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June 22, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:00:36
Episode 574 Scott Adams: Tucker Carlson Prevents War With Iran, Mayor Pete Imploding, DR Hysteria
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Hello Miss Boo Hat, Miss Boo Boo Hat and the rest of you who are streaming in here.
So many of you, my God, hundreds, thousands.
Here they come.
Yes, Bitcoin is soaring.
Bitcoin is soaring.
Who told you that Bitcoin would go up?
Eric Finman did.
He's got a very aggressive call on Bitcoin, and it looks like the so-called Finman effect is happening, which is that Eric Finman makes a call on a crypto, and it moves.
We've seen it over and over again.
All right, but before we get to that, let us do why you came here.
You know why you came here.
It's for a little thing called the simultaneous zip, and the way you do this You should grab a cup or a glass or a mug, a stein or a chalice, or a tankard, possibly a thermos, maybe a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And get ready for the dopamine hit of the day, the part that gets you going, the part that makes you just love the rest of your day.
day.
Here it comes, the simultaneous ep.
Ah, I hope you're making that noise at home.
Ah, So, one update correction.
Many of you know I did a little test to see if I could determine what the YouTube algorithm is for limiting or throttling things.
And it seemed to me that every time I mentioned the fine people hoax, My monetization dropped off a shelf, and it seemed to be throttled.
But I did an illegitimate test, which people have pointed out.
I did a small video on one topic, just about the fine people hoax, and I wanted to see if that would get demonetized.
And sure enough, it was deeply throttled.
But here are two interesting things.
As some smart people told me on Twitter, It wasn't a good test because that video was short.
And the algorithm favors long videos because YouTube wants to keep you watching.
So just the fact that it was a short video and most of my videos are longer, that should have produced an inappropriate analysis.
And perhaps it did.
So let us assume that we do not know what happened with the algorithm because that test was not very good.
But one interesting thing did happen.
Before I started complaining about my videos being demonetized, I noticed that the graph, instead of going up like almost every other video, was flat.
It was flat for a day or so, like nobody watched it.
And then after I complained, not only did the curve go up, but here's the interesting part.
The part that had been flat before disappeared.
So in other words, the history of the traffic on that particular video, the history disappeared.
It was rewritten by a different history.
So after I called out that it was flatlined and that was impossible, the flatline went away.
Now, am I mistaken?
Possibly. I could totally be mistaken.
I may be confusing this video with another one.
I may have seen something that was just a glitch.
I may have seen something that makes complete sense because of the way they count things and the timing of things.
Possibly. But the problem is, once again, I can't tell if I have free speech.
Think about that.
Do you have freedom of speech if you can't tell?
Because I can't tell.
It's such a...
You know, non-transparent process of whose videos get attention, who the algorithm slows down.
If you don't know, you don't really know how free your speech is.
Now I know, I know. Freedom of speech has to do with the government.
It does not have to do with private companies.
It does not have to do with social media.
But I think most of you are at least smart enough to know that free speech without the tools of free speech isn't really free speech.
Let me give you an example.
Does a prisoner who's in prison in solitary confinement have freedom of speech?
Well, yes, they can talk all they want inside their little cell, but they don't have access in terms of tools or capability to actually take advantage of their freedom of speech.
So, If a person is shadow banned, it's sort of like being put in solitary confinement.
That person from a legal constitutional perspective has complete freedom of speech, but nobody can hear it.
So you have to ask yourself, is that the freedom of speech that the founders anticipated?
Did they say, yeah, we want you to have freedom of speech?
But we're going to take away all the capability and tools for anybody else to hear what you're saying.
I think if the founders understood the internet and wrote a constitution in the days of social media, they would have actually included some language to handle that.
I think they would have had to, because they would have said to themselves, well, sure, you have freedom of speech, but nobody can hear you.
Wait a minute. That doesn't mean anything.
That is meaningless.
If you can't control the tools of communication, if they're not open to people, nobody has freedom of speech.
They have the freedom to talk to themselves.
The freedom to talk to yourself, I don't know how much that's worth.
Let's talk about something else.
Have most of you seen that President Trump tweeted Carpe Dunctum's meme that showed a fake Time magazine with Trump 2020 and then it went to Trump 2024 and it went through the years until it looked like Trump was going to stay in office forever.
It was brilliantly funny because it mocked one of the biggest criticisms of the president is that he literally intends to stay in office after the ends of whenever his terms are over.
One way to deal with that would be to treat it seriously and say, no, do not be worried, citizens.
I do not plan to try to become a dictator.
First of all, it's impossible.
You couldn't get the military or anybody else to be in favor of it.
