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Nov. 21, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:29
Episode 733 Scott Adams: Democrat Debate, #Shampeachment Reality Bubbles
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
We've got to talk about the Democratic debate last night, and of course, the impeachment.
That's all there is lately.
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Oh, yeah. That's the good stuff right there.
Well, let's talk about, I don't know, impeachment?
Or the Democratic debate.
We'll get to Sham Beachman in a moment.
But the Democratic debate, let me give you a rundown on how I think everybody did.
You got Joe Biden, who couldn't possibly stay top of the polls for much longer.
I mean, Biden really just sort of fell apart.
The crowd actually laughed at him for one of his gaffes, of which there were several.
But he just didn't look like he's all there.
And I'm pretty sure that his entire support is based on people who haven't seen him lately.
Yeah, that's the entire hit against Biden is, have you seen him lately?
Yeah. Because if you're still basing your opinion on how he was five years ago, you've got a problem.
So Biden is a dead man walking.
He's not going to get nominated.
Buttigieg, I wanted to like.
I wanted to like Buttigieg, but he's easier to like in the abstract.
If you're just thinking about him, you're thinking, oh, he's smart, he's well-meaning, he's somewhat in the middle.
You know, he brings a lot of stuff.
But then you watch him actually debate in which he's on the stage contrasted with the other politicians.
And I swear to God, all I could see is the smartest kid in high school trying to run for student council.
I just can't take him seriously as a leader Because his vibe is too, let's say, too smart and too young.
And neither of those things are popular in the United States.
If you're picking a leader, too young is really not working for you.
And too smart, we hate that stuff.
Because he talked a lot, and I don't remember any of it.
Do you? Think of all the things that Buttigieg said during the Democratic debate.
He got quite a bit of talking time.
I think he was one of the top people in terms of how much time he got to talk.
I don't remember any of it.
Do you? That's the problem with being too smart and too eloquent.
He's almost too good.
He's like the best debater you ever saw, but none of it is interesting.
So I don't know if he can break through with that.
Tulsi Gabbard did not have a good night.
She didn't have a terrible night.
But she didn't do anything to, you know, stay in the race, I think.
I would imagine that Tulsi will have a tough time making the next debates just because she didn't stand out.
And I just don't see her policies being close enough to what the Democrats are looking for.
And I think she's become a little bit of a Too focused on the anti-war part, which is good, but anti-war and not doing regime changes is what we already have.
We already have that president.
So Tulsi Gabbard's strongest point that she would not do with the regime change stuff, we already have that president.
So that's a tough contrast for her.
I thought Bernie...
Bernie surprisingly didn't get as much time as some of the others.
He was in the top four, I think.
But Bernie was just Bernie.
Bernie did not convert anybody new, probably.
Probably didn't lose anybody.
So I think Bernie sort of failed to make an impact, which is bad for Bernie.
Cory Booker...
Got a little attention.
He looked borderline presidential.
But he's so close to being, you know, booted out of the entire process because the process really, I would say the process is really rigged in a sense, maybe accidentally, but it's rigged in terms of people have name recognition.
And it's hard to, you know, work your way through the crowd if you're going to be kicked off the debate stage.
So, Cory Booker is interesting, but I don't know if Democrats are buying into him enough.
Klobuchar still has the right policies, and she has lots of capability, but man, is she boring.
Klobuchar talks like this.
Everything she says is probably smart and it makes sense and I don't really argue with much of it except some of it is opinion and the president must be removed from office.
But she's boring me with her monotone and I don't think I can listen to that for four years or maybe eight years.
I would blow my brains out.
Even though she's very capable, she doesn't come across as sufficiently charismatic She'll be president of the United States.
Perhaps she could be a good governor, maybe a good senator.
I think she is a good senator, right?
And we've got Yang, who, again, he didn't distinguish himself, stuck to his interesting but not setting the world on fire ideas, and I think he sort of disappeared on the stage.
And honestly, the not wearing a necktie thing, it's not really working for him.
I think you could get away with not wearing the necktie if you were in the top three.
Because then people would say, oh, you can be in the top three and not wear a necktie.
But if you're toward the bottom of the polling and you don't wear a necktie, I don't know if it looks like you're trying hard enough.
