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Nov. 23, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:14:48
Episode 735 Scott Adams: FISA Shenanigans, Tesla Truck Windows, #Shampeachment
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody, come on in here Harry, good to see you.
Kefifi2020, always a pleasure.
John, Austin, Maximus, what a pleasure to see all of you in the morning to share the simultaneous sip.
And if you're prepared, if you're the kind of person who sees opportunities, if you're the kind of person who seizes the day, carpe diem, then you're probably already prepared.
But the rest of you, you still have a few seconds to grab your copper, your mugger, your glass, your snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, flask, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Feel connected to everybody in the world who is doing it, even if it's asynchronous.
Oh yeah. Yep.
I feel connected to all people.
I believe I've attained a godlike quality in which I am one with the universe.
You probably feel it too.
Hey, you can be God too.
There's no reason there needs to be just one.
Let's talk about some fun things.
My book, Loser Think, is this week on Wall Street Journal's best-selling business book list.
Yay! Of all the non-fiction business books in the entire world.
That are in the United States.
I guess this list is for the United States.
I've got one of the best-selling ones in the entire country, so you should certainly check it out.
It's called Loser Think, and it's the best Christmas present you ever got and the best one you ever gave because, as I often say about my books, if you read them carefully and you don't bend the pages, After you read it, it's something I call a gift item.
That's right. You can consume it, and then you can give it as a gift.
You can have your cake, and you can eat it too.
How many products have that quality, where you can consume it and then give it as a gift?
Not many, but my book's got that all over it.
All right. This is amazing.
Every once in a while you see balanced news coverage, and it makes you take a double take.
Have you had that experience yet?
Have you had the experience recently of watching the news, and it doesn't matter if it's left-leaning or right-leaning news, and thinking to yourself, Thank you, yourself.
What's going on here?
That's a balanced news report.
I'm confused.
And that happened to me, I was reading Oliver Darcy's, so he's a CNN guy.
He was writing about Donald Trump Jr.'s book that has been a number one bestseller.
It might still be number one.
And I think it is actually.
And there was some controversy because the Republican National Committee bought $100,000 worth of books.
And people say, hey, that's cheating because the Republicans bought a big bunch of books and then you're number one book.
That's why there's a little asterisk-like indicator, a little dagger that they put next to it on the list.
So Oliver Darcy, who works for CNN, who is no fan of the Trumps, writes an article in which he completely...
Completely pees all over this report.
And it makes it very clear that Donald Jr.
absolutely deserved the number one spot.
And here's why.
Math. Turns out that $100,000 doesn't buy many books.
And if you look at what a commanding lead is, Don Jr.'s book ad, I think he sold 70,000 the first week, and the next best book was half that.
And $100,000 buys you something like 3,000 to 7,000 books, depending on discounts or whatever.
So, CNN writing an article with no hesitation.
I don't think there's any word in this article That even tries to be, like, snarky about Trump.
You know, normally you'd expect to see this article say something like, well, despite his best efforts to cheat, the cheating didn't make much difference in the end.
You know, you'd expect that some kind of flavor of that, but it has none.
It's straight up reporting, and it's straight up saying that the charges that, you know, Don Jr.'s book was number one because of this buy by the RNC is just false by math.
And so Oliver Darcy, I say, good job.
So I will give you an unqualified compliment for not only accurate reporting, because I know enough about the business to know that the way he explained it is accurate, and the way it was originally reported was illegitimate.
So good job, Oliver Darcy at CNN, for clean reporting there.
However, CNN's Brian Stelter, I saw a little clip in which he was talking about how Fox News, he quote, discards all the damaging information from the impeachment ceremony.
Now, I think they did distinguish between the news portion of Fox News that they think covered it similar to the way they covered it, but that the opinion people were, in Brian's view, discarding all the damaging information from the impeachment ceremony.
What does that make you do?
Think past the sale?
He's making you think past the sale.
What's the sale?
The sale is that there was damaging information in the impeachment hearings.
If he makes you think about whether or not some members of Fox News have discarded it, it makes you uncritically assume that it exists.
Because you can't discard something that doesn't exist.
So he's talking past the sale.
I talk about it when Trump does this all the time, and he does it a lot.
And here you see the same technique, and it works every time.
It works in the sense that it may not change opinions, but it's a good persuasive strategy.
