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June 14, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
47:04
Episode 565 Scott Adams: Limpet Mines, Hatch Act, TDS Recovery
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And you know you can't do that without two things.
You need Scott Adams present and you need coffee.
But you don't even have to have coffee.
You could have some kind of beverage that is your favorite.
It could come in a cup or a mug or a tank or a stein or a chalice.
Something else. A vessel.
A thermos. A flask.
Or you could have your coffee in a mug that says this.
Can you read it? Let's see if you can read this.
I don't want to ruin it for you by doing the reveal.
But it looks like I might have to.
It says, Capitalism delivers what socialism promises.
So I got this in the mail today.
Somebody is making coffee mugs.
They say, capitalism delivers what socialism promises.
I imagine if you do a Google search on that with that phrase and coffee mug, it will pop right up.
But I got mine.
Make sure you get yours.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine-producing amazingness of the simultaneous sip.
So, if all goes well today, I'm going to have a guest present.
I tried to have yesterday, but I had technical difficulties.
My guest has been, he's recovered from TDS. And I wanted to talk to someone who had gone through the process of having Trump derangement syndrome and somehow recovering, because it's a rare thing.
But before we get to that, I'll give a few minutes to make sure that everybody's here.
I want to talk about, so...
I always like to tell you what's weird about being me, because I have the strangest life, because I'm a little bit famous, but most of the time I'm not, meaning that 99% of my life is just ordinary life like anybody else.
But 1% of the time, weird things happen to me because I'm a little bit famous.
And one of them is that when I read the news, it's not unusual for me to be in the news.
So today is one of those days.
So Google kicked up an article by Jonah Goldberg in National Review, and he's talking about Trump giving people nicknames, and he quotes me.
And I want to read that quote because, damn it, did I lose it?
I want to read that quote because it talks about me.
So he's talking about Trump giving people nasty nicknames, and then he said, in response, cartoonist and prominent Trump-splainer Scott Adams tweeted, quote, I don't know if Pelosi is crazy, as Trump suggests, but she did just start a public insult war with the best public insulter in the solar system.
So that's what I said.
So remember what I said. So you can compare that to Jonah's criticism of what I said.
So I'm going to say it again, so this time just remember what I said so you can compare it.
I said that, I don't know if Pelosi is crazy, as Trump suggests, but she did just start a public insult or with the best public insulter in the solar system.
So, alright, then Jonah says, Adams is wrong on two counts.
So what follows are the two mistakes I made.
Number one, Trump's insults aren't all that clever.
Did I say they were clever?
One needn't be a modern-day H.L. Mencken or Oscar Wilde to come up with Lying Ted, Al Frankenstein, Little Michael Bloomberg, blah, blah, blah.
They're second-grader insults.
Now, where did I say that Trump's nicknames are clever?
I talk about them being persuasive and effective.
Is that the same? Not really, because clever suggests it's hilarious.
And it is hilarious in its own way, but it's hilarious because it's persuasive, because he shouldn't be doing it.
It's a little bit naughty and that sort of thing.
But I never made the claim that it's clever in any kind of an H.L. Mencken, Oscar Wilde way.
So the first criticism is of something that didn't happen.
What's the second one?
Second, the notion that Trump's barbs are equally effective across ideological or partisan aisle misreads the political landscape.
What? At what point have I ever said that Trump's barbs are equally effective on both sides of the political aisle?
I've literally never even had that thought.
In fact, the first time I ever thought about that difference was when I read a criticism of my thoughts about it.
So there are two criticisms about things that literally just never happened, nor are they in evidence in this.
But here's the funny part, the thing that you wouldn't know.
This is the second-generation Goldberg to insult my work.
Now, first of all, I know Jonah a little bit, and so I'm just having some fun, so don't take any of this too seriously.
Jonah's father, by weird coincidence, was a top executive at the cartoon syndication company that first syndicated Dilber at United Media.
So I actually know Jonah because I met him many years before he was famous for writing about politics.
I met him because I knew his father and worked with him in my early cartoon career.