I don't know if that's reading the way he wants it to read.
It's the sort of thing that works if you're in a commanding lead.
Hey, dress any way you want.
Everybody loves you. But if you're not, it maybe looks like you're not as serious about the process.
So I think that works against him.
Let's talk about Harris.
If you want to know how Harris did...
Don't watch the right-leaning news.
Don't watch Fox News.
Don't watch Breitbart to find out how Harris did because it doesn't matter what people associated with Republicans liked because this is the primaries.
So I looked to see what CNN and MSNBC and the like were saying.
And there was one tell that was very interesting.
Jennifer Rubin Who is a very well-known anti-Trump-er and seems to be connected to, let's say, the deep state.
So she seems to be pretty connected to the permanent democratic machine.
And she tweeted that Kamala Harris was having a good night.
Which tells me that there's some preference that she has good nights.
So there might be some, possibly, it could be a signal that there's some consensus building with her because maybe she could win.
Now, what's the most interesting thing about Harris's presentation?
Remember I told you that she could win if she made the following changes.
Improve her body language.
And stop laughing at her own jokes.
And also, I think she needs to stop doing terrible commercials hanging around preschool, because it just doesn't look presidential.
So last night, no laughing.
Right. And in fact, I saw Jonah Goldberg called that out on Twitter, noticed that she wasn't laughing at her own jokes.
Is that intentional?
Probably. And I thought her body language was better.
It could be because they're behind the podiums.
So maybe it's just natural that you have better body language when you're standing behind something like that.
But I thought that she came across as powerful.
I thought she was too lawyerly.
If she were trying to convince me, I would say she wasn't likable and she was a little too lawyerly.
But it doesn't matter what I think because I'm not part of the primary process.
So if Democrats liked her, and I heard a number of people say that she had a good night, that's important.
Now the most important thing that Harris said Was that she was trying to put together the Obama coalition, meaning the groups of people who were pro-Obama.
Now, here's how she said it.
I want to pull together the, you know, the people of color.
I forget the exact quote.
But, you know, I want the women, the LGBTQ. And then I'm waiting for her to say, and white people?
In her list of who she was pulling together for her coalition, because I'm pretty sure that Obama needed a lot of white people to vote for him.
So I'm waiting for that.
You know, she's like, we need the black vote, the LGBT, and then she says, and the middle class, or the working people, or something like that.
And I thought, really?
You left out white people in your coalition?
How's that going to work?
So the way she worded it was a secret racist dog whistle that basically she wants the Democrats to be the party of everything except old white people.
Now, it was actually a very effective thing for her to say because if you're talking about electability, You have to forget about the people who can't get the black vote.
Can Buttigieg get the black vote?
Probably no. Can Bernie?
Probably no. Can Elizabeth Warren?
Probably no. Can Biden?
Probably yes. But he also can't win the general.
So it doesn't matter that he can get them or not.
So for Harris to point out that using her clever secret racist dog whistle of calling it the Obama coalition, she's trying to say this is no party for old white people.
But if they're also working people, maybe they'll vote for us.
So it wasn't a bad approach.
Because I think it's a signal to Democrats, look, if you want somebody who can win, you're going to need a woman who's a person of color, because that's how you get the coalition.
But the way she worded it was very anti-Obama.
What's the thing I tell you makes Obama special?
You may hate his politics, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not talking about his whole presidency.
But one of the things that made Obama special, and I've said this a number of times, is that he didn't run to be the first black president.
And he was really consistent about that.
He ran to be the president.
And he didn't say, I'm going to scoop up all the black voters, ha, ha, ha, because I'm black.
Because that would have been racist.
Obama brilliantly, brilliantly downplayed the fact that he would have been the first black president and then was.
He let everybody else talk about it.
That's the way you do it.
That's the way you do it.
Harris talked about it.
Which allowed her to send the secret racist dog whistle that she wants to be sort of the leader of the women and the black voters in the Democratic Party.
And didn't even mention white voters.
Didn't even mention them.
Which was really striking in its absence.
Because how do you get elected without it?
That said, it probably went over well with Democrats.
So I think she had a good night.
I will remind you that over a year ago, I predicted Harris would get the nomination.
