Coffee with Scott Adams 2025-09-27
Grab a seat, grab a beverage, grab your favorite beverage. It’s so good to see you on a Saturday. I think all the excellent people will be here today. All the good people. Come on in. Let’s make sure your comments are working and then we will go to town. Comments are working, going to town.
Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It’s called Coffee with Scott Adams and you’ve never had a better time. But if you’d like to take a chance on elevating your experience to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mug, a glass, a tankard, a chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a flask, or a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid—I like coffee—and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It’s called the simultaneous sip and it happens right now. Go.
How does it look, Paul? Is the camera good today? I’m trying out a new camera and it looks pretty good. It’s supposed to be good in low light, but we will see. You will be the judge of that.
After the podcast today, as tradition dictates, Owen Gregorian will have a Spaces event on the X platform. Do a search under him and you’ll find it, or if you follow me on X, I reposted it right before I got on so you can find the link.
Coffee Tariffs
Here’s some good news: US legislators have introduced a new bipartisan bill to exempt coffee from tariffs. I’ll drink to that. Who is with me? Exempt the coffee from the tariffs. That is a good tariff coffee right there. It does taste better when there is no tariff on it, so that might happen. We will see.
Sinclair and Kimmel
The local affiliate group Sinclair is going to put Jimmy Kimmel back on their stations, and I believe the other affiliate group is going to do the same. Kimmel’s numbers were through the roof when he returned, of course. Everybody was curious and that probably helped. We’ll see if he has any lasting bump from that, but he’s back in business.
Correcting the Record
It turns out that a good deal of everything I told you yesterday on the podcast turned out to be total bullshit. If we have time, let me tell you all the things that I told you that aren’t true. Are you ready for this?
Do you know the story about all the Democrat women taking Tylenol to prove that it’s not dangerous and ending up in hospitals? Not true. There is no national emergency of people taking Tylenol. Total bullshit. I don’t know if it’s not true for every single person in the world, but there is no big trend or anything like that. Total bullshit.
Next, I told you that Newsom used the word “Gestapo” talking about the Trump administration, and he did not. I had confused him. I read a post by Jesse Watters that seemed to indicate that Newsom said it, but I have been informed that it was not Newsom, it was Walz. Walz did call them that. Comey just said other terrible things; he didn’t use that particular word.
Do you know the story about the 274 undercover FBI agents who were present on January 6th? We all got excited like, finally, we have proof that that crowd was full of agents who were there to cause it to turn into something. Well, according to Kyle Cheney at Politico, that’s just not a true story. There were that many FBI undercover agents, so that part is true, but apparently, they arrived in response to the rioting. They were not there in anticipation of it or to cause it; they showed up because of it. That’s really different. I don’t know what’s true. That doesn’t say that nobody in the FBI was involved in instigating; it just says that the story about the 274, apparently that’s something that’s been public for many months, and most of them came in response to the event. We don’t know what percentage of the 274 is real, but the story is not real, the way it was positioned was not real at all.
Lastly, apparently Comey is being charged with lying for something he literally never said and there’s no evidence he ever said it. Are you aware of that? He is being charged with lying about telling McCabe to leak something when there’s no evidence that he ever did that. McCabe says he didn’t do it, Comey says he didn’t do it, and McCabe said he leaked it on his own and told Comey about it after it was done. So the story is that Comey lied about telling McCabe to do it, but that never happened. There’s no evidence that he ever did that.
So what’s going on here? We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, but we’ll do some other stories first. As far as I can tell, all of those stories that I told you yesterday, the ones I just mentioned, were probably just all bullshit. I think that was my least accurate day.
I’ll tell you the one that I should have been on from the beginning: How many times have I taught you that if a story is too perfect, a little too on the nose, it’s never true? Which one of those stories was a little too perfect and on the nose? The Democrats taking the Tylenol just to show that Trump was wrong. That one from the very start I should have said, “Hold on, do you see the quality of that story? It’s just too on the nose. It’s too perfect. It can’t be true.” Again, I’m not going to say that there’s not anything true-ish about those stories, but they’re not actually true.
