Transcript

Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26

From Real Coffee with Scott Adams · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 1 min · 7,909 words · 60 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26", an episode of Real Coffee with Scott Adams published January 3, 2026 (1 h 1 min, about 7,909 words). It mentions 30 people, works and ideas, including Donald Trump, Act Blue, Department of Justice, Manuel Noriega, Katherine Herage.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on recent events in Venezuela, highlighting their significance while also touching on personal anecdotes and the influence of trending topics, like Dilbert and Donald Trump's decision-making. The speaker invites audience participation and reflects on their own media presence amid major news.

Key takeaways

  • In the age of viral content, Dilbert still trends while global crises unravel—a comic strip that refuses to fade.
  • Trump’s strategy: When in doubt, bet on the bold. He opted for special ops rather than full-scale military engagement.
  • Legalese or military operation? The ambiguity in actions may redefine international law as much as constitutional debates.
  • Remember Noriega? History's repeat suggests that American interventions often masquerade as judicial actions, blurring ethical lines.
  • Venezuela's no-resistance claim sounds suspicious; sometimes, strategic retreats aren’t the same as a lack of resolve.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Department of Justice, Manuel Noriega, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Fox News
  2. – 30:00: Katherine Herage, UC Berkeley, Donald Trump, Jonathan Turley
  3. – 40:00: Act Blue, David Stro, Hot Air
  4. – 50:00: Act Blue, Department of Justice, Enderil, US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit
  5. – 1:00:00: Spaces, Owen Gregorian, Marcela Gregorian, Neurolink

Notable quotes from "Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26"

  • But I should tell you that after the show, so after the podcast, Owen and Gregorian will be hosting a spaces afterparty.
    about Marcela Gregorian · at
  • For legal process. To me, that seems like the strongest thing, I think. So, that's what happened. So late at night, Trump authorized the military, specifically some helicopters. So I guess we set our 160th special.
    about Donald Trump · at
  • Anywhere to pick up a criminal or a accused criminal, alleged criminal and that this should be seen as a Department of Justice action that happened to be supported by a number of entities including the military.
    about Department of Justice · at
  • Now, people who are my age or in that zone, you might remember that the US did this in 1989 against the Panama leader Noriega.
    about Manuel Noriega · at
  • Anyway, Katherine Herage, who many of you know as a you know notable important journalist, she's talking about why X became the center of real journalism and that the.
    about Katherine Herage · at
  • The reality might be allegedly that they're a fraudulent organization from top to bottom. And what they really do is they take large donations, maybe from Democrat billionaires, maybe from.
    about Act Blue · at
  • All right. I saw this quote today from Elon Musk once again, always in the news. He thinks that Neurolink, the chip you put in people's heads, in the future there's nothing…
    about Neurolink · at
  • You follow me in X, I've reposted it the link to it. And if you don't see that, just look for Owen Gregorian and you'll find it quickly. Now the original plan that Owen had was…
    about Owen Gregorian · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Donald Trump — Person · Primary referenced political actor · 1 mention · first at
    Central figure in the episode’s main narrative: the host attributes the Venezuela operation and broader geopolitical signaling to Trump’s decision-making style.
  • Manuel Noriega — Person · Referenced historical precedent figure · 1 mention · first at
    Invoked as precedent for U.S. capturing a foreign leader (Panama 1989) and prosecuting him in the U.S., anchoring the episode’s legality/precedent argument.
  • Katherine Herage — Person · Referenced journalist / media commentator · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited for an argument that X displaced legacy media by concentrating reach and access to decision-makers; used to support the host’s broader media ecosystem thesis.
  • Owen Gregorian — Person · Co-host / community organizer (Spaces afterparty) · 2 mentions · first at
    Named explicitly later as the person to search for on X to find the Spaces event; functions as the operational point-of-contact for the afterparty.
  • Marcela Gregorian — Person · Co-host / community organizer (Spaces afterparty) · 3 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as co-hosting the post-show X Spaces; likely refers to Owen Gregorian, but appears separately due to extraction granularity.
  • Jonathan Turley — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a constitutional expert providing context on the Venezuela action.
    All right. So, Jonathan Turley is reminding us that constitutionally this should be fine, but people are going to argue that it isn't.
  • David Stro — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned for his observations on the psychology of fraud perception.
    And what does that do? This is Stum's observation and mine as well. What does that new psychology do to how we think about the election integrity?
  • Palmer Lucky — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the head of Enderil discussing underwater detection technology.
    I talk about this a lot lately, but you know the defense company called Enderil that Palmer Lucky is the head of apparently he's made the claim that Enderil has some kind of technology.
  • Naomi Lynn Lim — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the author of an article on midterm election strategies.
    Well, the Washington Examiner Naomi Lynn Lim is writing about how the midterms usually go to the party that's not in power. And Trump has questioned.