I've continued with my prediction because I don't think it's fair to change it.
You know, I think I should be held accountable for it.
I have also said that she was the worst campaigner I've ever seen.
And so far that's true.
But I gotta say that on the debate stage, she isn't bad at all.
And if what people know about her is her debating, if that's the part they pay attention to, she looks pretty strong.
I also said that if she could fix her body language, and basically the way she presents her demeanor, and not laugh at her own jokes, that she could still make a run for the nomination.
And last night...
She did those two things.
Now, do you think somebody else got to her?
Do you think it's a coincidence?
Or do you think...
I don't know who else was saying it.
Was there anybody else saying that she needed to stop laughing at her own jokes?
I don't know if anybody else said it before I said it.
But she has now done the things I said she needs to do to win.
So what's that do?
I think I saw, was it Bill O'Reilly who tweeted, is it just me or is she hard to like talking about Harris?
And I gotta say I have the same feeling about it.
She's hard to like.
But how much of that is gender?
Are women saying, oh, she looks hard to like?
I don't know. I don't know.
If women are saying she's hard to like, then it's a real problem.
But remember we said hard to like about Hillary.
You know, Republicans always said Hillary was hard to like.
And Hillary said, well, there's sexism involved.
Was there? Maybe.
You know, I wouldn't rule that out.
Maybe. I mean, there were plenty of reasons not to vote for her.
But you can't rule out that there was something about her that reminded you of your ex-wife.
I think guys had a different response to Hillary Clinton than women did.
Is that fair to say? Whether you're Republican or Democrat, I think there's definitely a...
A gender difference in how personalities are received.
For example, Trump's personality plays better with men.
Wouldn't you say? You know, I think Trump is hard to like if you're a Democrat and a woman.
So some people are hard to like depending on who you are and depending on who they are.
So I think that's a fair statement that Harris is hard to like for Republican men.
Which doesn't matter at all.
It's not predictive. So, I'm going to say, and somebody said that, I think it was Barnes, I don't know if you're watching, but he said that, Apparently the overseas betting markets for Harris went way up, like up 40%.
Can somebody check that while I'm talking?
Put it in the comments.
Check, predict it, and tell me who went up.
Because I would guess that Harris went up.
That's my guess.
All right. So that's how everybody did.
My prediction of Kamala Harris getting the nomination looks the best today than it has looked in several months.
Which doesn't mean I'm right, but I'm going to stick with my prediction.
I would say Yang has no chance.
I would say Tulsi has no chance.
Cory Booker is sort of a wild card.
He could surprise. But at the moment, it looks like he's about ready to be, you know, canceled from the debates for not getting enough poll numbers.
Although he had a great fundraising day yesterday.
It's worth saying. So he did make an impact yesterday.
It might be enough. And, you know, here's the thing.
One reason you shouldn't count Cory Booker out is that he's super smart.
And smart goes a long way.
Now, a lot of the candidates are smart.
And if you look at the smart ones, how are they doing?
Elizabeth Warren, very smart.
How's she doing? Really well.
Pete Buttigieg, very smart.
Very smart. How's he doing?
Really well. Really well.
He's outperforming what you'd expect from a mayor from a mid-sized city.
So, smart does count.
Smart is pretty predictive.
It doesn't mean you win, but smart certainly counts.
And so that's why Booker is a wild card, because he's really, really smart.
Somebody mentioned Steyer.
He's barely worth mentioning, because unless he gets a little more purchase on things, I don't think he's terribly relevant to the process.
All right, let's talk about...
Oh, and then I guess there was a Marquette Law Wisconsin poll.
I don't know how prestigious the Marquette Law Wisconsin poll is, but Wisconsin being one of those swing states, suddenly for the first time, Trump leads in a hypothetical matchup with any of the Democrats, Trump leads every one of them for the first time.
For the first time.
So in the middle of the impeachment hearings, Trump's poll numbers and an important swing state just went way up.
Who predicted that?
A lot of people, including me.
I'm not going to claim some smart prediction on my part because all the smart people said the same thing.
If you go for the king and you don't kill him, You got trouble.
It looks like this impeachment process, they went to take out the king, in this case the president, and it looks like it's not going to work.