TikTok News Consumption
According to The Hill, there is a new analysis that says one in five adults are getting their news from TikTok. It’s worse for adults under 30. 43% of adults under 30 get their news from TikTok. Do you think it’s a big deal that TikTok will now be under not just American control, but American control of some rich people like Larry Ellison’s son? Or is it Larry Ellison or both, I forget. But there’s going to be a little right-leaning Republican influence on that. Do you think that will make a difference? Do you think that the new American ownership will put their thumb on the TikTok algorithm so that it’s a little more friendly to the Trump world? I don’t know, but they might remove anything that was the opposite of that, so it might look like that.
I’m not sure I want TikTok to go away now. I had been advocating for a long time that we can’t let China run it. By the way, how many of you remember before anybody brought up the idea of TikTok being banned? Can you remind me, was I the first one to say it should be banned? Or was I responding to a story that somebody else said it should be banned? I don’t really remember. But when I think back, it seemed to be impossible that TikTok could be banned. Now it seemed impossible that it could be sold to an American company, but maybe that deal will get done.
Amelia Earhart Files
Just to make things interesting, did you even know that there are classified Amelia Earhart files that the government has? Can you believe that? The Amelia Earhart story, like every other story, has secret classified documents. Apparently there are things about that story we don’t know and Trump has promised to declassify and release it. Does that feel like a compromise? “Mr. Trump, what we really need is to see those Epstein files. I mean really, we really need to see the Epstein files. Would you settle for the Amelia Earhart files?” Well, no, but we’ll find out.
Kamala Harris
I told you yesterday that Kamala Harris was her drunkest self at some podcast and she’s out selling her book. Well, I don’t know if it was the same day, which would make it maybe less bad than if it was day after day, but she went to Howard University Bookstore. The video indicates she was drunk as hell. Was she just drunk all day long, or was she drunk two days in a row? I don’t know which one of those is worse, but how in the world is that not the biggest story? Do Democrats look at those videos and think, “Oh, that looks normal”? It’s so not normal. If you watch a video of her when she’s not drunk, do you know what she looks like? She’s not drunk. It is very easy to tell when she’s not drunk. By the way, I don’t know if it’s alcohol or pills or whatever it is. It looks like alcohol to my eyes.
And she’s still telling the lie while drunk that goes like this: “You know, it was the closest presidential election in the whole history of the universe.” How many times in a row can you tell the most obvious lie in the world? Probably every single voter in the country knows that’s not true. It’s not only not true, it’s not even close to true. Amazing. It makes me think that nobody can talk to her. You’re telling me that there’s not a single advisor, even her husband, who could say, “You’ve been saying that fact a lot and I’m not sure that passes the fact-checking”? Nobody? There’s nobody who can tell her that that is an embarrassing lie that every single person knows is a lie? She’s the only person who thinks the election was close? How does that even happen? Do you think she knows it’s not true but she hopes that her base doesn’t know? I think her base knows. They all know. Everybody knows. It’s like one of the most well-known facts in the world that it wasn’t as close as you might imagine.
Assaults on ICE Personnel
According to the Trump administration, there has been a 1,000% surge in assaults on ICE personnel. What do I tell you when there’s a percentage without a number? It’s propaganda. What is it if it’s a number without the percentage? It’s propaganda. Even though this propaganda is coming from my team, the side that I back, don’t do this to me. Don’t give me a percentage without a number. What is a 1,000% increase? What does that represent? Were there 1,000 people and there used to be one? I don’t believe the number because all data is fake. Second, whenever I see a percentage without a number or the reverse, I just think you’re lying to me now. You’re lying by omission; you left it out for a reason. 10 to 100 would be a 10-times increase; it wouldn’t be 1,000%. So I feel like my team is lying to me on this one. Now, I do think that there’s a problem with violence against ICE people, so the problem’s real, but the story doesn’t look real to me. It looks fake to me.
James Comey and Hunting Protestors
Back in 2023, James Comey was doing an interview with Jen Psaki, Biden’s spokesperson who quit and went to MSNBC. Comey was talking to her and he was talking about the January 6th people and he said, “Get all of them. Find everybody who went into that building. Find them all. We will punish everyone who went in there. We will hunt you to the end of the earth even for a misdemeanor and make you pay.”