Companies & orgs

  • Act Blue — Company · Case study · 5 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a Democrat organization under investigation for alleged fraudulent activities.
  • Department of Justice — Company · Legal entity · 3 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as supporting the legal action in Venezuela and investigating election integrity.
  • DEA — Company · Referenced organization · 2 mentions
    Mentioned as part of the coordination in the Venezuela operation.
    All right. So there was tons of coordination between the DEA and the military and the CIA and the Department of Justice. So that part's impressive.
  • 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the military unit involved in the Venezuela operation.
    Military, specifically some helicopters. So I guess we set our 160th special operations aviation regiment called Soar known as the Night Stalkers. So I guess we went in strong. there have been a lot of practice, a lot of preparation.
  • Enderil — Company · Technology mention · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned for its claimed technology to detect underwater objects, including submarines and whales.
    Called the Endril's Seabed Century. And he says, and I quote, I swear I'm not making this up. He said, I can know where all the whales are, the submarines, boats, where all the…
  • Grock — Company · Information source · 2 mentions
    Mentioned as a source of information on the economic impact of the Venezuela situation.
    So I went to Grock and asked that you know what's the economic impact on Venezuela? Yeah. This situation. So apparently you know lots of energy implications.
  • PG&E — Company · Referenced company · 2 mentions
    Mentioned for lowering electricity rates in California.
    Well, amazingly, PG, the power company here in California, is for the fourth time in two years going to lower the rates.
  • Night Stalkers — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
    Nickname for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment involved in the Venezuela operation.
    Late at night, Trump authorized the military, specifically some helicopters. So I guess we set our 160th special operations aviation regiment called Soar known as the Night Stalkers. So I guess we went in strong. there have been a.
  • X Corporation — Company · 2 mentions

Products & tech

  • Neurolink — Product · Referenced technology · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned for its potential future capabilities in restoring bodily functions.
  • Spaces — Product · Referenced technology · 4 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as the platform for the afterparty discussion following the podcast.
    Immediately after the show, Owen Gregorian will be setting up a spaces event on X. Spaces, if you didn't know, is the audio only. Doesn't cost anything to participate. it's audio only and.
  • Endril's Seabed Century — Product · Referenced technology · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned for its claimed capabilities in underwater detection.
    Called the Endril's Seabed Century. And he says, and I quote, I swear I'm not making this up. He said, I can know where all the whales are, the submarines, boats, where all the…

Places & events

  • US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of a legal ruling on gun rights.
    Limiting open carry of firearms and the which court was it? US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit by 2 to1 said that was too anticonstitutional.
  • UC Berkeley — Place · Referenced location · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in the context of disability accommodations.
    Well, here's a story from the college fix that more than half of UC Berkeley disability accommodations are based on emotional reasons.
  • Nobel Peace Prize — Event · Award mention · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of Maria Karina Machado, a potential replacement leader for Venezuela.
    And waiting in the wings is his probable or at least possible replacement, a woman named Maria Karina Machado, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize already for being sort of the…

Media & podcasts

  • Fox News — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the source of initial reporting on the Venezuela operation.
    But the reporting, at least on Fox News, is that the Venezuelans put up no resistance and that some of them just went home. Do you believe that?
  • Dilbert — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as trending on X despite major news events.
    To be in the headlines for once because I've been in the headlines for a few days. And I look on X and Dilbert is trending.
  • Hot Air — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the source of an article on fraud perception.
    There's an article in hot air by David Stro that guess is something I've been saying. I didn't know if anybody else would have the same observation, but he did.
  • New York Post — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the source of news on Second Amendment rulings.
    New York Post is reporting that a court has ruled in favor of the Second Amendment and open carry in California. So I guess there was a law.
  • Newsmax — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the source of news on election fraud investigations.
    Did you know News Newsmax is reporting this that the Department of Justice I think you knew this part as requested Minnesota and I think.
  • Washington Examiner — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the source of an article on midterm election strategies.
    Well, the Washington Examiner Naomi Lynn Lim is writing about how the midterms usually go to the party that's not in power. And Trump has questioned.

Full transcript with timestamps

Come on in. We'll check our comments. Make sure they're working on locals. Boom. There we go. Come on in. It is good to see all of you. I apologize again for my sketchy voice. I will do the best I can. All right. Once we get about a thousand people in here. Oh, looks like we have what? Only three people on YouTube. All right, come on in. Lots of news today, but shall we start with the simultaneous sip? That's a yes. All right, people. If you want to join the simultaneous sip, all you need is a copper mug or a glass of thanks of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparallel pleasure. The dopamine hit the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens. Now

that was really good. But let's talk about the news. So, I assume all of you know by now that there was some action in Venezuela. So, I'll give you a little background on it as people storm in and then we'll talk about what does it all mean. But I should tell you that after the show, so after the podcast, uh Owen and Gregorian will be hosting um a spaces afterparty. Now, the plan was to um which is very nice of Owen to ask people how I had how I had influenced people, but I think the Venezuela story is going to overwhelm that and that would be okay with me.

So, don't feel bad if you think talking about Venezuela is more interesting. So, I woke up this morning thinking, you know, maybe it'd be good for me not to be in the headlines for once because I've been in the headlines for a few days. And uh I look on X and Dilbert is trending. Venezuela gets attacked and Dilbert is still trending on X. So, guess I'll have to go with it. All right. So, you know, I've often tell you that if Trump has multiple options for doing something, he typically picks the option that looks the strongest.

