It Could Happen Here - 2026 Predictions

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

The gang makes their annual predictions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. CoolZone Media. So I have pulled up Pauly Market and Kalshi. We're going to go through each of the trending predictions right now. Stop. Stop. And then decide where we're going to be putting our last year's profit from Cool Zone coin. We're going to be transferring that on the blockchain to Paulymarket.

And I think we can come out of this year with a big profit. This is how we're relying on funding our operations next year. This is us going forward. Can you check Polymark it real quick, see if Morris is still alive? Jesus, right. It's been three years in a row. So this is our 2026 predictions episode. Like usual, I think we should start by reflecting some of our predictions from last year

to see how right to end wrong we were. The big one, big prediction that we discussed the most as a team, is when is Elon Musk going to distance himself from Trump? or when are they going to break up? Or what do they have their, you know, separation? And each and every one of the extended Cool Zone media team members who works on it could happen here put in a date. And the most accurate guess was from It Could Happen Here's main editor, Adam, who said May 30th,

which was really spot on. So congrats to Adam. Adam is listening to all of us stumbled through our episode. and have to edit them all. Cutting all the burps out, yeah. Actually, actually, you know, maybe. To really give credit back to us, maybe influenced your wisdom.

Oh, God, God, why? Let me reflect him, his glory on myself. We really made him wiser, and thus we're all wrong ourselves. Adam should probably take in more psychological damage. It's a good, you know, it means that we're smarter as a group entity, as a hive mind.

We're all smarter than our own individual intelligence, which Adam has the most access to. just like ants. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, no, Adam did pretty good on that May 30th, I guess. So there you go. Sophie also close at May 6th. And then Molly Conger June 10th, also kind of in that zone.

But Adam definitely hit it spot on. We had a few other predictions. Some of them were predictions. Some of them, I guess, were kind of more hopes and dreams, which sadly did not come to pass. The Myanmar Junta was predicted by me and James, Junta, was predicted by me and James not making it out 2025. They've kind of stuck on to power. Yeah. Yeah, they've rallied pretty substantially, actually. It's unfortunate. Netanyahu still is prime minister. I did predict that Assad would become a Russia Today host,

which I think is a good prediction, but did not happen. That could still happen. It still might happen in the future. I'm waiting for them to hire him for a fucking podcast. I don't think I predicted this, but I'm not surprised he's just playing video games. No, he's just pulled up in a hotel playing video games now. Yeah. During our death segment, I laid out a new theory of death based on Spotify Rapp, which the previous two years had some important deaths associated with Spotify Rapt Day. No big Spotify Rapped deaths this year, unfortunately. Though, I did make a death prediction last episode, which did not fully become true, but slightly

became true right after we recorded that episode last year. Before the episode even aired, I predicted that someone would try to assassinate Nick Fuentes while Nick was live streaming, perhaps a deranged fanboy. Days later, just days later, someone showed up outside of Nick's house as he was live streaming with a weapon, allegedly trying to kill him. This person died later that night in an exchange with police. It became this whole thing. But that happened just a few days after I made that prediction. So it technically didn't even happen in 2025, happened still in 2024 before we aired that last episode.

But it was close, was close to some kind of zeitgeist on that. It's unclear if that guy was a fanboy. We really don't know much about him. What's a few other predictions that have like kind of come true, but like it's more in terms of like which degree, I guess? I think my weird terrorism prediction

has been pretty on the money. Yeah, that's, that's, That's continued to be a driver of the discourse. We'll return to that in a sec. Sophie talked about Trump moving some like White House operations to Marlago, which has partially happened. There's been a lot of like a holiday events done at Mara Lago. Sometimes he's working out of there.