Now, what's interesting is his father once told me that he could draw Dilbert better than I could because it didn't take that much talent to do it, which is a strange thing to say for somebody you're working with.
But he meant it. He wasn't joking.
He said that it didn't take much talent to do what I did, and if he'd thought of doing a comic about business first, well, he'd be doing it instead of me.
So I've actually now been insulted by two generations of Goldbergs, and I just had to mention that.
But again, I like Jonah.
I'm just having some fun, but the criticism seemed a little off-base.
Alright, we've got a bunch of stuff to talk about.
Let's check the time. And I'm going to go in and see if Joshua is on here.
Let us see. There he is.
I'm going to bring on my guest, Joshua Lysak.
I'll ask him if I pronounced that correctly.
Joshua, I hope you're ready.
Joshua, can you hear me?
I can hear you. Tell me how to pronounce your last name properly.
Lysak. Lysak.
Okay, Joshua Lysak. Now, you responded to my request to talk to somebody who once had Trump derangement syndrome, but maybe I helped talk you out of it, or maybe you came out of it yourself.
Now, does that accurately describe you?
That does, yes.
How bad did you have it?
Tell me, what is your political leaning?
Do you naturally lean left or right?
Would you label yourself?
Yeah, I would say I'm center-left, a reasonable liberal.
Yes, we do exist. Alright, so you had terrible thoughts about Trump.
Could you summarize what terribleness you thought were the problems in particular?
Yes, and I can even give some context.
About a year prior to the 2016 election, I had been a listener of Sam Harris's podcast.
And of course, that left-wing ecosystem, kind of the intellectuals of the left, were predicting that this guy was going to be opening concentration camps and deporting You know, the millions of illegal immigrants and starting World War III and, you know, he was a sexist, racist, bigot, homophobe.
All these things that were hallucinated, I now would have to say, kind of looking back, is what was happening.
But at the time, I was fully convinced, well, these smart people are saying these terrible things are going to happen.
They seem to be pretty confident.
So why would I believe otherwise?
Yeah. Right. So, would you say that it was the group thinking that influenced you more than, say, your own critical thoughts about the facts?
Definitely, yes. Like a lot of people, I mean, as a busy person, I don't necessarily have hours on end to do all the research and the deep diving myself, and so I would look at these kind of commentators, podcasters, so-called journalists whose opinions I respected before.
It's a perfectly reasonable shortcut because we can't think through every topic to the bottom.
You have to rely on people to...
Sort of give you the cliff notes there.
Alright, so what was it that changed?
How did you come out of it?
Give us the brief journey there.
Yes. Reflecting on it, I have to point, I think there's three specific things that happened that were like, you know, cracks in the other movie screen that I was watching, right?
The two movies on one screen. So there were some cracks on my screen.
The first crack, actually, was how Sam Harris, personally, you know, after the 2016 election, for unrelated reasons, was kind of dragged through the reputation mud by establishment left-wing commentators,
intellectuals, Yeah, that's really interesting.
Alright, so once you saw that the same treatment could be applied to somebody you did know about, and you felt confident, Then that made you doubt the same treatment they were giving to Trump, who you didn't know as much about, but now you're saying, hmm, if they were wrong before...
All right, go ahead. What was your second one?
Yes, so that was the first crack, is their turning on Sam Harris, especially like Vox and that whole disaster.
So that would be the first one. The second one, actually, is a far-left friend of mine...
Posted on Facebook an article in Rolling Stone.
This is, I think, maybe a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago before my son was born, I'm thinking, in terms of the time frame.
So the article, the headline, it was something that just sounded terrible, that we expected to happen.
The headline was something to the effect of, Trump rolls back child labor laws.
Oh no, this evil, terrible person, sweatshops.
You can just see the sweatshops in your head, right?
And everyone's showing us thousands of shares.
Oh, this man's evil. Hashtag impeach now, right?
I go and I read the article.
The article is about how the Trump administration is instituting a new labor rule which allows blue-collar employers to hire 16, 17-year-old High school graduates to work at their companies as apprentices.
