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Sept. 18, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:17
Episode 666 Scott Adams: Coffee…NOW!
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Hey everybody!
Where are you? Come on in.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm Scott Adams.
I have my coffee and if you're anywhere near prepared You can enjoy the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein and shell, a tank or a thermos, a glass, a canteen, a grill, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip, the unparalleled pleasure, the part of the day that's the best and makes everything better.
Go! First of all, let me start off with my apologies.
I literally just woke up.
Literally, sort of literally.
Semi-figuratively literally just woke up.
Meaning 10 minutes ago.
So I do not have coffee in my veins except the sip you just saw.
My preparation is poor.
And I'm live to thousands of people.
This is one of those lessons on the...
The value of humility.
I've told you before that through practice and trial and error, I've learned to damp down my shame reflex, so my ability to embarrass myself in front of lots of people is very high.
You'll be seeing a little bit today.
All right, normally I'm at least a little bit prepared, but I've got a few things to talk about that are fun.
First of all, congratulations to Mike Cernovich.
Mike Cernovich being the, I believe, the most active, aggressive voice on the topic of a Democrat donor named Ed Buck, who had some kind of a history of people dying in his home of drug overdoses that were part of some recreational...
He was having gay sex with homeless people and shooting them up with drugs, allegedly, or something like that.
That's roughly the details.
And he just got arrested for that stuff.
And it looks like he's going to be in trouble.
So Mike Cernovich was on this from the beginning and was saying, he's going to do it again, he's going to do it again, he's going to do it again.
I don't know how many times I saw a tweet from Mike Cernovich telling the world, Ed Buck, going to do it again, going to do it again, do something.
And he does it again.
So, Mike, you're right again.
And I say again because Mike has quite the track record of being way ahead of people on a lot of stuff, including the presidency.
Did you see the clip of Joe Biden misspeaking and saying that his plan would help 720 million American women?
There are 300-some million people in the country, but Joe Biden's plan is going to help 720 million women.
He's lost it.
So, combine that, the Biden, what would you call it, disintegration, that strangely enough hasn't been affecting his poll numbers.
And you have to ask yourself, what?
What? Why are Biden's poll numbers not going down?
Because everybody should be watching what we're watching, right?
But here's the thing.
They're not. They're not.
Because most people don't watch the news, I think.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what percentage of the voting public do you think actually watches the news?
And I say watches because I say watches because the news, because if you didn't watch it, just reading about it, you would say, oh, he just misspoke.
He meant 72 million or something.
Maybe it was 72 million he meant.
Now, if you read it and you said to yourself, hey, he just misspoke, it wouldn't mean much.
Or if you didn't see it, it wouldn't mean much.
And if somebody, if you've been following the news not at all, and you went up to somebody and said, hey, you haven't followed the news at all, Who do you like for president?
They might say Biden because they've heard of him still.
So you and I, we follow the news, right?
And we figure that everybody must be following the news at least a little bit, right?
It's hard to imagine if you're one who is following the news.
It's hard to imagine. Wait, are you telling me there's a citizen If I went up to them, a voting citizen in the United States and said, what do you think of Pete Buttigieg?
That there's a very high likelihood they would say, who?
Think about it. There are probably at least a third of the voting public who has never heard the name Pete Buttigieg.
Wouldn't know who Cory Booker was.
Vaguely might have an idea who Elizabeth Warren is from some last election or Pocahontas.
It could be that by President Trump giving Elizabeth Warren so much attention with Pocahontas, it put her in second place in the polling because that's where she is.
She just knocked Bernie out. So it could be that the president accidentally boosted her because at this phase with so many candidates, people have heard of her and they just know that she doesn't like the president.
They're like, well, I've heard that name.
She isn't Joe Biden.
I know she doesn't like the president because he's always calling her Pocahontas.
That's all I need to know.
She's in second place.
So, the latest poll looks like Warren's new support all came out of Bernie, is where we expected it to happen, right?
So we all expected that either Warren or Bernie, one of them would have to fall and support would go to the other.
And it makes sense that it would go to the younger person.
It makes sense it would go to the younger woman.
So, you know, a female Bernie is a much better Bernie if you're a Democrat, wouldn't you agree?
Because they get a two-for-one.
They get these policies, but then they get a chance for a woman president.
So it stood to reason that Warren would eventually cannibalize Bernie, and that's happened.
So let's say that that keeps happening.
What will happen when there's a little bit more attention on the race, and we get a little closer to the primaries, and people start thinking, oh, I guess I should start paying attention.
And then they start paying attention for the first time, and they see these compilation clips, because you know they're coming, of Biden having these missteps.