We'll talk about that. All right?
So, I was...
So, here's my realization yesterday.
And I don't know why this took me so long.
When I tell you this realization, you're going to say to yourself, Wait a minute.
Why is this the first time we're thinking of this?
All right? It's funny because it's so obvious.
And when you hear it, I think you'll literally laugh that you didn't already see this.
All right? Here it comes. The Sondland testimony is that he was sure there was a quid pro quo based on context and talking to Rudy and other things.
But when he asked the president, the president said unambiguously, no quid pro quo, just tell him to do the right thing, meaning Zelensky.
Now, how do you explain that the president said directly, No quid pro quo, just do the right thing.
I'm not asking, you know, I'm not offering anything as an award for doing the right thing.
And yet everybody thought it was a quid pro quo in context.
So here's my insight that you're going to laugh that you didn't think of it already.
It's President Trump Name a situation in which he's negotiating something in which his first offer is not give it to me for free.
Do you feel it yet?
His first offer or his first ask in every situation Is give it to me for free.
Now, if you're doing a trade negotiations, it's obviously, there's no concept of free.
Everybody's getting something and giving something.
But when you're talking to a foreign leader, and there's something you want, and the leader has an agreement with you for investigations, there's actually a treaty that specifically mentions that you can talk to them and you can ask for this.
The treaty says we can ask for investigations.
If you have a treaty with another country and it says you can do something, would your first offer be we're going to bribe you for it?
Would that be your first offer?
Never. There's no scenario that's realistic in which President Trump's first conversation with Ukraine is we're going to give you something for this.
Not in a million years.
And why is this the first time you're thinking of it?
Why did it take me months to realize that he would never offer something when he had every right to get it for free?
Every right to ask for it for free.
That's what the treaty is.
The treaty says you can go ask for this for free.
Do you think Trump is going to enter a negotiation where there's a written treaty that says you can get this for free and he's not going to ask for it for free?
So when Trump said to Sondland, no quid pro quo, he needs to do the right thing, It's because there's a treaty and it is the right thing.
In no world does Trump give something away for nothing.
What's one of the biggest complaints people make about Trump's history?
One of the biggest complaints is that he doesn't pay his vendors.
He doesn't pay people.
He delays payment.
Where else has the president delayed payment?
Everywhere? Everywhere?
Doesn't he question every single payment?
Now, how could it be true that it looks like a quid pro quo to his entire staff at the same time the president is saying, no, do not offer something in return?
I can't be more clear about that.
Do not offer something in return.
Makes perfect sense that the president had that mindset.
Now, let me remind you That all of the evidence we've seen that it was quid pro quo comes from people's assumptions.
Every single person who's asked, what's your evidence of quid pro quo, has either an assumption, or they talk to Rudy, who is not the president, and Rudy, you know, whatever Rudy says, you don't know that that came from the president or not.
Rudy had a job, and Rudy was doing it the way a lawyer does a job.
Is that exactly what the president asked him to do?
Or is it just how Rudy does the job?
So imagine you're in a court case.
You've been accused of something.
So you've been accused of a crime.
And you have ten pieces of evidence against you.
And one on your side.
There's only one thing on your side, but there's ten pieces of evidence against you.
And then you present it to the jury.
All of the evidence against you, all ten of it, from different witnesses, etc., is based on their own presumption according to them.
And the one thing that's on your side is the one piece of direct evidence.
There's only one piece of direct evidence.
President Trump, what do you want out of Ukraine?
No quid pro quo.
Direct, and I believe nobody's questioned this, because Sondland was the kind of witness that you can't even tell what side he's on, right?
Because it felt like he was playing both sides, so you wouldn't even automatically say, well, whatever he says is not likely to be true.
It really looked like Sondland was playing it straight to me.
I took Sondland as a completely credible witness, even if I didn't like what he was saying.
So the mere fact that the one piece of evidence you can rely on, the one direct piece of evidence about the president's state of mind, Said no quid pro quo as clearly as you could possibly say it.
So you want to be in a position that the president's in where there's only one piece of evidence you can rely on and it's totally exculpatory.
Now, does that mean there was no quid pro quo?
Nope. Doesn't mean that.
It does not mean there was no quid pro quo.