I read that and I say, I completely agree with that.
I'm completely on board with that.
Right. And yet the headline was so far removed from that.
It was a hyper exaggeration.
That was the second crack in the night.
I said to my wife, I said, how many other Trump rolls back child labor laws headlines have we seen that if we had read the story, if we just clicked and read, we would completely agree with it.
So what's the third thing?
Yes, the third thing was you.
And so this was a little over a year ago.
Before the hoax funnel, so this is a little over a year ago, you had the hoax tunnel.
It looked kind of like a wind tunnel.
You had this drawing on your whiteboard, and you listed the various media hoaxes or exaggerations or lies about President Trump.
Don't start with the big one.
Start with this little one and work your way through.
It looked like a wind tunnel, right?
So like work your way through the hoax tunnel and you realize, you know, maybe there are legitimate reasons to vote for someone else.
In my case, I'm kind of on the Andrew Yang bandwagon for 2020.
But there are legitimate reasons, you know, to like President Trump's results in his administration.
And there's, you know, reasons to maybe not approve.
But these are not any of those reasons.
All right. So what's unusual about your journey is that it involves reason and actually learning, which is so rare.
And I think it helped a lot that you said you were sort of moderate left-leaning.
Your appreciation for Andrew Yang sort of speaks to that.
I mean, Yang is... Yang is half Republican.
I don't know what he is.
I don't know how he could get elected because he's only half one side and half the other.
But that is very interesting.
Now, did you get any pushback from your friends who presumably remain Trump haters?
Well, whenever I bring up something, like maybe they shared a headline, or, oh, did you hear about what Trump did today?
And I'll say, well, I looked into that story, actually.
I read past the headline in the article, and actually it was ABC. And then, just as you predicted in the, what would it be, the VFP hoax funnel, where they just say, okay, well, maybe that thing isn't true, but this other thing.
And so it's just like hopping from one thing to another, and maybe it'll get to the point where it's something that Okay, I actually agree.
I'm not a fan of President Trump.
Joshua, did you see the video clips of the times that President Trump used the same mocking expression as he was blamed for mocking the reporter who had the handicap with his arm?
Have you seen the compilation clips that show he does that all the time with other people?
Not until I think it was on your timeline.
Right. Yeah.
So the news funnel completely protects people who are the Trump haters from seeing the exculpatory video.
They just never see it.
And so you can kind of understand why people are fooled.
Now, you had the ability to start with a Sam Harris, who I would say is actually not really political in a way, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, yeah. And I think that the type of people he was having on his podcast had some sort of either political affiliation or they're economists, they're commentators, they're technologists.
And for their own reasons, they had fears about possibly being an existential risk, like Eric Weinstein.
I think that was Weinstein's phrase, existential risk.
Yeah, even when I disagree with Sam Harris, I appreciate that he's trying to get there through some kind of process of reason and facts and discovery and You know, learning, etc.
Like, he's trying to get to places through rational processes.
Unfortunately, he lives in an irrational world, so that's going to have a limited effect on people's minds.
So, Joshua, thank you so much, and I'm sorry about my miscue yesterday, my technical error that delayed this until today, but this is fascinating.
Is there anything else you want to add? Yeah, I just saw a comment in here I want to respond to.
Somebody asked, is he an artist or an engineer?
You probably expect, just like Andrew Yang, I am both.
So I'm an entrepreneur.
I own my own business.
I'm a real estate investor as well.
But my main business is as a ghostwriter.
So it's creativity, it's writing.
So I own a creative business in addition to another enterprise.
So a little bit of both. And want to give your company a plug?
What's the name of your business?
Oh, sure, sure. Yes, it's Entrepreneurs Wordsmith.
EntrepreneursWordsmith.com is my business.
I've ghostwritten 40 full-length books since 2011, so we're celebrating eight years this month.
All right. What kind of books do you ghostwrite?
A certain genre or anything?
Most of them tend to be business books, entrepreneurship books by thought leaders or aspiring thought leaders who are maybe experts in a specific niche or industry and they want to go mainstream.
