supports us. So if Trump supports him, you know you're 90% there, right? And I was thinking, what qualities does he lack? And I'm watching him, having obviously learned from Trump, you can see, you can see that he's picking up the most powerful parts of Trump, including the cursing at just the right amount. And he's learning to be provocative. But unlike Trump, he probably holds back a little bit. And that makes sense. He's vice president, he's not president. So I would say he's definitely learning technique. He's learning persuasion. He, he would have Trump and Trump lovers backing him. The only thing I'm worried about is that it puts a target on his back too soon. But on the other hand, it's so obvious that he's the front runner that I guess that target would have been there anyway. So I'm going to say that Erica Kirk's early endorsement does not hurt him. It might help him, and I'm fascinated to find out if the Democrats will have any way to attack him that would be reasonable. Does anybody. I'm looking at the comments right now. Does anybody have any idea what negative stuff you would put on them? Because the only negativity is coming from Republicans, right? Basically Republicans who are a little bit anti diversity, let's say. That's the best thing I can say about it. Might not like he was married to, but are they going to vote Democrat? Are you going to vote Democrat? Because you, you think his wife should be whiter, really? So I don't know that there's anything that would slow him down. And so I'm, I don't think that my endorsement per se is useful. So I'll put it in the form of prediction. So prediction, not endorsement. Later. I might, I mean, I might endorse it later, but it's too early for me, so I'll call it a prediction. He'll be the nominee. Now, what about Rubio? Rubio as very cleverly and smartly. Well, that would be the same as. Same as clever. He's already taken himself out of the run onto the condition that JD Is running, and we assume that to be true. So imagine if there is some kind of, let's say, opposition research or something comes up that takes JD out of the race. I don't know what that would be, but you just imagine something you don't know or something that hasn't happened, you know, hits him and takes him out. Rubio would just be sort of loyally sitting on the sidelines, just the obvious person to step in. So Rubio probably increased his odds of becoming president by taking himself out of the race. Does that make sense? By taking himself out of the race, he doesn't have a target on his back and JD Does. So as time goes by, if the bad guys make a dent, and I don't know what that would be, but if they make a dent in J.D. the, the only replacement that would seem obvious would be Rubio and he would look like a loyal supporter. He would, he would by then have some major accomplishments, as you could say. He already has major accomplishments and he would probably instantly get Trump's support under the condition that Trump agreed something took JD Out. So I think if he ran straight up against JD there's no chance he would win. But if he sort of loyally stands aside and said, you go first and it doesn't work out, now, I don't know what the odds of it not working out are. Let's say 10%. You would go from 0% chance of winning to 10% without any risk whatsoever. So good play, Rubio being smart. So you've probably watched as the, the Minnesota fraud stuff makes more headlines. But as it does, people seem to agree that the California fraud and California mismanagement might be something like 10 times as big. How in the world could Governor Newsom ever become president under the context of. By the midterm, we're going to know a lot more about all the hundred billions of dollars that were stolen. In his state. But not just stolen, also mismanaged, because it's kind of hard to tell what is stolen was mismanaged. It might end up being the same thing. But here's just some examples. All right, so by the midterms, some experts are saying that the cost of gas in California could reach as high as 10 to $12 per gallon and that that cost would be almost entirely because of California mismanagement and almost entirely because California is what I call a hoax, hoax driven government. So the reason gas will cost so much is a variety of regulatory things that were designed to protect the climate from catastrophe. Now, there was no chance it was ever going to protect the climate from catastrophe because one state couldn't do that anyway. But what it did do is it created this gigantic umbrella for fraud. So the only thing that happened was our gas might go to $10. It might go at least 5 or $7, but some say as high as 10. We got a 20% decrease in capacity when January hits because two refiners just said that we're out. Too much regulation, we're out. So there won't really be any serious argument about what caused gas prices to be out of control in this one state, because all the other states will not have this problem. And you can directly tie the cost to California believing incorrectly, the hoax that we were in an existential crisis that could somehow be fixed by California alone doing things that other states were not doing. How in the world would somebody who was the steward of that process as governor, how in the world do you get elected president? I mean, the fact that even Bill Gates has said we don't have an Existential threat that completely pulls the rug out of the entire California strategy for the last 10 years. So that's going to look like a disaster. Right? So the first example of the hoax driven government of California is that there was a climate hysteria or a climate crisis and he