That is a very clear statement that he’s less interested in the law or justice and more interested in sending a message to these people. Even though it would ruin their lives, it would send a message to the other political people. When I hear Comey talking about “we’ll hunt them down for even a misdemeanor and make them pay,” I say he is allowed essentially a free punch. Not literally a punch, because we don’t do violence, but it’s a hall pass. I believe that the current administration can do absolutely anything they want with him. Not with everybody, not with somebody who was never involved in anything bad at all, but he’s a really bad character and that statement removed any sense of empathy I had. I have to admit, although I think nobody’s above the law and if he lied to Congress there should be a penalty, I was feeling a little bit of empathy for him. But once you see what a bad person he is—he’s a really bad person based on his own statements. “I will hunt you.”
By the way, do you remember my famous, most-mocked prediction that if Biden got elected, Republicans would be hunted? Here was Biden’s head of his FBI saying that he will—he used the word hunt—we will hunt you down even if all you did was a misdemeanor. Hunted. Exactly what it was. I saw this video on a clip by Maze Moore. He is a real good follow. If you’re on X, you should definitely follow Maze (M-A-Z-E). What Maze does is whenever there’s a story in the news, somehow he finds exactly the right clip that gives you that context for the story that is really good. So follow Maze.
Catherine Herridge on the Comey Indictment
Catherine Herridge, as you know, is an intrepid reporter with a very good reputation as a reporter. She said based on her two decades of covering the FBI, she thinks that this little indictment that’s like one page for Comey, she thinks that what we’re seeing is not what it will be in the end. Apparently there’s something called a holding charge, which I didn’t know was a thing. It sounds like if you need to get in under the statute of limitations and you don’t have all your ducks in order and you don’t have your full case, you can put in a charge just to put your stake in the ground and make sure you didn’t time out the statute of limitations. Catherine is saying that what this might turn into is a much more detailed, complex, much bigger case, and that you can’t judge it from the initial holding charge if it’s a holding charge. We don’t know that for sure, but Catherine says she sees a pattern. This would be a pattern that she recognizes. I would take that seriously; she’s a good observer of patterns. Probably a bunch of other people will be dragged in and maybe there’s a RICO thing here.
George Soros Funding
There is a new report from a non-government entity called the Capital Research Center. Ryan Mauro did some big investigation and found that George Soros’s Open Society Foundation gave over $80 million to what they’re labeling terrorist and pro-terrorist groups. Now, there might be a little bit of judgment involved as to whether or not a group is a terrorist group, but there are some examples that look to me like not something you’d want funded.
The Soros organization has responded and said they have never funded anybody who was involved in terror and they have very good standards and they would never do a thing like that. We’ll see. I assume that that just has to do with who defines who as a terrorist organization or terrorist-supporting organization. My take on this, which has been the same for a long time, is I don’t believe that the senior Soros has really understood where his money was going, maybe for a number of years. Some weasels in the organization were calling the shots and not giving him all the information he needed to know where his money was going. I think you’ll find that probably not even Alex, I don’t even think it was necessarily his son. Probably somebody in the organization had a little bit too much influence and was a little bit too left, even for him, is my guess.
The Psychological Impact of Lawfare
I was trying to think how psychologically torturing it must be for the people who know that they’re on Trump’s list, like Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer who is famed for doing real good work for the benefit of his side. He’s really effective and he got a bunch of rules and laws changed so that the Democrats could win in 2020. He didn’t break any laws as far as I know, but he’s worried that he’ll be targeted.
I was thinking about the psychological torture of that. Once they watch Comey being brought in on what they would say would be thin charges, then they know that they can be brought in on thin charges. Soros knows where his money goes unless he’s gotten senile. That’s what I’m saying. I’m saying he’s gotten senile; he’s like 100 years old. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Think about the torture that they put Trump and his family through. Imagine waking up every day if you’re Melania and you don’t know if your husband is going to go to jail for nothing, nothing important. Just hold that in your head: the amount of terror that his closest people went through. Some of them went to jail, you know. Some of his closest people went to jail. Imagine the torture of knowing that you could be next and then suddenly the legal documents show up and you’re like, “There goes the next 5 to 10 years of my life. Even if I’m found innocent, I’m going to use up all my money, all my time, my reputation.” It’s just terrible. And now Trump is returning the favor. As these indictments trickle out, because they’re not all going to happen at the same time, every time there’s a new one, everybody who has not yet been indicted but thinks maybe they could be is going to live in terror. Every moment of every day they’re going to think, “Is this going to happen to me? Is it any minute?” Brennan and Clapper and them. The psychological torture is a real big part of the story, but it’s kind of invisible. It’s got to be quite a weight.
