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Feb. 15, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:06
Episode 417 Scott Adams: Was Live
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Hey everybody!
Let's get on in here, because you know what time it is.
Yeah, it's time for coffee with Scott Adams.
I decided to give you a little fireplace view.
It's part of my long-term plan to show less of me and more of something else.
But you know, one of the reasons you come here is so that you can enjoy this simultaneous sip.
And it's coming up.
Grab your mug, grab your thermos, your stein, your chalice, your cup, your glass.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
here it comes the rope the simultaneous sip ah that could have been better had it been warmer and Alright, back to me.
So, we got all kinds of news happening.
It's like news all over the place.
So let's run through it one at a time.
So I was waiting to hear Alan Dershowitz's opinion on...
I'm gonna look at my Twitter feed to remind me of some specifics here.
I was waiting for Alan Dershowitz to weigh in on this question of McCabe reporting that they talked about using the 25th Amendment.
And... Ted Lieu, who is, besides being the husband of Betty, and a U.S. Air Force veteran, he's a member of Congress.
And I'll tell you what Alan Dershowitz said, and then I'll tell you what Ted Lieu said.
Now what's funny about this is that Dershowitz is probably the world's expert on constitutional law.
Ted Lieu Is whatever is not that?
So Ted Lieu is constitution-splaining to the best constitutional scholar in the world.
And this is funny, so I'll just read it to you.
So President Trump actually was quoting Alan Dershowitz from the Tucker Carlson show.
And he said, quote, This is quoting Alan Dershowitz.
Trying to use the 25th Amendment to try and circumvent the election is a despicable act of unconstitutional power grabbing, which happens in third world countries.
You have to obey the law.
This is an attack on our system and constitution.
So, Dershowitz is saying it's a despicable act of unconstitutional power.
Now what he's talking about is McCabe referencing the conversation about using the 25th Amendment, which typically has, well, it's intended for people where a president is incapacitated, mentally or physically, and then can be replaced, which did not apply.
To President Trump's situation.
And so Dershowitz is saying it was an unconstitutional power grab.
But Ted Lieu does some Constitution-splaining.
And he addresses Alan Dershowitz in his tweet.
And he says, The 25th Amendment is the law.
And a majority of the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet can invoke this amendment.
You can disagree with their use of it.
Should they invoke it?
But you cannot say it should be unconstitutional.
You should read the U.S. Constitution again, Alan Dershowitz.
I don't even know what to say to that.
Can you imagine Ted Lieu going into the doctors for his appointment?
And the doctor says, Ted, we've checked you out and you've got high blood pressure.
And then Ted explains to the doctor why he has completely misdiagnosed him.
At what point is it embarrassing to explain an expert's job to an expert?
Now, I suppose you could word think this until the point where you'd say, okay, it's not illegal to use the 25th Amendment But I'd have to say it's pretty unconstitutional to use it when the president is not incapacitated to use it to change the result of an election.
That's pretty unconstitutional.
Now, I think it would be fair to say it would never get approved by enough people to be implemented.
We wouldn't have to worry about it necessarily, but the fact that it was even talked about was shocking.
Now, the fact that it was talked about also made me question, at what point will Trump derangement syndrome be a legitimate legal defense?
And it's a more interesting question than you think, because the entire legal system depends On the illusion of free will.
If we didn't imagine that people have free will, it wouldn't make sense to punish them for their choices.
Because if somebody doesn't have a choice for what they pick, you know, if it's just cause and effect and it was all predetermined at the Big Bang, Then you have no legal system because people just say, well, it's not like I could choose to do something differently.
I'm just a victim of particles bouncing around.
So the legal system has always had to have this sort of thin fiction that people have free will and make their own decisions.
And it certainly feels like that.
So we live in a world where it feels like you make your own decisions.
But science keeps chipping away at that.
And I would say that it would be easy to get an expert, a psychologist, a scientist, a brain expert, to confirm that people are being brainwashed by their choice of media.
Now, both sides are getting brainwashed, but in different ways.
And I'm pretty sure that you could prove That, let's say McCabe, and this is just hypothetical, none of this is going to happen, but I think you could give scientists to say that McCabe was literally brainwashed to believe that there was a crisis in the Constitution and that something had to be done immediately to save the country.