But if you want to apply the same standard, let me ask you this question.
How many times have you seen on CNN them grapple with the following question?
So I'm not even saying which way they come down on this question.
I'm just saying, have they even discussed it?
Have they discussed it in any fashion?
And here's the question.
Was it in the United States' interest That there be an investigation in Ukraine about Biden's activity, given that Joe Biden was leading the polls to be the next president.
Has CNN asked that question?
I'm seeing yeses, but I don't know if you're saying yes that you saw it or yes to my point.
That's the trouble with the comments.
Sometimes they're out of timing, so I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing.
But let me just say this.
I know that CNN has said, and I've said it myself, I've agreed with them a bunch of times, that there's no public information that would suggest that Joe Biden did anything illegal.
I think that's fair, right?
There's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegal.
There's certainly... Things which you'd like to know more about, because they suggest that it's worth looking into.
But it seems to me that CNN continually skips over the only question that mattered.
And this is why it's the only question that mattered.
If there was no legitimate reason to be looking into Joe Biden, in other words, legitimate in terms of the United States citizens, Well, that's a big problem, because it means that our foreign policy was, you know, hostage in some sense to a political question, something that was just purely political for the president.
But, suppose it's the opposite, which I've been saying for the entire time, that it is the opposite.
I'm a citizen.
And I can check this fact with you.
We can do a fact check right now.
I'm a citizen of the United States.
I understand that not everybody in the United States agrees with everything the United States cares about.
We have different priorities and such.
But if there are a lot of people like me, and I don't know what percentage is enough, but let's say 30% of the voters...
Have the same opinion as me, would it be worth looking into?
So my opinion is that I would like to know more about Ukraine and Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, to know if Ukraine has any kind of compromising information on them, given that Joe Biden might be the next president, according to the polls.
So is there anybody out there?
So in the comments, just tell me.
As a citizen of the United States...
Do you have an interest, a legitimate interest, not just curious, not just wanting Joe Biden to get in trouble, but actual legitimate interest?
If you could just take your political hat off, does it make sense, especially given alleged and probably actual Russian interference?
Yeah, and you see all the yeses going by in the thing.
Now, would it matter that Democrats disagree with you?
So I would imagine if I were doing the same presentation to an audience that was mostly Democrats, and I said, is it legitimate to ask these questions about Joe Biden?
You would assume, a lot of people say, no, it's not legitimate, because there's not enough there.
You know, it's not enough that we can see that would suggest there's a crime, so therefore it's illegitimate.
But, does that matter?
It actually doesn't matter.
Because if you had, and I'm just going to pick a number for conversation's sake, imagine 30% of the voters, if presented with this situation, and you said, should we look into it?
There's no indication of an actual crime by Joe Biden, but because Hunter's got some swampy things going on there, and that could be enough to create a little, let's say, blackmail material, because it wouldn't take much.
If Joe Biden simply knew a little bit more about the situation than we know he knows, that's already a problem, right?
So I'd say if 30% of the country or 25% of the country had a legitimate need to know that information, the president has every right, authority, responsibility, fiduciary, you know, responsibility to look into it, given that election interference is one of our top priorities and should be.
So CNN skips that question.
And here's the interesting part.
I think Fox News skips that question pretty often too, don't they?
Have you noticed that? I know that some of the opinion people on Fox News have made the point that it's worth looking into.
I think I've seen that.
But I don't know if any of the news people have.
Somebody fact check me on that.
Have any of the news people, not the opinion people, on Fox News ever pointed out or even dealt with the question?
Because as news people, we don't want their opinion.
Have they dealt with a question?
Interviewed anybody, had a story on it, asking whether it's worth looking into.
Is it a legitimate thing for anybody to do?
And then the question that all the inexperienced people are saying is, you know, why would the president have to do it himself, and why would he have to send Rudy?
And Only inexperienced people would ask that.
Oh, somebody says Smirkanish covered it on CNN. Smirkanish would be opinion, right?
But I'm wondering on Fox News if any of the news people covered it.
Anyway, I'm sure I was going to say something else about that.
Did you all see the, there's a tweet, a lot of people tweeted it.
It's a double screen in which it shows the, I think it's the chyron or the, what do you call it, the little label that the news puts at the bottom of the screen that tells you what's happening on the screen.
