All Episodes
Previous Next
May 15, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
59:02
Episode 530 Scott Adams: Beto, Biden, Cuban, Healthcare, Comey, Brennan, The Border
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Everybody, come on in.
Come on in, Janice.
And Ms. Boo Boo Hat, Andrew, come on in.
Grab a seat. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Yes, some of you know the theme song.
You can actually do my theme song in any order and any kind of rhythm and any kind of musicality you like.
It's all good. And you know what else is good?
The simultaneous sip.
That's why you come. You come for the simultaneous sip.
Grab your cup, your mug, your jug, your take, your stein, your flask, your thermos, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, I love coffee when it's just the right temperature.
That was a good one.
Well, did all of you see the deeply embarrassing Beto O'Rourke apologies on The View?
Now, usually I don't like to talk about the, I don't know, sort of a smaller issue, but it was so cringeworthy watching Beto apologize for his white male privilege and Then I thought to myself, what do the people think who supported that guy two months ago?
If you're a Democrat, and you've been wrong about just about everything for three years, and I'm just saying this just for fun, There are people who are wrong about everything about Trump, about whether he would get elected, about how he would do after he's elected.
Hey, the economy is great.
Didn't see that coming, did you?
So people who have been wrong about just everything for three years straight, they finally get this candidate, Beto, and they say, huh, well, I've been wrong for three years straight, but I got my candidate, Beto.
This Beto guy...
He looks pretty, pretty good.
He's looking like he could be president.
Two months later, oh god, it happened to me again.
Once again, I have proven that I know nothing about the world and I'm a terrible judge of character.
Does anybody say that?
Is there anybody?
I wonder. Because I expect there's nobody who says that.
But shouldn't they say, if you're watching it from the outside, you say to yourself, you know, if I'd been wrong for three years straight, and then I picked Benno, and then I watched him go on the cringeworthy apology tour for being himself...
Which is about as self-eliminating as anything could possibly be.
What I say to myself, well, maybe there's a pattern here.
The pattern seems to be I'm really, really bad at judging character and figuring out who to vote for and who's going to be good.
But I bet that doesn't happen.
People being people. Let's talk about some more people.
Let's talk about Mark Cuban, who made some headlines because he said that he doesn't think that any of the 22 or 24, however many Democrat candidates there are, he says he doesn't think any of them have a chance against Trump.
Now, that's noteworthy because Cuban has not been Terribly pro-Trump.
He's been on both sides of things.
He's said some good things and some bad things.
But it's got a notable coming from him.
Now, of course, he's leaving open his options to run for president himself.
My expectation is that because he's smart, It's not going to be 2020.
If Mark Cuban runs for president in 2020, short of some kind of national drafting movement to draft him in and get rid of all 22 Democrats, which I don't see any chance that's going to happen, but short of some miracle situation, He's certainly not going to get into this mess because strategically he would disappear in the group.
By 2024, He can own the group.
He's sort of setting the public up to expect that the worst person you could run for president is a career politician.
That's one of the things I loved about Cuban's comment, because when he says all 22 of them have no chance against Trump, it is, of course, headline news.
So the headline, I'm looking at the headline right now, it's on top page of Fox News.
He says, guess what?
So the headline is, guess what 2020 candidate Mark Cuban thinks can beat Trump right now?
And the answer is none. So he's got this headline, and then he frames it quite cleverly as the reason that there isn't a single Democrat who could possibly beat Trump is that the public doesn't want a politician.
Now, That's true-ish, meaning that part of Trump's appeal is that he was not a traditional politician.
It does ignore the fact that part of Trump's appeal is everything Trump.
You can't really pick the one variable out of Trump and say, well, look at all things Trump.
It was this one variable because he wasn't a politician.
That's the thing. It's never that.
There's never one variable that explains this more complicated situation.
But, Cuban is very clever to focus on that variable because that's what gives him a clear channel to run for president in 2024.
He would like the public to be thinking in those terms.
Now, he's not wrong.
Because if you look at the bunch of Democrat candidates, Part of what makes them look so pathetic is two years of President Trump.
If we had never had a President Trump, just do this mental exercise.
Think of all the Democrat candidates for president.
Now imagine a world, and it's hard.
Like, this is really hard.
I don't know if anybody can do this.
I can't do it. But try to imagine there had never been a President Trump.
He never ran for office.
You'd never heard of him. What would those 22 candidates look like?
Do you know what people would be saying?
Think about this.
Do you know what people would be saying about the 22 Democrat candidates?
What would they say if there'd never been a President Trump?
They would say what they said about the Republican field of, what, 16 people who ran at the same time that Trump ran.