But would that be a legal defense?
Well, at the moment it would not.
It might have some effect on sentencing, but you couldn't legally get away with that defense.
It is, however, scientifically valid.
In other words, you would have scientists come in and say, yeah, it's pretty obvious that this person was brainwashed and therefore not entirely in control of their own decisions.
I'm sure you could get experts to say that, and probably all of them.
If you had enough evidence of ridiculous political opinions, let's say you had a history of social media postings that were so biased that any jury would look at them and say, yeah, it doesn't look like this person uses facts.
They seem to have been brainwashed by consuming their media.
Somebody says, B.S. Science my ass.
Good argument.
Science your ass.
Why didn't somebody say that earlier?
I could have saved a lot of time.
That was a clever and incisive argument.
Science my ass.
Good one. Alright, I know you all want me to talk about the Jussie Smollett situation.
And I've been waiting for a more, let's say, factual basis.
But what we know so far is somewhat hilarious.
And let me frame this by saying you shouldn't believe anything you hear about this story.
Just literally nothing.
You shouldn't believe any of the reports about what the police did or did not see or do or talk to.
I wouldn't believe anything about who got picked up.
I wouldn't believe anything about who's the suspect.
I wouldn't believe anything about what is or is not on a camera.
And I wouldn't believe anything that Jussie Smollett says or does not say.
So basically, you should have intense distrust for every part of this story.
That said, where we are at the moment in terms of the alleged story is quite hilarious.
Fact check me on this, but I believe that two people of interest have been questioned by the police who seem to be the people who were on the video cameras who seem to be the people who attacked Jussie Smollett and Apparently there,
Nigerians, one of which, worked on the show with Jussie Smollett.
Now, if it's true that two Nigerians were involved in this in some way, then it is probably not true.
That somebody was yelling, this is MAGA country.
And it is probably not true that they were wearing MAGA hats at the time.
So we don't know what the real story is.
And again, don't believe anything you hear on this story.
Absolutely everything is unreliable.
Some of it is true, but we have no way of knowing at this point.
It's just all unreliable from every angle.
But it is nonetheless hilarious.
That the current situation is that two Nigerian guys are being questioned.
So it doesn't get any funnier than that.
And in fact, I would say that this story just smells wrong.
Okay. Now, there was a piece by Chris Saliza, who is a notable anti-Trumper.
And I want to just read to you a little bit from him today, if I can find it.
And I'm sure I can.
Alright, I just took a little snippet out.
This is from Chris Saliza on the CNN website.
He talked about the news of what McCabe said about the 25th Amendment and he said there are two ways to look at it.
One of those ways is that there's a deep state and they were literally talking about a coup using the 25th Amendment to replace the government.
So he says that's one way to look at it.
Sort of the two movies on one screen idea in his own words.
So one way is that it was exactly what a lot of you think.
They were talking about a coup.
But here's the other way.
So this is Chris Saliza, anti-Trumper, telling you the other thing that this evidence could suggest.
He says, this news from McCabe is confirmation.
So this is, if you're a Trump opponent, you might think this in his framing.
This news from McCabe is confirmation that senior officials within the Justice Department were so worried about Trump's behavior in office, his behavior in office, he had just started, that they broached the unthinkable.
Colon, removal by means of the Constitution.
The fact that such serious and professional people, men and women charged with enforcing the laws of the country, were driven to such extreme action, or at least the contemplation of such extreme action, proves just how abnormal and dangerous Trump really is, both to the presidency and the country.
Now this is sort of what I was explaining yesterday.
The idea that, in McCabe's mind, he might have been a patriot.
But only in his mind, not in your mind, obviously.
But in his mind, he might have thought, oh my god, I'm the last defense against Russia running the country.
And so he had to act on that.
But the way Zaliza frames this is hilarious because it's framed as though there are two possibilities.
There are two ways to describe what's happening.
One is that it was a deep state plot to overthrow the country or overthrow the government using the 25th Amendment.
The second is the president was so sketchy and there were so many reasons to think there was something wrong that even if McCabe was incorrect, he was operating in good faith against these obvious indications that there was some gigantic problem potentially.