And he did it again. So, I'm starting to think that you could predict his actions fairly fairly accurately by just saying what's the strongest thing you could do. Now, you might say that the strongest thing would be to send in the whole military, but I would say stronger than that would be to send in special forces of some of some type and grab the leader of the country and take him back for uh for legal process. To me, that seems like the strongest thing, I think. So, that's what happened. So late at night, um, Trump authorized the military, specifically some helicopters. So I guess we set our 160th special operations aviation regiment called Soar known as the Night Stalkers. So I guess we went in strong. Uh there have been a lot of practice, a lot of preparation and allegedly um no casualties on the American side.

None. Now I have not heard if there were casualties on the Venezuelan side, but I imagine there were. So Trump watched the whole operation from, you know, some undisclosed place and watched them, you know, I guess we have the ability to go through metal doors um and get people. So Maduro and his wife have now been arrested and brought back to America. Now the all the people who don't know anything about the Constitution um are going to be arguing with other people who don't know much about the Constitution. And I I'm sort of in that category. I'm no I'm no constitutional expert when it comes to uh you know what we can and cannot do militarily. But the argument is that this is not a military action.

[clears throat] is a legal action and that we can go anywhere to pick up a criminal or a accused criminal, alleged criminal and that this should be seen as a uh a Department of Justice action that happened to be supported by a number of entities including the military. So Pam Bondi is telling us what the charges are. So the charges against Maduro that the ex head of Venezuela um he's being charged with narco terrorism conspiracy uh cocaine importation conspiracy possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.

But that last one's weird. But apparently that gives uh that gives enough cover that Trump can do what he did. But if he had remained there and you know fought militarily and tried to defeat their army or something that would be an entirely different conversation. Now, people who are my age um or in that zone, you might remember that the US did this in 1989 um against the Panama uh leader Noriega. And we went in, but there was some there was violence and death there. Um and we grabbed Noriega. We brought him back to the United States and he was prosecuted and put in American jail. So this has some precedent in the sense that if you can if you can sell it as a um a legal system and not a military system, you can get away with it.

Yeah, there's some precedent that Obama uh went after some individuals. So, it's different to go after an individual than it is to go after a country. All right. So, apparently the operation was paired with a bunch of strikes on their military and um intelligence operations, but that might have been a decoy. Um is maybe just a suppression suppressive action. The reporting which you can't yet trust. Remember, it's still fog of war, right? Fog of war. So, you can't trust everything you hear about this. So, be cautious. Fog of war.

Um, but the the reporting, at least on Fox News, is that the Venezuelans put up no resistance and that some of them just went home. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the Venezuelan military put up no resistance and they just sort of walked away? Maybe. I don't know. That one's a little hard to believe. There may have been some people who walked away. All right. Well, so Maduro is being in a larger sense accused of being the head of a cartel called the cartel of deos souls. So the the accusation is that he was never a legitimate leader. Um so he's it's also is not a true decapitation strike some would say because he was never really the leader of the country legitimately.

That's more of an argumentative thing. All right. So there was tons of um coordination between the DEA and the military and the CIA and the Department of Justice. So that part's impressive. And waiting in the wings is his probable or at least possible replacement, a woman named Maria Karina Machado, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize already for being sort of the opposition, but um she would not really been able to take over the country until Maduro was gone. So allegedly there will be an election allegedly that election will be unrigged.

[gasps] The reality is that especially if Trump believes Venezuela was involved in rigging our elections, and he might, I don't know if he does, uh there might be a little payback happening here. The payback would be, oh well, good luck with your next election, but we're going to make sure that it goes our way. And when I say our way, I mean America gets a a leader that will, you know, be on our side essentially. She will be called a puppet. And maybe that's true. Feels like it would be. Yeah. Marco Rubio has told us that Maduro is not the legitimate leader.

So that's kind of important. All right. Um, now let's talk about the chessboard. This is the part I find fascinating. How long will it take before some part of social media says this is all Israel and blames Israel? I woke up this morning thinking, well, at least this won't be blamed on Israel. But but it might be it might be blamed on Israel. We'll take you through it. Excuse me. Um so there are a number of chess pieces and one of them is that Venezuela and Iran have been historically they've supported each other to get around sanctions and to get around other big economic problems. So Iran would be weakened um by Venezuela falling. it would lose an ally. It would lose one way that they could have, you know, made some money in case their other sources got dried up.

Um, at the same time, by coincidence, there's all these uprisings in Iran and uh Trump has said he would if the if the uh protesters get shot that he would intervene militarily. Now, that didn't sound like as much of a uh it didn't sound like as much of a threat until you see what he just did in Venezuela. So, if you're Iran and you're the leaders of Iran and you're wondering, huh, will Trump really do that? Would Trump actually attack us and depose our leader? Well, nobody knows. It could be a bluff, but if you just watched Trump go into Venezuela as strong as you possibly could, it would be reasonable to worry about it if you were ran. So, could it be that, you know, that uh Trump's timing is either lucky because it would make things go better in Iran, at least for the American side, uh or is that, you know, is it planned or just purely coincidence? I don't know. But it's definitely going to make people sort

blah blah blah. You know, he only did it for Israel. You know, that's coming. So, that's not my claim, by the way. So, I'm not making the claim that I know why it happened or what the timing was or anything. But I do wonder if the only reason is about the drugs because so far the Trump administration is making it all about the drugs. But I've seen push back where people will say, "No, Venezuela is not our biggest problem when it comes to drugs. So you wouldn't do all this if it's only about the drugs." I don't know. He might remember I always say he takes the strongest path. So the strongest path would be this. So that would predict that uh that maybe it was about the drugs and this is just the strongest path. Don't know. Then there's the Cuba connection [clears throat] because Cuba apparently relies on Venezuela for, you know, some of their um energy slasheconomic survival.

