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Aug. 22, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
45:31
Episode 636 Scott Adams: The Chosen One, The Anti-Semite Competition, Super Volcanoes
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a little bit late.
I overslept, so I'm a little bit underprepared.
But you're not even going to tell the difference.
Because once your day starts off with the peak experience of the simultaneous sip, You can barely notice that anything's wrong with the world.
And it doesn't take much to participate.
All you need to join me in this simultaneous sip is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tanker, a thermos, a flask, a canteen, a vessel of any kind filling with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Please join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the simultaneous sip.
Here it is. Well, we've got a few things to talk about.
So first of all, let's talk about all the news that the Democrat candidates for president are making.
And here's all the news they're making today.
Okay, that's all the news from the Democrat candidates.
Apparently they're all boring.
The only news story out of, what, 20-some candidates?
The only one who produced a news story was Bill de Blasio because he did a remote interview and the technology didn't work.
And it made him sound funny.
That's it. That's the only story that 20 Democrats could generate.
Now, let's look on the other side.
Has President Trump done anything lately that made any news?
Man, does he know how to make news.
All right, so first of all, he may or may not be trying to buy Greenland, where he may or may not put the Space Force.
And apparently he's calling the Democrats a bunch of anti-Semites.
But... Not to be undone, the Democrats have decided that the President is an anti-Semite.
But, not to be done, Breitbart recently, I think it was yesterday, or this morning, has an article about some New York Times editor who has some tweets that are being called out as potentially anti-Semitic.
So, instead of electing a President based on, let's say, good policies, Instead of picking a president based on who you agree with philosophically, instead of picking a president because you think they have the right gravitas and personality and they make a good representative of the country, we're not doing that this time.
This time, the only thing that matters is who can slime the other side as being more anti-Semitic.
Apparently, it just came down to that.
That's it. That's all anybody cares about.
Which side is more anti-Semitic?
Now, I've said before that the President has finally found a productive, let's say, escape path from the accusations he's been getting from the start of, you're a racist, you're a racist.
Defense didn't work.
Because when you're defending yourself against that claim...
You're still talking about that claim.
So you can't really defend yourself.
It's one thing you can't really defend.
So what he was doing was just sort of ignoring it and trying to do some things that would disprove it by his actions as president.
But of course nobody cares about what you actually do.
Nobody really cares about what you do.
They care about how they can spin things, etc.
And so what he did didn't really matter to his critics.
They didn't care that he was doing things that were clearly the opposite of what a racist would do, the opposite of what an anti-Semite would do.
None of that mattered.
It just mattered if you can take the narrative and put in whatever's happening today.
So as the New York Times described in their recorded meeting, They said they were going to create a framework and then slot in all the stories to make it look like it's all a big story of President Trump being a big old racist and his supporters too, of course.
But now the president's taken the approach of simply calling the other side racists.
Yes.
And he has as much evidence for his claim as they have of their claim.
Meaning that it's all BS. In other words, you know, for the most part, the Democrats in general are not racist.
For the most part, Republicans in general are not racist, although both groups have bad people in them.
And the president, of course, is slimed with every accusation and none of it really rings true.
Unless you're on the TDS side, in which case everything looks true to you.
So the president's gone on offense, and it's really just come down to who could make the other side look more anti-Semitic.
That's it. We don't even care who's running on the Democrat side anymore.
It doesn't seem relevant. So Bernie's come up with some kind of a plan.
I should say that there is one Democrat that got a little attention.
So Bernie has a plan.
It's a $17 trillion Green New Deal.
I think I'll look at the details of Bernie's plan now.
Because it's $17 trillion, and he's number two in the polls on the Democrat side.
So if he's got a $17 trillion plan, that's pretty important, right?
I better read about all the details.
Okay, I'm bored. I don't think I want to read any more details of it.
Are any of you going to read any of the details of Bernie's $17 trillion plan?
I think part of the problem with Bernie is that I don't know if anyone thinks he's going to get nominated, even though he's number two in the polls and the only person ahead of him probably isn't going to make it to the finish line.