It does mean the president said in clear words, don't go asking for something in return.
That's clear. But because he's the president, as everybody will point out, there's no such thing as no quid pro quo.
That's not a thing.
Just because you're dealing with the president of the United States, you need him.
If you're not making him happy, it's going to be a problem.
But there is a difference between simply existing as a president and In which people treat you a certain way, you have a right to exist.
You have a right to have a conversation.
That's sort of your job as president.
The fact that other people are interpreting that as a quid pro quo is not really your fault.
It's just sort of who you are.
It's your job.
If you're in the office of the president, it doesn't matter if you're Hillary or you're Trump, it doesn't matter.
Everybody's going to treat you as an implied quid pro quo.
It does matter if he said it directly.
That would be a little bribe-y.
But he didn't. He said the opposite directly.
So, there's certainly no crime About having an applied quid pro quo.
Is it possible that Rudy oversold the quid pro quo part?
Yeah, it's possible.
But that would not be the president's problem.
Is it possible that aid was being withheld in any way because of the Ukrainians not doing what the president wanted them to do?
Yes. Yes, that is possible.
But, is it a problem?
Is it impeachable?
Well, here's the thing.
Ukraine was massively corrupt, and the President wanted to know before he dumped his money there, do we have somebody we can rely on who is genuinely looking into corruption?
What would be one way to know if Zelensky was serious about corruption?
There's one way to know, if you look to the Burisma situation and the other stuff.
The crowd strike probably wasn't real, but worth asking about.
The only thing you would expect Ukraine would just say, well, the crowd strike thing is nothing, but let me tell you, let's look into Burisma a little bit, because there's something there, and obviously the Biden connection is something worth looking at.
And apparently there are a number of situations in which Ukrainian officials Did try to interfere with the election.
We know that as fact.
Because they wrote articles and stuff.
So it's part of the public record that some members of the Ukrainian government tried to influence the 2016 election, which is different from saying that Ukraine tried to do it.
There are individuals who tried to do it.
So given all that, If the president knows about one specific thing that looks corrupt to him, which is the Burisma situation and maybe the election interference, and the president asks, with no quid pro quo, can you look into this?
Now, let's say the president doesn't get the answer that he wants.
What would that tell the president about how reliable Ukraine is as an anti-corruption fighting regime.
As a proxy for whether Zelensky is a reliable corruption fighter, Trump tested him with some things he knows about or wants to know about, you know.
Tell me about Burisma, look into it, look into Biden, look into the election.
If Zelensky wouldn't even do that, could you trust him to be looking into any other corruption?
No, right?
You wouldn't. If he won't look into the thing that you know is suspicious, why would you expect him to look into anything else?
And so...
Here's another point you've never heard before.
Whatever Trump was asking for in terms of investigation in Ukraine served as a proxy for whether Ukraine was a legitimate, dependable partner.
So it would be entirely appropriate for the president to say, let's just wait for a positive signal That corruption is on the downswing and that we can trust them with our money.
One way you get a positive signal about corruption in general is if you put out a specific request and it got handled responsibly.
That would tell you that corruption in general is probably something that this new president in Ukraine is serious about.
So, would it be appropriate for the president to hold off until he had a positive sign That Ukraine wasn't going to just steal the money and go away like the last time.
Totally reasonable. And that his request would act as a proxy to tell you if Ukraine is serious just in general.
If they don't do this little thing, are they going to do the big stuff, the hard stuff?
It was reasonable. All right.
So I don't think there's any chance that Trump will get removed from office from all this.
I think it will lead to a landslide.
I love Nunes's...
Are you watching Nunes when he does his introductory statements before each of the days of testimony?
It's really good.
So Nunes is just killing it.
Because the way he's playing it is that It's not serious, should not be taken serious by the audience, should not be taken seriously by anybody there, and that it's just theater, and it's just ridiculous politics.
And he's doing a really good job because his little clips, you know, are going to be taken out of context and promoted, and people are going to see that a lot.
So I think, and then if you missed his play right before I came on, so just a minute before I came on, there was this, Dr.
Hill was getting ready to testify, and her statement had been read into the record, I guess, and in her statement she said that the Republicans, I guess on the Intelligence Committee, that That they believed that the only election interference was from Ukraine and not from Russia.