Impossible. Second of all, it wouldn't be to his best interest because retiring as a successful president is a really good deal.
Trying to become a dictator and having everybody in your family killed in the first 10 minutes would be a bad deal.
I think the president can tell the difference between these two deals.
Successful, respected ex-president versus everyone in your family is murdered in an hour.
They're not really close.
Seriously, ask Don Jr.
if he would expect to be alive I mean, it's a macabre topic.
But somebody asked Don Jr., Don Jr., if your father tried to become a dictator, what would you imagine would be your life expectancy?
I think he'd say, well, first of all, that's stupid.
That's never going to happen. And he'd be right.
That's stupid. It's never going to happen.
But hypothetically, my life expectancy would be about 25 minutes.
That's how long I could hide in a closet before the crowds rip me apart.
There's no chance in the world, I mean just none, that the President is thinking in those terms of staying in office after his term.
So, the best way to handle a ridiculous belief like that is to not treat it seriously.
And by tweeting this meme, he just put the joke to it.
And I haven't seen anybody complaining about this yet since the meme, have you?
Since the president tweeted this meme mocking people for thinking he was going to try to stay in office perpetually, has anybody talked about him not staying in office or staying in office?
I think he made the whole thing go away because it made it look so ridiculous, and he was willing to treat it as ridiculous even from the office of the president, which I thought was great.
So congratulations.
Carpe Dunctum, another home-run piece of work there.
You all are aware of the newest accusation against the President on the personal realm.
I'm not even going to mention it because, well, I'll tell you why.
First of all, I employ the 20-year rule.
The 20-year rule says this.
It says that if you did something more than 20 years ago, or even if you're just accused of something more than 20 years ago, because it's hard to check, I don't care.
I don't care. It's 20 years ago.
And by the way, I do apply this to all Democrats.
I applied it to Hillary Clinton when she was running and people were talking about things that may or may not have happened 20 years ago.
I said, well, don't tell me.
20 year rule. If she hasn't done any of this stuff in 20 years, I'm just not going to account for it.
But I must say something about this latest accusation.
And I'm going to make a distinction between things that are true and things that are credible, because those could be different.
Something could be not credible because of the way the information is transmitted to you, but still be true.
Whether something is true or not is not available to me, but I will say that the latest accusation doesn't smell true.
It doesn't really look credible.
Some people are saying, such as Alyssa Milano, hey, if there are 20 accusations about a thing, why don't you take that seriously?
To which I say, I'm pretty sure there are 20 accusations that Hillary Clinton had people killed.
Am I wrong about that?
Aren't there something like, I don't know what the number is, but some laughably large number of people that Hillary Clinton is supposed to have had killed over her career?
Does the fact that that number is a big number mean that, well, maybe they're not all true, but certainly she killed three or four people?
You know, I mean, I don't believe she killed 65 people, but certainly three or four.
No, it doesn't really mean that.
We don't live in a world where 65 accusations or 20 accusations actually means as much as you think it ought to.
Let me ask you this.
How many women in the United States have had a sex dream about President Trump?
I'm going to wait for your comments.
How many do you believe have had a dream about some kind of sexual interaction with President Trump?
I'm going to guess 30 million.
Probably 30 million people have had a dream.
And the reason is that probably 30 million people had a sex dream about the last president.
And probably that many people had a sex dream about the president before that.
I think it's the most common sex dream, is sex with the president.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's one of the ones that you just have all the time.
Not me, personally, but a lot of people.
And... So, you've got that, and then I also have the celebrity experience of how many times I've been accused of doing things to people that I've never met.
I've told you my story about my crazy stalker in Canada, who every few years she goes off at meds and calls people I work with, you know, business people, and tells me how I drive up to Canada now and then, rifle through her apartment, hack her computer, and And do terrible things.
Now, I have never met her, but she tells a very credible story, because the people who ask me about it, they say, oh, we got this phone call.
And I say, was it from a crazy Canadian woman that I've never met?
And they go, well, as a matter of fact, yes.
So... Famous people, and especially presidents, have a lot of people imagining that things happen, literally imagining that things happen.
If you've got 30 million people having dreams about you and hearing stories about things you may or may not have done to other people, and some amount of those 30 million are literally mentally troubled, you would expect I would expect no fewer than,
let's say, 300-some million citizens, say 150 million adults, let's say 75 million women thinking about the president, thinking about accusations about him.
I'm just giving rough numbers, but if you have 75 million people who are primed to think about the president and primed to think about these other accusations against him, And of 75 million, how many would you imagine believed it happened to them?