So what is it about...
Bernie, that apparently nobody on either side speaks of him like he could be the nominee.
You know, nobody on either side thinks so, and he's like this close to grabbing the nomination, and nobody takes him seriously.
Is it possible that Bernie will sort of sneak in because we're literally ignoring him?
Possibly. Do you know, there's a funny story about Seinfeld.
A true story.
I believe it's true.
If you watch the first few episodes of Seinfeld, they're pretty terrible.
They're terrible.
And the first season, in fact, you know, you could tell there was something there.
You could see there was an X factor that could have been developed and But overall, the first season was pretty weak, but it got re-upped because nobody was paying attention.
Literally, it was just under the radar, and for whatever reason, people weren't really looking at it too closely, and they got a few episodes, and then they got better at what they were doing.
And before anybody really noticed that they weren't doing well, they learned how to do well, really well.
So simply being under the radar...
It really helped Seinfeld find its voice and become the great show that it was.
Bernie might be doing something like that accidentally.
He might be developing a stronger campaign than we think because we're not really watching.
There's no heat there.
People are saying it's going to be Elizabeth Warren.
You know, that's the popular thing to say now.
And I get why people say it.
But, honestly, I can't see any of the top three Democrats actually being the nominee.
In my imagination of the future, I just can't imagine it.
Now, that doesn't mean it won't happen, but why is it that I can't imagine it?
Whereas I still can imagine, I can imagine Harris making it through the pack.
Now, that doesn't mean she will.
But I can imagine it.
Just can't imagine the other three.
What's that mean? Does it mean anything?
Maybe not. Alright, so the biggest controversy, the outrage, if you will, let's call it the outrage of the day.
And I'd like to reintroduce my new segment called Outrage Theater.
Each day I will pick something that's a phony outrage And I will have Dale come in to enact the phony outrage.
Dale, did you hear that the President of the United States looked at the heavens and referred to himself as the chosen one?
I know, I know. Some people say he's just joking around because that's what he does.
But I'm not so sure he doesn't think he's actually chosen by God.
What do you think, Dale?
Are you outraged?
It's outrageous.
Thank you, Dale.
It's outrageous.
It's outrageous.
And what about the president suggesting that if you're Jewish and you don't, if you're Jewish and you vote Democrat, that you could be disloyal?
What about that?
Dale, come here. Thank you, Dale.
Why do we treat any of this seriously?
Is it my imagination, or have all these types of outrageous issues in politics, it feels like there was a time when we thought they were real, right?
Wasn't there a time when you saw stories like that and you thought, oh, Person X has said something truly bad, and it's revealing their inner thoughts.
And now that we know their inner terrible thoughts, maybe we should do something.
Maybe it's a problem. They have so much power, or they could have power.
But now, now do you see it the same?
It doesn't really look the same anymore, does it?
And now when you see the daily outrage, my God!
My God, can you believe so-and-so said that?
It just looks ridiculous now.
Doesn't it? It's not just me, is it?
It no longer looks like anybody's even trying.
It looks like everybody's playing it for the laugh.
Like it's literally outraged theater.
People wake it up and say, is there anything in the news today that I could get outraged at?
Let's see. Oh, a person said something a little bit inelegantly.
Yeah, I can work with that.
Yeah, okay. Let me give it a try.
Bob said that Eskimos like snow.
No, not strong enough.
What else do we have here?
Okay, somebody said something that if you really twist it and take a weird definition of it and assume the worst, I could turn this into something.
I could make an outrage out of this.
I think I could make an outrage out of that.
Yeah, yeah, that's going down well.
I'll try this one out today.
So, you got that.
Here's a tweet from David Frum.
David Frum.
You know where David's from?
Well, I'm not going to tell you where David's from, but his name is David Frum, and he's from somewhere.
It's not good.
And he says, this is an actual tweet.
Somebody said this in public and didn't think it sounded ridiculous.
Which is the funny part.
Imagine somebody sat down to write this quote in a tweet.
It was their own tweet.
And they thought, yeah, this is going to sound totally sane.