What did he leave out?
There's a third possibility, or at least the second possibility has not been fully described.
What's left out?
is the more obvious option.
The obvious option is that CNN and the mainstream media has hypnotized, let's not use the word hypnotized, let's say brainwashed, because that actually is, I could defend that word, brainwashed, that the media Has illegitimately brainwashed a huge segment of the country into something like Trump derangement syndrome.
Now that, to me, is by far the most accurate description of what's probably happening here.
I think what's probably happening is that the media got McCabe and other people so whipped up into thinking that something dangerous was happening that ordinary evidence that would not normally Climb to the level of discussing the 25th Amendment certainly seemed attenuated, suddenly seemed attenuated.
In other words, things that they might have ordinarily written off as coincidence or politics or confirmation bias, because remember, these are professionals, and all day long they have to deal with, okay, is that a coincidence or is that evidence?
Is this confirmation bias or is this really true?
So these are professionals who work through this stuff all the time, and yet they managed to look at this bunch of nothing and convince themselves it was a danger to the Republic.
Now keep in mind that we have elections on a regular basis and parties change.
The government changes on a regular basis.
And it's not unusual that the people in the government, the FBI, the Department of Justice, it would not be unusual for them to not like whoever got elected.
Probably every other time that happens.
It's like, oh, I wish that person did not get elected.
But they do not act on that.
They do not consider the 25th Amendment because to them it's just somebody in power whose politics they don't like.
That's not what was happening here.
Here, McCabe and presumably others were so afraid that this particular new government was dangerous that they acted in a way that reasonable people are calling treason or a coup.
I'm not sure if it's treason if you're doing it for the benefit of the country.
I'm not sure treason works if you imagine the person doing it was trying to preserve the republic as opposed to destroy it.
So I'm not sure that word completely works.
But certainly there was a breach of constitution, or at least they discussed Using the Constitution in a way that it was not designed to be used.
So that's pretty bad. Somebody's saying it's a sedition.
Well, before I agree or disagree with that, let me look up the definition.
Sedition. To make sure I am speaking.
Sedition is overconduct such as speech and organization that tends toward insurrection against the establishment.
Could be subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent.
Yes. So it's against the established order, but is the established order So here's the thing.
I think the most likely explanation of events is that the media brainwashed half of the country and that some of those people in that half of the country were in important jobs, such as McCabe, and that they acted the way Other brainwashed people would have acted in the same situation,
thinking that there was an immediate end-of-the-world problem and that they might have to bend some rules to save the world, to save the country.
So that's my guess.
Now, and somebody's saying, oh, come on, Scott.
Well, let's compare the alternatives.
So one alternative is that McCabe...
Consciously just said, I don't like this president.
I want somebody else to be president, so we'll try to take this guy out.
But keep in mind, the 25th Amendment would have explicitly put the vice president in charge.
So check your theory against this one and this fact.
If your theory is that McCabe wanted to...
If your theory is that McCabe wanted to get rid of Republicans because he was a supporter of Hillary Clinton, it doesn't make sense that he would invoke the 25th.
Alright, so some of you lost the connection, and I see the comments.
But the connection is fine now, and it should work in replay.
My experience is that the replay will be clean, but you may have just lost the connection.
But anyway, it's working fine for other people.
That means you might have to refresh on your end.
But what I'm saying is, compare these two theories.
One is that McCabe didn't like the political outcome of the election, but that wouldn't make sense because the 25th Amendment would have removed Trump and put Pence in charge.
And that's the opposite of what he would have wanted for political reasons.
It would have worsened things, in a sense.
So the fact that they were talking about the 25th Amendment, which would have maintained a Republican government, I think that, to me, that suggests that he was acting based on Trump derangement syndrome.
Because You have to be pretty desperate to want to replace Trump with Pence.
If you're a Democrat, that's a desperate act.
And you wouldn't act desperately under any normal conditions.
You wouldn't act desperately just because you didn't like the political outcome.
You just wouldn't do that.
You would act desperately if you really believed there was a risk to the republic.
So that fits the evidence better.