They would say It's the strongest...
Yeah, somebody got there before I did.
They would say it's the strongest field of candidates they'd ever seen.
The most qualified, best group of candidates who have ever run for president.
True, right? If there had never been a President Trump, you'd never heard of him, he never ran for president.
They would say this group was the strongest bunch of candidates they'd ever seen in the history of the republic.
But there is a President Trump.
He did run for president.
He did win. He did have the first part of his first term is the best term any president ever had in terms of results for the country.
You know, there are lots of scandals and stuff, but results for the country, best of all time.
So now how do those 22 Democrats look?
They look terrible. They look so bad, individually and as a group.
They look so weak.
That their frontrunner is a 70-year-old doddering guy who's a little bit too touchy and maybe has some racist stuff in his past.
Now, I'm not saying Biden's a racist.
He's clearly not. But because of his age, there are always quotes he said that maybe sounded a little better back then, but don't sound so good now.
So he's got some issues he needs to deal with.
But if you think about it, The best they have, the one who's the overwhelming favorite among that group, is not really even slightly competitive with Trump.
Biden just looks like, like I said this before, if you started with Trump and removed from Trump every quality that we like about him, you would have Biden.
That's what would be left.
Biden would be the part you throw away.
After you had all the good stuff.
So as a matchup, if you're imagining Biden as a president, it's pretty easy to do.
Because he was vice president, he's got a long resume.
So if there had never been a President Trump, it's pretty easy to imagine a President Joe Biden.
But there is a President Trump.
And now everything Biden does will be compared to the sun level, I don't know, luminance of Trump.
And it's just going to make Biden look like a doddering old man who doesn't know.
You know, he's telling you to get off your lawn.
Get off his lawn, I mean.
All right. But something interesting happened.
Biden mentioned a little preview of what his health care plan will be.
I guess there are some details to come.
But what Biden teased, and I might have this wrong, so subject this to fact-checking.
What I say next is my best guess of what Biden's health care plan will look like based on what he said.
Give this a grain of salt, because he could change it before it's official, and I may have misinterpreted it.
But what it sounded like is that he wanted an option where there's a Medicare option for all, but you maintain all the private health care insurance that already exists.
So he wouldn't break the private market.
He would just say, for those people who don't have coverage, there's a Medicare option.
Now, that's very close.
To what I had suggested in one of my periscopes, which is to have the Medicare option But to make it a low-cost option, not a free option.
So there's a low-cost health insurance that will get people in.
And then my idea, which I suppose is not my idea, it's just the idea that people take to healthcare, is that if you've got these competing systems, you've got all the private insurance, and you've got a reinvigorated Medicare where some people are paying, to be honest, You've got a competitive situation and the competition might drive prices lower in a perfect world.
All right, let's talk about the border.
Why is it that all the news about the border just suddenly stopped?
Why is it that we're not every day seeing pictures of caravans coming to the border?
Did I miss a story where at all the problem went away?
I mean, I've seen little stories like TSA, some TSA employees are being sent to the border to help out.
And, you know, there's a little video on CNN about children sleeping outside, which looked horrible.
But for the most part, that issue seems to be downplayed by the media.
Am I wrong? Why would the media suddenly go from talking about the border nonstop To not talking about it much at all.
What would cause that to happen?
Could it be that what causes less coverage of the border crisis is that President Trump was unambiguously right all along about the seriousness of getting this under control?
Could it be that the story went from hurting President Trump to proving that everything he's frickin' said is spot on?
Because that's what it looked like to me.
It looked like the border story went from everything bad for Trump, so let's get a lot of this on the air, to, uh-oh, everything he warned us about just came true.
It turns out that human beings operate on incentives.
Apparently, President Trump was the only person who knew that.
The only person who knew that if you make it attractive to come, more people will come.
Who knew that? Only President Trump and everybody who voted for him, I guess.
So... Sorry.
So that story went away.
And what happened to all the poor people who were suffering at the border?
Did their needs disappear?
Did the anti-Trump press suddenly stop caring?
Did they stop caring about the people in crisis at the border?
Or is there something going on with Mexico?
Is Mexico doing a better job of controlling it?
What's going on?
And by the way, I like to come back to my framing of the border situation.
Because I think it's the best framing I've seen.
And the framing is, instead of talking about the details, the costs and the benefits, which is what people do, you know, what's the law cost, what's the benefit, does it work, does it not work, we kind of get lost in the details.
Here's a better framing.
Who gets to decide on immigration?
Who gets to decide what the United States allows or doesn't allow for immigration?
Whose decision is it?
That's the frame that makes sense.
