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Oct. 19, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:10:23
Episode 698 Scott Adams: Russian Asset Tulsi Gabbard, “GET OVER IT” Shirts, Hunter Gatherer,
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
I didn't notice you were here until just now.
Hello, Kefevi 2020.
Sharona, Ken, it's good to see you.
Grab a seat. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
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Go. Ah!
Could it possibly be any better than this?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Wow. Well, once again, we are blessed.
Thank you, President Trump, for all you have done for us to entertain us.
Thank you once again for your bounteous harvest of news that is not just enjoyable, but dare I say delicious.
Yes, the news is delicious.
Let us enjoy some news.
Number one, the Trump administration is suing CNN for, I don't know, fake news or something.
This is probably one of the funniest things they've ever done.
Suing CNN for fake news.
Now, I guess they're using the Project Veritas insider hidden camera reports as sort of the trigger for this.
So now there's a visual.
Now, did Project Veritas tell us anything that 100% of us didn't already know?
Well, not really.
But putting it in a visual sense, putting it in pictures, having an actual face to go with it, watching the insiders say it with their own words, it's different.
It's different than just knowing it.
So it took it to another level, and the president apparently is taking advantage of this by suing CNN for misreporting or fake news or something along those lines.
I don't even think it matters.
So here's the best part, though.
That's not the best part.
The best part is not that the president is suing CNN for fake news.
That's just the setup.
Here's the best part.
CNN can't report it.
CNN can't report it.
Because if they report it, it just makes them look terrible.
But if they...
Are you ahead of me yet?
You're probably ahead of me, right?
But if they don't report it...
It validates the claim.
If they don't report it, then the president says, well, see there, it was big news and they don't even report it.
Fake news. Now, honestly, I can't even tell if they are even a little bit serious about this.
Yeah, I'm sure the lawyers will get paid and CNN will probably have to pay some lawyers too.
But I don't know if they're serious about this, because it seems like every news organization could be sued for bias in one way or another.
But the hilarity of it, that they can't report it, and it's national news, they can't report it.
That's just the funniest thing, maybe the funniest thing you've seen all month.
Now remember I keep telling you that reality and Entertainment, you know, the government and entertainment have just merged.
The funniest thing that's happening almost every day is whatever Trump is doing.
Am I right? Or sometimes it's whatever crazy Hillary is doing.
We'll get to that. But there's nothing...
If you go to Netflix right now and say, I'm in the mood for some funny entertainment.
Good luck. Good luck.
Find a funny movie in 2019.
You can't. You've even seen the reporting that says even the directors, who was the director of, what was the latest, oh, the Joker movie.
He used to make funny movies, and he said, hey, you just can't make them anymore.
Nothing's funny. Yeah, so you end up with Bill Burr And Dave Chappelle, and then you're done.
It's like nothing's funny.
It's like the world isn't producing funny content except for those two guys anymore.
And then the Trump administration.
Here's the other thing they did.
So, you probably saw the news about Nick Mulvaney, Chief of Staff.
So he did a press conference which apparently didn't go so well.
Which is funny, because in my opinion, it was genius.
So, part of the problem with any administration is that it's a lot of different people with competing opinions, and it looks like maybe they're not all on the same page about how to describe what happened with the Ukraine phone call.
Nick Mulvaney did, so far in my opinion, the best job any of them have done, except for maybe the President himself.
Because the President has his own way, and I think the President also handled it perfectly.
I thought Nick Mulvaney also handled it very well.
But it looks like maybe there was somebody in the White House who disagreed and sort of put pressure on him to walk it back in some way that didn't even make sense.
So what Mulvaney originally said was genius.
And I will paraphrase it to improve it even more.
Basically what Mel Vaney said is, if you're having a conversation with another world leader, it's always quid pro quo.
That is exactly the right framing.
If you took the quid pro quo out of the equation for any two leaders who are having a get-together or a conversation, what would you have left?
No reason to talk.
If you took the quid pro quo, and here I'm talking about the implied quid pro quo that's always there, because remember, the President is not being accused of directly saying, if you do this, we'll do that.
Everybody agrees he did not directly say that.
But everybody also agrees that there's always an implied quid pro quo.
I've got a little something here waiting for you.
There's a little something I want later.
It's always there.
So what would be even the point of meeting with another world leader unless both leaders came to it with an implied quid pro quo?
And the implied part could be even general, which is, hey, if you play with us, you know, play nicely with us on this topic, I'll sort of owe you something for later.
It doesn't have to be direct.
But if you took the quid pro quo out of the meeting, there's no point in talking.
That's the only reason to talk.
Am I wrong? There's literally no reason to have a conversation if you take that out.
So Mulvaney got close to what I said.
Now, let me be immodest here.
May I be immodest?
The way I said it is the end of the conversation.
Right? If you put me on a stage with somebody who has the other view that it's the end of the world and he should be impeached, and I say that, you know, there's no such thing as a conversation between leaders that doesn't have an implied quid pro quo.
If you were to take that out, there's no point in having a conversation.
Ever. Any leader. No point in talking about anything.
Ever. Even socially.
It's a waste of time. What does the other person say after I say that?
Well, they better change the subject because it's the end of the conversation.
Mulvaney was right there.
He was right on the edge of saying it as cleanly as I just said it.
It's still good. I would say he still did one of the best jobs, except for the president, in making that case.
Now, the president's version is, it's a perfect call.
Here's the transcript.
See for yourself. There was no quid pro quo in the sense that I did not directly ask for something.
That's pretty good. It's pretty good.
But then everybody finds all this little evidence of conversations before, and they're tracking the timeline and all that.