I'm a little bit skeptical that Cuba will fall because of this, but things will get a lot tougher, but maybe. So my guess is there's not about Cuba, but it might be just might be one of the side benefits that could happen if you believe that Cuba's um government falling is a benefit. It would create a lot of pressure for uh the United States. However, also on the chessboard uh and this is not my own great idea. uh it could strengthen Trump's support among Latino voters. So, especially the older ones, they might say, "Finally, somebody did something about Venezuela and that would that will weaken Cuba and that's what we've been waiting for." But I don't think you would do it just for votes.

Again, it could be that that would just be a side benefit. So, what's what's so hard about figuring this out is that all these countries are connected and it's not entirely obvious if uh doing something with one country is intentionally about the other countries or it just works out that way. I don't know. And then there's the China connection. So, China gets energy from uh let's see, Iran supplies 10 to 15% of China's oil. Uh and Venezuela supplied or did about 5% of China's oil. Now, if you added them together at the high side, would that take China's oil oil supply down by 15 20%.

I don't know. And and is that a goal or could could China easily replace that much oil? Maybe they just get more of it from Russia or something. So I don't know. But uh next on the chess board is Mexico. So the the head of Mexico who is also credibly being accused of being um in the pocket of the cartels is of course reject rejecting this military action and uh but not very hard. So there's a there's an objection to it, but they're not going crazy about it. And it could be that the leader of Mexico is wondering if she's next because it does seem to me that if they if the US put together a set of indictments, I guess that's what it would be against Maduro, don't you think they're also looking at um misbehaving by Shan Bob, the head of Mexico? Don't you think that some part of the US machinery already has evidence that she's part of the cartel? So, she's probably looking at this and saying,

"Wait, are you saying that they're going to go nab the head of a country because they can they have a good case against that person?" Because that would be her. So, whether or not we plan to do that, it would put a lot of pressure on her to do whatever we wanted. So we might say, well, you know, maybe you're next. How about you give us a good trade deal? Or maybe you're next. Maybe you pay for the wall, whatever it is. So that's part of the chess board. And then Colombia, which has so far not been part of the military action, is probably a bigger source of drugs than Venezuela.

So Colombia would be also be in the chess board would also be wondering if they're next and I think they also have a leader who might be implicated as part of a cartel, right? I think so. Yeah, it puts command on notice. It basically puts all these countries on notice. is so this action has been compared to the fall of the Berlin wall in that it could have this ripple effect um that's pro-democracy or at the very least pro uh pro-American isn't fun I I hate to say how much fun it is trying to figure out what's going on but there's a lot of moving parts Then let's talk about Taiwan also on the chessboard. If you were if you were China and you watched what Trump is doing right now, would you get going and attack Taiwan or would you say, "Holy we'd better wait at least three years until Trump's gone and then figure out what we can do." I feel like if China is smart, and they are, that they

say, "Well, step back. Step back. this would not be the time to piss off Trump because he always acts in the strongest path. So that they wouldn't be able to counter on him standing down. I don't know if he was he would attack China if Taiwan was attacked, but they would have to be worried about it. All right. Apparently, the Venezuelan defense chief uh put out a quote that said, quote, "We will now surrender. We will now surrender. Your leader is gone. You don't need to surrender." Did we ask you to surrender? I don't remember anybody asking, [clears throat] but he has to say something.

All right? So you might wonder in the broader context um what is the economic impact of this? So I went to Grock and asked that you know what's the economic impact on Venezuela? Yeah. This this situation. So apparently you know lots of energy implications. uh it would allow other countries to be less able to evade sanctions because Venezuela would help other countries evade sanctions if they didn't like America and uh let's see the geopolitical importance this is from Grock so I just asked Grock you know give me the context um Venezuela has been a key part of an anti-American coalition so that would have include, you know, Russia and China. Uh, but if you take out Venezuela, uh, it doesn't take out the whole coalition, but it weakens it.

Um, we didn't want Iran to have some kind of a friendly presence this close to our country, and apparently they did because they were friendly with Venezuela. So, if we remove the option for Iran to have some kind of a fuller um anti-American presence in our hemisphere, that seems like a good idea. Then there's a military importance. Did you know that Iran transferred drone making technology to Venezuela and they're training the Venezuelans since 2006? Um, so that's not good. So that would weaken uh one way that Iran could get at us.