had to address it. That's hoax number one. But what Governor Newsom and other Democrats blamed the problem on was price gouging by the oil companies. Price gouging, when it was looked into, audited, there was no price gouging found that was a hoax. Hoax number two, that the energy companies are the problem, not the policies of the government. Those are big hoaxes. How about when there was a border crisis in California? What did California say? California said there's no border crisis. Hoax number three, literally a hoax saying that there was no border crisis. How about the homeless problem is one that can be solved by building them homes. Was there ever any hope that you could solve homelessness by building homes for the homeless? No, no, there was never any chance that that would make a difference because it's based on the misperception that the homeless have a no home problem. The reality is they have mental problems, drug problems, and if you gave them a home, they wouldn't be able to maintain it or live in it and wouldn't even want to live in it. They'd rather be on the sidewalk because they're insane or they're drugged or whatever. So that would be what am I up to, the fourth hoax. And then I'm not even throwing in reparations. So we've got a state that's trying to pay reparations when California never had slaves. None of the people lived here were victims of California slavery. It's a complete hoax. What about the trans issue that, that you could be born one sex, but really you're the other sex. Now I usually stay away from that one, but I think most of you would say, hey, throw that one in there as another hoax. So I could probably go on. But I see that Elon Musk had replied on X that California would go bankrupt if all the federal transfer payment fraud was stopped. So you got the federal transfer payments fraud. I'm not sure what the hoax is there. That hoax might be the wrong frame for that. It's just crime. But here's an example of what California did that other states did not. I think this was maybe Mario Novel. I saw this on X. So apparently after the pandemic there were all these stimulus funds that came from the federal government and every other state used the Government funding to pay down their debt, except California. So California, instead of paying down the debt and now we're basically bankrupt, they used it to just spend more on more stuff, which almost certainly was fraud or partially. So the result would be that the Californian businesses are going to be hit apparently with some enormous payroll tax to compensate for the fact that California was the only, only mismanaged state. We got 50 states and only one of them didn't know how to handle the money from the federal government. And even the other blue states didn't make this mistake. It's the worst of the worst of even the Democrat states. How do you become president? How in the world did the person who was presiding over all that become president? Now I haven't even gotten into, I haven't even gotten into the, what, $50 billion for the bullet train that never happened. How do you possibly become president? So one of the things I suspect fairly strongly is that Republicans are doing the. What is the, what's the movie where the Scottish warrior goes hold. What's that movie? Hold, Hold. You recognize that? Which movie is that? I have to get the right movie. Braveheart. Thank you. Yeah, the movie Braveheart. When the two armies are getting, they're ready to face off and, and then. What's his name, the actor? What's the actor's name? Well, William Wallace was the character. Let's go with that. William Wallace was the character and before he attacks, he's going down. Mel Gibson. Thank you. Mel Gibson is the actor and Mel Gibson is on his horse and he's going hold, hold. I always loved that. That was one of my favorite movie. But it feels like the smartest people in the Republican Party. By now they must have figured out that Newsom is the weakest candidate they could possibly run. I mean maybe even worse than Kamala Harris. So I, I feel like the Republicans are saying holding. Yes, wait until he gets nominated, we'll take him out. Well, apparently Yale has no Republican professors across 27 of their departments. So as you know, the liberal elite colleges are all cesspools of one sided thinking and that conservatives are basically shut out from, from higher, higher education. I mean in terms of being the professors. And I'm wondering if that will quickly be resolved by AI. So what we need is a Grok college. I don't think Grok is where it could do that yet, but it's very close. So don't you think that maybe in a year or two you going to have a choice of going to Yale or Harvard or Grok and if you go to Grok, it will take out the bias and you can get a degree that, that your employer will say, oh, you mean you learned all the useful stuff? And then somebody from Harvard comes in to apply for the job and the employer will say, oh, you learn to be a pain in the ass and care about all the wrong stuff. So clearly at this point in history it would be way better to have a Ivy League degree than some kind of made up, you know, AI Grok degree. But I feel like that could be completely reversed in maybe two years. Two years. So I think the free market, given the new tools, the AI and stuff that will be available, I think the free market is going to fix this. And it won't be because the government did it and it won't be because the higher education decided that they needed to be less biased. I don't believe it's self correcting, but it doesn't need to be if alternatives pop up and I think maybe two years. Well, there's a story in the news I think