Some very odd things, yeah. But on the other hand, he's also just Mara Lagoifying the White House itself with like the ballroom. So it's kind of going in both directions. Mia did put a very firm prediction on like an economic collapse in

2025 in the United States again it's like a slow in terms of like one of the key ideas for our show is like crumbles versus collapse it certainly continued to crumble but I think the actual full collapse point is still upcoming

yeah we'll get into this more later I will say it is kind of baffling to have my prediction completely derailed literally just solely by AI data set or spending? Yes. Which I did not predict that the entire American growth rate would be

an idea set of growth. Yeah. I didn't get that. No, the actual like job market and economy has become so separate from like corporate spending and stock market stuff. And like Robert did actually, I think, hit this a little bit on the head. He talked about how the economy will basically remain identical to Biden's, economy in terms of inflation, but the stock market will continue to go up and housing will keep

getting more expensive, and the left will start to be able to hit conservatives on inflation. And yeah, I think that is pretty much what happened. The economy is in a relatively similar places as it was last year, but, you know, inflation is still ticking. There's some, like, artificial attempts to, like, bring it down by Trump, but it's not, not really working in terms of prices. Yeah. No, the only thing, cropping it up in a numbers term is fucking NVIDIA. Well, NVIDIA less so now, but just irrational exuberance over AI in general. Yeah. But people are complaining about all the same things they were under Biden, just more so. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I have three other points here. I talked about a blue governor deploying

National Guard troops against Trump federal troops. Instead, you got Trump deploying National Guard troops against individual cities with like police kind of caught in between. We still have yet to see the the cool and based moment where like a blue governor deploys National Guard against against DHS. Gavin Newsom deployed his Twitter account. Yeah, no, still. And Sophie talked about there'd be still no clear left wing Joe Rogan. But so many have tried. A lot of people try. I still feel like I could be it. Well, you're going to have to be a lot more on camera, I think. Yeah. I think we'll have to have a lot, a lot more on camera stuff for that. More camera, less hair, larger gut, can't be explained.

More steroids. More steroids. I can do different drugs. Yeah. I mean, Adam Freeland is certainly positioning in that direction. Yeah, I agree, Gary. I agree, Gary. Also, I predicted that something would happen to the Paul brothers, and unfortunately, the only thing that happened is that their HBO show did not get renewed.

When was that boxy back? That was the year prior. And it wasn't good. No. They had a TV show called Paul American. Yeah. Are you serious? I didn't even hear about this.

about this. It was on HBO, but it got canceled. I guess I've just had other stuff going on. I'm kind of glad that I've lived a life where I didn't know that. I have no shame about that. Finally, both myself and like a few of us kind of talked about this is that there would be this movement away from big mobilizations. Some big mobilizations happened in short periods of time, right? Like especially you can point to like L.A. I think it's probably the most significant. But in terms of like actual like countrywide mass mobilizations, right? There's a movement away from this and moving towards lone wolf attacks,

which did happen. And specifically, I predicted there would be like a very, a very sloppy Luigi copy cat in the next four months. And oh boy, did this happen? Multiple in reoccurring times. And this kind of played into this larger model

I was creating, which kind of starts around the assassination of Shinsuwe. creating this escalating series of assassinations happening faster and faster. Because after Shinzo Abe, there was, you know, two years later, Thomas Crooks trying to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Six months later, the United Healthcare CEO, three months after that, someone tried to burn down the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in the middle of the night. One and a half months after that, there was the assassination of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.

Two weeks after that, a Christian missionary named Vance Belter, killed the Minnesota House Speaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, and shot Senator John Hoffman. Next month was the Prairieland assault on an ice facility in July, the exact details of which are still getting figured out in court. But after this, things kind of tapered down for a bit until September with the Charlie Kirk assassination and the attack on the ice facility in Texas, which kills two immigrant detainees. So, yeah, in terms of like, you know, lone wolf style pre-play. assassination style attacks, sloppy copycats, right? People writing messages on bullet casings emulating the United Health Care CEO assassination. This was like a super, super dominant part of 2025.