And yeah, I think this will make me look good.
So here's my tweet.
So David Frum tweets, In his self-loathing heart, Trump knows Obama is bigger than he is around the world as well as in the United States.
That knowledge tortures Trump.
Never allows him a minute respite.
That's right. David Frum, who maybe has never even talked to President Trump.
I mean, maybe not in months, but...
Doesn't know him, doesn't work with him, and yet, and yet can read his mind.
Now, not only can David Frum read his mind, but he can read it in a way that he knows other people can't read Frum's mind, and therefore, David Frum does the mind reading for all of us and then puts it in a tweet so that we too can enjoy the benefits of David Frum's mind reading.
And he's read the president's mind and he sees self-loathing in his heart.
There's self-loathing in his heart.
And he knows Obama is bigger than him worldwide.
He can't live with it.
And now that knowledge tortures Trump.
It tortures him.
And he writes this in a tweet.
He sends it off and he thinks to himself, Because I can read his mind.
See what I'm doing here?
I can read David Frum's mind.
Let me...
I got it.
I almost got it. Give me a moment.
His thoughts are coming in.
Oh, no, I missed it.
I was reading the thoughts of the guy sitting next to Frum.
Oh, man. The guy sitting next to Frum right now on the other side of the country, he does not like David Frum, let me tell you that.
Okay, but I wasn't trying to read...
Oh, the guy sitting next to Frum really has some bad thoughts.
Whoa. Yowzer.
Okay, let's leave that.
Now, move over. Move my mind reading over.
Okay, locked in.
All right, I am doing a mind meld across the country with David Frum.
And whoa, he likes vanilla ice cream.
Oh, that wasn't ice cream.
He... I think he hates puppies.
Oh my god, he hates puppies.
And he hates the country.
Yes. Yep.
He hates the United States.
You know...
Yep. And he...
Purple, his favorite color.
And... Oh my god, my goodness.
He's planning a horrible crime.
Oh my god. Sorry, I had to break my mind meld.
It was too much for me.
What I saw in there, the darkness, the darkness, it was too much for me.
I had to break it.
So the Babylon Bee had an article recently, and it said, among other things the article said, it was quoting the Portland police after the big mix-up there, And it said, quoting the chief of police, whose name is Outlaw, that's her actual name, the head of police in Portland, her last name is Outlaw.
Seriously. She said, we wish there were some kind of organized armed force that could fight back against Antifa.
Now, people said, after I tweeted that article, people said, My God, it's like they're almost the onion.
I can't believe that Portland would say that.
Don't they know that Portland does have an armed force to fight against Antifa?
It's called the police!
And the person who said it was the head of the police.
Doesn't she realize? Does she have no self-reflection?
Doesn't she realize that she is the police?
She is the armed force.
How can she be calling for an armed force to fight Antifa?
Well, It turns out that the Babylon Bee is like the onion.
They are a satire publication.
But it was enlightening to see how many people couldn't tell the difference.
The distance between satire and reality has shrunk so much that actual real adults Who can have families and get married and have jobs and drive to work and make it home.
Couldn't tell the difference.
You know, functioning smart adults couldn't tell the difference between complete satire and reality.
Portland police are so ridiculous that you couldn't tell.
All right. What else do we have going on?
Well, Oh, I loved Trump's response when he was doing his helicopter talks.
On his way to his helicopter, he gives these little spontaneous talks with the press and holds court.
And by the way, it's the best thing he does.
If you've never watched Trump give a spontaneous press, what do you call it?
I don't know, gaggle or something.
When he's on the way to the helicopter, it's just about the best Trump.
He's really, really good at it, and he just holds court, and he controls them, and he insults the press, and it's always hilarious.
That's where he did his I'm the chosen one joke that people couldn't tell was a joke.
But when they accused him of being an anti-Semite because he said that something about Jewish voters being Loyal to, you know, they should be loyal to themselves, basically.
They said that that was anti-Semitic, and the president says, quote, goes, no, it's only anti-Semitic in your head.