Yes, my voice does seem raspy. You're just noticing a good observation. Yes, my voice is raspy. Yeah, you may not have heard the news. All right. So, um, Jonathan Turley is reminding us that constitutionally this this should be fine, but people are going to argue that it isn't. All right. Um, there will be lots more developing, but did I hit I hit the high points, right? So, I was trying to give you the quick, you know, chessboard view of it because it's going to be the only news today. The news is just going to be about that. Um, however, you come here for more than just news about one story. So, with your permission, because I don't have much to add to that besides what I said, uh, I'm going to talk about some other fun news stories. I know, I know this story is so interesting. the Venezuela one that it's hard to imagine if there's anything else happening. But you want to spend a full

hour here with me, right? So, we'll do some other stories after I take a sip. Pause for a sip of whatever you got. Sip it if you got it. All right. Um, so some other stuff. I'm going to be at the risk of boring myself, but it'll give us something to hang out and talk about. Okay. Anyway, uh Katherine Herage, who many of you know as a you know notable uh um important journalist, um she's talking about why X became the center of real journalism and that the mainstream media is no longer the dominant source of news basically. So here's her take on it which I liked that reach meaning who sees what the reach is no longer about cable slots or front pages.

Uh it's about access to decision makers and business leaders and highly engaged readers in the same place at the same time. And that's why independent journalism didn't just survive the collapse of trusted corporate media. It moved to X and took the audience with it. Uh now she says there's no question that X is the platform with the greatest reach. Now I agree with all that and here's the part I didn't fully understand that independent media could never have grown unless they also had access to important people and and that they also had a way to publish to everybody who wanted to see them. So X allowed them to have a way to get to everybody. So that was automatically going to be better than you know a uh a media source you have to watch a commercial. I would add to this that on X it's very easy to not see any commercials. So if you give me a choice of looking at the news with commercials

or looking at the news without commercials that's not a contest right. So X has an automatic you know business business business model advantage but the part about access to decision makers that is entirely because the podcasters did a good job and they did a good job of networking and especially on X uh they would get boosted. So, do you think that Benny Johnson would have had such a big impact or Megan Kelly or you more controversial Tucker Carlson? Do you think any of that would have happened without X? I don't think so. And then once she gives him credibility because you're doing good work, then suddenly you can ask President Trump for an interview and he says yes. Or you could ask, you know, lower level um admin people and they'll say yes because they're not going to be um they're not going to be stabbed in the back like the mainstream media would.

And they have huge audiences now bigger than the networks. So yeah, this is a good observation, Katherine Herage. And it doesn't look like there's any way that's going to reverse, right? And again, like so many stories, you you have to add to it. It's only possible because of Elon Musk. Think about how many stories you have to say that about now. All the Doge stuff, all the fraud stuff. Um, only possible because Elon exists and was doing the right thing. Well, here's a story from the college fix that that more than half of UC Berkeley disability accommodations are based on emotional reasons.

Emotional reasons. Half. Right. So, there are lots of legitimate reasons for people with disabilities to want accommodations. So, if you want a ramp, that's a good reason. if you need a wheelchair access. Yeah, th those are perfectly acceptable and desired uh accommodations. But apparently people are coming in with psycho psychological and emotional disabilities. Uh one student famously got got approval to bring his mother to class. uh and it's the most disabled people registered at UC Berkeley since they started collecting data. Now, the reason I bring this up is not this particular story. The reason I bring it up is that uh looking for scams and frauds is now the new national sport.

So, at least in my bubble, every day I wake up, there's somebody searching for a new scam or uncovering a fraud. I'm really happy about that because that's the only way any of this gets fixed. The only way it gets fixed is if people start thinking it's important to find fraud. Even I didn't think it was important a few years ago. If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would said, "Yeah, I think I would have said something like Governor Divine Dewine Divine Dewine said that it was just the cost of doing business." You know, I would have looked at it like a 7-Eleven store and I said, "Yeah, of course there's theft." Yeah, 7-Eleven store. Of course, there's theft. But, you know, it's not that big a deal. But today, what we know is that it's the biggest deal. It's a existential threat to the entire civilization.

And if we don't pay attention to it, that's on us. Do you know why we're paying attention to it? I already gave you a hint. His name is Elon Musk who boosted uh um recent reports. Well, he he's boosting a lot of reports from independent media about how bad things are. Would we be in this situation where people are really really paying attention to fraud if Elon Musk did not do that or did not exist? No. I think he gives full credit for that. Again, it's really amazing. Um, and then then I'm having a problem reading the news lately because there are so many stories that look like what I've already seen but might not be. So, can you tell me is this a news story or did we already know that according to news nation that the assisted living facilities Oh, Gateway Pund is writing about this um that the assisted living facilities are often just somebody's house and there's no service there at all. Did we

already know that? Because it feels like a repeat. But on the other hand, maybe it's just a new place and a new new set of data. But in my bubble, every time I wake up, somebody Republican usually is uncovering something fraudulent, and that's a good thing. Next, you you may or may not be following the story of Act Blue. If you went onto the street and randomly stopped people and said, "Tell me what you know about Act Blue, how many people could answer that question?" Now, you're my audience is very uh plugged in. So probably half 3/4ers of you would know Act Lewis, but if you don't, they are a Democrat organization that raises money for a variety of Democrat candidates. But what they do that's special is that they take small donations. I know. I'll get to it. I'll get to it.

They allegedly allegedly take only small donations from American American sources and then they distribute it to candidates. The reality and they're being uh investigated for this. Uh I believe Trump has authorized the investigation. Uh the reality might be allegedly that they're a fraudulent organization from top to bottom. And what they really do is they take large donations, maybe from Democrat billionaires, maybe from overseas, and then they pretend with fancy bookkeeping that it came from uh individuals. Now, that would be really, really illegal, but that's the accusation.