It's the same pattern. I talked about this at the end of my episode on Mangione after like that came out, right? That like there's copycats after every shooting. This is basically following the same kind of thing we saw in 2019 with the 8-chance shooting. where you like this this is this has been going on from much longer than that but it's a very predictable what you start to expect it it's a very predictable thing which is someone carries out a shooting that actually manages to break through our levels of apathy about violence in this society and keeps everyone's attention and then throughout the year a bunch of different people

try iterations based on that because it's the only way to get attention and that's what all these people are craving right that's the only real currency that still has value I will say, I think this is something positive about the turn away from mass mobilizations was that the lone wolf stuff wasn't the only stuff that happened. There was also the turn towards the thing we talked about in our Q&A episode about the ICE rapid response stuff, which is, you know, there were a few big mobilizations, but then ICE was forced to change their tactics by the fact that giant mobilizations by ICE were going badly for them.

And this did create a whole bunch of sort of decentralized rapid response networks and a whole bunch of actions that were sort of based on this very, very, very much. very decentralized, very, we show up and we do this thing at this place when it's happening. It has stopped some of the things that is happening. It has not stopped all of the horrors that have been happening, but I think it is a positive trend in terms of the way that ICE has been forced to adjust their tactics to do things that are harder and can get less people at a time. So I think that's worth a, as a positive thing, worth sharing of how, yeah, the tactical innovations that activists have been deploying have been forcing ICE to do less devastating raids.

we saw various attempts at mass mobilization right like most successful with the no king's marches which were vast but we also saw those 50-51 things which kind of were not as successful in turning out large numbers of people but like me said like in ventura right like we saw huge numbers of people show up when ice tried to raid a couple of agricultural facilities up there and yeah we're like i was up in l.A we've spoken about that extensively but like garrison said that was probably the biggest mobilization against ice at one time in one place that we saw. It's probably do ad break and then move into predictions for this upcoming year, 2026.

Yep. The stock market is still trying to keep going, although in some parts is like, if not going down, flatlining. Like, Bitcoin did not increase this past year. There's been a few popular, like, rising stocks, like Netflix, which are pretty much at the same spot they were at the start of 2025, still going up and down. Yeah. Games Workshop is up 48%, baby. Well, there can't stop the Warhammer Train, baby. Read Assasanorum Kingmaker. It's great. Sixty-seventh most valuable company in the entire UK, larger than their whole fishing industry, baby. Jesus Christ, really?

Yeah, that's wild, man. Warhammer is load-bearing to the British economy actually. It's the only thing Nottingham really has left. Yeah, after they got rid of the sheriff, it already went downhill for them, hey. That and Robin Hood tourism is the only thing you can do in Nottingham now.

Okay, I have a big one about this, and it's not that the tech bubble is going to collapse. I do think a typebubble is going to pop this year. And about this year, but within the next 12 months, I think you're saying, three weeks left in this year. Well, you know, in 2026, yeah. These are, these are predictions for 2026.

Yeah, in 2026, the tech bubble is going to pop. Yeah, that's not the prediction. The prediction is that in an attempt to recoup the value from all of the completely useless data centers that they will have built that can only run LLMs and can do nothing else, someone is going to invent a cryptocurrency that can only be mined by large language models. And this is going to be one of the big attempt. to recoup the hideous, hideous amounts of capital

that have been dumped into all these data centers is that they're going to have, someone's going to find a way to make a kind of token that can only be generated by large language models, and they're going to try it. Is it going to work? I don't think so, but they are going to try it. It's going to be a big thing.

They're going to push it. It's going to suck. There's going to be a bunch of desperate attempts to, like, once the money starts falling out, which is not to say that I think that AI's going to, even the AI that annoys me is going to go away. But a lot of the irrational exuberance is going to end. And a lot of the startups that are just burning money are going to fail or get acquired. And you're going to see tremendous desperation for people to be like, this is the next