is no story at all, which is Barry Weiss, who's now the CBS News editor in chief. She killed a story. There was 60 minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants being deported to that notorious El Salvadorian prison. Now the, the knock against her is that the segment had already been, had already been blessed by their lawyers and they'd done all the work and they're ready to go on Sunday. And that mean old Barry Weiss told them that they should wait until they at least had some comments from the administration because apparently it was a story about what the administration did that did not include any quotes from anybody useful from the administration. And so the way the reporters at 60 Minutes and others I guess are complaining about it is they're saying, hey, you're, you're censoring us or you're just agreeing with the administration. I don't think that's what's happening. If you've been involved in any kind of news or editing environment, as I have for most of my career, this is the most normal stuff in the world. If you had an option of you could see this segment right now and I guess it would have run on Sunday. So your options are you can see it now and it would not include any important opinions from the administration or you could wait a week, maybe two weeks and you can see the exact same thing, except it would include, I think she wanted Stephen Miller to be the, to be the voice of the administration and that would be a good choice. Doesn't have to be him what would you pick? As a consumer, wouldn't you rather wait a week and then have some chance of seeing both sides of the argument? Of course you would. So I think that this feels like more of an anti Barry Weiss story than it is about. Anybody made a mistake. This is definitely not censorship. In the real world of news, in the real world of editing, in the real world of anybody who has an editor, this is just normal behavior. Now, if you wait a few weeks and the story never runs well, then I revise my opinion. So we'll go back to the very first reframe that began today's podcast. I will change my mind if this does not produce a useful counterpoint that makes the story more valuable. Because I think she was hired to make the news business better, not worse. And if you put me in her job. Well, let me say it this way. If you put me in her job tomorrow, I would have made the same decision. I would say, this is not ready to go. So I'm not defending her. Because then you say, oh, you're just being a pro. Barry Weiss. I really don't know what Bari Weiss is up to. I have not been following her. I don't know if she's a good egg or a bad egg. I don't know if. I don't know if giving her any support makes the world a better place or a worse place. I don't know. I have no idea. But if you take the personalities out of it, I would do the same thing. I'd say, you're not ready. Now, how many reporters have ever finished a story, wrapped it up, and then when their boss delayed it said, I'm happy about that? Never in the history of reporters. No reporter is going to say, I agree with my editor. This story was not good. No, that's not going to happen. So I say hold your opinion on this for at least two weeks. If after two weeks you hear that it's just going to be banned forever and it'll never run, I might revise my opinion. Well, apparently the Pentagon has failed an audit for the eighth consecutive year. The Epoch Times is reporting. Now, you probably knew that the Pentagon doesn't pass audits. It's good that audits exist, but remember, I've been complaining that it's not that audits exist or don't. There's something about the way we do it that guarantees they don't work or that they don't have the effect you would like, which is fixing all the problems. But part of the problem is that auditing is such a boring story that the public hears the story and they go, oh, the Pentagon fell. And all, well, better luck next time. Then they think about something else because it's just not interesting. So one of the questions I have is in a cursory reading of how they failed the audit, again, a lot of it is they can't find their assets or they can't account for things like spare parts. And if you can't account for your assets, the possibility that they've been stolen and sold is pretty high. Or just in general, if you can't account for your assets, we don't know that that signals gigantic fraud. But it does signal that we don't know if there's gigantic fraud. So again, I would say the problem might not be the Pentagon. The problem might be that the way we audit either doesn't have any teeth or we're doing it the wrong way, or it's the wrong people doing it or some combination of all those things. So I would look at auditing. The auditing. It could be. And I'm starting to form this opinion that it's not. It's not that something is or is not audited. It's that the auditing doesn't work because it's also corrupt or incompetent or we don't do anything about it. Now, let me ask you this. Do you think anybody got fired or demoted because they. They failed that? Well, Hagseth says that they're improving and that they might pass their first audit by 2028. That's their goal. I am in favor of having a goal in this case. It makes sense to have a target for when you got it fixed, but it coincidentally is when they'll be out of office. So I've got an idea. How about we promise to have everything fixed when I'm no longer here? Oh, when would that be? 2028. So are you happy that they have a plan that it will be fixed when they're no longer here? Because you really don't need to fix it if you're not really going to be there. So I would say I'm not happy with the