So if you started with 75 million women, what would you predict would be the number of them who would have accusations about any president.
It doesn't matter who it is. And of 75 million, I would guess 100, 200?
Maybe 100,000.
Somebody said 100,000.
I don't think that many. But I would expect no fewer than several hundred would legitimately come to believe that they had had sexual experience with the president.
I would think.
And a 75 million?
Because out of 75 million, you've got at least 10 million who are under professional care, professional mental care.
And by the way, I'm not saying anything about the latest accuser.
So this has nothing to do with her personally.
I'm just talking generally.
So anyway, you should expect that any president should have literally hundreds of people who actually believe that they had an encounter with that president.
If we had a female president, you should believe that there will be hundreds of American men who believe they had some kind of encounter with that person who didn't.
Do you know how many people believe they've had personal interactions with me who I've never met?
A lot. And I know that because people say things such as, just the other day somebody said, yeah, my friend was talking about how you did this or that when you went to school with them.
And I'll say, where'd your friend go to school?
And they'll say, Montana or whatever.
And I'll say, nope, didn't go to school in Montana.
There are Even in my case, I've probably heard, I think this is fair to say, I think I've heard hundreds of stories, hundreds.
This is just me.
I've heard hundreds of stories about people who claim they had an encounter with me in a bar, in some city I've never been to, in school that I didn't go to, in a college I didn't go to.
Hundreds. And that's just about me.
And they actually have told their friends These stories about encounters they had with me.
So, for example, especially in the 90s when Dilbert was really hot, I had an imposter who would say he was me and go to bars.
At least one woman emailed me to tell me about it and thought that she'd had an encounter with me.
And I said, where did this happen?
She was like, well, it was someplace I'd never been.
And obviously I would have remembered the encounter, but it didn't happen.
So very, very common.
Anyway, let's talk about something else.
Dominican Republic. I was waiting a little while on this story because, first of all, I don't usually...
It's not that I don't care.
I don't use it as material for the periscopes of tragedies and deaths and car accidents and fires and stuff like that.
It's not what I can add much value to.
But the Dominican Republic thing has now entered my domain, mass hysteria.
So I've made the claim that because I'm a trained persuader, I've studied hypnosis, I'm a hypnotist, And I've studied persuasion all my life that I have a little bit better insight to identify a mass hysteria.
Now, I identified, and so far I think I'm right, that the so-called sonic weapon used on our embassies in Cuba and somewhere else, Canada maybe, I said that was mass hysteria.
There might actually be some damage to people from something, but the idea that there was a sonic weapon, I said, was mass hysteria, and I predicted we would never...
I think I could claim success without 100% confidence, but probable success on that prediction.
The Dominican Republic appears very much to be mass hysteria.
What we know is that the politicians in the Dominican Republic are saying, hey, there's no story here.
All of those deaths had a cause, and I think they're claiming that they're not necessarily unusual, because there are a lot of people who visit, and some people are going to die, and some people are going to die young, and some people, you know, etc.
So here's my best, I'm going to give you my best prediction about Dominican Republic.
My guess is that some people died of some kind of environmental poisoning.
And environmental, in this case, could be some alcohol they had that was bad, could be something they were exposed to otherwise, etc.
So I think the odds that some people had some kind of legitimate accident, bad booze, bad something, pretty high.
The odds that there's some kind of widespread problem It's pretty low.
So, I separate those things.
Apparently, people are saying that the shooter of David Ortiz was a mistaken identity.
And people are saying, that can't be.
How would anybody have a mistaken identity of somebody so well-known?
Well, first of all, if you saw the video of the shooting, there's actually a surveillance video of the shooting.
He was shot in the back.
I don't know how easy it is to recognize somebody from behind.
I can't imagine that that would be something you couldn't make a mistake at.
I would say it's at least seriously possible that it was a mistaken identity.
I wouldn't say that's confirmed by any means.
There's probably slightly more chance that that was the case.
But I wouldn't take anybody's word for it.
So that's my ruling.
There may be a few real deaths, and it would be good to know exactly what happened.
But probably it's some combination of coincidence and mass hysteria driving the Dominican Republic stuff.
So here's a prediction. So remember, I told you, you can ignore people who predict the past.
That's not a thing.
And you should ignore anybody who gives you opinions that can't form some kind of a prediction.
So here's my prediction.
We will not discover, with any amount of research and any amount of time that goes by, we will not discover a large, let's say, conspiracy to kill lots of people.
We will not discover that any person or group was behind it.
And that we might discover that there were some tainted specific poisonings that happened, but that other people were more coincidental, probably more coincidental deaths.