So the president's approach, which is pretty good, pretty good.
Just coming around and saying, yes, that's exactly what I did.
I had that phone call.
See for yourself. But it did leave him open for a little bit of criticism because they find the timeline doesn't match and, you know, who knew about the funds being withheld and all that.
Whereas the way I did it, there's nothing left.
I've removed all of the opportunity for criticism because I just said, yeah, that's every meeting between leaders.
You couldn't take that out if you wanted to.
You couldn't remove the quid pro quo.
It's not possible. And then on top of that, you'd want to say it is a top, this is also something Milvady didn't quite say, but he could, or I think he hit the data, but he could do better, that it is a top priority for any president to find out if anybody's compromised in our government.
And Biden certainly is on the, at least poll-wise, he's on the cusp of looking like he could be the next president.
So finding out if that guy has any entanglements with foreign countries is pretty close to the top priority for the sitting president.
You've got to look into that.
So, totally appropriate call.
The funniest part is that after the Mulvaney thing, I guess Mulvaney used the phrase, get over it, meaning that, yeah, leaders talk this way, just get over it.
So the Trump campaign, which is the funniest campaign of all campaigns ever, Brad Parscale, I think, probably is behind a lot of this.
They did a t-shirt that just says, get over it.
And there's a little Trump haircut sitting on one of the first letter of get.
Just get over it.
Now, the get over it shirt is, again, right on message.
Because, you know, you heard everything I said, which is, this is just how leaders talk.
You couldn't remove this even if you wanted to.
It's always quid pro quo.
Well, Get over it.
Get over it is sort of the summary after you've said, yeah, that's just the way the world works.
You know, thanks for waking up and being an adult and noticing that everything is quid pro quo, even if you don't state it.
Yeah, welcome to the adult world.
Get over it. It's pretty good.
It's funny. It probably raises money.
I have to admit, the moment I saw it, I wanted it.
As soon as I saw that t-shirt, I was like, I kind of want that.
I'm not going to wear it because I don't want to get punched in public.
It's too dangerous. But I wanted it.
So that's pretty good. It's not often I see a t-shirt where I say, yeah, I kind of want that.
All right. I would like to talk about LoserThink.
It's a little thing which...
I have to show you the cover of the book.
Hold on. Don't go anywhere.
Don't go anywhere.
Stay.
We're back.
You didn't go anywhere, did you?
Okay.
Alright. Now I want to give you three examples of loser think.
Which is a concept out of my new book, which you can pre-order now, the best book I've ever written.
Probably the best thing you'll ever read in your entire life.
Don't let other people read this before you do.
You're just going to be, well, you'll be unarmed.
You'll be going into debates without knowing how to do it right.
Alright, one of the concepts that I talk about here, and the idea behind loser thing, is that if you have exposure to different fields, You can see around corners and you can see situations more clearly.
So, for example, if you had experience, let's say, as a lawyer, and then you also knew economics, and then let's say you also knew psychology, you'd be way ahead of somebody who only knew one of those things.
And in LoserThink, I don't teach you everything that those fields would teach you, just the important concepts.
I'll give you some clear examples of this.
I've got three examples. of people who either exhibited LoserThink or did not.
Let's take, number one, the Doral decision.
The decision to hold the G7 at the Doral Country Club.
What do people who have only, let's say, their only filter is government or reporting?
Let's say they know the news.
They know history, and they're good at reporting and government stuff.
And then they see this story about the president chose his own property, Doral Country Club, for the G7. What would they naturally think about that?
They'd say that's a problem, right?
If that was your experience, if you knew journalism, government, In history, and that was your main focus, and you looked at that, you'd say, this is terrible.
This is terrible. It looks like it's just an inside job, he's looking to profit from it, and sure, he's saying, we'll do it at cost, but you're still saying to yourself, yeah, but it brings attention to his property, right?
Now, what if you had an additional skill?
Let's say your skill stack included journalism and the media, a little bit about government, and a little bit about psychology, history, etc.
But suppose you also understood negotiating, right?
Eh? Eh?
Suppose you understood persuasion, which in negotiating are sort of the same general area.
If you do, and I do, and the president does, you would say that this is the most brilliant thing you've ever seen in your life.
Well, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you know I do that sometimes.
Here's the thing. When you're negotiating, you always want the home court advantage.
You want to be somewhere where you are most comfortable, your own property.
And you want the other people to be impressed by your surroundings.
You want something about you, yourself, your personality, but also your property to literally surround them and develop them and become part of their world.
You can't set the table better than this.
So much so, I would say that every time that a president of our country hosts someone in this country, they should always take the home field advantage.
Let me ask you this question.
Would it be better for the President of the United States to meet another world leader at a hotel ballroom or in the Oval Office?
You see it now, right? If you meet with the President of the United States in the Oval Office, the President has a huge advantage in this situation because you're in the Oval Office.
You're literally surrounded by that President's power and prestige.
That makes a big difference.
If you meet him at the restaurant...
And have lunch? Well, then the table is being set by just randomness.
You're just somewhere else.
You have no advantage in that situation.
So, that's my first example of loser think.
Now remember, loser think doesn't mean that the people who are doing it are losers.
Nothing like that. I'm saying that as a method of understanding your world, it takes you down an unproductive path.
It's a losing path.
It's better to increase your talent stack so you can see around corners a little bit better.
So what was missing for the Durell story was an understanding of negotiating.
It is a magnificently correct decision.
The decision to do it at Durell isn't just pretty good.
It isn't just, well, he can get away with it.
It's magnificent.
It's one of the best, smartest, cleanest wins you've ever seen.