excuse that we'll get it done by 2028. There's something. Something far more aggressive has to happen before then. Now, I will wait till 2028 if something happened that was aggressive. So if, for example, they said we just shake hand our entire audit process or we just put a general in jail, something like that. Like a big, shocking change. If you give me a big, shocking change that clearly is directionally correct. I might wait, yeah, I might hold my opinion to 2028, but if you're not showing me that anything is going to be different and it's going to be the same people doing the audit as did last time and the same people hiding the assets that hit it last time, I don't want to wait. I'm not, I do not find that acceptable. You know, somebody criticized me the other day on social media, says I would be more credible if I, if I ever criticize the Trump administration. To which I say that's true. I would be way more credible if I ever criticize the Trump administration. I've definitely criticized the Trump administration. I'm doing it right here. Are they doing enough? No, no, they're not doing enough. Are they satisfying me that they're even capable, even capable of doing enough? No, no. I see no signal that the Trump administration is fixing this problem. So that is a criticism. I think I'd say almost exactly the same thing if Democrats were in charge. So the next time you say to me, hey, you never criticize your own team, I say, well, that's what this is my own, by the way. Let me be clear. My team is not Republicans. My team is not maga. My team is America. Right. If you, if you're on Team America, which would include all of us, you need to get this fixed. This is not about one side versus the other. This is America versus the end of America. Right. It's an existential problem. It's, do you exist or don't you exist? It's way beyond, way beyond Democrat or Republican. All right, well, apparently the US Is putting more pressure on these so called dark fleet of tankers coming out of Venezuela. So I guess some tankers that were incorrectly flagged, I think that's the, they had a false flag, are being subject to a seizure. And I believe that now the third one has been seized. We already had two. And some people said, hey, those particular tankers are exempt because they're a different flag. Well, it looks like the flags were fake. So the US Is taking the position. I don't know if it's valid or not, but they're taking the position that these can be seized. And apparently we're going to escort them to American ports and just take the oil. Now that is a very Trumpian way to handle this, which is, I'll just take your oil. Thank you. Now, some of that oil, if we take it, would we use it to offset the military cost of controlling or the military cost of leaning On Venezuela, if we do, that would be a very, very Trumpian thing to do. Well, thank you for the free oil. I always say that Trump picks up free money. If you leave free money on a table and everybody walks by it, Trump is the only one who say, does anybody own that? Whose free money is that? And after he asks maybe the second time, and nobody says it's theirs, he takes it. He just takes it. So clearly this is theft, but it's also free money. So very trumping. Now, the big mystery about the whole Venezuela in operation is does it have one purpose or does it have multiple purposes? And what would they be? And I don't know the answer to this question, but it could be a threefer, meaning that if you think of it in terms of trying to accomplish any one thing, then you would be confused because it's really meant to accomplish more than one thing. So the possible things, some people say, some people were not me, but are smarter than me about this topic, say that really, that are leaning on Venezuela is also a way to lean on Cuba because Cuba and Venezuela have a economic relationship that if you hurt one, you would hurt the other. Especially if you hurt Venezuela's oil business, I think that would hurt Cuba the most. So question number one is our actions at the moment, are they designed to take down or control two countries, you know, via the Monroe Doctrine idea that, you know, we're the dominant or the big dog and that if you don't do what we want and you happen to live in our part of the world, but we're going to come for you. So I would say maybe, or maybe it just makes the anti Cuban people happy, but it's not part of the primary goal. But I guess I would argue, obviously it does put pressure on Cuba, but what do we expect will happen from that? Do we expect that Cuba will have a regime change? Have we not been expecting that for six? Well, how many years have we assumed that if we put pressure on Cuba, they'll have a regime change? So I don't know what we're trying to accomplish other than making Cubans poorer. Then of course the stated objective is to put pressure on the drug cartels. Well, it does that, but as many people have pointed out, fentanyl will probably just find another way. And by the way, Venezuela is not the big fentanyl producer in the first place. So yeah, yeah, it's bad for the cartels, but is that why we're doing it? I do agree with this thinking that the cartels have become so powerful that you, you risk them becoming like a major military. Now, you could argue they're already a major military, but they're not any. They're not any match for the American military. At some point, they might become so powerful that you couldn't really directly attack them because it would just be too much catastrophe. So it could be that we're thinking ahead to make sure that the drug cartels don't reach a certain scale and power, and we're worried that