And so there's an accusation there.
So that Nunes and his group only believe that Ukraine was responsible for election interference and not Russia.
And Nunes takes out this report that's like this thick, that says, you know, it's basically something all the Republicans have signed off on, that says, yes, Russia interfered.
Here are all the examples.
Okay. And he's just got this gigantic document.
And at the end he goes, we'll make a copy available for...
For Dr. Hill and the other one, so that they have it to refer to.
Ouch! Basically, anything else she said after that point is just going to look like bullshit.
Because he annihilated her before she opened her mouth.
And I was looking at her face, handing her this gigantic document that proves conclusively and publicly that That her main belief was complete bullshit.
And I'm just watching her face and she's...
Bad day.
I would never want to have that day where you're sitting, you're getting ready to testify and the very first speaker just slaps you down so hard that there's nothing you can say after that that's going to redeem you.
All right, CNN, of course, we have the two movies on one screen situation.
And, oh my God, it's so entertaining.
If you're still trying to ignore, if you're trying to ignore CNN because you're mad at them, you don't like the way they cover things, you are missing a lot in terms of entertainment.
And I mean that seriously.
You really need to check the news on all your sources to get an idea of what's going on.
If you're only watching news on the right, you don't know what the other people are seeing, and therefore you don't know what's going on at all.
And let me tell you how...
No, of course CNN and MSNBC are selling Sondland's testimony as, well, it's all over.
We've made our...
We've made our point now.
And impeachment is on.
But they use words like, here are some of the exact words on CNN's website that try to make Trump look guilty without saying anything that's actually like a fact that would show that.
So they say it was stunning.
So yesterday's testimony was stunning.
Why? I don't know.
The testimony tied the decision to Trump.
It tied it to him.
Meaning what?
What's that mean? It was tied to him.
Does that mean that we have evidence that Trump did something?
Or did somebody else imagine it was tied to him?
He was linked to it.
He got linked to it.
But did he get linked?
Did Trump get linked to the decision because of a fact or because somebody said they imagined it?
They also say it's an impeachment turning point.
In what way?
And why? Why is it an impeachment turning point?
I didn't see anything that would turn anything.
Sondland's testimony is, quote, among the most significant to date.
Okay. It was significant.
Why? It's stunning.
Why? It's tied to, it's linked to, the president.
Based on...
So there's a lot of language.
Oh, and it's also maybe a John Dean moment.
So that's tying it to Watergate.
To which I say, maybe it's a John Dean moment, maybe it's not.
But... Why?
All the reasons are left out.
This is where I'm going here.
There's a lot of words that make it sound pretty bad, but it's not actually directly tied to any reasons.
And so I keep digging down.
It's like, well, there's probably some reasons.
And then you see the clip, which I... Oh, here's some more things.
These are quotes from CNN's page.
The testimony goes right to the heart of the issue of bribery.
Okay, what does that mean?
That the testimony goes right to the heart of the issue of bribery, as well as other potential high crimes and misdemeanors.
If you read that sentence, would you say to yourself, oh, there is now fact-based evidence that That the President was involved in bribery and other high potential crimes or misdemeanors?
You might get that impression, but that's not what the sentence says.
The sentence says that the testimony went to the heart of those things.
But when it went to the heart, what did it find?
It doesn't say. Did you go to the heart of it and find there was nothing there?
Or did you go to the heart of it and find there was something there?
And if you did, what was it?
The testimony was implicating the president.
Hey, you've been implicated.
Of what?
Implicated of what?
The testimony dismantled the foundations of Trump's impeachment defense.
How? It's hilariously vague.
So it's selling something hard.
But the reasons are generally left out.
This is talking about Sondland.
His testimony essentially offers Democrats validation for moving ahead with impeachment.
It offers them validation.
How? Because why?
This is a seminal moment in our investigation, Schiff said.
Why? Is it a seminal moment because Schiff got so excited he was leaking seminal fluid?
Is that why?
because he doesn't say why this is another quote from CNN's website On the face of it, this was a disastrous day for Trump.
On the face of it?
What about the facts?
How did the facts do?
Were the facts creating a disastrous day for Trump?