Speaking of which, the Department of Justice subpoenaed the travel records of Fani Willis, per the New York Times. Fani, one of the people who tried to lawfare Trump, has got to be worried because they’re digging into all of her records and stuff. I can’t imagine why they would want to look at her travel records unless they’re trying to find out if she used her money on her boyfriend or they’re trying to find out if she was influenced by some other country. It’s not entirely clear why they would want that, but from her perspective, that is psychological torture. Do I mind? No, I don’t. I do not mind that she’s being psychologically tortured. I believe that she is essentially a criminal. I would consider her a criminal even if she’s not convicted of anything; her behavior looks criminal to me. I saw that on a Nick Sortor post. He is a good follow as well (S-O-R-T-O-R).
FBI Agents Fired
Apparently the FBI just fired the FBI agents who were photographed back in 2020 kneeling for a George Floyd protest. Can you imagine getting fired five years later because you knelt for a photograph for Black Lives Matter? Is that a good enough reason to fire somebody? The AP is reporting on this. I’m going to say yes. I’m going to say yes, that is a good enough reason to fire somebody because I wouldn’t trust anybody who was kneeling to Black Lives Matter. I wouldn’t trust them, and trust is sort of a big deal for those jobs. I hate to say it, some of them might have been just going along because it was easier, but I don’t want any easy-to-go-along FBI agents who are literally getting on their knees to Black Lives Matter. Sorry, goodbye. I feel like that is a reasonable firing offense. I agree with that one.
Supreme Court and Pocket Rescissions
The Supreme Court just gave Trump another victory: he can do pocket rescissions. “Rescissions” is a word you’d never use unless you’re talking about the news. I guess that means that if money’s been approved, in some cases Trump can still just say, “I’m not going to spend it.” I think that’s like a pocket rescission. I don’t know how big a deal that would be, but it is yet another example of the Democrats trying to use lawfare to stop Trump from doing everything, and the courts seem to be giving Trump quite a few victories. He doesn’t win them all, but he wins a lot.
Terror Threat Warning
Apparently the ODNI, Paul Sperry is reporting this, are telling all the federal employees to alter their daily routines and avoid posting travel plans and remove badges and IDs outside of the office because there’s a new terrorist threat against the government. There’s a $10 million bounty that’s placed on the kingpin of the Atif al-Alaki, I guess that would be like the new Al-Qaeda.
I don’t know how many of these people got into the country through our porous immigration plans of the past, but if something starts blowing up or somebody gets assassinated by somebody who came in across the border, that is going to be one hell of a shock to the system.
Vaccine Injury Comment
“Scott, please look into vaccine injuries.” Fuck you. Fuck you, you asshole. You absolute piece of shit. You garbage. I fucking hate you. Get out of here. If you’re a member of Locals, you should quit right now. Just get out of here. I don’t want to see you again ever. I don’t want to see a comment. I don’t want to see you trying to help. Just get the fuck out of here, will you? I don’t want to see that comment ever again. Do you realize what a piece of shit you are for saying that in the middle of the livestream? Piece of shit.
Democrat Messaging and Popularity
There’s a new poll Frank Luntz is talking about on Fox that shows that it’s the worst showing ever for Democrats. They’re at their lowest popularity. Frank Luntz said that they have two problems: their message and their messengers. That’s all they do! That’s all they do. There’s a messenger and then there are things they say. That’s pretty much the whole job, but it turns out that those two things are the things they can’t do. Can’t get a messenger, can’t get a message. Good luck.
Gaza War Deal Claim
Trump said, when he was walking to the helicopter or something, somebody asked him and he said, “I think we have a deal to release some Hamas hostages and end the Gaza war.” Do you believe that? Do you believe that they’re close to a deal with Hamas to end the Gaza war? I don’t. I don’t believe that. I don’t know if he believes it. Do you think there’s any chance that they’re close to a deal to release the hostages? It doesn’t seem to even make sense when you look at everything they’ve done up to this point. If they ended the war, if Hamas did, would they not be sort of admitting that they killed 65,000 people for no reason? Their actions largely guaranteed a very aggressive response. Guaranteed it. You don’t know the exact size of it, but it guaranteed it would be big. And if they walk away with nothing, which is exactly what they would get—there’s no way they’re going to get anything—if they walk away with nothing and destroy the entire Gaza, I don’t think they can surrender. Surrendering is the same as going to jail or dying or something. So no, I don’t believe that they’re close to a deal. But if we are, I would wonder what was promised in return, and I don’t imagine that anybody’s in the mood to promise anything at all.