It's the compilation clips that are going to push them off, right?
If they see them. But also if they just pay attention, because he has so many gaffes at this point that just watching him in public is all you need.
He doesn't have to have a gaff per se.
Because he's so confused and bumbling in public now, it's just obvious he's not qualified anymore.
So when that happens, where will his support go?
Well, surprisingly, Buttigieg popped up into fourth place just above Harris.
Actually, solidly above Harris.
So Harris had her chance to hold The position that's going to get the nomination, probably.
Whoever Biden's votes go to, probably going to win.
So if all of those votes went to Harris, she would be the nominee.
I'm not saying they will.
It is my prediction, by the way, and I'm only keeping the prediction because it was my original prediction.
It's based on a theory that she checks all the boxes without being too offensive.
So that theory is still true.
She still checks a lot of boxes if she could just stay out of her own way and stop being terrible, which she could do.
So I'm going to keep my prediction just to be fair.
I don't think it would be fair for me to change my prediction, you know, every ten minutes as the process goes along.
But do you think Buttigieg legitimately just moved into fourth place?
I say no.
And here's why. I say no because I think that Biden's votes would more naturally, a little bit more naturally go to Harris.
So I think that his position is kind of close.
Yang I think only got up to 4%.
So he's sort of the strongest of the week.
So he's the strongest of the week.
Now let me give you some more advice to Kamala Harris.
And excuse me for sipping in your ear.
I'm just so tired.
But almost awake now.
So I was listening to Harris talk about the AR assault rifle, so-called assault rifle, buyback.
And by the way, do you know what the AR stands for?
I feel like there are at least three different theories for what AR stands for.
It doesn't stand for assault rifle.
I heard at least one person who knows more than I do.
Somebody says Armalite. And then somebody else, was it Jack Pasabek?
I don't want to blame him if this is wrong, so don't believe me, but I saw it somewhere, that the AR stood for Arkansas, where it was first made.
Somebody's saying Armalite.
But be that as it may, I'll call the family of Weapons, assault rifles.
So Kamala Harris is joining the Beto side that says we'll take your rifles.
We'll do a buyback.
Now the implication of a buyback is if you don't give your gun in the buyback that the government will come and take your gun away.
Here's how to fix that.
Nobody's going to get elected president saying we're going to go take your gun.
Would you agree? Would you agree that nobody's going to become president?
Period. There's just no chance.
Zero chance of becoming president if you say we're going to go take your guns out of your house.
Period. Somebody says Jack Posobiec was being sarcastic, which sounds right.
Because everybody always argues about what AR means.
So it looks like in the comments, since so many of you are...
I swear, if I were going to form an army, I would just take all of you watching Periscope because I know you're armed to the teeth.
I probably have the best armed audience that isn't watching Rush Limbaugh or something.
So here's the deal, people.
If the country falls apart, I am going to form a militia.
You're in. So here's how it works.
If there's an EMP attack, we lose all communication.
I guarantee that somebody in the town of Pleasanton can find me.
I'm easy to find. So you will know where to report to me.
You'll have to use Pony Express to communicate, but you'll know where to report.
I will be in charge.
And it'll be temporary.
So I'll just be in charge until we vote.
So I'll be your emergency militia leader.
Seriously. This is actually a serious offer.
I'm not even kidding a bit. I will be your emergency militia officer.
You will know that if we all lose communication, that you should find me.
And that'll be your starting point.
Everybody find me.
Find a way to connect to me.
I will simply coordinate you.
As best I can, as smart as I can, to stay alive and stay safe.
And then once we can communicate better, we'll have something like an election to see if you still want me to be in charge of your militia until the United States sets itself right.
Okay? Now, you don't have to join, of course.
It's voluntary. I'm just saying, what's your other thing?
What would be your other plan if you lose all communication in the country?
This is serious. I'm dead serious.
If the country loses all communication, you know, the trouble goes down, I will be your central point of contact because everybody can find me.
You'll know where I am. I mean, you can find California.
You can find Pleasanton on an old-timey map.
If you get to Pleasanton, just ask somebody where I am.
They'll be able to find me.
All right. So...
Here's Kamala. Kamala Harris said that she wanted to do a gun buyback.
Her problem is that she is ambiguous about what will happen if you don't sell your gun back.
I'm going to fix it for her, okay?
I'm going to present a plan that you don't like, but that's not the point.
I'm fixing her politics.
I'm not saying she's going to do it.
I'm not saying she's going to be the nominee.
I'm not saying you like it.
I'm just saying that she's doing something incredibly stupid with her policy.
Here's how to fix it. I will pretend I'm Kamala Harris and I'm trying to sell you on a gun buyback.