So um what if, and again, this falls into that category of every day I wake up and there's new alleged fraud of massive scales. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars here. And I do believe that it's been demonstrated, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, there's plenty of evidence that, uh, one person's address has been used multiple times. that would be illegal because it means so it's not real or that people who are not actively following politics have been donating allegedly small dollar amounts for years but they don't even know about it. If you go to their house and say did you give money to um act blue they would say what's that? No they didn't they didn't give any money.

So even though it's an allegation, yeah, it's called submerfing. Um I feel there's a 100% chance that they're a massive criminal organization. I also wonder if it's big enough that Democrats could not win anything without them. What would the midterms look like without act blue being able to put big money into people's pockets? Different, right? Doesn't mean that, you know, it would go a different direction, but it wouldn't be the same. So, that's happening. Also, good news that's being investigated. There's an article in hot air by David Stro that guess is something I've been saying. I didn't know if anybody else would have the same observation, but he did.

It goes like this that sorry hiccups. It goes like this that the psychology I'm this I'm going to paraphrase. This is not what he said exactly, but the American um psychology is that things were pretty good and our systems mostly worked and that we were not in sitting inside a gigantic fraud. Well, now that we know about the NOS's and we know about the all the Somalian fraud, um, our brains are primed in a way they've never been before to imagine mass conspiracies being true because the the scope of how big the fraud is with the with the fake daycarees and everything else. The scope of that is so big that once you learn that was a real thing and that it's going on for years, years and it's right under people's noses and people can see all the signs. You could see the the smoking gun and it didn't matter. You know, there could be news reports and it didn't matter. But now it matters.

And what does that do? This is Stum's observation and mine as well. What does that new psychology do to how we think about the election integrity? It changes it. And I think we need a new name for this. A name for the phenomenon where there's a whole bunch of bad things happening individually, but when you catch them individually, they don't seem like a big enough deal to, you know, change the world. So, if you looked at the uh let's say the uh Minnesota fraud and let's say you heard a report that there were some fraudulent uh children's charity, you would say to yourself, well, you know, happens.

Uh they should go to jail. But you would think it would be isolated. But what really is happening is this. It's an immense diversified machine in which you can't even keep track of how many frauds there are within the larger scope of things. Now, I would argue that the pandemic had that same quality that if you looked at the um individual bad actors, you would notice that there were people lying and maybe people doing things for, you know, for money, etc. But you wouldn't necessarily see the scope of it. The scope of it was unbelievable. And also unbelievable. I said it twice because it mattered. You wouldn't that's that's the problem I had in the beginning of the pandemic. I would hear reports of let's say data that was ignored and I would say yeah that can happen. Data is ignored. Somebody would say this study was suppressed and I'd say yeah yeah things happen.

study could get suppressed, but my brain was at the time incapable of imagining the vast scope of the fraud. Did you have the same issue? You could tell that something was wrong and you could see the buckets of the wrongness, but you just couldn't wrap your head around how big it was. Now, that's the same as these NGO frauds. you really couldn't wrap your head around how big it was and therefore you were frozen into inaction. Well, back to David Stum's point. Remember how there were many, many claims of election irregularity and I would hear them and I'm guilty.

That's totally guilty. And I would hear a claim and I would say, "Yeah, yeah, maybe that really did happen. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but it was in this little bucket." Then you hear another one. You say, "All right, well, there's more than one. It's in this little bucket." But it wasn't until maybe this year that we could understand that all the different ways that the election was, I think, rigged in my opinion that you would never be able to put your head around how massive the attempt of rigging was. And so you can't deal with it. So you default to, well, happens. It's in a little bucket. If we catch people doing things, we'll try to take them to court. But it's not really, you know, it's not about the whole system. It is the whole system. So, there needs to be a name for these gigantic frauds that we can't recognize because we're only seeing the tree and we're not seeing the forest. Oh, wait. We already

have that. All it is is another one of those. You can't you can't see the forest for the trees. So you look at a tree, you're like, well, you know, kind of sucks that that tree is unhealthy. Hey, who cut down that tree? But if you're looking at the tree, you're missing that it's the forest. That might be a big deal. So my recommend my uh prediction for 2026 is that the uh our understanding of the size of the election fraud and we might be finding this out through act blue for example is enormous. We might find out that it's not a coincidence that electronic electronic voting machines are used in battleground states. That might not be a coincidence.

It could be that one of the benefits that Trump will get out of attacking Venezuela um brought you up the wrong tree. It could be that we'll learn if something changes in the leadership of Venezuela. Imagine the imagine a new leader going in and then imagine Trump saying, "All right, we we helped install you. We are going to be your friend. will help you rebuild Venezuela. But you're going to have to tell us, did your guys or any Venezuelans have anything to do with rigging our systems? And then maybe we'll find out. So prediction, this will be the year we find out that the election was more more than the trees, that it was about the whole forest.

Well, 2026 just started out interesting. Uh Trump, well, in many ways, but Trump uh posted a meme that said we're entering the golden age and also separately that the hunter be the hunted becomes the hunter. So, those are two big themes for uh 2026. How many of you think I had anything to do with those two things? because I've been saying for a while that uh we would be entering the golden age, but then the pandemic blew that off track. And I've been saying for a while that Republicans would be hunted if um if Biden had won the election. And sure enough, they were hunted January 6, etc.