Alright, stop criticizing the FBI. Do you think that's what I just did?
Um... You have it completely backwards.
The FBI concocted the Russian hoax and fed it to the media.
Well, I'm not really talking about that, am I? It wasn't McCabe who concocted the FBI hoax, and we're talking about him.
I do believe that the dossier was a hoax.
I do believe that the whole investigation is closer to a witch hunt than anything else.
But when you're talking about McCabe, talking about the 25th Amendment, that doesn't feel like him trying to get a Democrat in office.
That feels like desperation.
Because Pence would have replaced him.
All right. Pence would have been step two.
That's a big reach.
Yeah, I hear what you're saying, that, well, then he would get rid of Pence next.
Maybe? I don't know.
Then who's after that? Wouldn't it have been...
At the time, who would have been president if Pence was removed?
Somebody do some fact checking here.
It would have been another Republican, right?
Now, here's something interesting.
Many of you complained about Patreon because you said, hey Patreon is kicking off some Republicans or at least kicking off some people for free speech reasons that you don't agree with.
Now Patreon is the platform where people can donate to artists and creators and So people said, we are going to stop donating to you, Scott.
So a lot of people who used to be donating to me on Patreon, maybe 25% of them or a third of them, just disappeared.
So my plan of funding my, let's say, expansion of what I'm doing on Periscope, I have an assistant that I pay to put it on YouTube and to put it into podcast form.
And I was funding that through Patreon.
But Patreon got attacked for being...
Let's say, a little too aggressive in kicking people off their platform.
And so people said to me, hey, Scott, you have an app that's used for something slightly different, but why don't you put a donate button on there?
And so, we put a donate button on there.
And let me show it to you.
So, I'll look at myself here.
I'll just do a search in the interface by WenHub.com.
Alright, so here you have it.
So the app is primarily designed for experts to make a video call to people who need some expert advice and want to pay for it per minute.
But we just added a donate button.
So if you wanted to donate to me or anybody else who signed up...
So any creator can just sign up here.
It just takes about 60 seconds to put in your profile and stick a picture in there.
And then you're available for donations.
So if you wanted to donate, you just hit the donate button, pick an amount, hit Apple Pay and put your thumb on it, and bam, you're done.
So... I won't claim that this is the first...
I'm not going to say that this is the only alternative to Patreon.
And I'm not going to leave Patreon, so I'm going to stay on there too.
But a lot of conservatives especially just didn't want to use Patreon and asked me how else they could do it.
So we just added that to the app.
By the way, none of this was planned.
I just talked to my CTO one day and said, hey, you know, I'm hearing this complaint about Patreon.
And I knew that we had a payment platform and I knew that it was something that, you know, anybody could sign up for.
So I said, how hard would it be?
To just add a donate button.
And I just sort of brought it up as a brainstorming idea.
And the next time I checked, they'd added it to the app.
So my crack team of technology experts just made it happen just because it was a good idea.
So it's called the Interface by WenHub app.
It's free. It's in the app stores.
And if you don't want to use Patreon, you have an option.
Now, we don't have... Yeah, somebody asked the right question.
So in phase one, it is not a recurring model.
So you just pay once and then walk away.
So if you wanted to pay again, you'd have to do it again.
If people use it, we'll add a recurring function so that they have the option of recurring or not.
I think it should be an option.
I don't think it should be the default.
But we'll see if anybody cares.
If people use it, we'll add that option.
It should not be hard. The ways you can give me money.
Thanks for asking. It's either Patreon or the interface by OneHub app.
It's got a donate button.
Just search for my name.
Or you can do a super heart here on Periscope.
So there should be an option at the bottom of your screen for something called a super heart, which if you press it would give you options for donating, but it's a few extra steps.
We don't accept Bitcoin within the app as payment, but thanks for asking.
Are you going to leave Patreon?
I'm not planning to, but if I get more donations on this, I would, yes.
So if I ended up Getting something even close to a replacement level on the interface by WinHub app, then I would leave Patreon, but I'm not going to leave unless people prefer this method.
Uh-uh-uh.
Oh, what percentage does interface take?
So we just matched Patreon, 5%.