Alright, let's talk about something else.
Iran, if you saw my initial periscope on this, here are some things I said that should make you think that I'm spooky.
So what I said was, you should not assume that that drone that was shot down was in international airspace.
And now a lot of people say, well, we know exactly where the drone was, because even a hobby drone will draw a map for you of exactly where it was.
So obviously this high-tech drone, we do know exactly where it was.
But What I said was, maybe, and for some reason this possibility had not been discussed by anybody I'd seen yet, I said maybe both Iran and the United States are a little bit right, meaning that maybe it was over Iran's airspace for a short time, and maybe by the time they got around to shooting it down, it left their airspace.
So I said, that's a possibility.
And now it turns out that at least some reporting from the New York Times, unconfirmed, suggests that maybe we weren't so sure where our drone was.
We weren't so sure where it was.
What? What?
Now, so that should scare you, because I'm sure we do know where it was.
So that suggests that maybe somebody was either not telling the president the full story or that the administration has decided to, let's say, lie to the public.
Now, let me tell you something about lying to the public about military action.
It's acceptable.
Let me say that again.
If your government lies to you, About military assets, where we were and why we were and what we did in a military sense, that is acceptable.
The responsibility of the government is not to tell me the truth about military stuff.
I don't want to know their secrets.
I don't want to know their plans.
I don't want to know what they tried that didn't work.
I don't want to know those.
And if it helps our cause militarily, I want them to lie to me.
Are we all on the same page?
If the choice is telling the citizens the truth, and I'm talking about the short term, in the long term the truth comes out, and I think that's good.
It's good that we eventually find out what happened.
That part I'm very sure I want to eventually know what happened.
But in the short term, where it's strategic, The things our president tells us is forming public opinion.
That public opinion is being monitored by Iran.
Iran cares what the public of the United States thinks because that determines what the president can do and get away with.
So it's all part of the military option.
So when your president tells you something like, you know, the drone was over this airspace, or the reason I did or did not attack is this or that reason, what you should say to yourself is, sure.
Okay. And then you should not take it seriously.
Because it's not meant to convey to you accurate information.
You're not part of a process in which...
Well-meaning people are trying to give you the most accurate information they have.
Nobody's trying to do that.
And if they did try to do that, you should fire them immediately because their primary obligation is to keep the country safe.
If the way to do that is to shade some information, then please, shade some information.
It's not an accident that we have a CIA, etc., Whose job it is to conceal and lie, etc.
The reason we do that is because it works.
The other thing that I suggested was that there might have been more than one aircraft.
You didn't hear anybody else say that, right?
I think I was the first person who said, what if there were two aircraft?
What if they maybe were aiming at one or confused it with the other one?
Something like that. And then it turns out that Iran is claiming, and maybe there's some confirmation of this, but at least they're claiming that there was a manned aircraft that may have violated their international territory.
Now, could it be that they confused the aircraft?
Well, probably not.
But could it be that they thought about shooting the one that was manned over their territory and said, you know what would be better?
It's to shoot the unmanned one that was close to our territory or was in our territory for a little while or isn't in our territory, but we can complain about the one that was while we're shooting down the one that wasn't.
Now, I don't know.
We'll probably never know the truth of where these aircraft were.
Maybe someday we will, but not in the short term.
And so my speculation...
That we should not be sure where our aircraft was because we should not expect, nor should we ask our government to be honest with us on these details on military things in the short term.
In the long term, I do want to know.
I think that's important.
Alright, so I'm going to claim credit for being the first person who speculated that we don't necessarily know where that drone was and it might have been part of the story and that there might have been more than one aircraft who were part of the same story and both seem to be the case.
Alright, let's talk about have you all seen the video of Pete Buttigieg trying to talk to some Black Lives Matter people who were complaining about, I guess there was a African-American man killed by a white police officer and there's some anger over that.
I don't know the details. But you really have to see that.
You have to see that to know that Pete Buttigieg will not be your president.
It is cringy, weak.
Because first of all, and I don't understand this part, because Buttigieg is an interesting person.
He knows how to operate in public and be interesting.
And he's standing there in front of a bunch of African-American protesters on this topic, and he's reading a prepared statement like he doesn't want to be there.
He's reading like, and, you know, feel bad about it, and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And I thought...
What is going on here?
He looks like he doesn't want to be here.
He looks like he doesn't care.
He looks like he's lost all his energy.
And then it got worse.
Because they were asking him, you know, does he care about black lives?
Does he think they matter?
And of course he said yes.
But then one of the protesters shouted at him and said, you know, something like, why do you expect our vote?