Oh, add January 6 to the list of things that were too big to understand. Yeah, the whole January 6 insurrection hoax um it's just bigger than we could imagine it could be a hoax, but that's what made it invisible. Yeah. the the scale of that hoax when in fact the real insurrection was Democrats trying to remove Trump. But they did such a good job of, you know, creating a this fake January 6 select committee and hunting down all the the people that they took a thing that um they reversed it essentially. They reversed reality because at the time they had the power to do that. They were the insurrectionists.

And the best way they could cover up for the fact that they were the insurrectionists is by accusing the other side of being the insurrectionists. And that's what they did almost successfully. Well, believe it or not, time for a sip.

Yeah, the J6 thing was professionally produced. That's another hint that it wasn't based on facts. Well, amazingly, PG, the power company here in uh California, is for the fourth time in two years going to lower the rates. So apparently they, you know, pulled a bunch of moves that allowed them to lower the rates. So good for them. I was not aware of that, but it will take it will allow Governor Nuome to say that he lowered costs. Now, as far as I know, Nuome had nothing to do with the fact that PG& lowered their costs, but whoever's in charge always gets the blame. Whoever's in charge always gets the credit. And if if Californians think or even if the n if he runs nationally, he's going to be able to say he lowered rates and there's no indication that anybody but PNG Eene was behind the lowering of the rates, but I'm glad they did. It's not a huge amount of money.

So, but it's just now up. It seems like a big deal if it just doesn't go up. New York Post is reporting that a court has ruled in favor of the Second Amendment uh and open carry in California. So I guess there was a law um limiting open carry of firearms and the uh which court was it? US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit by 2 to1 said that was too anticonstitutional. Am I wrong in thinking that the Ninth Circuit is usually liberal leading? That's true, right? I don't really follow the course that much, but can you confirm this in the comments that the Ninth Circuit usually is left leading?

Is that true? Um anyway, so it surprised me that they got a 2 to1 ruling in favor of the Second Amendment, I would say. All right. Um I'm going to file this next story under It is true. Okay, I'm getting confirmation. Thank you. Yep. Well, was sort of a surprise. Um, did you know News Newsmax is reporting this that the Department of Justice uh I think you knew this part uh as requested Minnesota and uh I think 21 states in total. They look like they're all lefty states. I think they're all blue states. I'm just looking at it quickly. Either all or most are blue states. But they've been asked by the Trump administration to produce voting records because we want to see if there are any fake uh voters on the roles. What do you think happens when you ask for voting records?

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that Act Blue, they changed their accounting so you can't tell what they were doing. So, as soon as the uh as soon as act blue was investigated, they immediately changed how they record things. So, they wouldn't be able to tell if they're up to anything bad. Now, that's pretty on the nose, isn't it? Yeah. By the way, Marcella, remind me that the on the nose thing is something I use a lot. On the nose. So that would certainly suggest a uh possibility of guilt. But what do you think is going to happen when the states are asked quite reasonably quite reasonably to produce records that show that their voters are real eligible voters? Well, we don't know yet, but they have 15 days to produce it. And I'm going to guess it will be less produced than the Epstein files. I do not think they'll produce it. I think they will do everything they can to and lose the

records. You know, maybe maybe what will really happen is uh they'll say, "Oh, we lost those records." All all 50. I think all 21 states are going to suddenly have a problem. Oh, yeah. We had those records, but yeah, they they weren't backed up. But what I don't expect to happen is that the federal government will get the records. And why? Well, obviously. Why? Because it's fraudulent. Obviously. So, I don't think there's any other way this could go. There's no way they're going to give them records that prove that their their voters are not real, right? There isn't any chance that they'll do that. So, they're either going to fight it infinitely in court or they're going to have a have a water leak or something. But we're not gonna see this. Here's a weird story.

Um I talk about this a lot lately, but you know the defense um the defense company called Enderil that Palmer Lucky um is the head of apparently he's made the claim that Enderil has some kind of technology called the Endril's Seabed Century. And he says, and I quote, I swear I'm not making this up. He said, "I can know where all the whales are, the submarines, boats, where all the divers are." Do you believe that? Do you believe that he has in place technology that can identify where all the whales are and all the boats?

Wouldn't that make it? Um, he also says submarines. Now, obviously, there's a great military value to that, but here's my question. Are submarines stealthy enough that uh we or anybody else could make one that's invisible to this technology? Or can he see everything? And if he can see everything, does that mean we already know that there are no alien bases under the ocean? Because I don't believe he believes there are alien bases. Maybe one of the reasons he doesn't believe it is that he can see everything under the ocean and if any alien craft had uh had enter um he would have seen it.

Is that possible? Oh, that's a really interesting little story. Well, the Washington Examiner Naomi Lynn Lim is writing about how the midterms usually go to the party that's not in power. And uh Trump has has questioned why that happens. You why why does the other side almost always not always but almost always, how do they almost always win the midterm? And I don't know if we know the answer to that exactly. It might be psychological. It might be because people only cared about the head of the ticket and if there's no presidential race, you know, the devoted people don't show up. Is that it? Might be some combination of things. But here's the interesting part.