And so they see a book being something that can open the door to greater awareness of their personal brand and credibility.
Excellent. And if somebody wanted to reach you on Twitter, tell them your Twitter story.
Sure. At Joshua Lisek.
Lisek is spelled L-I-S-E-C. Hit me up.
At Joshua Lisek. Great.
Thanks, Joshua. We're going to go on with the show and I appreciate you very much.
Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. All right.
Bye-bye. All right.
That was interesting and fun.
All right. Let's talk about some other things in the news.
Kellyanne Conway is in trouble for alleged multiple violations of the Hatch Act.
And President Trump says he's not going to fire her because there's some government entity that says she's in violation of these things.
Do you know what seems to be the new theme?
You know, I talk about this all the time, but the more I talk about it, the more clearly you can see it.
It's one of those things that the first time you hear this idea that I'm going to introduce or reintroduce, you don't quite believe it.
But you have to see a lot of it, and then you say, yeah, I'm seeing too much of this for this to be a coincidence.
And here's the thing. There's not any news anymore.
That's the thing. The end of news.
We're not having real news because we're doing such a good job, the whole country really, about dealing with our hardest problems.
And when problems are being reduced, It doesn't really make a news story.
You want big problems and crises and things like that.
So, have you noticed that the news has turned from big, gnarly problems to maybe 75% of the news would fall into the category of this?
That feels like it might be illegal.
Is that illegal?
I can't even tell if that's illegal.
What do the lawyers say?
Well, some of the lawyers say it's illegal.
But some of these lawyers say it's not illegal.
I can't even tell if a crime has been committed.
Am I wrong? The entire, like 75% of the entire news is stuff you can't even tell is really illegal.
Because I'm looking at, so I don't, again, I'm not a lawyer.
So this Hatch Act says something about Kellyanne Conway being a paid part of the administration is not allowed To say negative things about the other team.
So she can't say bad things about the other side while she's being paid.
To which I said to myself, are you kidding me?
That's a law?
There's a law denying Kellyanne Conway freedom of speech?
Did you know that?
Did you know there's a law that says that Kellyanne Conway and people in that kind of job don't have freedom of speech?
What? Now, here's the thing.
Like I said, I'm not a lawyer.
And if I had a lawyer here, you could be quite certain that that lawyer would say, yes, there are good reasons for this law.
People on both sides liked it.
Here's the reason. If we didn't have this, this is what would go wrong.
But honestly, it's not obvious to me what that is.
I suppose it's because people in certain positions would have too much power.
Maybe they would have too much influence.
Perhaps people would take them too seriously.
You know, those would be pretty good arguments.
But are those arguments better than freedom of speech?
Are you kidding me?
Are you telling me that a human being can't stand in public in the frickin' United States and say any, any?
I want to swear now because it makes me mad.
But to tell me that a human being in the United States, a legal citizen, can't stand in public and say any freaking thing they want to say, I'm not cool with that.
You're going to need a really good reason.
Now, I understand if it's slanderous, etc., but we have specific rules about that, and that's not about the free speech so much.
It's about slandering and injuring somebody.
So anyway, the Kellyanne Conway thing is just another lawyer versus lawyer thing that we won't fully understand and we're not really sure that something is illegal.
Just like obstructing injustice, the president is accused of collusion, which we don't really even know if it's a crime or not.
It doesn't feel like it.
Maybe he did something with his campaign contributions because of Stormy Daniels, and it feels like it's kind of sort of illegal, but we can't really tell.
And maybe he obstructed justice or obstructed injustice, but what he was obstructing was something that wasn't really even a crime.
Well, it wasn't a crime. And was he really obstructing or was he just doing his job?
It seems like all of the news is just this.
This, I can't tell if it's illegal.
If you and I break a law, don't you usually know it?
That's the different things, the different thing about our existence is that when we break a law, we usually know it.
All right, we have to talk about Iran.
I have an evolving opinion on the Iranian, the accusations that Iran was behind the attacks on the tankers in the Gulf there.