And Buttigieg, for reasons I don't quite understand, I'm not asking for your vote.
Now, I think he meant something clever.
I think that whatever he was thinking he was communicating was not whatever came out of his mouth.
Because if you're running for president and there's an African-American citizen standing in front of you saying that you're not doing something to get her vote, and you say to that person on camera while everybody's watching, I didn't ask for your vote, or I'm not asking for your vote.
Well, maybe that meant something.
Maybe he meant that specific person he wasn't asking for a vote.
I mean, whatever he meant, it didn't come out right.
Now, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, right?
Because we all know his academic qualifications.
So, let me say, if he and I did an IQ test, I'm pretty sure he would beat me on that IQ test pretty badly.
But it looked dumb, and it certainly was avoidable, and I think it completely ended any chance he has.
That clip makes it impossible to imagine him I think he's out.
I'm going to count Buttigieg.
His odds of being president just went to zero.
Completely zero. He should drop out now.
He has no chance. Did you see the video of the Democrats?
I guess 21 of them showed up at this fish fry event and they all had these terrible t-shirts on with who was the name of the Democrat leader who's Who organized it?
Clyburn, is it? His name was on the shirt.
And somebody on Twitter said, if you're running for president, Clyburn, if you're running for president, never wear a t-shirt.
Now, when you first hear that, you say to yourself, well, why not?
Everybody wears a t-shirt.
Wouldn't that make you just like the people?
Wouldn't that be good? And then you see the picture of the 21 Democrats on stage posing for the cameras wearing these t-shirts.
And I gotta say, if you're running for president, never wear a t-shirt, because they all look bad in t-shirts.
None of them look serious.
None of them look presidential.
A lot of the t-shirts didn't fit.
So some of them had, you know, too large, too small.
All of the T-shirts had the name of the other person on it, Clyburn.
I think it had some smaller, you know, some kind of message that you couldn't see.
But it was a terrible visual, and Bernie got the worst of it, because people were focusing on Bernie, because when you see him on stage with all the younger, more photogenic Democrats, He just doesn't look good.
He looks too old, too angry.
He just doesn't look like he could be your president ever.
So I think Bernie, I would say Bernie's odds of being president are close to zero.
He's down in the 5% range, I would say.
Here's the best story of the day.
CNN's Aaron Burnett was speculating that I'm wondering if one of the reasons that President Trump did not attack Iran, even though it seems that, at least the reporting says, I don't know if this is true, but the reporting says that Bolton and Pompeo were in favor of the strike, striking Iran.
But then the President didn't do it, and Aaron Burnett was speculating She wonders if the reason was because Fox News' Tucker Carlson was so against it.
What do you think?
Most of you probably saw Tucker Carlson's show and shows, because he's been talking about it for a few days, in which he is absolutely, solidly against starting a war with Iran.
Do you think That Tucker Carlson's absolute, solid disagreement with a killing war with Iran, do you think that that made a difference?
Well, here's my opinion.
We don't know if it made a difference, because what we don't know is if the President had reasons enough to not do the attack.
And if 150 people were going to die, That is reason enough.
It was a good reason. If the President found out there was some question about where the drone was, well, that would be a good reason, too.
If the President thought, let's scare them, but I don't really intend to attack, I'm just going to make it really look like I am, because this helps me to negotiate later, well, then Tucker Carlson would not be important to the decision, because in that scenario, the President already decided, and we just found out later.
But I don't believe the president could have attacked Iran.
So let's say hypothetically those other reasons weren't good enough and he still wanted to do it.
I actually don't think the president could have attacked Iran without Tucker Carlson's approval.
Now, I say approval, and I don't mean that in the sense that the president needs approval from anybody on television.
But the president does require...
public support for a military action that's killing people in other places.
Tucker I think made it impossible for the president to get some kind of strong enough military support.
So the weirdest thing about our democracy slash republic slash social media is actually running things is that Tucker being unambiguously against war and making it clear, he didn't say this directly, but I don't think he needed to say it directly.
I think Tucker made it clear that if the president attacked Iran, he would take out the president.
Now when I say take out the president, what I mean is he has such a prominent voice on the most important network for the people who are the supporters of the president that If he decided to hammer the president every day for starting a war, there's no way.
There's no way President Trump could get re-elected if Tucker Carlson turned on him for such a good reason.
So first of all, let's acknowledge it's not just about Tucker Carlson's personal opinion.
Tucker Carlson represents, accidentally, he represents a very large opinion of In the conservative world.
If he had been part of, let's say, well, I love the president and everything he does, so even if I don't like this action against Iran, I'm going to support it anyway because I'm on the team.