Bill Maher’s Critique of Democrats
Bill Maher’s show was yesterday and, as usual, he’s one of the few people who says anything interesting about politics because he’s actually willing to look at both sides. Now, he still has big problems; he thinks January 6th was an insurrection. He’s really just one hoax away. Once he learns that that one’s a hoax, he’s one hoax away from understanding everything. I think he’s close.
Here’s what he was saying to criticize the Democrats: “You can’t just say shit and act like it’s true. You can’t come up with radical and dumb ideas and reject debate.” He gave examples of what he would call saying shit and acting like it’s true: math is racist, queers for Palestine, looting is cool, healthy at any weight, and if the men’s football team played the women’s team it would be a tie. He says you can’t just say shit and then refuse to debate it. It’s funny how well that characterizes something like half of everything Democrats do. Just saying crazy shit and saying that if you debate it, you’re a racist or sexist and they have a right to kill you in public.
Christian Slaughter in Nigeria
Then Bill Maher also pointed out that if you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria with the slaughter of the Christians who live in Nigeria, if you don’t know that, you have a terrible news source. I didn’t know that. Do I have terrible news sources? I literally do this every single day. I look at as many news sources as I can every day. I didn’t know that. Now, I did know the Boko Haram or whatever it is, I did know that there were murderers and there were slaughters and stuff. So I knew something in that domain was happening. But did you know that 100,000 Christians have been killed since 2009 just murdered for being Christian? Murdered for being Christian. And that 18,000 churches have been burned down.
Now, I don’t necessarily think we need to do something about that because that’s another country, but wow. I think that would have been good to know. I’m going to say, can somebody give me a little fact-check here? Are there any Muslim countries that still have a substantial Christian population that’s not just a little token town somewhere? Are there any? Because I’m not aware that any Christians can really survive being in a country that’s dominant Muslim. Doesn’t seem like it’s survivable. And where would be the point where there are enough Islamic people in the country that you know it’s going to go that way? The answer’s about 10%. Europe is in that domain. So once it reaches about 10%, then whoever’s in charge starts changing the laws because 10% is a lot of people if they’re acting as one. And you can see Europe just becoming Islamic. I don’t know that there’s anything that could stop it. Once you reach about 10%, I feel like it’s automatic. So you’ve got to make sure you stay well under 10% or your whole country’s gone to a system that may not be your first choice.
Trump and Autocracy
Here’s a joke that Bill Maher said that makes me wonder if this is a thing he’s really worried about or if he thinks it’s just funny. He said if you’re tracking the rise of autocracy, we’ve just transitioned from the “muzzling dissidents” phase to the “prosecuting political enemies” phase. He says at this rate, Trump could be in a general’s uniform by Christmas. Does that joke sound like he’s actually worried about the US becoming an autocracy? It doesn’t, does it? It just sounds like he’s just joking about it because you wouldn’t talk that way about, say, an assassination, because that’s deadly serious. But if you think the entire country is being turned into some dictatorship autocracy, would you just tell a joke about it? Is that the way you’d treat it? You wouldn’t joke about other things that are that serious.
Does Egypt have a big Christian population? I’m trying to monitor the comments as they’re zipping by. I’ll take a fact-check on that; I’m very curious whether there are any big Christian populations that are undisturbed in an Islamic country.
I’ve got a feeling that Bill Maher doesn’t quite believe all the “Trump’s going to be an autocrat” stuff. Do you think there’s any chance that Trump would try to stay in office? Maybe if they threaten that if he leaves office they’ll jail him, he would sort of have to stay, or he’d have to try, because leaving office might put him in jail for not really any good reason. So we’ll watch that. It could be that the Democrats will wish it into existence. I think if the Democrats were not acting like they are, there’s no chance whatsoever that Trump would try to stay in office for a third term. None at all. But the way they’re acting, they’re going to create a situation where “Here’s the deal, Mr. Trump: if you don’t stay in office for a third term and indeed for the rest of your life, if you don’t, we’re definitely going to put you in jail because of what you did to all your enemies. We’re just going to return the favor.” So if you were Trump, the only reason—like the really strong reason—to try to overthrow the country and stay in power is because the Democrats would kill you if you don’t.