Because if we have strong border security, then the decision is with the United States.
The citizens of the United States can decide who to let in, how many of them to let in, and under what conditions.
If we don't have strong border security, decisions for the United States are made by Guatemalans.
We would essentially transfer our vote to Guatemala.
That's not hyperbole, is it?
The citizens of the United States have a choice of maintaining the power of the vote in terms of immigration.
Just talking about immigration, we have the option of us being in charge, which would require border security, because without that, we're not in charge.
Or we can transfer our control, we the citizens, to Guatemalans.
Because if we don't have border security, it's up to them.
It's up to the cartel. We actually are consciously deciding, and this is mind-blowing, isn't it?
The United States is having a debate, and I don't think this is going too far, right?
The U.S. is having a debate about whether the decisions about how the United States is formed and what it looks like in terms of immigration, are we going to decide that as U.S. citizens?
Or are we going to let those decisions be made by Mexican cartels and Guatemalans and other Central Americans?
Who gets to make the decision?
Because there's two parts to this.
One is what is decided, which of course is very important.
But secondly, you have to back up from that.
Before you say what is decided, you have to decide who gets to make the decision.
That's what a system looks like.
Let me broaden this.
Most of the problem, or let's say the disagreements between the political left and the political right in this country, are a difference between goals and systems.
But we don't think of it that way.
We should. Because I would say that the political left has by far the best goals.
What are the goals of the political left?
Well, everybody has a good chance.
Everybody has health care.
Education doesn't make you bankrupt.
So if you look at the goals of the left, they're the best, which is one of the reasons I'm proud to say that I'm left of Bernie.
So politically, I call myself left of Bernie because the goals on the left are really, really good.
Everybody's treated well.
There's no discrimination. We've got health care and all that.
But here's the problem. How do you do any of that stuff?
How do you do it? So when I say I'm left to Bernie, I say I'm left to Bernie except I'm better at math.
Because that's sort of my out.
Because I don't know how to get any of that stuff with just normal processes.
What the people on the right do is they don't speak in terms of goals.
They speak in terms of systems.
The Constitution is a system.
Now, a goal would be everybody's treated right.
But you can't really get to fairness.
Fairness is this ambiguous subjective standard.
But you can get...
To the point where we're all following the same set of rules.
That's as close as you can get to FAIR, in terms of how the right sees the world.
So the right wants, you know, good laws, they want capitalism, they want market forces, they want constitution.
All of those are systems.
You don't know what the outcome will be.
You don't know how good the GDP will be.
You don't know how free will be.
We don't know how fair the outcome will be of these systems.
The only thing we know with some certainty is that no one has designed better ones.
These are the best systems.
If somebody had a better system, I'm sure the people on the right would at least give it a look.
So, when you look at the border, it's another one of these classic situations where the right has a system.
And the system is, let's get the citizens of the United States in charge of the decision.
And then the next part of the process is once we have control of the border, we get to decide who comes in and under what conditions.
That's the system. What does that look like in the end?
Is it fair? I don't know.
Is it better than what the left imagined?
I don't know. But the system's pretty solid.
People on the left have goals.
They don't have any way to get there.
I think that's obvious. Even Mark Cuban, I think, would agree with that.
So there you are. If you start seeing this as the conservatives have systems, and systems are good, but you don't know where they're going, and the Democrats have goals, you can see my interests.
I think maybe for the first time you're...
I'm going to connect the dots here in a moment, but have you been...
At all confused by the fact that I spend so much time talking to Republicans and pro-Trump people, interacting with them, you, most of you, and talking about things on that side of the political divide while I unambiguously tell you that my personal leanings are far to the left of Bernie.
Because that probably has confused people for a long time.
But you're starting to see why.
Because you've got two incompletes.
You've got these goals that look pretty good, you've got these systems that look pretty good, and they're not incompatible, if we're realistic about it.
The way to achieve the goals on the left are through the systems on the right.
And those systems need to be improved.
For example, take climate change.
The end goal of climate change is Is to, you know, save the world and have greener sources of energy.
What do the Republicans say about that?
Well, they say, how do you get there?
What's the system? The system in this case is capitalism, removing regulations, creating in the energy department a way to rapidly test new nuclear fuels, and very importantly, Allowing that nuclear energy could be a part of the solution, so long as it has the right risk-reward, which it does.
It has a really good risk-reward now.
Generation 3 nuclear and Generation 4, so far I've had zero problems.
There have been zero nuclear incidents with Generation 3, which is most of, I think, or all of what France has.
And it's the newer versions.
All of the famous meltdowns you've heard of were prior generations that were, by their design, more dangerous, or at least by the way they were operated.