Or I'm Beto and I'm going to sell you on a gun buyback.
Here it is. This is me selling it to you.
People, those are your guns.
You bought them, you own them, you bought them legally.
I'm not going to come to your house and take them away, and by the way, wouldn't that be the dumbest thing anybody ever did?
There's no way, under any condition, in my administration, anybody's ever going to knock on your home and say, give me your gun, unless it's a red flag situation, in which case 90% of the public is sort of on the same page with that.
But, if you're a legal gun owner, and I've seen no problem, no way, anyway, anybody's going to knock on your door, period.
What we'll have is a gun buyback window.
It will last, I'll just say, two years.
And for two years, we'll pay you full value for your AR. And here's the catch.
They will be illegal to use after that point.
I'm not recommending this.
If you're coming in late, this is not my idea.
It's not my proposal.
I'm just describing a proposal that wouldn't be stupid.
Okay? That's all I'm doing.
Okay. But here's the deal.
If you don't sell it back to us, you won't be able to use it in public again.
You'll never be able to go to the shooting range.
You'll never be comfortable taking it out in front of friends.
You won't be comfortable having it in your car.
You just won't be comfortable having it.
It won't be the same thing you thought it was.
What happens if somebody breaks into your house?
You still have an AR. You didn't give it up.
It's totally illegal.
You use the AR to defend your home successfully.
What happens when the police show up and there's a dead body in your living room and your AR is leaning against the wall and you say, yeah, I didn't give up my AR. I kept it.
I used it. I shot this guy who came into my house.
The law has to be no charges.
Still take your gun, unfortunately.
Still take your gun. But the law has to be no charges if he kept your gun and he killed somebody anyway, you know, in self-defense.
Likewise, if there's a mass shooting in the church across the street and you take your AR out and you go across the street and you kill the mass shooter, even though it wasn't self-defense on your part, again, no charges.
So, if Kamala Harris had that plan, And said, we're never going to go to your house and take it away.
It will just be a sort of a worthless thing unless you want to keep it hidden and somebody attacks your house and you use it.
Or let's say there's an EMP attack and you need to take care of your gun to go take care of business.
In that case it would also be legal.
In fact, how about this?
This would be the most extreme Democrat plan that you'll never see.
She could say, If the country is ever attacked or there's any kind of a revolution situation, your AR is automatically legal again.
How about this? You can put a gun lock on your AR and keep it if you demonstrate that it's a certain kind of lock.
You can keep it at home, but you can never take it out of your home, even with a gun lock.
Now, that wouldn't work because you have to move sometimes.
Sometimes you have to relocate your home.
So anyway, I'm just moving through the possibilities.
In my opinion, a gun buyback could be marginally successful in reducing the number of guns that a bad person could get their hands on.
So you don't want somebody living in your home who does not own a gun who can get a hold of yours.
That's a pretty big deal.
So, you know, a gun buyback would reduce the number of opportunities for that bit of a mistake to happen.
How much would that matter?
Probably not a lot.
I mean, you're probably talking dozens of life per year that would make a difference in the best-case scenario if all your gun back...
If your entire gun buyback program worked, how many people would you expect to live who would have otherwise died?
What's your guess? Let me ask you this.
Somebody says I'm barking up a red herring.
I'm pro-gun, very pro-gun, and I understand what you're saying.
I understand that you've got a slippery slope argument and all that.
I'm just working through the thinking of it.
I believe I have the only credible opinion on gun rights in the country.
Big statement, right?
I'm going to say it again. I believe I... I have the only credible opinion on gun rights because I have the only complete opinion.
Everyone else has an incomplete opinion.
That probably includes you.
But see if you can join me in completing it.
When I say a complete opinion, I don't mean that it's not complete in your mind.
It might be complete in your mind.
But in terms of what you're willing to share, I've never seen a complete opinion.
I'm going to give you the first one.
Here's a complete opinion on guns.
I favor gun ownership, the Second Amendment, and here's the second part.
Here's the price I'm willing to pay.
Tens of thousands of innocent American lives per year.
If you can't say that, you're not in favor of guns.
Say it out loud. Say it with me.
If you're in favor of guns, say you're willing to pay the price.
That some low tens of thousands, I don't know what the number is, because you might want to subtract that to suicides or whatever.
So maybe, what is it, net 15,000?
What's the net after suicide of gun deaths?
Net 15? Because remember, it's net.
You have to look at NET. As most of you will quickly jump on and say, what about all the people who are saved?
What about all the lives that are saved by gun ownership?
Right? That counts.
You can't ignore all the people who are protected by it.