Or was it only on the face of it?
And then the CNN site is puzzled because they're talking about this like it's unbelievable.
Yet the president declared total victory in the face of factual defeat.
So the president was factually defeated.
What was the fact?
Which fact was it that defeated him?
Was it the part when Sondland said that all of the evidence against the president was his own presumption, Sondland's presumption, and the only evidence in favor of the president was direct evidence that he hurt himself when he asked a direct question of the president?
Is that... A total defeat?
That sounds like a total factual victory to me.
Am I hallucinating?
And they also like to say that the Republicans pounce on stuff and they seize things.
So this is also from CNN. The president seized on a comment by Sondland, in which he said Trump told him he didn't want a quid pro quo with Ukraine.
They seized on that comment.
Well, that's sort of the place you should seize, because that comment is a fact that completely makes the whole thing go away.
But the way CNN says it, they seized on it, like it was something unimportant.
Yeah, but we pounced on it.
There's a lot of seizing and pouncing going on, which minimizes the fact.
Oh, no. Yeah, there's this little fact that they seized it.
They pounced on it.
They made that little fact seem like more than it was by seizing it and pouncing on it.
All right. So that's some of their weird language I was writing down.
There's a lot more of it. All right.
I don't see the slightest chance that Trump gets removed from office.
There's nothing there that would make any Republican change their mind.
Not even a little bit.
It looks completely exculpatory to me, like completely.
It doesn't even look like a gray area anymore.
Now, the guy who's testifying right now, Holmes, is also testifying that it was his belief that there was a quid pro quo, but mostly that comes from...
I think the way they're connecting it is that Trump told people to deal with Rudy, and then Rudy, I think, allegedly made it clear that, you know, to get any cooperation...
And get their money and get a meeting and all that that they, that Ukraine had to play along.
But if that's the best you got, good luck with that.
Because I don't think anybody's arguing, nobody's arguing that Rudy didn't push the envelope.
I don't think any, I don't think any Republicans are saying, oh, everything Rudy did was just what the president wanted and totally appropriate.
Rudy's an attorney. Rudy gets to try to kick in every door that he can kick in.
The attorney gets to push every button that can be pushed.
He doesn't have the same restrictions as a politician.
He's fighting for his client.
So if Rudy asked for some things that maybe the president would not have asked for, still not illegal for the president.
The client doesn't get blamed for what the lawyer does.
All right, unless the client asks them to do it specifically, and that's not in evidence.
But the main thing is, and it all comes back to this, you know, and I get kind of tricked into talking about the quid pro quo stuff.
It's not relevant. The only question that's relevant, and you'll see, I think you've noticed a few people saying this.
I think I'm probably the first person who said it that I know of.
But now you see a few more people saying it.
That as long as the president was asking questions which the voters and the citizens of the United States also had an interest in, And of course we had an interest in if Biden had any nefarious connections over there.
Now, I'd be interested if it turned out there were none, and I would be interested if it turned out there were some.
I'm not personally aware of anything illegal by Joe Biden.
But I certainly wanted to know So, as long as the President's asking questions that a substantial number of citizens also wanted the answer to, that's the end of the story.
He's just doing his job.
The fact that it's also good for the President, not relevant.
Everything the President does for the country should, by design, also be good for him politically.
You wouldn't want the opposite, would you?
Would you ever want the President's Interests for his own reelection to be disconnected from the interests of the citizens.
You'd never want that.
You'd want them to be connected.
And they were. So, no problem with impeachment.
All right. Are we a simulation?
I have more evidence that we're a simulation.
And I like to update this every now and then.
And the evidence that we're a software simulation and not an original species are that if we were software, there are certain things we would expect.
One is that we might experience different realities.
Why would it be true if we were designed as software?
Why would it be true we would experience different realities, meaning subjectively?
We're watching the news, but we're seeing two different worlds.
Why would that indicate we're software?
Well, let me tell you.
It could be that we're just faulty.
We evolved to have bad brains.
But if you were designing software, it would be too hard...
To make every character's experience consistent with every other character's experience.
It would be too hard to program it.
So you would take a shortcut.
And you would make everybody have their own subjective experience except for some base physics and facts about the scenery.