And so you see the Republicans...
Going after competition, market forces, entrepreneurialism, letting the market free, using the government to stimulate rapid testing.
These are all systems.
These are all ways to approach a problem.
And then you see the Democrats say, get rid of all the CO2. Green energy, you know, which is not really much of anything.
To say that you would like solar and wind to solve climate change is great.
It's a great goal.
Nobody knows how to get there.
Well, maybe somebody does.
I don't know how. Yeah, all right, so...
That framing of systems versus goals is very important.
If you can imagine, the president getting close to election day in 2020, whoever he's running against, they've got two really good issues.
They've got climate change and they've got health care.
And they're going to ride these two issues, climate change and health care, because these are the two things that the president's not good at.
All the president has to do is come in and say, here are all the things we're doing Competitively and with market competition here, the rules changes.
Collectively, these will stimulate Nuclear and other green energy stuff.
We're going to push all of them as hard as we can because it doesn't matter if climate change is real or not.
You still want as much natural gas because it's better than coal.
You still want as much nuclear as you can get if you do it right.
It doesn't matter.
If the president came out and said, look, it doesn't even matter if I'm right or wrong about climate change.
We want to do exactly the same stuff.
We want to sell American gas.
We want to sell American nuclear technology.
We want to do it all, and we want to do it as hard as we can and as fast as we can, so long as it's safe.
So you don't even have to argue about this climate stuff.
I'm 100% with you on all the stuff we should do.
Now, he probably wouldn't be 100% with him on the details, but it would look like it.
It would look like he had a system.
It would look like he was moving aggressively in the right place.
So the president has a clear channel, like super clear.
There's just nothing standing in the way of the president completely owning climate change by embracing nuclear energy and other things that we just want to do anyway.
Stuff we want to do anyway.
Healthcare, the president has done a poor job, in my opinion, of selling the things that his administration actually is doing well.
The Health and Human Services Group has published a fairly long list of things that the administration has done that have the collective effect of improving competition.
For example, the recent rule change that says that pharmaceutical companies have to say their prices when they advertise.
That's a small thing.
If it were the only change, you'd say, well, that's not a big deal by itself.
But there are a whole bunch of those things which collectively add visibility and allow market forces to work.
The president has done a poor job of touting that success.
When he gets closer to election, he again has a clear superhighway to say, here's the deal.
We don't know how long it will take us or what it will look like in terms of the goal of everybody having good health care.
But I'm going to tell you the process for getting there.
Here's how I would describe it.
By the way, here's the background.
Before I was a cartoonist, I worked in a big corporation doing budgets and projections and PowerPoint presentations and such.
So I'm sort of an expert based on experience.
And explaining complicated stuff to people who need to make decisions.
That's what I did for a living.
So I would look at all the budget and all the projects, and I would try to simplify it so that people who didn't know as much about the details could say, okay, I'll make that decision or that decision.
So I'm going to do that for healthcare.
Here's the way I would describe...
Here's the way I would approach healthcare...
From a Republican market-based perspective, I would start by educating the public.
And I'm going to make up some examples that...
I'm going to make up some examples.
Don't get too caught up on the numbers.
I would start by saying, all right, we've got how many people who are not covered with health care insurance?
And that number is something like 18% of the country.
And then I would say, if 18% of the country does not have health insurance, just wanted to buy health insurance on the market, what would it cost?
And you come up with a number that's going to be something like $800 billion a year.
And you say to yourself, okay, that doesn't work.
You know, the GDP of the United States is about $17 trillion.
The budget of the government is around $1 trillion.
I'm using some rough numbers.
So you don't want to add $700 or $800 billion per year to a budget that's only a trillion.
Basically, you'd be increasing the budget by 80%.
So right away you say, well, that's the problem.
Is it a $4 trillion budget?
Anyway, so I assume all my numbers are wrong, so I'm not going to claim any of my numbers are right.
But listen to the concept.
So the concept is, if you just wanted to buy in the open market healthcare for the 18% or so that don't have it, it would be too expensive.
Whatever that number is.
Don't get too caught up on that.
Some people are saying the budget is $4 trillion a year, which doesn't completely change the argument.
It just says that healthcare is not as big as the budget, but it would still be way more than people want to pay.
So you start with that number, and you say, okay, we'd have to find $800 billion somewhere.
People are either going to have to pay more taxes or something's going to happen.
And I would make the various categories of where to find that $800 billion a year.
For example, I would say, I'm going to change all these rules and I'm going to take $100 billion out of the costs through better market efficiency.
So now you're $800 billion Looks more like $700 billion in a few years once these rules take its place.