You can't ignore them.
I'm saying there's a NET. Maybe we've protected 50,000 people and it costs us 15,000, not counting the suicides because that's double that number.
So those of you who are pro-gun, say it out loud.
I am willing to risk, including my own circle of friends and family.
They're all at risk because we're a country.
It's a risky country. We get a lot of guns.
I explicitly accept The risk of 15,000 people who didn't need to die for the right of gun ownership.
If you can't say that, you don't have an opinion.
So, I just put that out there.
Now, that said, I'm also a reasonable person.
It doesn't sound like it may be, but I am a reasonable person.
And if somebody could come up with a plan And I'll just speak in general terms.
If somebody came up with a plan that infringed on my gun rights 5%, but could reduce by half the number of gun deaths, I would listen to that.
I would listen to that. I would not say, oh, no, no, gun rights are absolute.
I would say, yeah, gun rights, the way it's written in the Constitution, is meant to be something closer to absolute.
And that's the way I would prefer it, perhaps.
But I'm also a human.
I'm also a citizen.
I have empathy.
I care about people dying.
I just said it was the price I was willing to pay.
I didn't say I didn't care.
I totally care.
So if somebody can come up with an idea that has some marginal little bit of impact on my total ability to do everything I'd ever want to do with a gun, but it saved 10,000 people a year, I would certainly listen to that argument.
And if you wouldn't, I would question your credibility on this topic.
It doesn't mean I'd like it, but I'd listen to it.
All right. Corey Lewandowski, how many people saw the show?
Corey Lewandowski being interviewed by Congress.
I started watching it and something came up and I couldn't finish watching it.
But I've got to say it was one of the most entertaining things I've seen in a long time.
I've said this before, how well President Trump combines entertainment, literally, with politics.
He does it in a way that makes both of them better.
In other words, his jokes are funnier because they're about real things and we can relate to them and they're in the news and they matter to us and stuff.
So it's real things and real personalities.
That makes it funnier. But the part that his critics don't get is how well he makes the politics better by adding the humor.
It makes us pay attention.
It frames things the way he wants to frame them.
It has all kinds of benefits.
It brings the energy.
We've talked about all this.
But the thing that What is fun about this is how many people he's influencing to adopt his method.
I would say that Andrew Yang is absolutely influenced by Trump.
Wouldn't you agree? Andrew Yang, I think it was Mike Sertovich who said that Andrew Yang's, his game is, persuasion game anyway, is Trump-like but without the anger.
And I thought, yeah, it's Trump-like without the anger.
What was the part that got Trump elected?
Well, the anger. It was the anger, because he was angry about the same things that his supporters were angry about, which was part of his persuasion, which is part of his magic.
So Andrew Yang does have all of Trump's game except for the anger, and that's why he's at 4%.
If he added anger to that, he'd be probably right in the middle.
If Andrew Yang added anger, And he won't.
And he probably shouldn't. But if he did, it's too late now, he'd probably be running second.
Because he has enough of a game that if he added...
Because remember, fear and anger, those things are...
And pacing and leading, those are so powerful.
And Yang's doing his own version where he's getting lots of attention.
And he's doing sort of everything positive quite well.
So if you do everything positive, what's your upside?
4%, apparently. But oddly enough, I'll bet if you polled Republicans, Andrew Yag would also be a 4%.
What do you think?
Because he's actually kind of popular with Republicans, just for not being a jerk, most of the time.
And for being...
See, the thing that makes you trust Andrew Yang in this big pack of Democrats, correct me if I'm wrong, but the thing that makes you trust him is that he seems like he cares about the facts.
And so even if he disagreed with you, he'd probably show you his facts.
And you'd say, ah, I disagreed with that, but yeah, those are facts.
So he's a little disarming that way.
Every time he does something rational, you say, ah, okay, that was rational.
You're $1,000. You can't give $1,000.
Well, there will be robots.
There will be a lot of robots.
So every time you want to attack him for his policy you don't like, you always go, well, you do have a little bit of a point there.
That's one of the things I appreciate about him.
All right, we were talking about Lewandowski.
Now, what was funny about it was he was clearly there to stall and make a mockery of the process.
Okay, we all agree...
Corey Lewandowski's strategy was simply to make a mockery of the process and give up nothing.
We all agree that's what was happening, right?
Now, given that we knew that was what was happening, watching him do it with a straight face for however many hours he did it was frickin' hilarious, wasn't it?
Watching Nadler Watching Nadler being chewed alive by his own side and the other side, and Corey Lewandowski too, was one of the most entertaining things you'll ever see.
And I'll tell you what question it answered.