So of the 5%, roughly speaking, half of that actually just goes to the banking, the transaction, just to pay the go-between people.
And then something like 2% plus goes to the company.
Alright, you can still pay for experts with the cryptocurrency that's integrated with the app.
By the way, for those of you who have purchased the WEN, W-H-E-N, which is the cryptocurrency that is part of the Interface by OneHub app, In addition to credit cards.
So the app works just with normal money and credit cards and US dollars and stuff.
But we have a crypto option.
The value of the crypto is tied to the value of the company.
So if it turned out that a lot of people wanted to use it as a Patreon replacement, and let's say that became a big thing, which it could.
Then the app would be more viable because it would have another source of income and the whens that people have already purchased probably would go up in value, but nobody can guarantee that because it's not an investment.
But the value of the when is tied to the success of the app.
So anything that makes the app more successful is likely to make the when go up in value, but no guarantees.
All right. That's what we know.
And is there any other news that we haven't talked about?
Let me just do a quick check on CNN and see if there's anything we forgot.
Oh, let's talk about...
We haven't even talked about the national emergency.
All right. So the national emergency.
Oh, we could talk about Amazon's exit, too.
So it seems to me that the president...
Can either accept or veto the bill and still do his emergency thing and still build the thing.
Because what's different today compared to just a few weeks ago is that we watched Congress fail in front of us.
When you see what Congress produced with their bipartisan group working together, I think we all have to say, yeah, that looks like a complete failure.
Now, is it wrong for the commander-in-chief, who has a valid homeland security issue, Is it valid for him to say, look, the Congress tried right in front of you, and they failed miserably.
You can see what they produced is not even a bill that I can sign.
Because apparently, and here's the part that I would say is a little bit of a wait and see.
I've been seeing the conservative complaints about the bill, but I have not yet seen anybody defend those same objections.
In other words, the things that the conservatives are complaining about, and I'll mention those in a minute, I have not heard anybody on the other side say, oh, they're actually good ideas, you're not looking at it in context, or you misunderstand.
So I'm still waiting for that.
Until I get that, I don't want to throw in with a side, but I'll tell you what the conservatives are saying.
Two problems. One is this, if there's a child and the child has some kind of a sponsor, then that person gets to stay and people are saying, my God, it's a giant loophole for every MS-13 and cartel member to say, oh, this is my kid.
I guess I can stay in the country.
Now, I would wait to make sure that that interpretation of the size of that loophole is accurate.
Because it might be that there's more to this story than we know, and that the Congress was not as stupid as it appears on the surface.
So it's possible that there's more to that story, and I'm waiting to hear the other argument before I weigh in.
But what we know sounds terrible.
Right? If all you knew is they've opened up this giant loophole that will increase child trafficking and be like an open door for the cartel, well, that would be bad.
And certainly the president should not sign that.
But I'd wait. Wait to see if there's a...
I don't know what the argument would be.
But I would wait to see if there is one.
The second part is something that...
Let me read the exact tweet here.
Because the other part is that the local cities would get a say on the question of whether the fence would be in their area.
And as was pointed out...
Let's see...
Give me one moment.
By Brandon Darby...
The problem is that the local cities get to decide, or at least they're part of the decision, whether there's a barrier where they are.
The problem, as Brandon Darby has pointed out, is that the cartels are already buying those local officials.
So the people who would be making the decision about putting a fence or a barrier between them and the cartels would actually be owned by the cartel.
So the cartels, in too many cases, don't know how many, already have corrupted those officials.
So we would effectively be, and this is insane, But true, as far as I can tell.
And again, maybe it's still fog of war.
Maybe we don't know exactly what this bill says or how it would be implemented.
I'll wait for a better explanation.
But on the surface, it appears that the bill, and I'm not even making this up, but it appears that the bill delegates a decision about building a wall on the border to the cartel.
And that's not even an exaggeration.
That's not a joke.
That's literally what's happened.
The bill as it stands, according to what we understand, and it could be wrong, but what we understand is that Congress got together and they were so incompetent that they came up with an idea for delegating the decision about building a border wall to the Mexican cartels.
Literally. I mean, they didn't say it in those words, but that's actually what's going to happen because the cartels, in too many cases, have influence over the American governments on the border.