they're coming to some kind of crossover point. So I don't think we're doing it. Well, here's the fourth possible thing. The fourth possible reason is that the big money people, I don't know, the big energy money billionaires, may have decided that it was, we can just steal the oil from Venezuela. They will make enormous profits, which presumably would happen, right, if Venezuela crumbled, but we captured their energy assets, would that make any American companies richer or any billionaires from anywhere richer? The answer is no. Maybe. Maybe. So we've got at least four possible reasons that Venezuela itself is a problem and they want a regime change that doing that will take down Cuba somehow. But I don't see how that the drug cartels got too powerful, it was time to knock them down, or that some rich people will have some enormous, enormous financial gain. It's kind of a weird one. So I do not believe that our full military will move in and just occupy the country. But I do like the fact that Trump never takes that off the table. All right, let's talk about Ukraine and Russia. There's something interesting going on here. So apparently there's been yet more meetings with Wyckoff and Jared and Russian, Ukraine and mostly Ukraine, and they're working in their 20 point plan for a multilateral security agreement. So what Wyckoff said is an interesting hint of where we're at. He said that negotiators focused in the recent talk on, quote, timeliness and sequencing of next steps. Now, it doesn't seem to me that you would talk about the timing of steps unless you thought you were close to agreeing on what the steps were. And I don't believe that we've been close to that before. So is his choice of words timeliness and sequencing, is that telling us we've achieved some kind of minimum negotiations and minimum state where we're close to agreeing on the content, but not the timing? Because if it comes down to timing, that would suggest we're close to something that could work. And I'm not suggesting we are. But his choice of words does suggest that, and I've not seen that before. So that's my persuasion related observation. So now U. S. Ukrainian and European officials earlier this week, they said that the problem is security guarantees for Kiev. And here's what Lindsey Graham said. Now remember, Lindsey Graham is a very anti Russian guy. And he said recently on Meet the Press, I guess this weekend that it was unclear if Putin would accept the current deal. So the negotiations were with Ukraine to tighten up the 20 points, but we don't know if Putin would accept it. And he says if he doesn't accept it, that the approach should be to start seizing oil tankers that are carrying Russian oil and then to label Russia a state sponsor of terrorism for what he says kidnapping 20,000 Ukrainian kids. Now, you know, one of the problems with getting a deal is that Trump will be accused of making a deal that's pro Putin. Right. That's a big problem. How does Trump avoid the accusation that he's just working for Putin, he's a puppet of Putin and he's not trying to protect Ukraine, he's not trying to protect Europe. He's just trying to make Putin happy. Well, it's a tough one because we're at a point where Putin is going to get something out of this deal that a lot of people don't want him to get out of the deal. So one way you could address that, which is not a total answer, is you could send the most anti Putin guy onto the TV to say that he would be willing to support some kind of a deal that looks like what we have now. So if Lindsey Graham, the most anti Russian guy, and nobody doubts that, so there's nobody in the world who doubts that he's anti Russian if he says this deal works for us, meaning America, wouldn't that be a pretty good signal that we're not doing it for Putin's benefit? If Lindsey Graham says yes. Now, I'm not a giant fan of Lindsey Graham's military first kind of approach to things. I'm simply observing that, that if he has a long, long track record of being anti Putin, he's exactly the person you want to send out to say, I could live with this deal. That would mean something. Now, of course, no matter what happens, the Democrats will use it as an attack on Trump, but it would certainly weaken the attack. So as I've said before, you never get a solution to a war under the condition that both sides are happier fighting than not fighting, which is the current situation. Or if one of them loses and nobody's Losing that hard. Yet you could argue that Ukraine is losing, but they're not losing hard enough that they would instantly sue for peace. So what do you do? Well, as I've often told you, the only path would be to find a way where both sides feel like they won. So how could you create a situation with Ukraine and Europe? And well, in this case there are four sides. You could say, how does U. S Europe, Ukraine and Russia, how do they all win? And I would argue that the one and only way that could happen is if they find a way to reframe the war as an economic opportunity. Now this is not a new idea, obviously, but as soon as you say, hey, I've got an idea where we all get rich, suddenly the war doesn't seem like such a good idea. So let me just develop this idea a little bit. Suppose instead of giving Russia, what's the better way to say this? Suppose we came up with a plan where the energy and the resources of Ukraine could be equitably, I don't want to say shared, but could become the launching pad for the US to make a lot of money by investing in their energy infrastructure. Ukraine can make a lot of money because their energy infrastructure could become great. Europe would be simply protected by the