Here's the question that, you know, I think I knew the answer to this already, but if you ever really, really wanted to know the answer, the following question, so what is it that Trump sees in Corey Lewandowski?
I guess that was answered.
What Trump sees in Corey Lewandowski, other than loyalty, obviously they're very close, what he sees is that Corey Lewandowski understands.
He understands theater.
He understands the show.
And therefore, he understands Trump in a way that I don't know other people do.
So Lewandowski knows how to surf the energy.
He knows how to create energy.
He knows how to be the show.
He knows how to use the show in a productive way.
And man, did he nail it!
You know, because of the nature of it where he was just, you know, resisting questions, it's not like you get it.
Nobody gives an award for that.
There's no Academy Award for not answering questions.
And there's no, you know, you can the Pulitzer for not answering questions.
But if there were any kind of a prize, For a guy sitting there with a straight face and making a total mockery of the system and walking out of it looking better than he walked in, if there was a competition for that, Corey Lewandowski won it yesterday.
Somebody said part two, he wasn't as good, so I didn't see it all.
So in the comments, those of you who did, am I right that for what he was trying to do, I don't think he could have done that better.
That was just A-plus the whole way for what he was trying to accomplish.
Somebody said, I thought Nadler would cry.
Nadler looked really bad at that.
Nadler just...
Okay, everybody's saying he did well.
Apparently, he's going to run for office at some point, and I think that will make a difference.
Let's talk about Iran.
So I'm a little behind on this story, but I believe that Saudi Arabia is saying, we're not positive it came from Iran.
Did you hear that? So the United States was saying, oh yeah, certainly we've narrowed it down to Iran.
We're very specific about where in Iran it came from.
So the United States is all specific.
Yeah, it's Iran and it came from this place.
And then Saudi Arabia, who was the one actually attacked We're not so sure.
We haven't seen that evidence.
What? Are you saying that we haven't shown the evidence to Saudi Arabia?
Now, there could be a reason for that.
And I guess Pompeo's going over there, or maybe he's there or something.
And he was going to talk to him in person.
It could be that there are some things you simply can't or shouldn't communicate in any kind of electronic way.
This might be one of those.
So it could be that we've got secret monitoring devices somewhere, secret human assets somewhere, and that if we told Saudi Arabia we knew, they're going to ask, how do you know, in order to believe it, and we kind of have to suggest that we have some assets that we don't want them to know about.
So if that's the case, and that wouldn't be outlandish, You can imagine that somebody would have to go in person, look the leader of Saudi Arabia in the eyes and say, we know where it came from.
And then the leader says, can you tell me how you know where it came from?
And you look him in the eyes and say, look, I'm not going to tell you how we know it, but I'm looking you in the eyes and I'm telling you there's no question about it.
We know it with 100% certainty.
That's all I can tell you.
I'm looking in your eyes.
I promise you, on my word, we know this for certain.
And if you act as though it's true, nothing will bite you in the ass.
And you have my word on that.
Now, something like that might be able to communicate effectively that we do know and that Saudi Arabia might trust it if they trust the people.
Because it's a human business after all.
So that could be the purpose of the trip.
And maybe after the trip, Saudi Arabia will say some version of, oh, the United States shared with us what they know.
Maybe they didn't. So now we're convinced.
So that might be the outcome.
Here's another theory.
The United States is not really good at knowing why things happened.
If you had to weigh the odds of these two theories, one is we don't really know Because it's kind of hard to know.
We probably don't know.
Maybe we won't be able to find out.
Think about it. Isn't incompetence always the first explanation for everything?
When you have a thing that's sort of a little bit of a mystery about it, and you're trying to get to the bottom of it, whether it's Epstein's death or anything else, Isn't your first impression maybe a little bit of incompetence?
Do you remember what happened when we first heard Epstein killed himself?
And most of you probably were saying, somebody got to him.
He was murdered. It was really a murder to shut him up.
And I said on day one, well, you know, it could be a murder.
But the most likely explanation for anything you don't understand is incompetence.
And then we hear that the cameras weren't working and the guards were asleep and all that.
He didn't have a roommate.
Now, you still might say, Scott, Scott, Scott, you fell for it.
That's all to get you off the track.
It really was a murder. Maybe.
Remember, I'm not saying it wasn't.
I'm saying that the odds always tilt toward mistakes if there's a mystery.
Always. Weapons of Mass Destruction.
In Iraq, what was more likely?
That we didn't know what Iraq had?
Or that we did know?
Well, we didn't know.
So is it likely that we know where some cruise missiles or drones or whatever they were?
Is it likely that we don't know?