Then you say, well, all these people who are getting emergency care services, somebody was paying for that before.
So of the $800 billion, there was probably another $100 billion, $200 billion That we were paying anyway for people who were uninsured.
So somebody was eating that already.
So you try to figure out how to recapture that.
Because if the emergency rooms no longer have to work without pay, They should be able to lower the costs.
So we should be able to find another $100 billion, $200 billion.
So you start with the $800 billion and then you identify the places where you can take a bite out of that.
Some of the places might be prevention.
Some of the places might be that you develop a lower cost healthcare, might be telemedicine, might be some kind of social coordination thing.
So you develop ways that some people, optionally, could have very inexpensive healthcare.
But it may not have all the features.
So the point is that you start with the big number, $800 billion.
You say, way too expensive.
You say, what are all the ways we can chip away at this?
We can develop new, cheaper systems.
We can compete better.
We can take the amount that we're spending on emergency rooms, and now that's available because everybody would have insurance.
And then you sort of put it all in your spreadsheet and you say, these are the variables.
These are the only things we have to play with.
If we can't figure out how to get these costs down, it just won't make sense.
But we'll build a system that can address each of these levels of costs.
So we'll do things that help startups and entrepreneurs.
We'll get rid of restrictions we don't need.
We'll increase competition.
And I think you could make a story This says on day one, we can't afford universal healthcare insurance.
But you could draw a timeline where you could get to it if all of these things worked out.
So the way I would approach it as a president is trying to simplify the story into a few categories of costs that have to be attacked directly.
And I'd say, if we can't get this and this and this and this cost down, we just can't afford insurance.
Here are the things I'm doing to try to get those costs down.
And we think that in 10 years we're going to look pretty good.
Something like that. All right.
I'm noting with great entertainment that apparently there's going to be some infighting between Comey and Brennan.
About who did or said what about the Steele dossier?
Whose decision was it to include this as the basis of the Russian investigation and the FISA warrants and all that?
It gets a little complicated, but the fun part is that it looks like Clapper, Brennan, and Comey are all in the barrel.
And those three may be fighting now to see which one of them looks like the worst of the bunch.
So there's that.
Let's talk about...
I saw something horrible in the news.
It was an Instagram user, a 16-year-old in Malaysia, I think, who did an online poll on Instagram about whether she should kill herself.
And her online poll, by 69%, voted that she should kill herself.
Was she 14? And then she killed herself.
So she actually held an online poll about whether she should commit suicide, and it was 69% said yes.
That's one of the worst things you'll ever hear in your life.
But it tells you the power of the Internet.
And however much power you think the Internet has, Probably has more than that.
It does seem to me that murder by internet might become a crime, if it's not already.
So it makes me wonder, let's say if you had somebody who was really persuasive, how hard would it be to kill somebody using nothing but the internet to convince them to do it themselves?
Or to convince somebody else to do it.
I mean, if you look at the news, you see that people like me are being identified by the news industry and social media as someone that it's okay to punch.
So, I think murder by internet is a real thing.
Let me put it this way.
With my skill set for persuasion, if I actually wanted to kill somebody by internet, I think I could do it.
I wouldn't do it.
I don't recommend anybody try.
But I think it's a real thing.
I think you could murder somebody by internet if you had the right set of skills and you selected the right target and you used the right technique.
I think all the elements are in place to make that crime completely practical.
It wouldn't work every time, but I would think it would work...
Too much. So, I don't know what we do with that, because it brings into question the whole free will and free speech questions.
What if somebody determined that they could kill people fairly easily by internet?
Would it become illegal if all they were doing is talking?
I don't know. It's an interesting question, a horrible question.
Alright, let's talk about the heartbeat bill.
So some of the southern states are introducing these so-called heartbeat bills, and the idea is that they would define the life of the fetus as starting when the heartbeat starts.
Now, as you know, I recuse myself from the question of abortion in terms of what the law should be.
The reason I do that is that I prefer that women have a majority or the primary decision-making on that question.
Because no matter where it ends up, a lot of people are going to be unhappy.
And so under those conditions, I default to the best system.
The best system is that women are the primary voice for deciding what the laws are.
And then once women have decided by some majority, I will back them.
So I just want to be supportive of the majority of women on abortion.
So do not assume that you're seeing something about my own opinion here because I'm recusing myself.
But from a persuasion perspective, the heartbeat bill is really brilliant.
I gotta say, from just a persuasion perspective, the heartbeat bill is...
That's really strong persuasion.
Here's why. The current abortion rules, as I understand them, subject to your fact-checking, is that the standard is whether the fetus can survive outside the mother.