And At first, here was my initial thought.
So when Pompeo made his statement, I said to myself, hey, Pompeo is saying that Iran is behind this, but what does President Trump say?
Because let me be as completely clear about this as I can.
I don't have any bad feelings or anything, really.
I don't know Mike Pompeo, so I don't have some strong opinion about his job performance or anything else.
It looks pretty strong.
From my position, it looks like Mike Pompeo is an amazing servant, public servant.
But he has the kind of job that you should not trust.
Meaning that no matter who's in that job, whether it's Pompeo or Democrat or another Republican, it wouldn't matter.
You can't really trust what they tell you about what another country did.
Now, we all know that President Trump is accused of 10,000 factual errors by his opponents.
And although some of those are exaggerated fact-checking and they weren't really that wrong or they weren't wrong at all, Still, we would agree that President Trump can use some hyperbole.
So you had a situation here where Pompeo is in a job that you shouldn't trust what he says just automatically.
So you shouldn't trust that.
And then the President is known for his hyperbole, so you have to be careful.
Is it negotiating? Does he believe it?
Does he just want Iran to hear it?
You have to be careful. But here's what caught my eye.
The first statement I believe that President Trump made about it was to quote Pompeo.
So I think his first statement was just a tweet in which he quoted Pompeo to say, it is the assessment of the U.S. government that Iran is responsible for today's attack in the Gulf of Oman.
Now, if you heard that President Trump did not say directly, I think Iran did this, or that Iran did this, but rather he simply tweeted a quote by an underling.
What does that tell you about President Trump's confidence that it was Iran?
Because if he were confident, he would say, Iran did it.
So the first thing I flagged was, hey, why is the president softening this by not saying it directly, but he's letting his underling say, it's the assessment.
That feels like not quite sure, and it feels like the president is leaving himself a little wiggle room so he can say, well, my people thought it was true if we changed their mind or something later, and he'd have a little bit of wiggle room there.
But apparently he went on Fox and Friends this morning and said in direct language, this is the president, and I'm quoting, Iran did do it.
So now he said directly.
And you know it because you saw the boat.
So I think by now most of you have seen the video of what appears to be an Iranian small naval boat that pulls up next to the damaged tanker and somebody reaches up and removes what is obviously one of these limpet mines that stuck to it that had not exploded.
So one of the mines on the other side of the ship had exploded, but this particular one had not exploded, and the Iranians on the boat allegedly were removing it.
So now the president has seen this video, and so he's willing to make the direct statement, Iran did do it, and you know it because you saw the boat.
All right? Now, you know it because you saw the boat.
In other words, that's...
The primary evidence is you know it because you saw the boat.
Now it's also true that these limpid mines have been used before and they're associated with Iran.
But here's the other thing that Pompeo said.
Pompeo said that there were no other entities in the area that had the expertise, you know, the ability to do this kind of attack.
Now you watched, if you watched the video, you saw how much expertise it takes To execute the attack.
Are you ready? I'm going to demonstrate all of the expertise it takes to do this attack.
You want to see it again?
That's an entire Iranian naval attack.
Grab a limpet mine, pull up next to the tanker, attach it to the tanker, sail away.
Now, nobody's saying that the people who put the limpet mine on the tanker invented it, right?
It seems to me that anybody in the Middle East who was a bad person, who had connections to arms dealers, etc., is it really that hard to get your hands on a limpet mine?
And is it hard to have a boat that can pull up next to a tanker and attach it?
Because apparently that's all you have to do.
I think they might have to set it for a timer.
Apparently there are two ways these limpet mines explode.
One is with a timer, one is with some kind of distance trigger.
But in any case, I don't believe that limpet mines were designed so that you need to be a nuclear scientist to operate it.
It's probably got a button and a timer.
So, when Pompeo says, we don't know anybody else who has the sophistication to pull this off, I say to myself, you have not demonstrated any sophistication.
In fact, the facts and evidence are exactly the opposite of sophistication.
Somebody in a small boat pulled up to a big boat and went like this, with their limpet mind.