The only way you could get past that, I think, is to be really confident that another Republican will be president and the House will not be flipped. So I think JD Vance, if his polling numbers stay high compared to whoever he’s running against, there’s no real chance that Trump would want to stay in office because he would be protected. But that’s what I’m looking for.
Pete Hegseth at Quantico
You know those 800 generals and admirals that have been summoned to Quantico to meet? Everybody said, “Oh, is this World War III or what’s going on here?” The information we’re getting is that Hegseth wants to essentially look at them in the eye, in person, and then tell them how their culture needs to change. Basically, how he’s going to make them a more lethal force, maybe less woke, maybe there’ll be other things he tells them. But basically he’s got an idea of how things need to be to be an effective military and we’re not there, and he’s telling the leaders, “You’re going to make this happen.” Do you think that’s the only reason? Do you think that might be a cover story, but what they really need is to talk to a subset of those generals about something specific?
Speculation on Venezuela
Because there’s also some talk that’s not decided, but there’s talk that there are plans for putting boots on the ground in Venezuela—well, no, I take that back, not boots on the ground, but an attack. It might be an aerial attack on Venezuela proper instead of just the water around it. So that’s not decided, but you could easily imagine that what they want to do is make that a surprise. So they say, “Oh, the reason that all the generals and admirals are coming is it’s about the culture. Yeah, we’re just going to have a little pep talk about the culture.” But then a subset of them are there for planning an attack on a foreign country. Maybe. We’ll see.
Drones and UAPs
More drone talk. More drones were spotted in the heart of basically where the heart of the Swedish Navy is. They tried to shoot down the drones and were unsuccessful. How hard is it to shoot down a drone? Correct me if I’m wrong, but shooting down a drone is the easiest thing to shoot down, right? Because they’re not that fast and they’re not that maneuverable and they’re not stealth. Right? So you’re telling me that Sweden with all their modern weaponry couldn’t shoot down a drone? And that none of these massively suspicious drone activities all over the world—because it’s not just Sweden, we had it here, we had our New Jersey situation—but you’re telling me that nobody can shoot down a drone? Which means that they’re what? Alien? Or some kind of technology we’ve never seen before?
I saw Tucker Carlson and Michael Shellenberger talk about it, and Michael said that the objects are behaving in ways that do appear to be using a different kind of propulsion or anti-gravity and he’s skeptical that it’s ours. “Ours” meaning human beings or “ours” meaning American? I don’t know. Sounds like everything is in the air. But there’s not a strong belief that it’s Chinese or Russian. It’s possible. Basically everything’s possible at this point. I’m going to say for the millionth time, there are no aliens. They’re not alien ships. I don’t think there’s any anti-gravity. And so how do you explain the credible reports that say these things were behaving in a way that no earthly thing knows how to behave? The easy explanation is they didn’t see it, or they imagined it, or they lied, or they made it up, or they were mistaken, or they dreamed it. The most obvious explanation is it didn’t happen at all.
Portland and ICE Protection
Trump is going to send troops to Portland to protect the war-ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege. I guess there are big protests against ICE up there, so he’s sending in the military. I don’t mind that at all.
Pentagon Drone Program
As I’ve been telling you forever, and other people have as well, you know that whoever is going to win the next war, whatever that war is between whoever we don’t know, it’s whoever is going to have the best drones. The most drones and the best. That makes you feel pretty comfortable, right? Because I mean, who could make better and more drones than the United States if we decided it was a national priority? Right? I mean, the United States still has lots of capability. We’re not helpless. So once we know that making lots of really good drones is the way that you stay safe, by now we’re making a lot of really good drones, am I right?
Well, turns out no. The Pentagon drone program is a disaster. They were trying to do something called the Replicator program, which would be an awesome kind of drone, and they spent two years and millions of dollars and they have not produced a whole bunch of awesome drones. So maybe we actually don’t have the ability to compete with military hardware. Now, I’m hoping we could rapidly make up the difference; seems like we could. But we just wasted two years and millions of dollars and didn’t create a fleet of drones. Do you think that Iran has that problem? I don’t think so. Iran seems to be really good at making drones. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on that. That’s bad.