And certainly you can see why they would have that standard, because that's a practical standard that is something that you could sort of have some scientific backing for, but it's never a clean decision, because science gets better all the time, and where's that line? So that's the way it's been, based on survivability.
But the people who were pro-life very cleverly came up with this heartbeat idea.
Now the first thing they did this brilliant is, I assume, that they intentionally got that name.
Heartbeat Bill into our minds.
Now, once it's in your mind and you're comparing these two standards of whether something is a human being who is alive, just think about these two standards.
One, if science has determined that, roughly speaking, it could survive outside the womb, but that level is changing all the time, right?
That's the current standard. Sort of, it's pretty fuzzy and problematic, you can see.
Compare that to, does it have a heartbeat?
Yes or no? I'm assuming the question of whether it has a heartbeat is unambiguous, or certainly a lot closer to being unambiguous.
Now, what makes that brilliant?
And again, I'm not giving you an opinion I'm not giving you my opinion on abortion laws.
I recuse myself. So I'm just talking through the persuasion part of it.
What's brilliant about that is that our understanding of what it means to be alive is very much heartbeat related.
So at the end of your life, if your heart stops, pretty much every human being would have the same interpretation.
If your heart stopped, You're dead.
If your heart is still beating, well, now it's ambiguous.
You could be brain dead, but we would still keep you alive, subject to large conversations, and even some people would say, keep them alive even if the brain is dead.
But you would agree on the point that we are very primed as a species to think that a heartbeat is the definition of whether you're alive or dead.
It's traditionally, scientifically, it's a very, let's say, universal standard.
So what's brilliant about these moves by the southern states is that moving the conversation from viability to heartbeat is really, really, really, really strong persuasion.
Whether or not it works, we'll see.
But I would be amazed if this framing doesn't change how people think of the whole situation.
So we'll see what the Supreme Court does, because all this stuff will end up in the Supreme Court.
I will tell you that there is some thinking, and I'm a member of that, but I'm reconsidering this view.
But at the moment I have the view that any state that makes abortion illegal...
through these hard money bills or some other mechanism, is going to suffer economically.
And that should be enough to talk most states out of doing it.
So I would not be surprised if there were a number of southern states who end up with restrictive abortion bills, and other states do not.
And that over time, if you were to measure the economic progress of each of those states, the ones who have the restrictive laws will attract Less entrepreneurial people attract fewer big corporations, attract fewer employees.
So, somebody says, no, their population will be better.
I don't know if their population will be better, but what we can say for sure is that big corporations are going to think twice before going there.
Imagine, if you will, if Apple Computer were looking for a new state to move to.
Imagine if it's Google.
Imagine if it's Amazon.
Imagine any of the big tech companies looking to move into a state and build a facility there.
Which of the big tech companies could move to Georgia now?
Which of the big companies could move to Alabama?
none right I don't believe there's any large tech company that could move any kind of operation into one of the abortion states if we end up with a situation where some states ban abortions I don't think so I think that the big corporations that are American corporations will say it's just not on the list.
We're not even going to consider it.
Now, somebody's saying, what about Hobby Lobby?
And what about companies that move there because they prefer that situation?
Maybe. There might be some offsets, but I would imagine there are very few people who will move someplace to restrict their own rights.
I don't think that's a thing.
People will make a decision to give themselves more rights, but people rarely will go where it's just restricting their own rights.
That's not a reason to move.
All right. Let's see what else we got.
That's all the fun stuff for today.
So let's see if there's any new news today, so we'll have more to talk about.
And disagree.
Somebody says a move is usually just an expansion using people already there.
Well, I'm saying that big companies do make decisions about where to move facilities.
And the big tech companies will definitely not move to one of those states.
It's just not going to happen.
So there you are.
All right. Joe Scarborough said Trump looks 20 years younger than some Democrats.
Yeah, there's your contrast problem.
Your contrast problem is that Trump, people are going to be surprised that Trump just looks more interesting and better and more competent and now even more experienced.
More experienced than his competition.
All right. Riots in Iran.
Is that true? The riots in Iran?
Because that would be interesting.
Oh, there is something interesting about Iran.
So I think I don't know how to pronounce his name.
The Ayatollah, Iranian Ayatollah.
When addressing the, you know, the increase in tensions, the Ayatollah said that there won't be a war.
That's very interesting, isn't it?
Because aren't you used to countries, when they're having tensions, they say stuff like, every option is on the table, you know, if they do this, we will respond aggressively.
Isn't that the normal way that countries who are adversaries talk to each other?
But Khomeini said, don't worry about a war, because there's not going to be one.