Now, did you know that?
How's that change your opinion, right?
Doesn't that change your opinion?
Now, this is why you talk to the experts, right?
If you had not heard that from Brandon Darby, that there are key parts of the border where the American governments, the American government, you know, the local city people, are already bought by the cartels, Now, is he guessing?
No, because in an article in Breitbart that I linked to, he actually goes down the list of the people who have already been caught taking money from the cartel.
It's not a one-off.
It's not speculation.
It's not, oh, it happened that one time and I'm generalizing too much.
It's already widespread and it's confirmed.
Nobody's guessing about this.
The cartels are actually starting to run the governments on the border.
And we just delegated the decision to build a wall to the cartels.
That actually happened.
Now, ask yourself, if that's not an emergency, what is?
What is an emergency?
If it's not an emergency that Congress just delegated border security to the Mexican cartel, and that was the best they can do, if that's not an emergency, I do not know what an emergency looks like.
So, there you go.
Now, remember I said from the start, That unless you see something coming out of this working committee about the border that looks like a, here's what the expert said, and then here's what we decided.
If you don't see that, then they have not served you.
They have not done the job of a Congress.
Their bill does not deserve any consideration.
You should not even be talking about whether the bill should be signed or not signed.
You should be saying that nothing got produced that is worthy of looking at.
Because if they can't do that simple thing, here's what the experts said, here's what we funded, now you can compare them, Now, if it turned out that the experts said we want eight things, and this is one report I heard, here's our eight priorities,
and then the committee said, all right, we can only fund the top three, that's a defensible argument, because they've communicated with the public, they looked at the priorities, they did not disagree with them, they just added their expertise, which is how much budget do we want to put on these priorities.
That would be something you could agree with or disagree with.
Maybe you think it should be more funding, but at least it would be a rational process, it would be honest, it would be transparent, and the public could say, hmm, I'm okay with the top three priorities.
It's an 80-20 situation, if it is.
I don't know if it is. But if you don't see even that, here's what the experts said, here's what we did compared to what they wanted, You should not support anything that comes out of that committee, even if it's good.
Even if it's accidentally good, you should not support it because the process is spitting in your voter face.
It disrespects the public in a way that's grotesque.
Now, can the president, who has been saying from the start, I'm going to sign that thing, and then watching a supermajority of the Congress agree with it, right?
So even if the president vetoes it, a supermajority can argue it and still overcome his veto, right?
I think he should still do it.
If, under this condition, if it's true that this delegates the decision about the border to the cartels, and I think the argument is pretty good that it does, you know, I haven't heard of the counter-argument and you need to wait for that, but it looks like that.
If that's what this bill does, and also opens up an easy channel for child abuse and everything else, then I think the president absolutely can just veto that piece of shit and declare an emergency and say, the cartels have breached the border.
They're already controlling the local governments.
The local governments are no longer the credible defenders of this country.
They have joined the other side in too many cases.
Certainly not the majority, but in too many cases.
And the federal government has a responsibility to the people to declare this an emergency so that we can counteract the bought-off officials that the cartel owns.
So, I'm not going to predict that the president vetoes this bill.
Because he has said very clearly that he will, and he did get both sides to agree to it with a supermajority.
So that's kind of tough to veto.
And it's possible, and I can't say this enough times, that I have not yet heard the positive argument for the bill.
For some reason, you know, nobody is making that argument.
So if you don't hear a positive argument for the parts of the bill that are flawed, letting the local governments be part of the decision, having that, you know, kid sponsor thing that's just an open door.
If you don't hear the counter argument, I'd say the president has really a responsibility to veto it, but he might not.
We'll see. Now what might happen, And I will just speculate.
So let's just imagine the best case scenario.
So the best case scenario is that that sponsor part of it where if there's a kid in the United States, I guess that we have to keep the sponsor as well.
It could be that what that does is prevents children in cages or it protects the children.
And it might be a trade-off that people willingly understood and took.
It could be that the defense of that is we are completely aware that it opens up opportunity for abuse and we are completely aware that that abuse will happen.
But it solves a problem for so many kids and families that we're consciously going to make that trade-off.