thing. This is the next thing. Throw a bunch of money into this. Like, yeah, that's, that's going to be annoying. No, I mean, I feel like people have been talking about the A bubble popping for a while. I have been hearing things from people who think and track this more than I do, that if it is going to happen, there's indicators that it's more likely to happen in 26 than it was in 25. I'm not going to put money on that on the Kalshi betting markets. But it does seem to be more of a possibility. And you can see this the way people are handling Navidia stock right now and being advised not to buy more stock, but still hold what you have. Yeah, and just where NVIDIA stock has moved over the last month or so. Yeah. So if you look at what's happening with NVIDIA, we might have reached the peak and it might be so Jover for some of these guys. Wow. Yeah, I think the big open question is

how bad it's going to be. There's going to be at least one of these big AI companies, Open AI or Anthropic or somebody that either goes bust entirely or has to get acquired. But again, if you're looking at this rational, and out wishcasting, both Apple, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all perfectly capable of sustaining their rates of burn. Microsoft is still going up, yeah. Facebook is as well.

And I think what you're likelier to see is contraction and consolidation, which is not to say that it's not going to be disastrous for some group. I think there's a good chance that we do see some banks fail because there's some bad investments out there, yeah. They have been doing collateralized loan obligations where the underlying asset is compute time. Yeah. This is more deranged than 2008.

Yeah. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is the most deranged thing I have seen since the tulip crisis. Like, I cannot explain. Good God. That's so insane. I mean, the upside that we have over 2008 is that the thing that all of these bad bets are on isn't people's houses, right?

Yes. Yeah. And so that does, there is a potential that some good comes out of it in terms of like universities, getting access to a lot more compute that they can actually use. for valuable things. Yeah. And people are already suffering under recession conditions if you're like a working class person.

Like you already dealing with the followed effects of this. Just the stock market itself has been insulated from the rest of the economy, which is in a state of recession. And also it can get worse. So a lot of people who aren't like super wealthy are like pro this bubble popping and pro this because then if other people, people in power finally realize how bad it is, They're hopeful that then something might be done to, like, fix some of the material conditions, which I can understand people's, like, you know, point of view there. Yeah, I am not as worried about this being as bad for the average person as 2008 was.

I don't think it's going to be as satisfying as people are hoping it was. It's not going to wipe out or put an end to the annoyance of AI in our lives, although it should make it easier to rationalize some of the shit people have been saying. Like, it should make the craziest of the AI boosters being like, this is going to replace everything. The whole economy will be AI in two years. No one will have a job. That's going to be a lot harder for anybody who's not to not seem like a crazy person while advocating. But the Internet's going to stay annoying, like, unfortunately. I think it's fucked for a little while, that.

Yeah. I think my girly pop economy prediction is that we're going to continue to see influencer shopping. What I mean by that is, like, influencers have been pushing. products like no other in marketing budgets have been going to influencer marketing at a rapid pace. And I think we're going to see the implementation of AI into that more. And I think that that is primarily going to be one of the ways like we might see less or we'll still see as much, but targeted ads. And we're going to see an addition to that. We'll also see like targeted influencer marketing for products. And like it's already pretty gnarly on like TikTok

and Instagram. But I think we're only going to see more. of that and it's just going to, you know, it's going to be peak capitalism care. Something that could be really fun is that if it pops, it's going to line up almost perfectly with 2008 nostalgia. So we'll have recession nostalgia,

which is already starting to happen, in the same time as a whole economic recession. So we'll have the recessions line up in time with their nostalgia cycle. And then it's only a matter of months before you have, you know, like 2010s, like hipster stuff coming, coming back in. Great.

So, you know, it's right there. We're so close. We're already at that, like, you know, 2008 level of 2000's nostalgia. But if it lines up with the recession, then that could be really exciting. Now, I'm also kind of curious as to whether or not we're going to start seeing, you know, a lot of the earliest adopters of AI on a regular basis were very young people using it to cheat at school. Yes.