Reported by people who don't have a full understanding of the world, because they've got a blank spot there in the negotiating part of their brain map, can't say it.
It's invisible to them.
All right, here's another one. So Elizabeth Warren plans to fundamentally change the system, and she uses words like that, where she's going to fundamentally change our economic system.
If you did not have a degree in economics, as I do, I've got a degree in economics and I've got an MBA, business school, so I have that part of my mental map is largely filled in.
So when Elizabeth Warren says something like this, I want to fundamentally change the system, people who have my background, whether they say it in these words or not, are having the following thought.
When is a good time to make a radical change to your system?
Is a good time to do it when it's working great or when it's not working great?
Now, some people say, hey, Scott, you said to me that it was actually a really good time to do a trade war with China.
Because you said that our economy is strong, that's a good time to take a risk.
Because your economy is so strong that if that goes wrong, you're still okay.
Because the economy started so strong.
That is correct.
The trade war is a change within the system.
So the system didn't change at all.
We're just tweaking one variable within the system.
That's normal business.
Now, the China trade war is bigger than normal variable, but it's still within the system.
No matter what we do with China, the system will still be the system.
What Warren wants to do is take the system...
Throw it away and replace it with something we have not tried in this country in quite the way she wants to do it.
That is a radical and unpredictable change, which is way beyond the level of risk that anybody who had a degree in economics would accept.
There's almost nobody Who, if they were being honest, let's say, you know, in a political sense, you will of course find people who will take any position on anything, right?
Because it's politics. But even somebody who pretended to disagree with what I'm saying, if I could take them privately and say, look, nobody will ever hear what you're going to say to me.
This is just between us.
I swear, trust me, it's just us.
Nobody else will hear your opinion.
Do you think it's a good idea, with your degree in economics, to change the entire system when everyone agrees the system has never worked as well as it's working today?
You know, 3.5% unemployment?
I mean, really?
That's just crazy.
And you don't change your whole economy when it's the best it's ever been.
Ever! It's just the dumbest thing in the world.
Now, let's say that you had no experience in economics and no experience in anything else in which you would do risk management decisions.
Let's say you were a journalist.
Let's say you had a degree in history.
Let's say you had a degree in anthropology.
In which of those domains would you have learned risk management?
None, right?
Risk management wouldn't be part of what you do.
But let's say you were a doctor.
Let's say you were an emergency room doctor, or even, most extreme case, a battlefield doctor.
You know, you work in a war zone.
Well, in those cases, you're doing risk management decisions all the time.
You know, do I work on this patient?
This one might die, but this one's 85, but this one's 20.
So you're doing all this risk management decisions.
That might get you to the point where you would recognize that Warren's plan is completely the worst risk management decision you could ever make.
It's the worst. Now compare that with Julian Castro, who was asked about UBI during the last debate.
Do you remember what Julian's response was?
He just gave a sort of a dismissive one sentence, and he said, well, you know, that might be worth a pilot, a little test program, a pilot program.
Did you catch that? It was one of the smartest things said at the debate, and he just mumbled it in one sentence.
He goes, well, maybe do a pilot program on that.
Julian Castro showed you how to do it.
Now, I don't know what his background is.
Does he have a law degree?
I don't know what Julian Castro's background is, but maybe somebody can tell me in the comments while I'm doing this.
But, based on that comment, the fact that Julian said...
Let's do a pilot program.
What does that tell you about Julian Castro?
It tells you he understands risk management.
That's exactly what you do.
If Elizabeth Warren had been saying, look, I know this is a radical thing, we can't do this all at once, but I'm going to pick out this part of the economy and I'm just going to work on this one thing.
Let's do a pilot, let's try it small, let's try it in one state, let's see what we can learn and then we'll decide later if we want to do it bigger.
If Elizabeth Warren had said something like that, Well, maybe she wouldn't be getting as much attention as she is because that's a little bit too normal.
Being extreme gets you a little more attention.
But I would certainly say to myself, oh, there's a leader I could trust because they understand risk management.
All right. Here's another example of loser think.
And this is a positive example.
I was watching, meaning I'm going to give somebody a compliment here.
So I was watching Tucker Carlson last night, and he does a little game show thing, I think on Fridays or something, in which he has other hosts or personalities from Fox News compete in a little trivia contest.
And one of the questions was the name of Tiger Woods' upcoming autobiography.
And Greg Jarrett was competing against, I can't remember her name, I wish I could, but he was competing against somebody else.
But I'm only going to talk about the Greg Jarrett part.
So neither of the competitors had heard of the name of the book, but it was multiple choice.
So Jillian Turner, I'm sorry, yes, it was Jillian Turner.
And neither of them knew the answer, but there were four choices.
Greg Jarrett looked at the four choices, rang in, and said, the answer is back.
One word, just back.
He said, I don't know what the answer is, but the other three titles are hackneyed, which is sort of a writer's term.
Nobody but writers ever uses that word.
He's a best-selling author.
He's got a new book that's a best-seller right now.
Last book, best-seller.
Greg Jarrett I believe has a legal background.
He has a media background.
He knows how to write.
So he knows the publishing world.
So he knows how words work, right?
He's an attorney. He's a TV personality.
And he's an author.
So when he looked at the list, the word back...
Jumped out as obviously the title that anybody would have chosen under that situation, because back referred to Tiger Woods coming back, but also he had a problem with his back, and also a one-word title is very strong.
If you could make a title with one word, one word, loser think.
It's not an accident that my titles are good, if I do say so myself.
It's because I work with professionals who really know how to put titles on books.
It's not like I come up with one title and everybody says yes.