So his um chief of staff, Susie Wilds, who gets a lot of credit for being smart, they say they want to put Trump on the ballot, you know, in the conceptual way, not the actual way. And her thinking is that the Democrats are going to put him on the ballot by just saying, you know, you have to thwart him or defeat him because he's still president. And the best way to do that would be to, you know, elect a bunch of Democrats in Congress. So Susie says she wants to put Trump on the ballot. I think she said she hasn't told Trump yet, but what she wants is for Trump to um campaign like he is on the ballot, but you know, he'd be campaigning for surrogates and proxies and stuff. Um that will probably happen. But in this story was a little piece of data that I think was contradicted later in the story, but I'd never heard this before.

uh that people will vote for who they think understands their problem, not who has the best solution. Have you ever heard that? It's the first time I've ever heard that. And I I question whether that's true. But even if the Republicans came up with a great plan, um, if they didn't show that they really cared or really understood, let's say, affordability. So, you could argue that if Trump does a great job on affordability, it wouldn't matter to us to uh the midterms partly because that would be in rearview mirror by the time it happened. Right? So, people don't vote for the past. They vote for do you understand what I care about as their their way of understanding whether something would be done about it.

So at the moment the Democrats were doing a better job of acting like affordability is the main thing that would beat the Republican plan of saying oh we did a good job on energy and eggs and a few other things. So that would be a winning position. So, can Trump reverse that? Can he can he show enough empathy and enough of a plan going forward such as healthcare? Uh, also in the article was the idea that if the Republicans don't have a health care plan, any kind of healthare plan or one that doesn't sound good, they can't win because that would show a lack of empathy.

The Democrats still have the option of saying, "We understand your pain. Uh, you know, we're going to do something about it, and what we're going to do about it is throw massive amounts of money at it, and you know, that'll fix it." Now, if you're a voter, you say to yourself, "Oh, I don't like overspending." But if they can immediately solve my problem, and they immediately understand it, which is what it would sound like, that's a winning play, winning proposition. So, at the very least, Trump would have to have a Republican plan that doesn't sound bash or crazy. and he would have to show that even though he got a few victories on affordability that uh he has so much more to do. So if he if he can sell both of those ideas, we have so much more to do. It's a top priority. I I totally understand why you want more affordability.

You know, we're going to make it happen. Here's one of the things we're going to do for healthcare. But short of that, the Republicans have a lossy path. All right. Um, I saw this quote today from Elon Musk once again, always in the news. He thinks that Neurolink, the chip you put in people's heads, um, in the future there's nothing physically to stop them from being able to restore full bodily function. So, in other words, if you had, let's say, a break in your spinal cord, at the moment, there's nothing we can do about it. But if you had a neural link chip, not yet. Not yet. They can't do it yet. But in the future, it will be able to bypass the uh the disturbance in your um your existing nerves and just send the signal to where it needs to be. And that people who are paralyzed, completely paralyzed, could get back 100% of their function.

Isn't that amazing? That's so amazing. Now that they'll be too late to help me, of course, but uh just the fact that he's got that as a target and he usually hits his targets. Yeah, it's just amazing. So, thank you for that, Elon Musk, on behalf of all paralyzed and semi paralyzed people like me. All right. Um, immediately after the show, uh, Owen Gregorian will be setting up a spaces event on X. Spaces, if you didn't know, is the audio only. Doesn't cost anything to participate. Uh, it's audio only and uh, people will be invited up to make their points and say things. Now, uh, this will happen immediately after I'm done. You have to give them a few minutes just to fire it up. So immediately is not exactly immediately.

Um but if you want to find it, you if you follow me in X, I've reposted it the link to it. And if you don't see that, just look for Owen Gregorian and you'll find it quickly. Now the the original plan that Owen had was to ask people if I've helped them in some way and make that the theme, but that was before Venezuela. um got attacked. So I would not be I would not be insulted if the spacious event is more about Venezuela because that's sort of a you know top of mind at the moment. But uh a lot of people love the spaces. They sometimes they'll run two or three hours because people just want to keep going and it's amazing. All right, so that is all I have for you. I think I made it about an hour, didn't I?

pretty good. Timed it perfectly. All right, I'm going to go private just for a minute with the locals. Um, like I said, people locals probably want to head over to to spaces pretty soon, so I'll keep it Oh, hiccups. So, I'll keep it short. But thanks for joining. locals, I'll be with you just to wrap things

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26"?

Scott Adams (Guest), Owen Gregorian (Guest), Katherine Herage (Guest), Pam Bondi (Guest), Jonathan Turley (Guest).

What is "Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26" about?

The discussion centers on recent events in Venezuela, highlighting their significance while also touching on personal anecdotes and the influence of trending topics, like Dilbert and Donald Trump's decision-making. The speaker invites audience participation and reflects on their own media presence amid major news.

What is mentioned in this Real Coffee with Scott Adams episode?

30 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Donald Trump, Act Blue, Department of Justice, Manuel Noriega, Katherine Herage, Owen Gregorian. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Episode 3061 CWSA 01/03/26"?

The episode runs 1 h 1 min; the transcript is about 7,909 words in 60 timestamped sections.

More from Real Coffee with Scott Adams

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.