Now, maybe it's a little bit hard to get a limpet mind, but in the Middle East...
I feel like that wouldn't be too hard.
So here are some questions that are still out there.
Oh, and first, number one, if you're trying to determine what's the truth of this, my cat here is attacking me, so you can't see her below the camera.
So now that we have the video, oops, cat coming through.
Oh, no. Cats.
She sees me doing this.
She gets very jealous of the whole operation.
All right. Look at the audience.
Boo. All right.
Carry on. So now that we have the video of this alleged Iranian ship pulling up to the tanker, here's the thing that you need to look for.
Iran has denied involvement originally, but when Iran denied involvement, they were denying it based on no specific evidence being presented.
Now there is specific evidence of what appears to be clearly an Iranian vessel, which suspiciously did not have a flag, and suspiciously all of the sailors did not have uniforms on.
And even more suspiciously, here's my favorite part.
Did you see the video of the boat, the small boat that is allegedly Iranian?
And the people taking the limpet mine off, did you notice there were probably like 15 sailors just standing right next to the mine?
Now, I'm no explosive expert.
I don't know much about the military.
I don't know much about limpet mines.
But I'll tell you one thing.
If I were the person who was not directly responsible for reaching up and taking the limpet mine off the tanker, I wouldn't be standing right next to him because you got to think that that thing just might go off.
I would sort of get to the back of the Iranian alleged boat just in case it went off.
I might even go below deck just so the explosion didn't get me.
So what was going on there?
Now here's another piece of evidence.
Apparently, some of the facts are conflated in my mind, but basically, the Iranian Navy did rescue some of the people from the tanker.
I don't know if it was this one, but we know that the Iranians were involved in a rescue mission.
They took some of the sailors off when that mine was noticed.
So put this together.
What are the two explanations, not just one, But what are the two different movies that perfectly explain this alleged Iranian boat taking the limpet mine off?
Well, movie number one They put it there in the first place and they wanted to remove the evidence because they didn't want it to be obvious that a limpet mine had been used because that would tie it to Iran.
And so when it didn't go off, the Iranians said, oh darn, one of our limpet mines didn't go off.
We better go retrieve it because that would be obvious evidence that it came from us.
So that's movie one.
Here's movie two. The Iranians rescued some of the sailors.
We know that. If the Iranians were willing to rescue sailors, would they not also be willing to remove the mine that was still stuck to the side of their boat, their ship?
Doesn't it make complete sense, both of those movies?
In one movie, they had to remove the evidence that showed they were guilty of the other mine that did go off.
In the second movie, They said, holy crap, let's rescue these people.
Their boat's on fire. And look, there's still a mine stuck to the boat.
We'd better get that off of there because we know how to do this.
They can't reach it, but we can pull our boat up and we can reach it, whereas they can't from the top.
They can't reach down and get the mine off.
So here's what's missing.
You need to look for a direct statement from Iran as to what that ship was and what it was doing.
If Iran says, that wasn't ours, well, then you have to deal with that.
If they say, yes, that was ours, and we were trying to help, well, you have to answer that.
And if they say it was ours and we were just helping, we have to explain why it wasn't flying a flag and why the sailors were not in uniform.
So we've got a lot of questions here, right?
I would say the fact that they were...
Oh, and then next.
What good does it do you to not have a flag and not have uniforms if the ship that you're on is so unambiguously an Iranian vessel?
How does that make sense?
Did the Iranians think that tooling around in a well-known Iranian vessel...
They would be invisible because they didn't have their uniforms on and a flag.
This is a pretty serious military vessel.
I mean, it wasn't a giant one, but it's unambiguously a military vessel and unambiguously belongs to Iran, apparently.
I don't know how many other ones there are.
Anyway. So I would say at this point, yesterday I said it was a coin flip.
I said, based on what we knew, it was a 50-50 proposition that Iran was behind it.
Based on what we know today, that percentage goes way up, at least 75% that it was Iran.
But if Iran makes no comment about the ship, if they simply don't mention it, they're guilty.