It's a whole process.
A lot of people get involved.
In fact, the subtitle is different from the title of the people involved in that.
I mean, it's a whole process to come up with a title.
Jillian Turner, as far as I know, I'm not aware of her having a best-selling book, probably didn't have experience in getting a book published and picking a title.
Greg Jarrett had an extra skill.
He is a best-selling author.
He has had, I know, because best-selling authors all have this conversation, long conversations with So when he looked at the list, he and I said the same thing at the same time, because I did not know the title of Tiger Woods' book.
But as soon as I saw the list, I said, oh, it's obviously back.
No question about it.
In my opinion, it was clear as day that out of that multiple choice, the answer was going to be back.
And then Greg Jarrett speaks almost like it's coming out of my mouth.
Well, the top three are hackneyed and back fits a couple of different ways.
It's clever. That's the answer.
All right. So that's my point.
Greg Jarrett having a deeper talent stack that happened to be just perfect to this question because he knew publishing.
It shows you the power of having an extra talent.
Now, he didn't have to be the most experienced publishing person in the world.
You just had to have a little exposure to picking titles.
And it would have been obvious to you which of those choices jumped out.
All right, enough about that.
More about the funny day.
So let's talk about Hillary Clinton saying that Tulsi Gabbard is a...
A Russian asset. I don't know where to start.
This is some of the funniest news ever.
Let's start with Don Lemon.
I turned on the radio as I was driving yesterday and I heard Don Lemon say this and I've been laughing to myself for hours.
He said that he thinks maybe Hillary Clinton is playing 3D chess.
Pause. Pause for effect.
Let that sink in.
Don Lemon says he thinks Hillary Clinton is playing 3D chess by accusing Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset because what she's doing is making it more difficult for Tulsi to mount a third-party run by making Tulsi go on record as saying she doesn't plan to do that.
Oh... You had to hear it live to hear him say it, and I felt as though I could hear him It was almost like he was talking and knowing it was ridiculous at the same time, because nobody has been rougher on Trump supporters for that 3D chess and 4D chess analogy, because we're always saying that the president is thinking ahead.
In fact, I did it today, talking about Durrell.
I said the president is ahead of everybody, because he knows that it's important to have it at his space.
It just makes a difference.
So hearing Don Lemon resort to the 3D chess analogy for something which is clearly not 3D chess.
I'm pretty sure that Hillary Clinton was not trying to prevent Tulsi from a third-party run.
And guess what? If she had been trying to prevent it, it wouldn't have made any difference.
Do you think Tulsi Gabbard would have said, you know, I was really planning to do a third-party run, but then Hillary said something that one time?
That's not going to change anything.
If Tulsi Gabbard planned on a third-party run, she would have a third-party run.
There's nothing that Hillary's going to say that's going to change it.
This is the most ridiculous comment from somebody who I think had an embarrassing day.
Here's why it was embarrassing.
Imagine if you had been fighting to get Hillary elected for however many years.
And imagine, too, that you were sorry that she hadn't been elected for the three years that Trump's been there.
Would you say to yourself, after hearing Hillary Clinton go full conspiracy theory and blaming Tulsi Gabbard and also, who was it, Jill Stein, of being Russian assets?
After you heard that, if you were a Clinton supporter, a Hillary supporter, right up to that day, and then you heard that news, what did you say to yourself?
How did you process that?
Did you say to yourself, well, I've been right all along.
This Hillary Clinton is on the ball.
Her mental game, her mental stability, totally where I want it to be.
And it looks like she's playing 3D chess again.
Look at her with that 3D chess.
Maybe. Maybe you do that.
But don't you think, and this is just a question because I can't read minds, but don't you think...
That all over the country, there are people who, in their own quiet moments, are hearing Hillary accuse people of being Russian assets, Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein.
Do you think that her supporters, in their private moments, are saying to themselves, oh, shit.
Looks like we dodged a bullet there.
Sure, maybe I don't like President Trump or his policies.
But I don't think I wanted that either.
Whatever that is, whatever we're seeing, you know, whatever it is that we're seeing Hillary Clinton do now, remember, that's who she would have been in office.
That craziness that you're seeing, that would have happened even while she was president.
Could you possibly watch Hillary Clinton's performance this week in her private life and say to yourself, you know, I wish she'd been president.
I don't see how anybody could have that thought.
I think they would all have to say, as much as I don't like President Trump, I have to admit there were two bad choices that election.
I don't think there's anybody saying, man...
If only we'd gotten her in there.
Don't you think it would have some effect on their confidence about how right they are about anything?
It should shake your confidence to watch the candidate that you've been fighting for for years go bonkers exactly a time when she would have been in her third year of the presidency.
Do you want that making decisions?
I don't think so.
All right. So, a little more on Tulsi.
So Tulsi, quite cleverly, took this opportunity to boost her visibility.
I'm pretty sure it will help her.
I think Tulsi will get a bump for this.
The biggest problem that Tulsi Gabbard has is that Republicans like her.
Have you noticed that? From the very beginning, it's been literally annoying me how many people have said to me, what about Tulsi Gabbard?
Scott, you never talk about Tulsi.
And I didn't, just because I wasn't talking about people with 1% support.
It just never seemed relevant to me.
But the number of Republicans who were in love with her And that's the best way I can say it.
Because I don't think it's like a...
It doesn't feel like some kind of a lust.
They just think she's attractive kind of thing.
The way Republicans talk about her is like they're in love, not like they're in lust.
It really looks different.
There's something about her that makes men crazy.
And, you know, I... Normally I wouldn't even talk about that, right?
I mean, that's not my thing.