Isn't that interesting?
Now, of course, somebody says, stop ignoring Spygate.
I just talked about Spygate.
You must be late.
So, isn't it interesting that Iran, their leader, would say there's not going to be war?
That tells me that Iran really, really doesn't want war.
Because if they thought there was any chance of war, and they thought that there was any chance that they might get into one, any chance that they might want one, they would use different language, wouldn't they?
Wouldn't they say, you better stay away, we will make you pay.
They'd say, you know, if you start a war with us, we will destroy your assets in the Middle East, whatever.
But to say there won't be a war, just like flat out.
No, there won't be a war.
It's interesting, because the only way there could be a war is if Iran started it.
Because I don't see a scenario in which the United States starts a war with Iran.
So Iran actually has the power to say, no, there won't be a war, because we're not going to fight.
So you don't have to worry about it.
If we don't fight, there's no war.
Because they're not going to just, you know, invade, which is true.
So who knows if anything that Iran says is true?
Who knows what is persuasion and whether they say different things locally that they say in English?
Who knows? All those things are questions.
But while I'm watching this develop, the two questions that are not answered is who is it who is attacking these Saudi resources?
And why aren't we at least wondering if it's Iran?
You know, are we...
As far as I know, we moved our military assets based on what?
Do you have an answer to that question?
The US just moved a whole bunch of military assets into the Middle East to respond to Iran, and Iran did what?
Allegedly, they did something.
Now, how do you feel about the fact that the military of your country just staged itself to be ready for a war?
A war? And you don't even know why?
Think about that.
You've never even been offered a reason.
Yeah, there's some intelligence, there's something happening, and we hear that it's bad, and Iran is behind it, and they're doing something.
But what? What is it?
Are we going to start a war without knowing why?
I don't think so.
Somebody's saying Israel gave us intel.
I'm sure that's true.
I'm sure Israel is giving us intel about Iran and vice versa.
But I think it's about time for the citizens to find out what the hell is going on.
And I'm not sure that I would be too happy with, trust us, it's a secret.
Would you? Would you support war under the condition that it was started for reasons that we can't tell you?
I wouldn't. There's not the slightest chance I would support a war with no reasons given because they're secret reasons.
So that's where we are now.
Now, I also am not worried about President Trump starting a war because he's not inclined to do that.
He's ready. It's positioning.
It's persuasion. It's negotiation.
So it makes sense to move our assets there because it shows that we're taking everything seriously.
It reminds them what the risks are.
So it's good persuasion.
But I don't see any risk of war with Iran because both sides aggressively don't want that.
Yeah, the John Bolton thing is interesting because I think the president benefits by having John Bolton to be bad cop.
So I think Trump does well with the bad cop on the team.
Bolton is the best bad cop you ever had.
The president can be trusted, I think, to use his own instincts to cancel that out.
People are saying that Bolton will be gone, but I think Bolton is useful because he scares the pants off the other side.
As long as Bolton is there, Iran does believe that they have a military threat.
The day that Bolton leaves, Iran is going to say, oh, well, maybe not so dangerous after all.
Let's get a little adventurous.
So I don't think you should assume that even if everything you believe about Bolton is true, I don't think you should assume that the administration would be more effective without him, because his utility is very obvious.
First of all, he knows about the area.
Second of all, he's very predictable, which in this case is an advantage.
And thirdly, we know that Trump's instincts are literally the opposite, and of all people in the world, Trump is the least likely to be influenced by somebody else's opinion.
Can you think of anybody less likely to be influenced by John Bolton's opinion than President Trump?
He literally, if you were to invent a person who would ignore John Bolton, if you had to write a movie script in which there was a character Who is the only character who is best suited to ignore everything Bolton says?
It would be Trump.
He would be exactly the character you would invent to ignore John Bolton.
So I'm not too worried about the Bolton effect.
I think he's a positive variable that fits together well with Trump.
They make a scary but reasonable team.
I could be wrong about that and that would be terrible.
But I think they're a good team at the moment.
Bad Cop went too far.
Venezuela debacle.
Well, you don't see us moving troops into Venezuela, do you?
So the president's instincts have so far been ones you can trust.
All right, that's all I got for now.
And, oh, yes, the Hungarian leader meets with Trump.
You're reminding me of Dave Rubin getting problems from Media Matters.
So Media Matters is going after Dave Rubin for daring to have an upcoming interview with Mike Cernovich.
So Media Matters, as you know, is an organization which targets conservatives or anybody associated with that side.
And targets them for public destruction.
And they've targeted Mike Cernovich, now they've targeted Dave Rubin, because he's going to have Cernovich on his show, or already had him on.