fact that the US Would have such a big investment that if Putin attacked, he could be guaranteed that the oligarchs in the United States would say, unleash the army because we have too much money wrestling in Ukraine. So could you create a situation where Russia would be better off economically? You know, they'd lose their sanctions and they'd give some relief and they get to keep the stuff they've already conquered. I think that's a given. And the US Gets rich or has so much economic opportunity that that becomes the security guarantee. So we would not necessarily have to say we will place our US army on Ukrainian soil. We would only need to say, you think we're going to make $100 billion? No, we're going to make a trillion dollars. So if you could create a picture where the US could get to a trillion dollars of economic benefit just, just for investing in Ukraine, it might take a while. But you, you throw the trillion in there and people's eyes open. Do you think that the US Would employ military might if Russia tried to encroach on our trillion dollar economic opportunity? And the answer is, of course we would. You might not like it, a lot of people might disagree with it, but yes, yes, you could guarantee that if we had a trillion dollars at stake that our richest people would say, you know how I have a lot of influence over the government. Well, this is where you paid me back. This is where you go to war with Putin. So I think there's some possibility that if we could tell a story where the US Has a trillion dollars to benefit, that Putin would know that attacking it had nothing to do with Europe and had nothing to do with NATO, that the US Would unilaterally say, okay, we're going to you up bad. So maybe, maybe we're getting close. Well, apparently, Trump has tapped, I like how they say tapped. He chose Louisiana governor as a special Greenland envoy. New York Post is reporting this. So in addition to being governor of Louisiana, this gentleman, whose name I forgot to write down, governor of Louisiana, will be the special envoy to Greenland. I guess we didn't have one. We had no special envoy. Now, Denmark, of course, is objecting because they, they think, oh, no, that is one more step toward you trying to strong arm us out of owning Greenland. To which I say, you know, Trump has already established that, has already established that he's going to go strong on what looks to me like, you know, Monroe Doctrine times three. And if you're in our part of the world, you don't get to say no, if we have a legitimate security interest. And do we have a legitimate security interest in having at least a military, Military, let's say, strong association with Greenland. And I would argue that if they don't give it to us, we're going to take it. Not right away, but that is what I like about Trump. He's very clear. You're either going to work with us or we're going to take it. And that's the Monroe document right there. In my opinion, that's the Monroe Doctrine. So in the context of Trump leaning on Venezuela, that surely gives Denmark some pause, because I don't think they expected our, our navy to surround Venezuela. Now, even though Venezuela has nothing to do with Greenland, it suggests what level of military might Trump might employ if we have an economic security reason to do it. So it's got to rattle them. So I would say the current context is good for Trump. He's kind of taken down the verbal pressure, but it kind of subtly puts a little more pressure on them. Now, here's what the New York Post says. It says that behind closed doors, administration officials have mapped out a plan for the island, Greenland, to become independent and then enter into a compact of free association with the US Giving Washington a role in certain areas, such as defense. So it looks like step one is to get Greenland to vote for their own independence. Do you believe that our CIA, if it worked hard to co opt the influential people in Greenland, we can't be a lot of them. You know, you could basically bribe every politician in Greenland in about five minutes because they're not many. So between what the CIA could do to bribe people plus what they could do to threaten people, plus the fact that when I say people, I'm only talking about the, you know, the most influential people who are already in Greenland, do you think we couldn't get them to say, you know, we should be a free country if we're, if we're asking them to join the United States, that's too far, we wouldn't get that. But if you said, hey, what do you think of your idea of more independence? No, we're happy being owned by Denmark. But are you, are you happy being owned by Denmark? Because the other option is you could vote for independence. Do you think that Denmark would deny you your independence if, let's say 70% of you voted for freedom? No. So if you could get the local leaders by bribery or incentive, or I will make you rich, which wouldn't cost as much, I mean, it would be the cheapest color revolution of all time. Because it's a small population. We absolutely 100% could co opt their government, the influentials, into agreeing that Greenland should be independent. We would not be able to get them to say they should join America. But if you became independent and you no longer had the support of Denmark, could you survive unless you had really productive, some kind of association with the United States and probably Canada too. The answer is not really. I mean you, you would have to make deals with the United States, for example. You can share in our development of our natural resources if you provide physical security against Russia and China, which they're