And I'm trying not to be sexist about this.
I'm just trying to be observational.
My observation is, so I'm not making any comments about Tulsi's appearance.
That's not my deal.
I'm not about that.
But my observation is that people keep coming to me telling me they're in love with her and they're Republicans.
I've never seen anything like it.
Literally, I've never seen anything like it.
So she has some effect on people, mostly men, as far as I can tell, or at least more men.
That is hard to deny.
There's some kind of X-factor thing going on there that I can't say I see it exactly.
I mean, I can see it, but I don't have the same reaction to it.
So she quite cleverly used this to boost her exposure.
I think her rank will go up.
I don't know if it's enough, but I think her rank will go up.
And I love that she said, she talked to, by tweet, she talked to Hillary Clinton and said, you, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.
Personification of the rot.
That's good stuff.
Now, I had not seen anything from Tulsi prior to this that made me think, oh, she's good at this persuasion stuff.
There was something she was doing right, the X Factor stuff, but I didn't really see, you know, persuasion talent.
But then this tweet comes out and I'm thinking, damn, this is fire.
You know, you kind of expect it from somebody in the military.
Don't you expect a military personality, somebody who's been shaped by experience in the military, is that they would be extra controlled until they don't need to be, right?
Wouldn't that be sort of a basic characteristic that you would learn?
It would be like, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, kill.
That's what you learn, right?
Thank you.
Don't kill until you're ready to kill.
Don't pull the trigger unless you're ready to kill.
And it looks to me like Tulsi, in my opinion, was just a spectator in this process.
Hold. Hold.
This debate didn't have much to go on.
Hold. And there's Clinton.
Clinton pops her head out of the foxhole.
And suddenly, Tulsi says, now.
Now. Somebody says, we told you.
So, I'll give an A-plus for Tulsi for the week.
I think she won the week easily.
Easily won the week of the Democrats.
And I'd be surprised if she doesn't hit 5% on the next...
You know, she's going to be in the top six, I think.
Probably because of this.
Just gives her a little more attention.
So there's that.
So I hear the Huffington Post is for sale by Verizon.
Aw, aw, the poor Huffington Post, my nemesis for years, the organization which has been slandering me for years, they're not making it financially.
Oh, oh, I feel so sad for them.
So I put in my bid.
I bid $1 for the Huffington Post, and I will take it over and fire everybody.
So if Verizon would like to get rid of this financial sinkhole, I will take it off their hands for $1, and I'll do what they don't want to do, which is I'll fire everybody.
I'll just go in there and say, I'm your new boss.
I just bought your company for $1.
You're all fired. Get out of here, you stinking fake news people.
All right. Did you watch...
Oh, here, let me give you another example of LoserThink.
When people are looking at the Hunter Biden thing, the other team likes to say, oh, yeah, well, you can make fun of Hunter Biden, but what about Ivanka?
And the example that people keep giving me on social media is that Ivanka was granted a bunch of trademarks in China recently.
Now, if you're deep in loser think, you say to yourself, my God, China is giving Ivanka trademarks.
Not just one, but multiple trademarks.
Has she sold out?
Is she working for China now because they gave her a bunch of trademarks?
No. Let me explain how trademarks work.
I have trademarks in China.
Quite a few. Do you know what it takes to get a trademark in China?
Let me show you the process for getting a trademark in China.
It looks like this.
I got some paperwork.
I got my trademark paperwork.
It says, what do you want?
I want to have a trademark on this name or this product.
What categories? This will be just for ashtrays and automobiles.
Those are the only categories I need my trademark.
Are you using the trademark actively?
Yes, I am.
Now I put this in the mail.
Or my lawyer does.
And you send it off to China.
Then China, in some office, gets your trademark request and says, huh, let's see in my database if anybody else is using this.
Nope. Nobody else is using a trademark called Ivanka Trump.
Granted. Done.
That's it. I just described the entire process.
You fill out some paperwork...
China looks at it and says, does somebody already have this one?
Nope, we don't have somebody called Ivanka Trump in China trying to sell things with the name Ivanka Trump on it.
Approved. That's it.
That's the whole process.
And why does somebody get a trademark in China?
It's because the Chinese will otherwise steal your product.
The reason you get a trademark in China Even if you never want to do business in China, it's because you don't want the Chinese Dilbert comic to emerge.
If I did not have a trademark in China, they could make Dilbert products and just call it Chilbert or Bilbert or Gilbert or anything they wanted.
They could actually even call it Dilbert if I hadn't already taken the trademark.
Same with copyrights and other things.
So the people who don't understand a little bit About intellectual property.
Hear the story that Ivanka Trump got trademarks in China, and they say, my God, they're in bed together.
They're in bed together.
It's like President Xi and Ivanka, they've got some kind of unholy deal together.
No! Somebody in Ivanka's organization, probably a lawyer, filled out some paperwork.
Somebody at the lowest level of Chinese government looked at the name on the paperwork, looked at the database, and said, no, we don't have an Ivanka Trump approved.
That's it. That's the entire process.
And it's like a big deal to people who don't understand what a trademark is.
All right, enough about that. Have you all seen the video of the Mexican police shooting it out with a cartel and losing?
Losing a shootout to the cartel?
And, you know, there's a bunch of phone videos of it, so you don't see any of it too well, but you can tell that the cartel actually has these fairly large trucks, which they've rigged up with armor on the sides, and they've got these military-grade machine guns and military-grade handheld machine guns as well, and they just outgunned the police, and the police had some pretty good guns, but nothing like that.
And they're just driving down the streets of this Mexican city with a mounted machine gun in the back of a truck.