And then you had prompted me about President Trump meeting with the Hungarian Prime Minister, who is far right, and people criticize him for all kinds of stuff.
Here's my declaration, which I've said before, and I will say again.
My brand, and I'll let other people speak for themselves.
Dave Rubin can speak for himself.
Obviously, the president can speak for himself.
Obviously, everybody can speak for themselves.
But I'll just tell you my view.
Don't freaking tell me who I can talk to.
Don't tell me who I can meet with.
Don't tell me who I can interview.
I reject The stupidity of that system completely.
Don't tell me that I adopt every bad decision everybody ever made because I had coffee with them.
Don't tell me that I can't talk to a human being in the United States or anywhere in the world for any freaking reason I won't.
Don't tell me I can't talk to a serial killer.
Don't tell me I can't talk to anybody in any ethnic group.
Don't tell me I can't talk to Black Lives Matter.
Don't tell me I can't talk to Antifa.
Don't tell me I can't talk to the worst person in the world.
Don't tell me I can't talk to somebody who committed a crime 10 years ago.
Don't tell me I can't talk to somebody who said something that offends you, even if it offends me.
Don't even frickin' try to limit my right to free association.
Secondly, if you think that there are good people meeting with bad people, let's say Media Matters believes that Dave Rubin, in their view, is slightly more virtuous than Mike Cernovich, why would you limit their contact?
Because by your own point of view, Mike Cernovich would become a better person If he spent time with Dave Rubin, this would be a Media Matters opinion, not my personal opinion.
Every time somebody that you think has bad opinions or is a bad character has a significant contact with somebody that you like slightly better, I think you should be happy about that.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think that the leader of Hungary is influencing President Trump?
No. Not.
Do you think it's more likely that the leader of Hungary will start to adopt any of President Trump's mannerisms or ways?
Probably because Trump is a person who influences other people.
He's not really the person who gets influenced.
The other side argues differently, but that's my opinion.
So I would say you should encourage interaction between people that you dislike because of their opinions and people you do like.
That can only be good.
If there are opinions that you find objectionable, how about putting them in the light?
If the sunlight doesn't kill the ideas, Well, maybe you should rethink your feeling about those ideas.
And most importantly, I don't want to live in a world We're crucifying each other for what somebody did or did not say on social media.
If you look at the attacks against Mike Cernovich and you look at the headlines, you know, like the teaser or the bullet point, you'll say to yourself, my God, he did that or he said that?
That sounds terrible. And then you look at the actual contacts and you go, well, that's not exactly what the headline said.
This is a more nuanced situation.
This does not look at all the way it was represented in the summary or the headline.
So I don't think we want to live in a world where we're picking through the scat of our enemies and looking for that little morsel that we can attack them with for something they said or did on social media years ago.
It just isn't the world I want to live in.
So to Media Matters, I would say you are a vile and despicable force doing some of the worst things that anybody could do in our free society, which is discouraging freedom of association.
It's one of the worst things that you could do in this country.
I would say it's equivalent to racism in terms of badness.
I'd say it's equivalent to stealing.
If I'm just going to rate it in terms of how corrosive it is and how negative it is, I'd say it's as bad as a sex crime.
I would say it's in that level of despicability, trying to tell people who they can associate with, crucifying people for things that they don't even believe themselves anymore.
Things that people did which they themselves would consider a mistake.
Do you want to blame somebody forever for an opinion they used to hold but no longer hold?
Seriously? Media matters?
That's the world you want to live in?
I don't want to live in that world.
Stop making my world worse for whatever reason you think you want to do that.
So anyway, that's my take on it.
If anybody comes after you for your associations...
You should aggressively fight back about the concept.
It's the concept.
And you should make it very clear that your association with whoever somebody doesn't like should make that person a better person.
Because you're a better person.
If you believe that's true.
I believe that's true.
If you put me in a room with anybody that you disagree with, what is the likely outcome when we leave the room?
Is the likely outcome that I will have turned toward the dark side?
Or is the likely outcome that I will have had some positive influence on the person you didn't like who was sitting in the room with me?
I think you know the answer.
I don't make people worse.
That's sort of not what I do.
I don't spend time with people and then they leave the room as worse people.
That doesn't happen.
Nor do they influence me to be worse.
I don't believe that's ever happened.
So if you like a world in which free association is still a thing, people can improve, people can change their minds, people can grow, people can get over their mistakes.
If you want that world, then you don't want a Media Matters world.
But if you want to live in a corrupt, despicable, disgusting little sewer of a civilization, then Media Matters shows you the way to get there.
▲
Export Selection