Would we agree on that, right?
Would you agree that if Iran never mentions The video of the ship, they don't mention it to say that they were helping.
They don't mention it to say that it wasn't theirs.
They just don't mention it. Then it's them, and that would be confirmation.
I would say that takes it to 100%.
So wait.
Give them about a few days, probably 48 hours, maybe a week.
If they don't mention it, you know for sure.
If they do mention it, I'd sort of listen to what they said, because we would be surprised.
You never know. But 75%...
It was Iran and that what they were trying to do was create some...
They were trying to shake the box.
This is what President Trump does all the time with negotiations.
The variables were not set up in a way that was good for Iran.
They didn't have any good ideas.
So they said, well, if we don't have any good ideas, let's just shake this box.
Get some different variables going.
So having some minor damage on some tankers that were...
And it's obvious that these attacks...
Whoever did these attacks did not want the cargo to reach the water.
Think about that. Whoever did the attacks did them in a very specific way that would minimize loss of life and would not sink the ships.
It would just dissuade them from doing business.
That's a very interesting thing for anybody to do, and it certainly speaks to the false flag possibility Because if it were a false flag, it would be somebody who didn't want to kill innocent people and didn't want to pollute the water.
They just wanted to make it look like an attack.
But you would also say, quite reasonably, that's exactly what Iran would want to do.
Because Iran also didn't want to kill people from some innocent country that had nothing to do with them.
And Iran also didn't want to pollute the water right around their country.
So in both cases, you had, whether it was them or not them, you had reason to not do a more serious attack, which also suggests that our response to it should be muted, meaning that we probably have to respond in some way, I suppose. Maybe we'll just tighten sanctions or whatever.
But it's clearly not a military provocation, of the type that was designed to be big enough to cause a bigger fight.
It seems so intentionally limited in scale that that should tell you something.
All right. As I was watching Change of the Topic, watching the coverage of the President's statement about what he would do if he got information from a foreign country or a foreign leader, and he was asked Would you listen to the information or would you give it to the FBI? And the President said directly, he said, I'd probably do both.
He said he'd listen to it and he'd give it to the FBI. I think all day long his critics were arguing that he wouldn't give it to the FBI. It seems to me that he...
I'm going to delete this critic here.
It seems to me that everybody kept saying, my God, this president, he wouldn't tell the FBI if he got information from another country.
But his answer was, probably he would.
But he would also listen to it first.
I have not heard anybody...
Have you heard any critic actually criticize what he actually said?
I haven't heard it yet.
Have you? Have you heard any critic...
Accurately characterize what the president said and then make a criticism that suggests they actually heard what he said.
None. Somebody bought some WEN tokens and is waiting to be a billionaire.
Thank you. So it's fascinating because, you know, I said from the start that you do both.
In other words, you listen to the information and if it's problematic, you tell the FBI. Why wouldn't you?
So that's more fake news.
I'm going to make a prediction here.
I don't believe I've ever made this prediction.
And it's a dangerous one because it goes quite against expectations.
And it goes like this.
I believe at some point before the end of the President's administration, whenever that happens, whether it's one term or two, I'm pretty sure it's going to be two, but sometime before the end of his administration, you're going to learn, this is a prediction, just a prediction, that Russia was not necessarily behind the hack of the DNC. Now, you might not learn that it was an inside job.
That's a separate question.
But more and more, it seems to me that when you hear officials talk about it, they talk about it's highly indicated, or they're pretty sure, or they have a high degree of confidence that Russia did it.
And I gotta say, I'm not convinced.
Because here's the thing that I can't get past.
Yeah, somebody's mentioning the 17 agencies.
Remember that the statement that Russia definitely did it is at the bottom of a lie funnel.
The lie funnel started at the top and said there are 17 agencies who all agree that Russia did it.
That was the beginning of the lie.
Later, there were individual entities that said, okay, well, it wasn't us.
We didn't say this, but others did.
And then it was, well, okay, it's not all these people, but really there was a small working group in which we pulled people from the various groups.