It's only anti-Semitic in your head.
Isn't that the best?
No, it's only anti-Semitic in your head.
Because, you know, I keep telling you how well the president frames things, and reframes things, and brands things, and how he uses visual language.
So, when he said, in your head, that is so much better than saying, in your thoughts, or in your mind.
Because thoughts and mind are non-physical, but your head's a physical thing.
It seems like a small thing, but it's just one of the things that Trump does consistently right in persuasion.
He always talks in terms of visuals.
So when you say, no, no, it's only in your head, that's a stronger statement than only in your mind.
Because you imagine their head, you can't imagine a mind.
So he basically took this idea that somebody says, hey, is this thing out in the world?
Is this something you said?
And now it's part of the real world.
And Trump looks at him and goes, no, no, that's only happening in your head.
And I feel like, I think I can use that.
Because I've probably said a million times that people are imagining it.
I've said that people have TDS. I've said that you're over-interpreting it.
I've said that people are taking things out of context.
Now compare all the things that I said that are non-physical.
They're all sort of conceptual.
Well, you've got TDS. It's sort of a concept.
Let me explain it. It's three words.
It's Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It suggests there's a mental thing happening that doesn't make you broken.
It just means there's a hysteria here.
And so I'm trying to explain this concept.
It's tough to sell a concept.
Concepts are not persuasive.
Trump says, no, no, that's just happening in your head.
It's just sort of perfect.
Everything I've ever said on the topic, and I've said a lot.
I've said a lot. Three years I've been talking about the concept of people having TDS and being confused and seeing things wrong, confirmation bias.
And all of that, everything I've said has made no difference whatsoever, I think.
It seems to have convinced nobody of anything.
And Trump just looks at the guy and he smiles and he goes, no, no, that's just happening in your head.
And I thought, well, that's a keeper.
That's just happening in your head.
Just think, imagine you're the reporter, and you say something, and let's say the president answered some other way.
And the President said, well, you know, you're looking for things that aren't there.
It's confirmation bias.
You know, of course I didn't say that.
You know, you're the anti-Semite.
Suppose you'd said something like that.
What would the reporter say?
The reporter would say, oh, I've got great stuff to take out of context.
I'm going to be taking this out of context.
You know, I've got some material here.
But now imagine you're the reporter and you say, President Trump, you said blah, blah, blah, isn't that anti-Semitic?
And the Trump says, no, no, that's just anti-Semitic in your head.
How do you feel? Just put yourself as...
And the President of the United States looks at you and says, no, no, that's just happening inside your head.
It's really powerful.
It's so simple and it's so perfect.
No, no, it's only happening in your head.
It just completely treats it like it's not a thing.
I've never seen a brushback pitch that effective.
I mean, imagine you're the President of the United States, you're on camera, the entire world is watching, and a reporter from a major publication calls you an anti-Semite because of something you recently said that was ambiguous.
How many people could have brushed that back so jauntily?
He just looks at him and goes, no, no, that's just happening in your head.
I love that. All right.
So how does CNN headline it?
So they put a headline on the story that says, Trump adds Jews to his hip parade of hatred.
His hip parade of hatred.
So now we have this absurd situation where every day the president is accusing the Democrats of being anti-Semitic and the Democrats are accusing the president of being anti-Semitic.
It's a little bit ridiculous.
If you can take any of this seriously, you're missing the show.
It's no longer about what anybody's saying.
It's just not about that anymore.
It's not really about policies.
It's not about that anymore.
It's about the show.
And the show is really good.
Here's something interesting and scary.
Apparently there are things called supervolcanoes.
Have you ever heard of that?
A supervolcano?
Because when you say volcano, it's already plenty scary.
But apparently there are, I don't know, half a dozen or so, so-called supervolcanoes potentially under the Earth.
They're distributed around the Earth in various volcano places.
And apparently if any one of these volcanoes does their thing, it's going to be a serious problem for the Earth, as in 10% of us die.
Right. 10% of the Earth will die.
And the rest of us aren't going to be too happy about it at all.
