with them. We should bring all of our companies home.

Now this other news thing is that Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and multi-multi hundreds of billions, I don't know he's super rich guy, I guess he criticized the regime and he disappeared. So far for a week now. It's really hard for a billionaire to disappear. If somebody like Elon Musk or Bill Gates were not seen for a week and it were a national story it wouldn't take long to find him. You know hey he was at the retreat or he just took some break from social media or something. But it's been a week and we don't know where one of the richest people in China is. And very public guy like Jack Ma is always on TV. He's like very public.

So what if he never shows up? Because that's possible. We might never see him again. He could be making shoes with the Uyghurs right now. Anything could happen. Now I imagine he will turn up soon but his attitude will be adjusted is my guess. I think the regime probably will talk to him and say you know if you'd like to stay alive and a billionaire let me tell you how to do it and it's not the way you're playing it right now.

But the other thing that's interesting is that Jack Ma is no ordinary guy. Whatever it was that turned him into one of the richest people in the world was not an accident. He's got skills and he's got billions of dollars and skills and did I mention skills? And here's my question. As strong as the Chinese Communist Party is, I mean it's immensely strong, I don't know if they're messing with the right person right now. Because if he's already got a little problem with the leadership and they're doing something with him right now you don't want to let him out. Let me say this a different way. If China is doing something bad to Jack Ma they better finish him because you don't want that guy loose with his billions and really, really mad at the regime. Because he is important. He has enough probably inside knowledge, contacts, people he could bribe. He could probably take down the government because I think that any billionaire in this country who was really serious about taking down the government could have a good shot at it.

Now China of course you assumed that they would close him down the minute he tried anything. He'd obviously have to leave the country and he'd have to get most of his money out if he could. But if he gets out of the country with his money and they tortured him, Jack Ma could take down China. I think they've got a dangerous situation on their hands. I don't think they can ever let him out if they're doing something bad to him now. They might reach some agreement where they don't do something too bad. Maybe just some house arrest. And then when they've talked to him enough he just feels like I don't want to go through this again. It wasn't that bad. It was just house arrest for a week but I don't, you know next time it could be bad. So I just won't say bad things about China. I would think that's the way it's going to go. I think that he's a smart guy and they'll just figure something out and he'll just shut up about China.

But did I mention he's Jack Ma? Now I don't know much about him. I just know that you don't get where he is by not having skill, not being brave, not doing things that people don't expect, not being able to push through a brick wall as if it didn't exist. So I don't know what his real capabilities are but one assumes they're pretty good. China might be in trouble. We'll see.

That is my show for the day and I've got some things to do so I'm gonna run off and do those things. Somebody says Zuckerberg took down Trump. You could make that argument. Yeah you know there were too many other variables to isolate one thing but if Zuckerberg and Facebook did not exist Trump would probably be president. I mean that's not an unreasonable thing to think.

All right I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you tomorrow.

All right YouTubers you've got another minute. Why do you think the Trump tape was leaked? Well it was because his enemies probably thought that they could make something out of it. Now the interesting part is that a lot of people are going to hear the president make a lot of claims about election fraud. So there's at least some thought that maybe the president's team released it because by turning it into national news which just has to be covered all of his allegations get out there. So it might be good for the president to do that. Explain lead stories. I don't know what that means. Calendar drama.

So as somebody pointed out on Twitter the Dilbert calendar is printed in China. And so the question was hey if Dave Chappelle can get Netflix to take his old show off the air can't I get my publisher to use a different printing company? That's not exactly a good analogy. If I were Chappelle and I had an ancient show that I probably made little or no money on at this point and all Netflix had to do is just click a box and it doesn't appear anymore because it's probably as simple as that right? Just click a box and that little part of their business just doesn't exist anymore. Probably doesn't make much difference to Chappelle because the way Hollywood deals are made even though it was his show I doubt he had profits going forward. I doubt it. Or if he did there weren't much. So he didn't give up anything. So Chappelle basically gave up nothing of any value and in order for Netflix to give him what he wanted they probably just had to check a box and they couldn't even tell the difference in their profits because it's one of thousands and thousands of properties.

By comparison my publisher I believe does all of their printing for all of their properties in China. It's not easy for them to stop doing that right away. They can't just check a box and then there's no printing in China. Do you have any idea how hard it would be for a major publishing company to change where they publish all of their books? It's a big deal. Now this is why I promote an executive order that just orders companies out of China, American companies. Because your publisher, it's not really fair to ask a publisher why don't you decrease your profits by 30 percent and spend your entire next year trying to figure out how to do this thing that there probably isn't even enough capacity in the United States to get done or you'd have to take it somewhere.

So the Chappelle thing was the smallest possible ask. There's no real cost. I mean immeasurably small and just check a box. Mine would be an entire publishing company working for a year changing everything that they do. Maybe there would be no Dilbert calendars. That would make a big impact on me. It's not the same thing. But I'm on board with getting the Dilbert calendar out of China. So if you wonder what I want it's that. But I also work in the real world and it's not really fair to ask a publisher to make that kind of a change until it's either legally necessary or there's some kind of alternative that doesn't look so bad. You know do it in Vietnam or wherever. So that's where I stand on that.

All right and I will talk to you tomorrow.