This is a civilized, or allegedly, civilized country right on our border with a paramilitary that's completely owning the police and murdering them at will.
Now here's the question.
At what point does that get our attention?
At what point does the United States say, Well, it would be nice to deal with the government of Mexico on a variety of things.
We will when it works.
But there are other things.
There are other things that we just have to do ourselves.
And one of the things that we might have to do ourselves is to start sending some snipers and some drones to just start picking away at the cartels.
I don't know why we're not murdering them.
Like, actually murdering them?
What would stop us from sending our, I don't know, SEAL teams and drones and snipers and whatever else we have to, just put them in place and have them start picking off the cartel?
Just actually murdering them, wherever we can find them.
Why don't we bomb them? Do you think we don't know where the cartel's facilities are?
Why don't we just carpet bomb the whole damn thing?
Just kill everybody there.
Why not? I don't really understand what prevents us.
There must be a reason.
I think there is a reason.
But I would say that we could declare the cartels a...
I think they have to be declared terrorists, and I think we've come close to that, but haven't.
And I don't understand why we won't act unilaterally.
Is it because we're afraid of the Mexican military?
I mean, what exactly stops us From attacking terrorists right on our border.
Turkey does it. We're letting Turkey do it with the Kurds.
If Turkey can do it with the Kurds, why can't we do it with the cartels?
Remember, they're sending us fentanyl.
If fentanyl were not part of the equation, I might say, well, you know, drugs are going to get here anyway, blah, blah, blah.
But fentanyl is just straight-up weapon of mass destruction.
And the Chinese are sending it to the Mexican cartels, then the cartels are shipping it in.
So really, we should look at this as a Chinese attack on the homeland.
And if the Chinese are using the Mexicans as their go-between in their attack on our homeland, we can kill them.
We could just kill their entire...
If we found out that some of the drug cartel people had a mansion or a facility somewhere...
We could just blow up the whole thing, kill everybody who was anywhere near it.
I don't think we have to worry about anything.
I think we have a full free shot.
It's a free pass. Anyway, so there's more to that story than I understand, so probably somebody smart needs to explain to me why we're not already acting militarily against the cartels.
Here's an interesting question for you.
Find somebody who has a strong opinion on the Syrian situation.
Doesn't matter which position they take.
Maybe they're pro-Trump, maybe anti-Trump, but they have a strong opinion on it.
And then ask them to draw a map of Syria and the neighboring countries.
It's just a little experiment to see how much they know about the region.
Just say, okay, it doesn't have to be to scale or anything, but could you draw like a conceptual map and then draw Turkey and the neighboring countries?
I just want to see if you know what the neighborhood looks like.
Very few people could do that.
But they would still have a strong opinion about what should happen over there.
You sort of have to see it on a map and be able to conceptualize it on a map to have a strong opinion on it.
Same with Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
You probably say to yourself, hey, why is Saudi Arabia messing with Yemen?
Have you seen a map?
Look at the map. If you look at the map, you'll know exactly why Saudi Arabia is massacring people in Yemen.
Because they can't accept an unfriendly entity right on their border.
Nobody can. Well, except the United States, apparently.
We let the cartels ship us weapons of mass destruction every fucking day, and we let them live.
Sorry, did that sneak out?
Does it sound like I have a little bit of bloodthirst?
When it involves fentanyl being shipped to our borders?
Because I do. I do have a little bit of a bloodthirst.
I cop to that.
So I was watching some video of Syria in which dead bodies were being paraded through the streets to show how awful the Turks are.
And even the news said, we can't quite verify that these people are first of all really dead, and second of all that they died because of Turkey.
So even the news is saying, we think people are dying, but we don't have any confirmation.
Isn't that a hell of a...
What kind of a massacre has no confirmed deaths?
I mean, I assume people are dying because there's military action, but we don't have any confirmed deaths.
It's the biggest thing going on, and we can't get decent news.
Because everybody is talking about the Kurds being left to be massacred, And obviously, that's worth worrying about.
But is anything like that happening?
Anything? I just don't know if anything like that is happening.
Yeah, and the Kurds are a legitimate threat to Turkey.
If the roles were reversed...
If this were the United States and we had known terrorists on our border who were working with people who were not terrorists, but some of them were, would we act the same way Turkey is acting?
Of course we would.
If you reverse the situation and said, okay, now you're Turkey.
You've got to take care of the Turkish people.
What are you going to do?
You've got terrorists on your border who are creating a homeland.
You don't let us stand.
The Turks are doing exactly what we would do in that situation.
Exactly what we would do.
So it's hard for me to come down hard on the Turks for doing exactly what we would do.
It's part of the same reason that I'm supportive of Israel in general, even when they're You know, somewhat, let's say, somewhat militaristic, because it's what we would do.
If we were in their situation, we'd act a lot like they act.
So I try not to get into the hypocrite territory by acting as if we would do anything differently.
My take on this is that the president shook the box.
Probably some people got killed.
Probably some people would get killed under every scenario.
There's probably no scenario in which nobody gets killed.
You get that, right?
The people who are saying, hey, the president made a big mistake the way he did this because some people are getting killed.
Well, nobody wants people to get killed, but what was the plan where nobody got killed?
Nobody has that plan.
There were only plans in which people get killed.
The president chose a plan in which Americans didn't get killed, but other people did.
That's sort of his job.
That's the president's job.
Now, of course, all the people like Romney and the people who are complaining about our honor, the United States has lost its honor, and that's a valuable asset.
Is it? Is it really?
In what imaginary world were other countries dealing with this based on our honor?
That is a complete imaginary situation.