Because I would think that the bad guys are pretty good at launching those things and keeping them below radar, wouldn't you?
How hard would it be?
Let's say we tried to do it.
Let's say Russia tried to do it.
I'll pick another superpower.
So let's say Russia tried to launch cruise missiles or I think the line between cruise missiles and a drone that's a rocket-powered drone is not much or anything.
I don't know. So whatever they launched, do you think Russia could launch several drone-slash- Let's just say drones, and get it to a place in the Middle East without being detected on radar in a way that tells where it came from.
Because remember, one of the things you can do with these devices is you can shoot them in one direction and have them circle around and attack from the other direction.
So it could be that the only thing you know is the attack vector.
That's the only thing you picked up on radar.
So you don't know where they came from.
So do you think we have the capability to know where they came from?
How many of you think we have the capability to actually know where they came from?
Satellite imagery. Not at night.
A lot of people say yes.
Here's my opinion. I believe that we have the ability to know where some things come from sometimes.
Because that would be a better description of any war zone.
And generally speaking, I'm going to call the Middle East a war zone right now.
So, if you believe that we have the capability to know where drones are coming from, do we have the capability to know where they're all coming from?
Because that I doubt.
I really, really doubt we can tell where all things come from.
We probably can pick up a lot of stuff, but I'll bet the people who are sending that stuff may have done a test run.
So they may have already tested and found out that they had an attack vector that would not be spotted.
Maybe they sent an actual plane.
Not a plane. They probably just sent another drone first and said, well, we'll send one.
See if they see it.
Just bring it home. Okay, they didn't see it.
Let's send 10. And then just before I got on, breaking news was that Trump was going to increase sanctions on Iran.
What does that tell you?
What it tells me is that Trump doesn't have confidence that it doesn't necessarily, I'll say necessarily, it tells me Trump doesn't necessarily have confidence that we know that Iran sent those missiles from Iranian soil.
Somehow it matters if it came from the Houthis, I haven't figured out why that matters.
Do you know? Why would it matter if the Iranians train and equip the Houthis and they fire the drones versus Iranians fire from their own territory?
Should we treat those as different things?
Saudi Arabia wouldn't.
So then here's the other thing.
If it's not Iran, who the hell is it?
So it's either Iran, Iranian proxies, Or who?
Who is the other country that could potentially, in your wildest imagination, have been behind it?
Anybody? I haven't heard anybody else even mention, right?
You know, people talk about false flags and stuff, but really?
Do you think Saudi Arabia blew up their own oil refinery?
Maybe? Let me put it this way.
If you're going to do a false flag attack, You could pull it back a little bit.
You could blow up just a few things and maybe kill somebody that you care about if you're doing a false flag.
That would be enough. You don't need to take out half of your industrial...
You're not going to take out half of your oil output in an oil-producing country as a false flag, are you?
Would you do that? Somebody's saying Israel right before the election?
Probably not right before the election.
Unless that was the play, but I don't think so.
Were they drones or missiles?
Yeah. I don't even think we know for sure if they're drones or missiles.
If we don't know that, we don't know where they came from.
Can we agree on that? Can we agree if we don't know what they were, whether they were proper missiles or just drones of some sort?
If we don't know that, we don't really know where they came from, do we?
So, my expectation, I don't think I said this out loud, but what I was expecting is that we would take the sanctions to draconian levels on the assumption that Iran was behind the attack and that we would not get kinetic with them, meaning firing bullets and bombs and stuff, because it just doesn't make sense yet.
If they did this, and if they wanted us to find out they did it, they were trying to provoke war.
If somebody's trying to provoke war, the last thing you want to do is give it to them.
Now, somebody smart said that what they're really testing is how far this non-death war can go.
So we can have a material impact on Iran through trade, by constricting their trade.
They can't have a material impact on us doing anything, except they've noticed they could mess with an oil tanker and we didn't shoot anybody in Iran.
Maybe they're testing that because nobody died on the oil tanker.
And then they attack an oil facility and didn't kill anybody.
So maybe they're testing the theory of how much stuff they can blow up in trade negotiations.
It would feel a little crazy to me, but they're getting a little desperate, wouldn't you think?
Now, I'm going to say again that I'm positive there's some conversation going on in Iran at the inner circle level in which they're discussing how and when to take the Ayatollah out.
That's got to be happening because you know that anytime you have a situation like this, at the very least, people are disagreeing on the best path.
There is no way in the world That his inner circle is all agreeing any more than Bolton and Trump and Pompeo would agree.
You can't put people together at that level, give them this high importance of a question and expect they're all on the same page because they're not.
It's not human. It wouldn't be normal if they're all on the same page.