If he had done something like that, it would give the president cover to do whatever he thought he needed to do militarily.
Because he came down so strongly, Against it, and it didn't look like there was ever going to be any reason good enough.
It wouldn't have mattered, I think, to Tucker.
This is just my own speculation.
I don't think it would have mattered to him if the administration had offered some BS reason why we had to do it.
Because he seemed to stake out a territory which is, it doesn't work ever.
This attacking other countries never works.
So I don't care about your reason, because what's the point of having a reason to do something that never works?
How could it ever make sense to say, well, I know it never works, but we're going to do it because we have a good reason?
That would be complete nonsense.
So you don't even need to listen to the administration's reason, because there is no reason to do something that never works.
There's no reason for that.
You have this weird situation where I don't believe that Tucker stopped the attack.
Because I think there are probably other reasons that were good enough.
But I do believe that he presents a very valuable public service.
And I don't think you can minimize that.
That Tucker Carlson is legitimately...
And somewhat, you know, it's an accident of history that he's in the position he has, you know, that he has the prominence, he has the 8 o'clock spot, you know, the most prominent spot.
I don't think it's just an amazing thing that he's in a position where he can probably stop an optional war.
Now, I don't think Tucker could stop a war if the homeland were attacked, right?
And, you know, I don't have any reason to think he would try to.
So if we had to attack, we had a real reason.
It was defensive, whatever.
That's a different story.
But for an optional war, and Iran at this point anyway is certainly in the optional category.
We don't have to. We just think we have reasons.
Or some people think they have reasons.
Tucker is actually in a position to stop that war.
Think about that.
I mean, just think about that.
That's amazing. And you'd have to say that as a patriot, and I'm sure he would call himself a patriot, I think I've heard him say that, and most of us would, damn, he did some good work this week.
What did you do this week?
How was your week?
What did you do this week that protected the entire world?
I didn't do much. I don't think I did anything to protect the world this week.
Tucker Carlson did. Tucker Carlson protected the whole world this week.
And it sounds funny when I say it because it's hard to imagine that one strong voice would have that kind of effect.
But if you've got the 8 o'clock spot on Fox and President Trump is your president...
He doesn't really have the option of doing an optional war without the main voices on Fox.
And again, Hannity would be the same situation, right?
If Hannity wanted to stop an optional war, pretty sure he could do it.
I don't know if there's anybody else on Fox who could do that.
The other shows on Fox are either straight news or they are...
More entertainment opinion.
If you look at the Five, for example, it's very influential, but it's more entertainment opinion.
It has a little less weight, I think, than a Hannity or Tucker Carlson.
Anyway, one of the things that Aaron Burnett was questioning is the timeline of the Iranian story.
So at one point the President said that he stopped the attack ten minutes before it happened and in another story he said they came to me thirty minutes before the attack and gave me some information about, you know, casualties and then I stopped the attack.
So Aaron is pointing out, Aaron Burnett, that there's a discrepancy in the story.
Alright, was it ten minutes before the attack or was it thirty minutes before the attack?
To which I say, are you kidding me?
First of all, there's not really a difference between 30 minutes and 10 minutes in the telling of this particular story.
Right? Because first of all, the planes were not in the air and the President's not making that claim.
It was 30 minutes or 10 minutes before the decision was supposed to be made.
It doesn't matter If it was 10 minutes before the decision was made or 30 minutes before the decision was to be made.
If you're the commander-in-chief, does that deadline mean much to you?
Not really, because he could have said, give me another half hour, right?
And they would have said, okay, we can't wait forever, but I'll give you another half hour.
So that 10 minutes or 30 minutes doesn't make any difference.
But more importantly, there was no discrepancy.
Because what he said was, they came to me 30 minutes before, and then I asked about some questions, they answered some questions, and then separately he said he called it off 10 minutes before the attack.
Those are the same story.
They came to you 30 minutes early, you talked, and then 10 minutes before the attack, you called it off.
That gives you 20 minutes to talk about it.
That's the same story, isn't it?
They came to me 30 minutes before.
We talked about it. And when it was 10 minutes left, which means the 20 minutes of talking happened, I called it off.
That's a discrepancy?
I don't know. It doesn't sound like it.
All right. I put on my headphones because I'm going to invite some people to ask me some questions.
Why don't you ask me some questions?
Partly because the news is so darn...
We've got a lot of quiet news.
So once I ask you questions, for the benefit of the other people who are listening to this, they probably don't want to hear a long background.
So if you can kind of get to the question part quickly, people would like that.
And I know you might want to say some nice things about anything I've done, but just keep it to the question and we'll keep it tight.