Sure, there are other countries who have positive feelings about the United States, and pulling out of this current situation might make them think less of us.
Is somebody not going to do a trade deal with us because of that?
Is somebody going to leave NATO because of that?
Is there anything anybody's going to do in any way that makes any difference because of that?
No. No.
Is there any fighting force that wouldn't want to join up with us if we had a common enemy?
No. Because fighting a common enemy, it always makes sense to team up with the United States.
Why wouldn't you? So I cannot identify anything in the real world that is in any way, even hypothetically damaged, By what the president did.
And I think that, you know, his choice got X number of people killed.
Every other path, no matter what he'd done, would get X other people killed.
Do you think Turkey was going to wait forever and just let the Kurds set up a homeland and be able to export terrorism across the border?
No! No!
That path was not available.
Nobody had that option.
Do you think the Kurds were willing to be flexible before we said we're out of here?
No. If we had said, we're thinking of pulling out, we're going to give you lots of time, Kurds.
You have all the time you need to work something out.
We'll work with you. We don't want to just pull out.
Can you be flexible?
What would the Kurds say? No, we're not going to be flexible.
Do you think that they were ready to deal?
No. No. The president shaking the box and saying, all right, you're on your own, is the only thing that made the Kurds flexible.
Short of that, nothing good was going to happen.
So yes, it caused some lives to be lost, but every path had that downside.
And I wonder if we'll ever find out who got killed in that area.
Alright, what else we got?
I'm having a good time watching Fox headlines.
They're funnier than usual.
So they used my pun in a headline.
Now, I'm not saying that they got it from me, because it's an obvious pun, but it's one you heard me make.
I said that Hunter Biden was more a gatherer than a hunter.
Hey, for a hunter, he's kind of a gatherer.
And so Fox's headline today is Hunter Gatherer.
Talking about Hunter Biden.
Because there's a report.
So Fox News is saying this, that Hunter Biden was paid $83,000 a month, even more than we thought.
And by Burisma since 2014, to be, quote, a ceremonial figure with a, quote, powerful name, a report said Friday.
So I read this and I thought, a report said Friday?
Okay, where's the link to the report?
What exactly report was that?
I don't think the story says.
Now, maybe it says and I missed it, but I looked for it.
Do you believe any news organization that says, a report said, and they don't mention what the report is or who did it or where it came from?
I'm not so sure that's a report that I find credible.
You've got to name the report.
And maybe it's in the story, like in a footnote or something.
I just couldn't find it. My guess is that it has to be there.
I can't believe an editor at Fox would let somebody write, a report said...
And then quote it without telling us whose report it was.
So maybe that was just an editing error.
Or maybe it's my error. So I'm not going to say it's Fox error.
I'll say that I couldn't see, at least obviously, where that report was.
Does anybody know? Anybody else know where that report came from?
If you do know, say so in the comments.
Somebody said that John Solomon reported this weeks ago, but they don't name him.
All right. So, they also said, here's another headline on the Fox News page.
It said, long-time Trump critics' comments start a frenzy at President Bashing Network.
Who do you think is the President Bashing Network?
So, Fox News refers in the headline to a president bashing network and you all know who it is.
That's pretty funny if you think about it.
Now, as I've said, the news is our new form of humor.
And I think Fox News embraces this Far more than the other networks.
When I watch Fox News, which is the primary thing I watch, I always make sure that I sample CNN all the time to make sure I see both sides.
But more time I spend on Fox News by far.
Now, partly the reason I do that is that it's so well produced and so well staffed.
The talent and the way they produce it at Fox News is sort of unparalleled.
There's a reason they're number one.
Just the professionalism on every level, from the human talent to the way they produce it, to the technology.
It's the best in the business.
But they certainly understand that there's a humor element of the news.
And you see them playing to it with their headlines here.
Because when they say the president bashing network, you know that, first of all, they know you know what they're talking about.
But secondly... That's sort of with a wink, isn't it?
The president-bashing network, wink, and you're supposed to laugh.
Likewise with Hunter-Gatherer, that's obviously intentionally to make you laugh.
So Fox News understands who their audience is really well, and they understand that the humor of it is part of the entertainment.
So I always appreciate that.
So the Brooklyn Nets fans brought some pro Hong Kong signs at a LeBron James game.
I guess the Brooklyn Nets were playing, must be the Lakers, where LeBron plays, at Barclays And so I think this is going to be a thing now.
The protesters, I think, are going to follow LeBron probably all season, or at least as long as the Hong Kong problem goes on, which is probably all season.
So that's fun.
Imagine trying to be LeBron and trying to concentrate You're playing basketball when a big chunk of your audience is hanging up signs about Hong Kong and how you messed that up.
Because, you know, even LeBron, even LeBron is thinking he messed up.
Don't you think? I'm not reading his mind, but I'm just saying if you were LeBron, or anybody were LeBron, and you're in his position, would you think, well, I had a good week?
Or what do you think? It looks like I messed up this week.
I mean, I think he thinks he messed up.
So these signs get to remind him of one of his, maybe his biggest, public unforced error.
He has to feel bad about it, you think.
Because it's all negative attention, and it's taking away from the team, the sport.
It's taking away from everything he cares about.
So you have to think he thinks it wasn't a good week.
And reminding him of it with these signs and t-shirts, that's got to affect his playing.
I would think it's going to affect his mental game.
But to be fair...
You know, while we can disagree with him on his political statements, I think we'd all agree LeBron James is probably one of the most mentally solid athletes of all time.
So it could be that he's one of these rare people who could maybe even raise his game.
Maybe he even likes it.