Lisa Monaco and Microsoft
There’s a woman named Lisa Monaco who works at Microsoft. She’s an executive there in one of their top executive roles, and Trump wants her fired because her job before that was the number two in the DOJ under Biden. Trump says she’s a bad, bad person and he’s asking Microsoft directly to fire her. He says, “It is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco,” Trump said on Truth Social. He described her as a “menace to US national security” and he cited Microsoft’s government contracts as part of his threat against Microsoft. Apparently he had withdrawn her security clearance last March, at the same time he withdrew a bunch of other people’s security clearance. What do you think of that? Do you think that Trump has a moral, ethical case that she should be fired from a private enterprise when she doesn’t seem to be doing anything that would affect him? I don’t know. I think if Microsoft did fire her, I think I’d be a little worried. That would not be cool, in my opinion. Now, I’m not a big fan of hers, but she’d have to do something worse in the context of just having a job in the private sector. I would need to know that she did something in that domain that was unacceptable.
DOJ Voter Roll Lawsuits
The Department of Justice is suing six states that have apparently refused to share their voter roll maintenance records. So the federal government apparently wants to make sure that the states are doing what the states are supposed to be doing, which is running clean elections. Guess which six states are refusing to share their voter maintenance records with the federal government: Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and also California. Does it make you feel suspicious when they don’t provide something that couldn’t possibly be a problem if it’s accurate? If it’s accurate, what would be the problem? It would solve the problem for the state because they’d say, “See, look how good our records are. I told you they were accurate, now you can see for yourself. Take a look.” Why would they withhold it? I can only think of one reason: they know their voter records are either fraudulent or so poorly maintained that it’s a security problem. I can’t think of another reason, unless it’s just sort of general “say no to everything Trump wants.” Maybe it’s that.
Diversity in Corporate Boards
Axios is reporting that this year white men have made up a majority of new directors at the top 500 companies in the US for the first time in nearly a decade because American corporations are reversing their diversity efforts. So is that a problem? Is it a problem that white men got a dominant number of the director jobs? Well, it would be a problem if they were not qualified, but nobody said that. If it were not based on merit and what that person can do for your company—it’s more about what they can do for the company, which would include contacts.
Remember everybody got mad that Hunter Biden didn’t know much about the oil business but he was a director at Burisma? Everybody said, “Well, that’s got to be a problem because he had no experience in that industry.” And I kept saying, you don’t look for people with experience in the industry, not for directors. For directors, you look for people who have something that the industry doesn’t have and they do, such as a connection to another industry that they need to work with, such as background in AI, for example, if you thought your company was going to bring in a bunch of AI in the future. So you could think of a whole bunch of reasons, but one of them is that somebody’s just connected. If you’re connected, you’re going to be more likely to be a director. So that doesn’t bother me. I’m happy about it if we assume it’s based on merit.
Birthright Citizenship
Trump’s going to take another run at the Supreme Court to try to get birthright citizenship overturned. As it stands, you just have to be born in this country and you’re a citizen, but the argument would be that that rule was about the children of slaves and that when it was extended beyond that, it became ridiculous because other countries, most of them, don’t do this. And there’s a reason they don’t do it, and it’s the reason that we want to stop doing it. So we’ll see. I don’t know if I would predict that he’s going to be successful in that, even with a conservative court. I feel like the originalists who want to keep things the way it was originally intended, I feel like probably there’s so much case law and precedent at this point, it’d be hard to reverse that.
Right-Wing Violence Study
According to Beth Brilgee in The Federalist, there was a study about right-wing violence that was full of fake data because I guess they let some rabid Antifa-connected person into the research. That was one of the problems. I don’t know if that was the only reason they think it’s fake, but they believe it’s fake. Now, as I remind you, all data that matters is fake. Sometimes it might be useful, it might be better that you have the fake than if you didn’t, but all data that matters—from economics to health, to finance, to violence, to crime data—it’s all fake. It’s all fake and it probably always will be.
Innovation and Cancer Research
According to Dr. Singularity on X, there’s big waves of innovation coming. Now, he doesn’t say it’s because of AI, but it could be that there are just waves of innovation coming with or without AI. He says there’s a tsunami hitting every field simultaneously, a tsunami of new science. That’d be cool.