Alright, let me see who we're going to bring on here.
Let's bring on Mark.
Mark, are you there?
I can hear you. Do you have a question for me?
Yeah, on the issue of persuasion for the next MAGA thing, what would you think about Let America Flourish?
And then you've got a humor hashtag of LAF. Let America flourish, because LAF is a good acronym.
Well, first of all, I would not make a decision based on the acronym, because in my opinion, MAGA was the worst acronym ever, because it sounds like a maggot, and of course, the critics made that case.
And yet, the worst acronym ever, but it's still the best slogan of all time.
So you can certainly have a bad acronym and a great slogan because MEGA was exactly that.
I would not have – yeah, somebody said flourish is too flowery.
Correct. You would not use the word flourish in any kind of a campaign slogan because it sounds – I don't have to tell you.
It just sounds like you don't have the common touch.
Thank you. Thank you for that question.
Let's take another question.
Let's go to Debra.
Debra, are you there?
I can. What's your question, Debra?
A few days ago you talked about how companies in the United States really couldn't go to China anymore and companies are pulling out of China and so that means they've got to go other places.
Now, there's one country that is pretty much uncharted territory, and if the conditions were right, what would you think about there being economic development in North Korea?
Well, I'm all in favor of that.
You know, the President is wisely – one of the things he wisely does is he says, you know, I will do terrible things to you, but if you play well with us, I will do great things for you, for your economy.
So that's the proposition to North Korea.
So anything that we could do that would be good for potential North Korean development should they play well with the nuclear situation is good.
But I don't see any way that businesses could easily pull out of China and go to North Korea.
North Korea wouldn't have the infrastructure, the stability, etc.
So I don't see Apple Moving its resources or production to North Korea would just be too dangerous.
But thanks for the question.
Alright, let's take another question.
By the way, I would think Guatemala would be the obvious place for that.
Let's go to Scott.
Scott, who disappeared.
Scott disappeared as soon as I selected him.
Let's go to James.
James, coming to us soon.
James, can you hear me?
Yes, James, do you have a question?
No, you're not a, how do you say, war expert, but the thing is, people say about America, you know, this war in Afghanistan, Iraq, right?
The thing is, it's asymmetrical warfare.
Is America doomed to Yes, the United States will, in some sense, probably lose every war from now on.
In the same sense that every large country will probably lose every war from now on.
And the reason is that it's too easy to get weapons to insurgents, and there's always some insurgent who wants to use those weapons, especially as drones come online.
So between IEDs and drones that are basically flying IEDs, it will never pay to start a war.
So when I say we'll never win another war, certainly we can crush a government, we can crush their standing army, we can take it down from a big army to a small army, we might be able to destroy their nuclear capabilities.
So there are lots of things we can destroy, but we will hurt ourselves so much that it will never be worth it, the Iraq example being a perfect one.
So I think that the days of just winning a war and then, you know, it's Like the end of World War II where Japan and Germany say, okay, okay, we give up.
Let's make this a clean surrender.
We'll get everybody on board.
If you'll help us rebuild our country, we can all be friends again.
I don't know if we'll ever see that again.
So I think the days of winning wars in other people's territory are coming to a close.
And something that Naval said earlier, On Twitter the other day, I think it put it in the perfect perspective, which is imagine that something like Moore's Law, which applied to microchip processing power that says that it doubles every whatever years.
Imagine that applied to drones.
We are very close to the point where any enemy who can get drones can pretty much attack back anybody.
So just the whole concept of Wars where you're killing people are just going to become just not worth doing anymore.
There may be countries that you have to leave.
There may be countries where you have to bomb some assets.
There may be countries where you just have to do a change of leadership for some reason.
But you're not going to conquer that country and fix it.
I think those days are over.
But thanks for the question. Thank you very much.
Let's take another one.
Let's do Kevin.
Kevin looks like he has a good question.
Kevin, come to us.
Oh, Kevin, are you there?
Good morning. Do you have a question?
Premise that warming is bad.
I accept the premise that that is a stupid question.
Now, I'm not calling you stupid.
I'm calling the question stupid because it's the most common question on the topic.
So the question, if you didn't hear it, is, do I accept the premise that warming is bad?
Depends. Are you sunbathing or are you a lobster?
If you're a lobster, warming is very bad because you just got boiled to death.
If you're tanning in the sun, well, isn't it good that it's warm?
I would hate to be sunbathing on a cold day.
So warm is not something that's good or bad.
Warm at some level is amazing.
Warm at some level will fry you to death.
I like to call out the worst opinions on climate change.