And apparently these super volcanoes are not just possibly going to erupt, they're guaranteed.
So, we have under the Earth half a dozen different volcanoes that are pretty much guaranteed eventually to erupt.
Now, it could be 100,000 years from now.
I mean, because we're talking about big timelines.
But it's going to erupt, and whenever it does, maybe a billion people will die.
That's a big deal.
And, yeah, they talk about it being overdue.
I don't know exactly if they can tell that.
But... Here's my thing.
Apparently there are things we could do to reduce the risk.
I don't know what that is.
Maybe you drill a hole and let some of it out or something.
I don't know what the details are.
But a lot of the people who say we should put $17 trillion into a Green New Deal, for example, people who say we should immediately reorient our entire economy For climate change, always treat it as though it's the problem.
It's the one thing we know about that could devastate or literally decimate.
Hey, I've never used that word correctly.
I would like to take a moment to pat myself on the back for using the word decimate accurately.
Decimate, for those of you who are nerds, means that you lose 10% of your army, basically.
So des, as in T, C, as in 10.
People use decimate to mean completely destroyed, but it means 10%.
So that volcano could take 10% of the population of the Earth, so it could decimate the Earth.
I've never used that word correctly.
First time. And so I say, when people are looking at climate change, they say, let's put all of our resources there because this thing could be the end of humanity.
But I say, wait a minute.
We don't have one risk that could take out humanity.
We probably have half a dozen if we really thought about it.
You've got your meteors, your asteroids that might be heading toward the Earth.
We could put trillions of dollars into detectors and even maybe nuclear rockets that could fly out there and catch them early enough that a small change could knock them off course, something like that.
We got the super volcanoes.
We have the risk of pandemics.
We have the risk of, I don't know, nuclear war.
Seems like we've got a lot of risks out there.
So we should figure out how to distribute our resources across these major risks that could kill us all.
Kill us all.
All right. It looks to me like there's not much else going on.
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
I'm going to initiate the secondary simultaneous sip.
If you are prepared, you'll have the pleasure of two.
Yeah. Two simultaneous sips in the same day.
Are you kidding me?
How great is this? Get ready.
Go. How many of you saw Bill Pulte giving away a Tesla today?
Did you see that?
He did it. I believe it was live before I came on.
On Periscope.
So make sure that you're checking out what Bill Pulte is doing.
His Twitter is at Pulte.
P-U-L-T-E. And he has really turned philanthropy into a whole new thing.
I mean, not only is he pioneering this using social media in the way that he's doing it for For good, but there's something really important about what he's doing that I think is way bigger than the fact he's giving money to people who need it.
Have you ever looked for meaning in your life and couldn't find it?
It's probably applied to many of you.
Do you ever wake up and think, oh man, what's the point?
Why am I here?
What's my meaning? What am I adding to the world?
Part of it is because we don't live in these small tribes where everybody's helping each other.
Because helping people that are part of your tribe, people you know, people who are close to you, people you can see the reaction once you help them, is really good for people.
It's part of what we need.
We're biologically and evolutionarily designed to help out.
And when we help other people, we get a feeling of meaning.
But our current world, everything, all responsibilities are sort of distributed out, and we let the government take care of people who need it, and then we don't get any of those tribal feelings.
Do you get any kind of a good feeling when you pay your taxes?
Because I pay my taxes, and it goes into the government, and most of it gets wasted, and some of it ends up helping people, but I don't see their faces.
It just goes into this big concept called the government and then I hope something good comes out of it.
But what Bill Pulte is doing Is he showing you the faces and the stories of the people and allowing you to connect directly to them, be part of giving them something that completely solves, completely solves at least one problem they have.
You know, one person gets a new set of teeth, somebody gets a way to get to work, that sort of thing.
And then you get to see the reaction, which is the important part.
That's the thing he's adding to this process that gives you meaning.
So if you've given to one of Bill's fundraisers, you know, various GoFundMes for different people in need, you get to see that person receiving the gift and learning about it for the first time.
And then you feel, hey, I was part of that.