So you know there's some conversations going on in Iran about the competence of their leader and his age is going to be part of that question.
Have you ever met an 80-year-old who's just as good as a 70-year-old?
Probably not. So you know they're having a Joe Biden question over there, and it's probably a serious one.
And if you're the United States, you probably have some insight that a little of that is happening.
And so maybe you'd let that play out a little bit.
Let their process do what it should, which is remove an 80-year-old guy when it's time.
Now, I guess he's Ayatollah for life, right?
So, you know, it wouldn't be easy.
It wouldn't be easy, but they might know what they need to do.
And this attack on Saudi Arabia, if we go easy on Iran, even, let's say we...
Let's say this.
Let's say we find out that Iran was absolutely behind the attack, I think, and process of elimination.
Tells us we probably will reach that point because who else would it be?
And so let's say we reach that point.
What's our best play?
If we attack, the Ayatollah's support increases.
So the day we attack, everybody says, oh, darn it.
Look what he got us into, but we got to protect the homeland, so we're all on board now.
Ayatollah, tell us what you want us to do.
That might be our worst play.
The best play might be to say, look what your leader just did.
You've got an old man who just attacked a country that hadn't attacked him.
I mean, at least not militarily.
He just put you at the risk of complete destruction.
But guess what?
He did destroy you completely.
Because we're going to shut down all of your trade now.
Who knows what Trump's doing.
He says he's strengthening the sanctions.
Honestly, I don't know how much we have left that's real.
That you can tighten.
This attack would give Trump a full free pass to tighten sanctions to the point where the public is in serious trouble.
They're already in big trouble, but there's probably another level of trouble after that that's literally starvation.
I think that if this attack is pinned on Iran for good, The smartest play is to squeeze their economy in a way that we would not have otherwise.
And make sure that the Iranians know that the newest squeeze, the one that hurts even the inner circle, the one that makes people die in the streets, that that last squeeze was because of this attack.
And if they do another attack, then you take their economy to the next level.
And if you had to do something kinetic, I like using that because it makes me sound like I'm a TV pundit who knows his military stuff, which I don't.
But if we did an attack, don't you think we'd take out a power grid?
Right? We'd probably take out a power grid.
And we'd make sure we didn't kill anybody.
So I have a feeling that the Iranian leadership is being squeezed to make an internal change.
The way you do that is you don't go hard and kill Iranian people.
You say, Iranian people, we're on your side.
People in Iran, we are squarely on your side because you're cool.
Because guess what? The population of Iran, I say this all the time, they are cool.
They're cool people. Love to be allies with Iran.
If we could someday Be close allies with Iran.
Let's say a non-Ayatollah Iran.
That would be the ultimate outcome.
That would be the ultimate.
And we should.
And we can't. I think you could say there are countries maybe we could never be friends with.
Maybe. But Iran isn't one of them.
I think it's in our DNA that we can get along if we just get the Ayatollah out of the way.
And I think the Iranian people, at least the pro-Western segment, which is huge, I would agree with that statement.
So, I think Trump is the smartest person in the room when it comes to this stuff.
And what I mean by this stuff is human nature.
Nobody understands human nature like President Trump.
It's what made him president.
It's what made him successful as a president.
It's why he's talking to Kim Jong-un and their buddies.
It's why he can go hard on China and still be respectful, very respectful, to President Xi.
It's actually why, you know, he was saying recently he respected all the Democrat candidates, because it takes the zip end of them.
If he went harder at them, they'd have more to push it back against, but he's leaving them with nothing to push against.
Yeah, I respect them all.
They all do a good job. So President Trump understands human nature like nobody else.
Maybe this is turned from a A political military situation, which of course it always is, to a human being situation.
Once you reduce the military problem to a human being problem, the way he did with North Korea, the President simply redefined it as a human being problem.
Hey, Kim, come on over.
We'll work this out. The moment he did that, everything good happened.
Everything good happened when he redefined it as a human being problem, not a military problem.
And now, the President will never be able to meet with the Ayatollah.
I think we agree, right?
This President, no President is ever going to meet with the Ayatollah, because the Ayatollah won't do it, and if he did, it would be a waste of time.
But, the next leader of Iran is probably going to be selected, in part, because remember, it's a selection process.
If you don't know how the The process works in Iran.
My understanding is, and I'll give you the idiot's description, this is the dummies version, so assume all the details are wrong, but the basic idea is that there's some kind of high council of clerics who are sort of the, let's call them the Supreme Court plus by analogy,
pat analogy, but they're sort of the leading group that got there through whatever combination of political machinations or religious machinations.