And just kind of trawling different teacher subredits. and online communities. I'm seeing teachers talk about, like, younger kids, now there being a backlash among very young people against the use of AI and the way it makes people talk. God, I hope. This is kind of coming alongside as you're starting to see a recovery and levels of literacy as schools depart from the bad way

of teaching kids to read that fucked everyone up. I don't have any kind of longitudinal statistical data on this. This is all very much anecdotal. So I'm still waiting to see, Is this a broader trend, or did I just come across some people saying this is a thing that they're seeing in their area? But I'm kind of interested. And there's a degree to which I think some sort of backlash against AI is inevitable just

because of how everyone running society is trying to push people to replace everything with it. Like, that just inevitably is going to irritate the kids because the adults are all doing it, right? We'll see. I think people are increasingly better at spotting AI. like intuitively and very quickly is something I've seen like not in high school but like teaching at like a university level people just being like this is an air response and it's fucking cringe like because the AI always writes in a particularly cringe way right that is very obvious and I've seen that but I genuinely hope more people stop using AI because it is

making education a pretty fucking miserable place to be right now which is a bummer because I like teaching. Let's go on another ad break and then return for some midterm predictions. Hey, isn't everyone excited? It's another election year already. People are saying the most important one of our lives, Garrison. I think so. Just what I was starting to miss it. I'm voting Kamala for every single. Canada. Writing in common

every single state level position. Yeah, sure. She will be the comptroller. All right. You're killing me. Who do we think is going to run? Gavin Newsom. Oh, no, no, this is... That's later. That's later. Midterms.

Yeah. Unfortunately, Sophie, we have another important election. We're not talking about 2028 yet. We don't have to do that until next years. I've skipped the midterms and I was already going to the next level of hell. No, no, no. Who's going to be governor of California, James? God knows. The Dems have not really been putting their strongest foot forward, have they?

Katie Porter had these, like, really pretty nasty videos come out of the way she was talking to people who work for her. I don't think that that is a good leadership trait, and I don't think that that is a person we should choose. I don't know. I'm so resigned to being it being someone's shit, you know, that, like, I honestly try not to put too much of my time and effort. into it. But yeah, I know. Maybe it'll be fucking Katie Perry. Maybe Trudeau will pass on his electoral magic. She's got some good songs. She could use them with actually, with the intellectual property licensing, which Trump doesn't do. She could get that shark. Maybe the shark could be vice governor. You know, there's this potential there. Be as worried about the shark. So, obviously, the Democrats are projected to do well in this midterm election based on

like anti-Trump sentiment and like the regular swing away from the like whoever's in the executive branch in midterms. And yeah, I think the Democrats will do well, especially if you look at the last like a month or so of election results. I think it's possible they take both chambers. I think they will absolutely take one. I'm going split. It's possible they take both chambers. I don't think it's going to be a landslide. It's not going to be a blue tsunami. Blue Nami. I think it may be a wave. I think a wave or a small wave is likely. I do not think it's going to be a complete blowout, but there's been, like, especially in the Tennessee special election, a 13-point shift towards Democrats. We've seen other double-digit shifts across the country in the past,

in the past month. I don't know how much they'll be able to continue that sort of sentiment in, you know, nine months time, 10 months, 11 months time, leading in. to November. So I think some of that enthusiasm will maybe taper off a little bit as Trump becomes kind of like a lame duck presidency. But I still think they'll do like okay in terms

of like the Democrats. I very much disagree. I think this is going to be like a generic D plus 14. This is going to be a fucking massacre. What signs are pointing you towards that? I mean, they just won the mayorship of Miami. Yeah, yeah. Well, so

you're saying it's going to be good for the Democrats. D plus 14. Yeah, like Democrats plus 14. Okay. Like, I'm talking like an ass, a tsunami. Okay, got it. My prediction is that all of the polling people are fucking cowards. What's happening right now with the polling is that they are using the 2024 electorate.