I would listen to that.
That's a conversation I would listen to, especially if the population affected is sort of a one-time thing and they can deal with it over time.
Now, I'm just saying I would listen to the argument.
I'm not saying I'm making a decision.
I'm just saying that if they knowingly made a trade-off that's good for some kids but definitely bad for a smaller group of kids, I'll at least listen to the argument.
And in terms of the local community agreeing or disagreeing, it could be, and I'm not saying this is the case, but if you were to look at the language and if you understood how things work with governments, it could be That the federal government could never successfully build a border where the local government disagreed anyway.
Now, in terms of legal rights, maybe they could.
In terms of a practical matter, it might be impractical for the federal government to override a city that didn't want a wall.
Even if legally they had all the right to do it, in the real world, it just might be politically and practically impossible.
Let me tell you how, and again, this is just speculation.
I'm not putting this out here as anything that is fact, but I'm increasing your imagination about what the possibilities are.
One possibility is that there will always be lots of cities on the list That are candidates for a wall.
And it could be that no matter how much funding we get, you're only working at the top priorities.
So it could be that if a particular city says, hey, federal government, we absolutely resist the wall here, Then the federal government, very much like Amazon.com when they pulled out of New York City, they could say, all right, we're not legally, you know, there's nothing that makes us impossible for us to still put Amazon's headquarters in New York.
But if you don't have a friendly local government, it creates a friction that's not worth it.
Likewise, in the real world, I could easily imagine a situation where the local government, even if they had to accept the federal authority to build a barrier, the local government could make it hard.
They could just say, sure, we're going to cooperate with you, but it's not our priority.
We won't return phone calls when you ask us where the gas lines are.
We won't tell you. These are bad examples.
But I'm just making the point that although the bill says that the local groups need to approve the wall, it might be And this would be compatible with everything I understand about the world.
It might be that it's no real change.
It might be that unless the local government was on board, it's just too hard.
And so priorities being what they are, the federal government would say, okay, we're going to wait on that city because they're resistant.
We'll just build walls with our limited funding and our limited resources where there's no problem.
So I think that our simplistic idea that the cartel can buy a government and the government can stop border, probably true.
Seems to me that would be true.
But it might not be any different whether or not this bill says the government can stop it or not.
Because maybe the government could sort of stop it just by being difficult to work with.
In exactly the same way that AOC stopped Amazon from coming into New York City.
Amazon is not legally stopped.
There's nothing that would prevent them from going to New York City.
It was just too much friction.
It just wasn't worth dealing with the friction.
And the federal government probably always had that situation with the local governments too.
So I don't know how different it is.
So wait for the experts to weigh in on that.
All right. Also, it could generate envy of cities with a wall.
Good point. If you build several walls, And then those cities are happy with their walls and crime goes down.
The city next to you that did not build the wall is first of all going to get all the extra crime because people can't cross in one place so they're going to go to the place with no wall.
So the place with no wall should see an increase in crime.
And then the voters have some decisions to make.
So it just might not make any difference that some of the cities oppose the wall, as long as you can build it in other places and then convince the other cities by example.
I saw that Beto, Beto O'Rourke, was asked if walls are such a bad idea, would he be in favor of tearing down the existing wall in El Paso? would he be in favor of tearing down the existing And he said yes.
So Beto O'Rourke actually said he would tear down the existing wall.
I don't know if there's anybody who has less chance of becoming president than that guy.
But... I think he just went from a joke to a bigger joke.
Yeah, that is pretty crazy.
You know, even if you didn't like the wall, it would make more sense to put a gate there than it would to tear down the wall.
Somebody says, is he bought by the cartels?
Well, now there's a good question.
If we know that the local governments...
are bought by the cartels, and you can't think of any other reason somebody would tear down the entire wall.
What assumption do you have to make about Beto O'Rourke?
Now, I'm not going to say that the fact he wants to tear down the wall necessarily means that the cartel already owns him.
Not necessarily.
But I can tell you for sure that if you don't at least suspect it, you're not acting like Andrew McCabe, that's for sure.
Because Andrew McCabe would suspect there was something going on there, and he would do something non-constitutional about it, I think.
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