Maybe he likes playing against the protesters.
So it might actually make him better.
You never know. LeBron's not like other people.
He's a super athlete and mentally he's super strong as well, sports-wise.
He thinks people who disagree with him are misinformed.
Well, I don't believe he thinks he nailed it this week.
I think he knows he missed the layup this week.
I don't know where Boo the Cat is.
She's usually in here. I guess she got a better offer today.
All right. Is there anything else going on?
So somebody says, are you still to the left of Bernie and Warren?
Yes, but I'm better at math.
So where Bernie and Warren want to do some things where the math doesn't work, I can still like their goal.
So I share Bernie and Warren's goal of making education widely available for cheap or for free, and I think healthcare is a basic right.
I don't know how to get there.
If I knew how to get there, I would tell you cleverly how my plan is better than their plan, but I don't know how to make the math work.
But now, I've said this before.
There's somebody in the news who's lying to you badly, and I'm not exactly sure who.
Let me give you two facts and see if you can make them make sense.
There are two things we are told reliably.
That there's something like 18% of the United States does not have healthcare, right?
So everybody has healthcare, healthcare insurance, except for 18% of the country.
So what would that tell you about how much extra each of us would have to pay, whether it's in taxes or some other kind of way?
How much would each of us have to pay to make up for that 18%?
I don't know, 10-20% extra?
Because if you add the extra 18%, maybe there's some extra economies of scale because of size or whatever, maybe not, I don't know.
But somewhere in that 18% range, right?
If 18% don't have insurance, then all the people, presumably they're also the people who are poor, so they're not paying any taxes.
So if 18% of the people are poor and not paying taxes and don't have health care, what would it cost the rest of the people who are not as poor and have health care to cover them?
Isn't it around 18%?
So if I were to raise my health care expense by 18%, it would be, let's say, $300- $400 a month.
I don't know, somewhere in that range.
Now, keep that in mind that it might cost you a few hundred dollars per month more if you are asked to cover the 18% who don't have insurance.
Now, how does that work?
With the fact that I turn on Fox News and you'll hear experts and even Warren herself and Bernie themselves telling you it's going to cost $30 trillion and that there's not enough money in the entire country even if every rich person gave up all their money there's not enough money to pay for covering that extra 18%.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Somebody is lying to you By trillions.
And I don't know who it is.
I don't know who it is.
It's either true that we have only 18%.
I see people saying it's a little higher than 18%, but the math will still work either way.
It's either true that 18% don't have health care, or it's true that giving everybody health care will cost trillions and trillions, and there's no way we have that much money.
They're not both true. They can't be.
Do you see that?
Do you see that those two things, which are both reported as uncontested fact, can't both be true?
Somebody is lying to you in such a massive way, it's trillions.
It's trillions of dollars they're lying to you, and I don't know which side.
I actually don't, because both of those things can't be true.
At the same time. Here's my suspicion.
The 18% is the one that's true.
Because I think you can measure that fairly accurately.
What both Warren and Bernie are doing incompetently Like, so incompetently, I almost want to, like, give up on supporting Trump.
Go to Bernie, go to Elizabeth Warren and say, please, dear God, can I fix your message?
Because you are so ruining this.
You know, you're actually making it harder for more people to get insurance because you've totally ruined the message.
Here's the message that Elizabeth Warren says.
Elizabeth Warren, how are you going to pay for this?
Is the middle class going to pay more?
Ah, their costs will go down.
Now, we didn't ask you their costs.
We said, will their taxes go up?
Elizabeth, can you answer that question?
Their costs will go down.
Elizabeth, do you have a hearing problem?
Because I'm asking you, are the taxes going up for that group?
Their costs will go down.
And you go, what the hell is wrong with you?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Here's the correct answer.
Allow me to be Elizabeth Warren and not a freaking idiot.
This is what you would say.
Yes. The whole point is that people won't have to pay their own costs and employers won't have to pay for it.
So there'll be less money paid into the healthcare.
The government will do that.
And the way that looks is that your total costs will go down, even though your taxes will go up a little bit.
So yes, what we plan to do is have your taxes go up a little bit, but the savings that you'll have overall will go up a lot.
That's our plan. So we want you to save a lot of money if you're in the middle class.
A lot. Your taxes will go up, but you're going to save a lot.
But Elizabeth Warren, can you guarantee that that will be true for every voter who's in the middle class?
No. There are lots of different situations.
Probably somebody in the middle class will pay a little bit more, but not a lot.
There. I just fixed it.
If you take that message to the people and say, yeah, the middle class, a little bit more taxes, save a lot on health care.
That's my plan. I don't even know if that could be accomplished.
I'm not even saying it's true.
But the message is better.
Compare that to, Elizabeth Warren, are you going to raise our taxes?
No. Costs will not go up.
What is wrong with her?
And even Bernie, Bernie does a better job because at least he's a little bit honest about it.
It's going to be real expensive. I'm going to really screw the rich people.
At least he's honest.
I don't need to know the exact numbers.
He's telling me he's going to screw me to give health care to other people.
I get it. You don't need to give me an exact number for that.
I kind of know what that looks like.
So that's your assignment for today.
Here's your assignment.
Find out who is lying.
Is it a lie that we only have 18% who don't have insurance?
Or is it a lie that it will cost trillions of dollars to insure them?
They can't both be true.
Tell me which is true and get back to me.
That's all I got for today.
I hope you pre-ordered my book, Loser Think.
That's what makes me come back.
For the fun of it.
Well, I'd come back anyway because I enjoy doing this.
But it does make it easier for me to do this when I feel that I've got some support.
So that's that.
See you later.
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