I gave, you know, $5 or whatever it was, and now, whoa, look at this person finding out that their biggest problem just got solved.
It's an amazing feeling.
And so what Bill's doing that's special is he's found a way to take this big, cold, impersonal world where we have the right instincts, but we don't have the right systems to connect our instincts to help people with the people.
And he's created this on a highly visible way so you can tap into it.
And you can be part of it at a completely reasonable cost, because each person is giving a little bit, but there are a lot of us, and so it's directed at people in a very effective way.
All right. Just thought I'd tell you that.
I think I might do a separate Periscope a little later today or tomorrow, I'm not sure, to give you some updates on WenHub, some very interesting things.
Actually, I'll tell you now. Well, I'll tell you in a special Periscope.
I won't put that in here. That's all that's going on today.
We are in August and so the news is necessarily slow.
How come supporting is not a system?
Somebody's asking me, why isn't supporting the NRA, and then having the NRA influence the government, why is that not a system?
That is a system.
It's a bad one.
So, it's not just a case of systems are better than goals.
Some systems are better than other systems.
So, now, if the only thing you want is to get a result and you don't care what the outcome of it is, then paying the NRA to go fight for you and get the stuff you want might get you what you want.
So, in terms of it working, it might.
What's the downside?
The downside is that it's not a credible result.
Because all the people who didn't get what they want, they look at it and they say, wait a minute, it wasn't even a vote of my fellow citizens.
I always think that's a sexist term, my fellow citizens.
How about my teammates, my country people?
I don't know. I don't know how to de-sexism that statement.
But if you looked at any law and you say, I don't like that law, But at least it was a democratic process.
My elected representatives who have to stand for re-election made the decision in Congress.
Those are credible. But if you look at a system which that's the way it's supposed to work, and instead somebody found a workaround, somebody found the cheat code, then you can get the result you want, but it will never be credible.
Because everybody who's looking at it says, yeah, you used the system.
Your system totally worked for you.
So that, you know, if all you care about is you get to keep your guns, but it doesn't create a stable, credible situation that works for everybody, well, that system will get you that.
But if you want a better result, that's the way to go.
You want the voters to be the ones.
So what I want is not a different result.
So when I'm complaining about the NRA, I'm not saying that you should take the NRA out of the system because I want a different outcome.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying you should take the NRA out of the system because they broke the system that works best, which is the people.
Now, I do appreciate that they educate people.
They probably keep people a lot safer.
The gun owners learn how to, you know, take care of their guns.
Somebody once... I think this is true.
No member of the NRA has been a mass shooter.
All great. I think the NRA has a lot to be proud of, and I would compliment them for tremendously important good work.
But... I didn't vote for them, so I want my government and the people to make those decisions.
All right. What solution works for everyone?
That's not relevant to what I just said.
We're not trying to find a solution that works for everyone.
We're trying to find a system that produces an outcome where some people are happy and necessarily some people are not.
But even the people who are not happy say, okay, I trust the system.
I don't like the outcome, but it was a democratic system.
Our republic did what it was designed to do.
All right. Yes, what percentage of the NRA's budget do you think comes from gun manufacturers?
Oh, let me ask that.
Without looking it up, don't Google it.
Tell me in the comments, what percentage of the NRA's funding do you think comes from gun manufacturers versus the people?
Because people are donating as well.
What percent? Let's see it in the comments.
Most of you are pro-gun if you're watching this.
I want to see if you know, without being told, what percentage.
It takes a while for the comments to catch up, so I'll be watching that while they happen.
I think maybe people don't want to take a guess, because you don't know.
Somebody says zero.
None. Zero.
99%, zero.
Under 10%, probably 20%, 30%.
7%, 50%, 10%.
Somebody guessed 70%.
Less than 50.
So almost all of you are way less than 50.
We've got two guesses, three guesses that are over 50%.
Most of the guesses are down in the 10% range.
But it's all over the map.
So I'm seeing 80, 90, etc.
Alright, so I looked it up yesterday.
So I looked it up.
I saw an answer.
I think it was on Quartz or something.