going to need. They're going to need it. So it feels to me like they have a 100% functional long term plan to get some kind of at least Monroe Doctrine control over Greenland's physical security, which would be paired with some kind of sharing of resources. And I would say that if you wait long enough, we almost 100% are going to get that done. I don't know if it could get done under the Trump administration. It might be a 10 year thing, but if you give me 10 years, I say there's 100% chance that this plan would work. 10 years. I don't know if the government would be consistent for 10 years. So the big if is what Happens if Trump leaves office? Or what happens if a Democrat becomes president and everything has changed? Well, that story is boring. So I saw on X that Elon Musk stated that Tim Walsh is guilty of hiding vast fraud. Now, who would know more than that than Elon Musk because he was dojing things. And you also remember that Tim Walsh was the strongest voice accusing Elon Musk of being the corrupt one. What is it we've learned about Democrat strategy? Well, we've learned that they literally. This is not a joke. They literally accuse you of whatever they're doing. So the fact that Tim Walsh made such a big deal of accusing Elon Musk being the corrupt one, that does strongly suggest that he was the corrupt one, meaning Tim Waltz was. And it's hard for me to believe that Tim Walsh was not in on at least some of the corruption because he's also being accused by credible people of moving against whistleblowers. So at the same time that he was accusing Elon Musk of being corrupt, he was frying whistleblowers in his own state who were the ones who would have outed him and others for being the corrupt ones. So just hold in your mind for a moment that Newsom and Tim Walsh are two of the most prominent Democrats. And I would say almost certainly they have a lot to answer for. A lot to answer for. Anyway, I don't know if I even care about this next story, But Israel approved 19 new settlements. Obviously they're trying to make it impossible to have a two state settlement, but that is, no, that's no surprise. And I guess Israel is bombing and attacking Hezbollah and Beirut. They think they can, they think they're very close to completely destroying the military of Hezbollah. So that's just more, more the same. I will remind you that Israel is not my country. So I observe what they do. It's not up to me to approve it or to deny it. It's not my country. So I simply observe. If it affects America, then I get involved. According to the University of Minnesota, there's been a breakthrough in lab grown spinal cords. Apparently they use 3D printing to create a structure that stem cells can be attached to that become lab grown tissues that can repair nerve fibers and spinal cords. I might need that. Apparently the problem with repairing nerve nerve cells is that you can't control them when they're growing and you need them to be sort of on a straight path. But I think the 3D printing allows you to take the lab grown cells and put them in a path that connects Broken tissues or broken nerve endings. I guess that might be exactly what I need to walk someday. So hurry up, Hurry up. So the national debt's going to approach a trillion dollars in just interest payments. And I saw somebody estimate that we're doomed by 2035, which is longer than I would have expected. And I always wonder why we're not more worried about debt, because it seems like the biggest problem that's coming. But then I wonder is the reason that we don't obsess about our debt problem because the only things we ever obsess about are things that some billionaire with dark money makes us think is the top priority. Do you ever wonder about that? With all the problems in the world, how do we decide which of the big ones that we talk about and address? I don't think it's because of the big ones. I think it's because nothing becomes a big story, whether it's climate change or anything else, unless there's some gigantic big money, dark money thing driving the story. And I don't think any of them are driving the story about our debt is too high. That's like, there's no billionaire who's putting money on that story. So that might be why we don't worry about as much. We just haven't been trained to worry about as much as we should. But I do wonder if Elon Musk is right, that in the AI and robot future, which is coming up fast, that that will make money worthless because everybody will have everything for free. The, the robots and the AI will just do all the hard work and we will just enjoy the abundance. Now, if that's true, does that give us some kind of escape path from debt? Because money wouldn't mean anything. So even if you said, hey, we're going to cancel our debt, we're not going to pay you back, that even the people who owned the debt would say, oh, sure, whatever, you could pay me back. But the money isn't worth anything because everything's free. So that's pretty optimistic. I can't quite get there. That's a lot of optimism, but it's not impossible. And I don't want to bet against Elon Musk's view that's always a bad idea. But I wonder, in a related story, you know, Scott Besant is pushing the Trump accounts where every baby that's born is a thousand dollars in an account, but you could add several thousand dollars if you're a parent, up to $5,000 a year, so that by the time the kid becomes 18, they would have a nice little nest egg. But here's the problem that automatically falls out from that. So these accounts would be available to rich and poor. And whether you're rich or poor, you get $1,000 in your account. But whether you're rich or poor, you