The worst opinions on climate change, probably the top one, is that warming is good.
That's probably the top dumbest opinion about climate change.
Because some warming is of course bad.
Now, the question is, would we get to that level where, of course, it's bad?
And to get there, would we pass through a level where it's actually better?
In order to get to the point where the whole, let's say, the climate and the ecosystem falls apart, do you only get there by going through a period where, hey, it's really nice weather?
Because right now, I can tell you, the weather...
In California, where I live, in June, has never been better in my entire adult life that I've lived here.
This is the best, perfect weather.
It's like 70s and 80s.
I mean, it's amazing. And maybe we pass through the warmer and better before we get to warmer and all dead.
So I'm not saying that warmer and all dead is going to happen.
I'm saying that the question is not the right question, because some warming, of course, is too bad.
Some warming, probably good.
Probably helps. Alright, thanks for the question.
You're welcome. Alright, let's go to...
I want to pick a woman just to keep things fair here.
Alright, Jill. I can hear you.
You don't sound... Are you Jill?
Okay. My question was related to climate change again.
It's can a country actually be a wealthy country if they don't burn fossil fuels or if they don't consume energy?
Can a country be wealthy if they don't use fossil fuels?
Well, there may be a time when that's true.
But it's certainly not true today.
Well, what about France?
France has 50% of its power with nuclear at the moment.
They do burn a lot of energy, so they're trying to get away with it.
But 50% of their electrical production is...
They're the highest country in the world in terms of nuclear power.
So suppose they run from 50 to 100%.
Wouldn't you say that there's a...
Wouldn't you say that that's a situation in which...
That's true.
I recently ran correlations on energy use through all the...
It turns out that the correlation between fossil fuel use and energy use is 98.7%, which I thought was really stunning.
I ran that through all the list of countries and it turned out that they were all If you're a wealthy country, you have to burn fossil fuels in terms of the current technology.
I would say in our current world, that's true.
In the world that we're creating, that will not be true.
It would be easy to imagine, for example, let's take a small country, Monaco or some small country, where all they need is one or two nuclear plants, and they basically have the cheapest electricity of any country.
And I can imagine...
It looks like we've got some issues going on.
All right, I fixed that technical issue.
So I think we can get to the point where, yes, you could have a successful economy without burning carbon.
If you had nuclear and if you had green energy, we're not there, but we could definitely get there.
All right, thank you. All right, let's see if...
I prefer...
Oh, we got somebody running for Congress here.
Let's see if this works.
James? I don't know if it's James.
Caller, can you hear me? Can, loud and clear.
Can you hear me? Yes, I can.
Are you running for Congress?
Yes, I am, sir.
And where are you running for Congress and of where?
I'm currently in the fourth year going against Harley-Ruda, but I'm about to make a big announcement, first week in July, that will probably be good news for you.
So stand by. Okay.
Which kind of leads into my next question.
Could you give me your opinion of Congressman Adam Schiff?
My opinion of Adam Schiff?
Well, he's obviously a team player.
You know, the people who are team players, it doesn't matter which side you're on, the team players can't be taken seriously, meaning that they're playing for the win, they're not playing for the country, they're not trying to be honest, they're not trying to be straight with the public.
So, apparently, he's very effective, because he's on TV all the time, and he pushed the...
You know, the Russia collusion hoax better than anybody.
So he's certainly effective, but it's hard to respect him.
Does that answer your question? Maybe we lost you.
All right, let's take another caller.
How about Angela?
Angela?
Angela, are you there?
A little bit lighter this morning with your snitches.
Sure. I would love for you to do your best in persuasion to get the President to live tweet during the candidate debate next week.
And if we can't get him, can we get you to do some live tweeting?
Well, the President has already announced he's going to live tweet the debates.
I thought that's a done deal.
I did not think it was a done deal.
I kind of thought it was one of those floating the trial balloon kind of things.
Well, yeah, maybe.
But it's hard to imagine him resisting, isn't it?
Yes, absolutely. Because you know he's going to be paying attention to it.
And so I can't...
In a million...
I mean, it's impossible for me to imagine he would resist the opportunity to upstage them with his tweets, because his tweets are going to be way better than...
Whatever the debate is.
So yeah, I would say that persuasion would be unnecessary.
Was the second part of that question?
Well, I was hoping that we could also convince you to do the same.
Oh, sure. Yes, I will commit to you that unless I have something going on socially, that I will do some live tweeting on the Democratic debates.
I will commit to that unless something comes up.
Alright, that's fine. Just wanted to get us back in the lap zone a little bit.
Alright, well, I'll definitely help you there.
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