Yeah. This is not the 2024 electorate. They have not figured this out yet. No. They are still underestimating the exact scale of which everyone fucking hates them. I'll be surprised if both houses flip, but yeah. Here's the thing. The Cuban parts of Miami

went left by like 15 points. Something we talked about in the show. They are going through and systematically pissing off every single part of their base, right? Like one of the things I've, one of the stories I've been tracking is about the ways in which they've been systematically pissing off a whole bunch of

farmers who are a very, very consistent right-wing voting base. And they're pissing them off a trade world bullshit because China's not buying soybeans, right? This is how they're losing elections in Western Iowa. I think the other part of this too is, and this is how I think the momentum is going to be sustained, is that things haven't even gotten

as bad as they're going to get yet. The actual standard of living in this country right now it is going to get so much worse as all of the inflation stuff sort of racks up, et cetera, et cetera. Like the country is going to be worse. Everyone's going to be more pissed off. Trump is going to have bombed like four more countries.

We're going to have like sent troops into Mexico or some shit. He's going to be so unpopular. It's going to be the fucking flood out there. That's possible. Yeah. I think the incumbent. becomes the advantage becomes less and less relevant, the worse the economy gets. And like, that was something Biden got hit with, right? But Trump is going to have to wear, especially

to get further and further into his term, right? It's a Trump economy. I guess this just requires that the current momentum Democrats have to be maintained for a while, which is something that historically Democrats haven't been great at. Yes, they're shit at it. So this would require effort for, you know, people like organizing with the Democrats and social media messaging, like, actual in-person, like electoral organizing to really like keep this momentum and pressure going for the next 11 months, which is, you know, they've done a good job at this the past like six months, but can they like maintain this to the midterms? That's the only point where I start to hesitate on terms of like the scale of like a blue wave. But I think it's certainly possible

that they end up doing it quite well, but it's going to be reliant on like maintaining this pressure. No, there's still some structural difficulties that make flipping Congress entirely. Very difficult. Especially with the redistricting stuff happening. Yeah. Yeah. So like, could they take the Senate quite easily? Yeah. The House still up in the air for me. I think lean to Democrat at this point, certainly leaning Democrat, but still not confident. That'd be great. I just, I don't want to get irrationally, you know, ahead of our skis here. I have watched very, very dysfunctional state Democratic parties win elections in districts that were R plus 22.

Fucking, fucking anything could happen at this point. No, yeah. It's not coming from a national strategy. It's coming from, like, local candidates doing well on local issues and people fucking hating Trump. Yeah. It is not the DNC who is putting Higgins or Mamdami in office. Well, yeah. That is, I guess, a good thing because the DNC fucking sucks.

It has always fucking sucked, and it has really reinforced how much it sucks in the last eight years. Yeah, and being able to hit Trump and Republicans on the economy with tariffs, this, like, oligarchy stuff has proven to be. pretty successful so far. And I think being able to continue that messaging as the economy trends in its current direction, being able to continue that messaging, I think, will help the Democrats. Interestingly, a platinum in Maine

still seems to be the frontrunner for that race. So I think there's a decent chance. We get our first tootunkov in the Senate. Well, he doesn't have a toad talk to people. He has that absolutely dog-shit cover up. I'm sorry if you are listening and you did that tattoo, but it's probably not your best work.

like, he's got a blob now. That stuff just did not prove to be super impactful to the actual voters in Maine, it seems, and the actual, like, focus on his talking points have maintained his lead. So I think that's something that Democrats can also look to in terms of, like, how much of these, like, you know, like, tertiary, like, personal attacks. Or, like, you know, genuine, genuinely valid, valid complaints or issues are not very dominant based on how much emphasis is actually getting put on this sort of like affordability messaging.

To wrap up this predictions episode, should we do a quick death pick? No one's going to die. Oh, I thought you're going to ask it. Do you think we're going to invade Venezuela? No, see, this is what I'm more interested in. I'm more interested in, are we going to start any wars? Yes.