also get to add your own parental money, say $5,000 a year. If the rich people add the $5,000 a year, but the poor people obviously do not. What happens when the poor kid and the rich kid turn 18? The rich kid will have 10 times as much money than the poor kid. So if what you're worried about is income inequality, doesn't this guarantee that it's going to be really, really bad? So I wonder how they deal with that. I do think that raising money for babies is easier than raising money for other things. Because even I'm thinking, I'm saying, huh, maybe I should donate some money to that thing that looks like. But then I think, wait a minute, in 18 years, which is when the first kid would get the benefit from it, money might not be worth anything. So either the debt will have killed us by then, or Elon Musk is right, and money will have no value. So we've got this weird situation where if, if it were a steady state, which it never is, this would be one of the best ideas ever. But because we absolutely cannot predict what the world looks like in five years, much less 10 years, much less 18, it's hard to imagine that things would stay as stable as they are now, such that this goes the way you think it would go. The changes in the world are just so big. Debt plus AI plus robots. I don't know. I'm not opposed to this idea. It's just hard for me to imagine everything works out anyway. There's a Russian general, the guy killed with a bomb under his car in Moscow. So in Moscow is the key point here. And I thought to myself, wouldn't that be the perfect murder if you wanted to kill a Russian general? Because everybody assumes Ukraine did it. But suppose you had some other reason to do it. You just wanted to murder that guy. You could so get away with it. Because. Because the Russians would just assume that the Ukrainians did it, that I don't even think they would look anywhere else. It'd be the perfect murder. But it does make me wonder if Ukraine has taken a decapitation strategy like Israel. So you know how Israel just consistently kills leaders of their, their enemy countries? They just never stop doing it. Well, there's a head of Hamas. Well, there's a head of this. Well, there's. And I've always said that taking out the top leaders is an excellent long term strategy because eventually you, eventually you've taken out all the capable people and the only people left to assume control are less capable. But also if you're in a context of negotiating for peace, if you're the generals, and generals would have some influence with Putin if you could convince the generals that if they stop now, they are not targets. But if they don't stop now or convince Putin to main pace, if they don't do it, that there will be continuous assassinations of generals. So as a strategy, I would call that the Israel strategy. And I think it's a strong one. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but as a strategy it looks pretty strong. All right, that is everything I wanted to say today. Would anybody like a closing sip? How many people we got today? Now we got a pretty good crowd. I think you have earned the closing sip. So what did you like about today's show? While I'm sipping with you, tell me in the comments, which points you like? You like the reframed? Did you like. I don't know, Is there any part of this do you like more than any other part or do you, or do you just like hanging out? Tell me. Remember I was telling you yesterday that I'm a proud narcissist, but only, only if I'm creating value for other people. So I would be happy to be praised for what I did. Right. But only if it made a difference. You like to reframe? You like hanging out? All right, let me pause some of these comments. Just like hanging out. That's perfectly acceptable. And you like me destroying the Democratic Party. You like to reframe. Yeah, the hangout. You like my blanket and my attitude. What else? Reframe in the start about smart people changing their mind. Good. You know, I, I felt that that was valuable. A true narcissist only cares about adding value to themselves. That's. That's not true. That is not true. Well, it's a definition, so I guess you can have your own definition. Thus fare. Oh, drawing the map for Republican success. Okay, the persuasion talk is the most beneficial it might be. You like seeing me be resilient? Sorry. You like my non tribal approach? Good. I get too much credit for what I do because a lot of it is, you know, what choice do I have? Daily age of our bs radar. Oh, I love you too. All right. You're so rote. I see some racist comments, which I do not approve of. You know, you're entitled to your opinion, but the. The racist comments, I just. I just think they're uninformed. Just totally uninformed. Talking about jv. All right. We don't need privatized Social Security. Yeah. So somebody who's reminding the Locals people that I've given one person permission to be inappropriate. So. So on the Locals platform, one individual was consistently over the line, you know, just unacceptable kind of public opinions. And instead of banning him with his agreement, he is now defined as our Jester. So the jester says things that are absolutely inappropriate, just 100%, but he's the only one who's allowed to do it. Only one person. So that's worked really well because there's a little bit of outlet for that behavior. But we reframe it as the gesture so that it doesn't have too much of a sticky quality to it. All right, we're just testing that. All right, everybody, time to go. Spend tremendous spending time with you. I hate to leave, but nothing lasts forever. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye for now.