So you'll have to fact check me on this.
But according to the one source I looked at, and again, could be wrong, but the one source I saw said that the NRA's funding is 74% from gun manufacturers.
74%. So when you say to yourself, hey, the NRA is funded by the members to give the members what they want.
Nothing like that's happening.
Did you think that the NRA was funded by its members to represent its members?
Did you think that?
Well, fact check me first, because I could be wrong about this.
And it may have changed, too.
That ratio may have changed since I read it.
But if it's true...
That 74% of the NRA's budget comes from the gun makers.
Does the NRA represent gun owners or does it represent gun makers?
Which would you say would be the truer statement?
How many of you who were supportive of the NRA because you believe the NRA is doing what you, the members, want them to do, how many of you thought that's what was going on?
There are a lot of people saying, wow, in these comments.
But I need you to fact check me.
So, honestly, you need to fact check this.
And I'm hoping somebody can do it in the comments before we sign off.
Again, I'm pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment, pro-NRA. I think the NRA does a tremendous service in a whole variety of ways, education, safety, etc.
But if you thought that they represented the members...
I'd say you should do a little research and find out if that's true.
So don't take my number.
It's just, again, I saw it on one source on the internet.
I can't. I'm not going to swear to it.
I wouldn't die that that's even in the right neighborhood.
But check it out. If it turns out that the NRA's money comes mostly from donations from its members, I think it would be fair to say it's an organization that is designed and it's a system for supporting the consumers.
And if most of their funding comes from gun makers, what do you think their priorities are?
I mean, we live in the real world, right?
If it's true, and again, you've got to check this, don't take my word for it, if it's true that they get most of their money from gun makers, then that's who they work for.
That's how the world works.
The person who gives you most of your money is your boss, effectively, if you want to keep doing what you're doing.
Yeah, so I'm saying it was one source and it's not credible so far.
I don't see anybody, by now some of you have Googled it while you're on this Periscope, and I don't see anybody debunking it yet.
And it might not be true.
So, yeah, I think I blew some minds here.
I hope the statistic is correct, because if I said something this shocking and my basic assumption was wrong, I guess I'm apologizing to do tomorrow, because you don't want to piss off the biggest gun-owning group in the world.
Oh, somebody's saying that 80% of the contributions might come from individuals, but because they give less than companies do, it could look like most of the...
Yeah, it could say 80% of the...
There is some way that you can imagine that there's a large number of people involved.
All right. I don't see anybody debunking that yet, but I don't see anybody confirming it.
Somebody says, who pays the gun makers?
Well, I'm not sure that's the best question.
Because once that money is in the hands of the gun makers, they're not going to spend it for your benefit.
Once people have money, it doesn't matter where it came from.
People will spend it for their own benefit.
Somebody says they'll send the link, it doesn't look true.
I feel like we need to find out before I end this Periscope, because if I got that wrong, that would be terrible.
Funding. Let's see.
So I'm going to...
So the money powering the NRA. I'll just look at the first link.
So they've got $350 million in 2013.
Are you kidding me?
In 2013, the NRA had $350 million donated.
What? I had no idea it was that much.
Wow. That's a lot of money.
I'm just looking now.
I'm not looking at the screen right now, so if somebody's already solved this, let me know.
NRA, would Wikipedia have the answer about funding?
Funding. Funding, funding, funding.
Sorry, I know this is boring, but I shouldn't have brought up that topic without knowing more about it.
Alright, it's too hard to find.
Too hard to find. It looks like some of you are getting...
IRS says 47% membership dues, 24% individual contributions.
All right. Yeah, is it Quora?
So, Quora, I think, is the one that I saw that had the 74%.
So, let's say, let's put a, let's stick a pin in that, as they say in boring business meetings.
Let's stick a pin in it.
Okay. And we'll research that for next time, okay?
So, here's the basic thing.
Whichever way the funding goes, whoever is giving the most money is probably who is influencing the organization.
But let's see if we can determine that.
It may be something we can't determine.
And I'll talk to you tomorrow when we have the answer.
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