There’s a potential cancer treatment that looks exciting. By the way, there’s a story about a potential cancer treatment basically every day, and almost none of them will pan out. The ones that are for mice almost never pan out for humans. But they’ve created a type of immunotherapy called glycan-dependent T-cell recruiters, or Glyco-TR, that can kill many kinds of cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue. So I guess what it does is it just directly boosts your body’s ability to fight the cancer, and it does it so effectively that it doesn’t matter too much which form of cancer it is. Now that would be amazing. And you know what I say to that? Could you please hurry up? Could you just work a little overtime for me? Could you please try to get this done in the next six months, please? And if you need somebody to test it on, here I am. Test it on me.
Tylenol and Autism
The makers of Tylenol, we’ve learned that as far back as 2018 they were saying that the evidence was getting “heavy” for autism risk from Tylenol. So apparently it’s something they’ve known was at least a growing concern for a while. Is that why Johnson & Johnson spun them off into their own company? Was there any other reason for that? Or did Johnson & Johnson say, “Oh, we’re going to be totally out of business from the lawsuits, so we’ll spin it off into a separate company, and if that gets taken down, well, it’s a separate company. Somebody else’s company gets taken down.” So that may have happened, but there may be more to why they spun it off. Maybe it was just a money-making situation.
Grok AI and Government
Elon Musk, according to Fortune, is selling his Grok AI as a service to the US government for 42 cents for every agency that uses it. Not 42 cents every time you use it, but just 42 cents for every agency. Now, why would he do that? And apparently the other AIs have been negotiating for super low-cost AI for the government. Why would he do that? Well, I don’t know, I can’t read his mind, but I’m going to speculate a few things. Whoever’s AI is the engine that drives the government controls the government. Because don’t you believe that we will rapidly reach a point where AI will tell us what the right answer is for all of our policies? There’ll be less and less human thinking involved in all of our big decisions, whether it’s government or business or personal. It’ll be more AI and less humans. And that trend will just keep continuing until you basically just ask the AI what to do, and you still say yes or no, so the humans are still in charge, but they won’t override the AI as often the further you go into the future. So that would give whoever could tweak the algorithm on the AI, that person can determine what is true, but maybe also what’s policy. Now, if you have an honest actor running the AI, then that doesn’t happen. But how can you guarantee that you’ll have an honest actor even if the actor that’s there passes away? Will the next person be an honest broker? I don’t know. I’m happy about the fact that Grok is in the mix because I do think it’s the one that has the least risk of grotesque bias. They’re all going to have bias, but I’d be happy about that.
Zelensky and Tomahawk Missiles
Zelensky is asking the US for Tomahawk missiles because they could reach all the way to Moscow and they’re hard to shoot down. That would be sort of a World War III moment if he starts lobbing American-made missiles into Moscow, but Zelensky wants to do exactly that. He wants to make it hard for the government of Russia to ignore the fact that they’re in a war. Now, I don’t know if I’m in favor of that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump decides to okay it. Wouldn’t be surprised because he’s clearly ramping up the danger to try to get something done. I don’t know if he would ramp it up that much, and I don’t know what Russia would do. I assume that they would—is Russia not trying to do a decapitation strike against Zelensky? They might actually prefer Zelensky in office, so they’re probably not trying to kill him. But I would imagine if Zelensky could put an accurate missile anywhere in Moscow, he’d use it for a decapitation strike to try to take out Putin. What would happen if an American missile tried to take out Putin and it injured him but didn’t kill him? Sort of a worst-case scenario, if you know what I mean. Yeah, that would be a worst-case scenario. Big risks. Don’t know what’ll happen.
I guess Trump and Turkey’s leader Erdogan have reached some kind of nuclear deal where the US is going to help them build some domestic nuclear power. It’s a big win every time any country decides to use American technology to build out their nuclear energy situation because you don’t want them depending on Russia to keep their energy running. Russia’s doing a deal with Iran, I told you yesterday, so Iran will be sort of tied into Russia’s energy expertise for a long time.
It’s Saturday and it’s top of the hour. You should go check out Owen Gregorian’s Spaces that’s happening right now—not right now, but give him a few minutes to fire it up after I’m done. You can talk about more of this stuff or related stuff and you’ll have a rip-roaring time. I’m going to say a few words privately to the Locals people, my beloved subscribers on Locals. The rest of you, have a great Saturday. You deserve it. Locals supporters, I’m coming at you privately in 30 seconds.