But anyway, they are the group that selects from among their group the Ayatollah and they have to be supportive of the Ayatollah for that Ayatollah to stay.
Now I presume that once you become Ayatollah you take care of controlling everything to the point where even your Supreme Council, whatever they're called, can't really remove you very easily.
Once you get the job you're probably pretty bulletproof.
But You know they're talking about it, and you know they've got number two already picked out.
Because wouldn't you?
I mean, if your leader is 80, you start looking around and saying, who's our backup plan?
Backup plan. So you know they've got a backup plan.
If the backup plan guy is willing to meet with Trump, just conceptually, you know, if he became the Ayatollah, and if it were asked, and if the situation were right, would he meet with Trump?
Well, then you've got something.
Then you've got something.
I've been saying for a while, and it's actually in my book.
I hope the reality doesn't change before my book drops November 5th.
It's called Loser Think. It's getting rave reviews already from early reviewers.
You will love it. It'll probably be my biggest book.
What was I saying? I just went to bookselling mode and completely lost my train of thought.
Oh, so what I'm saying is in the book, and I'm saying now, is that the Middle East might be one Ayatollah away from peace.
Because think about it.
All the other countries are either, you know, not militaristic directly.
You know, they might be funding somebody who's doing some terrorist stuff.
But Iran is sort of the big problem, you know?
Saudi Arabia and Israel seem to be willing to get along, Egypt, you know.
So most of the Arab countries are willing to at least live in peace with Israel, which is most of the game, right?
So if Iran were to come into, let's say, the nation of people, a nation of awesome people, how close are we to that happening on its own?
We're this close.
Because somebody who has a second device open, Google for me the life expectancy of an 80-year-old, please.
So just put it in the comments.
Once you turn 80, what is your life expectancy from that point forward?
Five years? Is that stretching it?
Five years, maybe? I would say the next five years, the odds of him dying are...
Yeah, I mean, it could be six months, right?
It could be six months on average.
So if you've got a guy who seems to be the problem, and he's within...
I'm seeing lots of numbers here, but they all look like guesses.
I'm seeing lots of people saying...
Oh, somebody says, nine for women, seven for men.
So he might have seven years.
Really? Nine...
9.1 in the US. Okay, so it might be longer than I thought.
I think the trick here is that once you reach 80, that tells us that there's something healthy about you in general.
So if you reach 80 and you're still in good health, your odds of going a few more years are probably pretty good.
So let's say it's seven years max.
If it's seven years max, it's probably something closer to...
No, they can't expect you to live that long.
That can't be right. There's no way that an 80-year-old is expected to live seven more years.
That can't be right. I wouldn't expect it.
All right, well, whatever it is.
My point stands. If you're 80, there's a good chance you're going to be taking the dirt nap pretty soon.
The Iranian leadership has to be talking about that.
And maybe they can speed it up.
Because, you know, maybe there's a way to retire.
But probably if you're the Ayatollah, you can't retire because somebody will kill you.
So maybe you don't have that option.
All right. So Trump's instinct to push on the economics instead of to get military, and I'm assuming he won't get military, if nothing else comes to light, if we don't learn a new shocking fact about this, I would not expect him to get military.
I would expect him to go draconian on their economy, because you want them to see that that's the response.
Yeah, you can blow up another refinery.
Yep. Yep. You can.
You can blow up another refinery and we're not going to start a war.
Your economy will be completely done then.
Like completely. We'll blockade you, maybe.
But we're not going to start a war.
Blow up as much stuff as you want.
You'll just be destroying yourself.
I'm not hitting you. You're hitting yourself.
I'm not hitting you. You're hitting yourself.
Stop hitting yourself. Alright, is there anything else going on?
Anything else interesting?
I don't think so. I think we got it done for today.
Alright, so that's all the good news.
And I will talk to you.
Oh, somebody says, what's the slaughter meter?
The slaughter meter is at 100%.
The odds of President Trump winning re-election...
The definition of the slaughter meter is that if everything stayed the way it is today, and we just extend it to election day, would the president win?
And if everything stayed the way it is today, yeah, he'd win 100%.
So something big would have to change between now and then.
I talked about Ed Buck, and Saudi Arabia just confirmed Iran attack.
Don't go until I check that out.
Is that because Pompeo is there?
Uh, I'll look in the headlines here.
Uh... New security advisor.
Who's the new security advisor?
Robert O'Brien.
He's a hostage negotiator.
Okay. Um...
I don't see it on the headlines.
Maybe it's on Fox. I don't see it.
I guess it takes a while. It's probably on the live news.
Probably on the live news before it gets to the...
Alright, so we'll check on that and that's all we have and I'll talk to you later.
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