And is his cabinet going to stay the same? What kind of already have started one? To answer your first question, yes. Is the cabinet going to stay the same? I'm surprised It's weird, right? Trump first term, there was a lot of cabinet turnover

in the first year. Sure. Scaramucci. This is not happening this year. This year, they stayed pretty tight-knit, despite a lot of turmoil. Or like, you know, issues around like Cash Patel,

Pam Bondi, RFK Jr. Pete Hague Seth with the double-tap war crime strikes. Nome as well. They are pretty tight-knit, it seems. So I don't know if there's going to be cabinet turnover.

I think Cash Patel will be out next year I think Cash might have Yeah, might be on the edge of his He's lost the podcast bros He just found the J6 pipe bomber I don't think it's going to happen I think the cabinet's going to stay the same Which I predicted against last year

But I think based on How they've weathered certain controversies I do not know if Trump cares Enough to do cabinet turnover Yeah or whoever's talking to him about these things Yeah, we'll see I don't, there's no one that I think is an obvious choice. I think the likeliest turnover is Patel.

Then maybe Hegsseth. I don't think he's going to go. I think Hegseth is too loyal. He's a, he's a team player. Sure. And he has absolutely no chance of going into business for himself, right? This is the big thing is that it's not a skill or competency that got these people their jobs. Yeah, it's loyalty.

Which, you know, kind of, kind of was a factor in Trump 1.0. In Trump 2.0, it is just pure loyalty. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And if they're able to prove that, especially around like, you know, the Epstein stuff, really, really tested those, those loyalties. Yes. And if they're able to get out of the Epstein controversy, like, kind of intact, then I think all these guys will be set for, like, the next little bit. I guess, do we think Vance is ever going to become a president during the next, like, year or two?

Trump is, like, 80s. So I'm not going to say there's not a 20 or 30 percent chance that just, like, if Donald Trump dies, Vance becomes the president, right? Sure. And he's at the age where he could just drop dead, right? Outside of that, no, I don't think he's likely to become president. Yeah. I do think in the next 12 months, the U.S. will begin a UAV campaign in the Sahel,

quite possibly Nigeria. Like, I think that's possible in the next 12 weeks, just looking at flights that they've had very recently. There's a decent chance, too, that they start expanding the use of special forces and maybe even keep fobs open without the willingness of the Nigerian government. But that's a longer shot. Yeah, and the Nigerian government's pretty into it right now. Yeah.

Do you think they're going to put troops on the ground in either Mexico or Venezuela? I think there's a good chance that we utilize special forces on the ground in parts of Mexico for brief periods of time. It's a good chance that we already have. Yeah, we almost certainly already have. I think there's a chance that we wind up

having people on the ground in Venezuela after a fuck up, right? Like, but I think that at present, their plan is air strikes and drone strikes. I think if we were to wind up having anything on the ground in Venezuela, it would be as a result of like a strike with a manned craft going badly and someone going down over Venezuela. That's not a zero percent chance if they keep fucking around. But I really don't think they want to have troops on the ground in Venezuela. I think they want to be striking targets in Venezuela.

Yeah, it's not a place where they want, you want, like, some of the troops to be engaging. Like, that wouldn't go well. Trump does not want to wear that, right? Like, if we saw in Syria, like, he wasn't willing to deploy large numbers of the troops. He was willing to use a lot of drone and airstrikes, even when the civilian cost was very high. And I think that is the model, like that strike cell model that we saw, like the strike in baguze at the end of the Islamic State is probably a good example of the sort of, yeah, quote unquote, lateral damage or killing civilians that we can expect them to see as acceptable.

I think the final point on this is that the Trump administration genuinely believes that they can topple regimes with their strikes. They thought this with the Houthis and they think this about Venezuela. They actually think you can do this despite all evidence to the contrary. So I think it's going to inform a lot of their decisions. Yeah. And I think Syria like kind of, not Syria with Assad, but Syria with the Islamic State, we reinforce that for them. But like, they're obviously overlooking, like that they have an incredible partner for. that they don't have in these places. Yeah.

Well, I think that's our predictions. First time we're not doing a death segment. And you know what? I feel fine about that. Yep. No one's going to die in 2026. Morris, yeah. I'm not going to say it this time

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