So you would see the programmer cut corners because of resource management to let people live their own little truth so long as it didn't violate any other facts that were part of the simulation.
But here's my new one.
Oh, you would also not be able to see the simulation from the outside.
And sure enough, you can't exceed the speed of light, so we can never get outside our universe and look down at it and see what it's made of.
The other thing is you can't tell what it's made of.
If you were made of software...
You wouldn't be able to use a microscope at any level and look to see what you are.
Because at some point, if you went down, down, down, down, it just wouldn't make any sense.
It would just be zeros and ones.
But here's my new one.
How do you explain dark matter?
So apparently the universe is 85% dark matter, meaning all the empty spaces, there's just nothing there.
Do you believe that you can live in a reality in which 85% of everything doesn't seem to exist?
What does that sound like?
Sounds like software.
Because you don't build software that records or takes into account things that will never be interacted with.
And all the stuff that's between stuff, the so-called dark matter, you can't interact with it.
So if we're software, it just wouldn't exist.
There would just be some program rules about how the things that do exist interact, and all the stuff in the middle, Just wouldn't exist.
So that's more evidence that at least we're consistent with how we would be designed were we software.
All right.
I'd just like to throw that in at the end.
I'm just looking at your comments.
Here's a little update. I'm still being totally demonetized on YouTube.
And one of the reasons that YouTube can get away with it is because nobody really cares.
You know, you might care a little bit, but nobody really cares about my monetization.
Nobody's going to make a big deal about it.
And there's no way for me to find out what's going on.
But I'll tell you what's going on.
At least the observable part.
All of my content is demonetized.
Within seconds, long before any human could look at it.
So we know that I'm on some kind of an algorithm or some kind of a list where I'm automatically demonetized.
Now, in the entire history of all of my videos that are on YouTube, have I ever said even one thing that would be in even a questionable category to be demonetized?
Most of you know the answer to that, right?
Not once. Not once have I ever crossed the line, not with any of my videos, not once, have I crossed the line into anything that would even be ambiguously cancelable.
Nothing. Not even close.
So, what is it that puts me on the instant demonetization list?
Here's the punchline.
Each time we get demonetized, We immediately ask for a manual review.
What do you think happens when we ask for a manual review?
How often does it get overturned and then re-monetized?
Every time. 98% of the time.
There were a few exceptions, and we don't know why they were still demonetized, but there was no good reason for it.
So when a human looks at it, they agree there's nothing there that would cause it to be demonetized.
But here's the trick. The human opinion comes after all the traffic has happened.
So even though it gets re-monetized pretty much every time, I make no money to speak of.
It's essentially rounds to zero.
Because they made me wait a day, and all my videos, most of the traffic happens on day one.
So... YouTube is just taking me out of the game, completely taking me out of the game on the biggest platform that I could have an influence.
Now, are you being trolled?
Well, maybe. So that's going on.
So I wrote my book, Loser Think, which so far people are saying is my best book.
And people are buying it already for gifts.
People are buying multiple copies.
People are buying the hard copy and then they're also buying the Kindle and also buying the audiobook because they want to consume it in different ways and have a permanent record but also listen to it in the car.
I've never seen that for any of my books.
I've never seen so many people buying multiple copies and people are buying it for everybody in their class, everybody in their organization.
So apparently it's already a huge gift item.
It would mean a lot to me if that book did well.
Now, it doesn't change my life, but it certainly makes it a lot more fun to do this.
Because at the moment, well, I'll just say it directly.
At the moment, it costs me money to do this.
So right now, I have an assistant that I pay for processing my videos and putting them up on YouTube.
And I pay my assistant more than the tiny monetization I get.
So I'm actually paying to do this.
You get it for free without commercials, and I'm paying for that.
So it would be great if people bought my book because at least I would feel that I'm not wasting my time.
I'd like to feel that the market is responding.
Now, of course, I would also like to think that the things I'm adding to the universe are good with or without compensation and fully worthy of putting out there.
But unless the market responds, it's a little bit hard to imagine that anybody cares.
And so if LoserThink does well in sales, I'm going to say, okay, people care.
So it's still worth it for me to pay to do these videos because people care.
And that's the best way to find out.
All right. That's all for now.
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