Then you find out that it was, you know, somebody handpicked those people.
And then when it was handpicked, you know that it's really just the handpicker.
So it went from everybody agrees to, well, it wasn't everybody, but it was some important people.
Okay, it wasn't all the agencies per se.
It was individuals within the agencies.
Okay, they weren't just randomly selected individuals.
They were handpicked, which really means it was just one person.
Russia did it. So, here's what's wrong with the story.
It started out with a big truth, absolutely no doubt about it.
17 agencies, you know, 17 agencies agree.
And by the time it shrunk down, it's all the way down to, we have a high degree of confidence because a few people said so.
And by the way, this could be faked.
That's the part nobody tells you.
Nobody tells you how easy it would be To fake that it looked like Russia.
So I'm going to put that prediction out there that before the end of the Trump administration ends, before his terms are over, that we will learn that we did not know it was Russia and that we've been signaling it by using language such as high degree of confidence.
When you watch the news, Does the news ever say we have a high degree of confidence that Russia hacked the DNC? Have you ever heard any pundit use that language, which is actually the official language?
The official language is that we have a high degree of confidence.
That's pretty different than we're sure they did it.
That's pretty different, because we've had high degrees of confidence on things that are wrong before.
All right. Sarah Sanders has decided to leave the administration.
That must be the hardest job in the world.
I see on Twitter a number of people are recommending me for the job.
I would be the most awesome replacement for Sarah Sanders, but I couldn't take the pay cut.
So I'm not in it for the job.
But I've got to tell you, I would be awesome at that job.
But do not want it.
Alright, that's all I got to talk about today.
Anybody have any questions? Anything you'd like to see?
Yes, and congratulations to Sarah Sanders.
I think history will be kind to her for having the hardest job in the world and doing it with grace and talent.
And making everybody look good.
So I think she was amazing.
So there's some photos of Jim Acosta in a bookstore signing some of his books and nobody was around and people were making fun of him because nobody was in line.
Nobody recognized him. He was just lonely there signing his book.
I have to tell you something.
I've done a lot of book signings.
And first of all, it is a thing to just drop into a big bookstore and just sign some books.
So it's very common for a famous author to walk into a bookstore and just say, hey, I'm the author of that book you have on that table.
Do you mind if I sign some for your store?
Because I'm around.
And all that does is it sort of kickstarts your book in one of the stores and you can get a little bit of momentum going at least in one store.
So that's probably what Acosta was doing.
He probably just went to see if his own book was being presented well and then said, hey, I'm Jim Acosta.
Let me sign it. But the other possibility is that he showed up for a book signing and nobody showed up.
And I say that because I have done major book signings where literally nobody showed up.
So I've done book signings where people were lined up literally outside and all the way around the block.
I've done book signings where you couldn't see the end of the line.
It just disappeared into the distance.
But I've also done a number of book signs where literally nobody came, and it was just me sitting at a little table.
And by the way, this happened at the height of my Dilbert fame, when Dilbert was just the hottest comic going.
And I would go to a bookstore, and I would sometimes just sit at a table, and the staff would just Be embarrassed and they'd be trying to make conversations like, well, I think people are going to come in any minute.
Yeah, maybe it's the weather.
I think it's the weather. Probably maybe not everybody read the publicity, but they'll be coming in any minute now.
And an hour later when nobody's come in, then the staff starts asking for autographs.
And that's when it gets really embarrassing.
Like the assistant manager will come over with three books, say, oh, you know, I'm glad that you're not busy.
Would you like to sign my books?
And really, it's basically because they literally feel embarrassed for you that you spend your day sitting at a table talking to no one.
So, point is, do not take that as an indication of how much people like Jim Acosta's book because it's not that unusual to show up to a book signing even when you're famous and even if you're a best-selling author and nobody shows up.
It happens. All right.
That's all I got to talk about.
And somebody says Kellyanne was supposed to replace Sarah.
I don't know. I don't know.
Seems like Kellyanne would have had that job already if that's the job she wanted.
All right. All right.
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