Apparently at the same time, or around the same time, CNN said at the bottom of their screen when Sondland was testifying, Sondland confirms a quid pro quo.
And then you look at the Fox News screen, and about the same time, it said, Sondland confirms Trump told him no quid pro quo.
And people are really waking up to the two movies on one screen.
Do you remember the first time you heard from me, and it was probably...
2016? Might have been 2015?
I'm not sure. But do you remember the first time you heard me say, we're watching two movies on one screen?
And try to remember what you thought about that the first time you heard it.
What was your first thought?
No, not really.
Right? Wasn't that your first thought?
Well, that's a little bit of a hyperbole, Scott.
It's not like we're seeing different things.
Maybe some people are just lying about it.
Or maybe some people want to spin it a different way.
But no, Scott, we're not actually seeing different things at the same time.
That's not true. That's probably what you thought the first time you heard it, right?
I'll bet you don't think that now.
Did I not tell you in 2016 in these exact words that President Trump would do more than change politics?
I like reminding you of this.
I predicted more than once in 2016 that he would change more than politics, that he would change, he would rip a hole in the fabric of reality and change how you saw reality.
Now, the first time you heard me say that, what was your reaction to it?
I'll bet you just flushed it out of your head.
If you heard that in 2016, you probably just said, crazy talk.
You know, he's not going to change reality.
Or change how we view reality.
He's just a politician that has his pluses and minuses.
He's not going to change reality or the way we see it.
That's probably what you thought the first time I said that.
What do you think now?
Is it not completely clear, completely clear, at this point, that our individual subjective interpretations of our environment are insanely different?
Now, it's always been true.
If the thing that you got out of this was suddenly we're seeing the world differently, that's not what happened.
We always saw the world differently.
We just didn't know it.
And when we could realize we were seeing it differently, we assumed wrongly that the other team was just lying.
Right? If you saw the world one way and the other team saw it the other way, what did you think about them?
You thought they were stupid, uninformed, or lying.
Right? The thing you didn't think, probably, the thing you didn't think is that it was an honest perception.
In other words, they were honestly trying to interpret their world and they came to a completely different perspective.
You know, different version of it than you did.
But they weren't lying to themselves.
And they weren't any more stupid than the average person.
They weren't any less informed than the average person who were pretty uninformed.
Now you realize that it's an actual perception difference.
Yeah, Yanni and Laurel helped a little bit too.
We actually are seeing reality so fundamentally different that even debating it doesn't make sense because you're not even debating the same reality.
There's somebody, yeah, in the comments, somebody saying, I used to think the other team was crazy.
Because it looks like it, right?
If you're in your little manufactured, subjective world, and you see somebody else's manufactured, subjective world, it can't be explained.
Because you believe that people have a good perception, in general.
At least we have enough perception to navigate our environment and get jobs and stuff.
So, we are now waking up to the fully subjective reality.
Fully subjective.
So that's fun.
I would like to put in a good word for something that you think is bad, but it's not.
Alright? So here I'm priming you.
Notice how I primed you?
I'm pacing you now.
So I'm telling you what you're thinking before I change your mind.
So first I agree with you.
The thing I'm going to recommend next, an entertainment property, I'm going to recommend it, and your first reaction is, no, no, no.
That's not funny, and I don't like that guy.
Because he says things I don't like.
Are you ready? On Netflix, Seth Meyers has a comedy special.
It's really, really good.
And you should watch it.
I know. I know what most of you just said.
In your mind, you just said, Seth Meyers.
That's that guy who says bad things about President Trump.
And I've watched his show on TV and it's not funny.
If I've watched him a million times on TV, and it's not that funny to me, and he says things about politics I don't like, why in the world would I watch his comedy special?
Well, let me tell you why.
It's brilliant. It's really brilliant.
So it's not just he's good at it.
It's about as good as you're ever going to see.
It's really good.
It's clever. It's not terribly political except one portion.
That he handles in a very clever way.
So he does talk about some politics, and I'm not going to give it away, but the way he frames it makes it go down okay.
So I watched a number of anti-Trump jokes that were just in one little segment, and he walled off the segment in a way that I think you will appreciate.
It's kind of clever. But he did it so artfully that I really thought I wasn't going to like it.
But not only did I like it, it was great.
It was really great.
So, do yourself a favor.
Because the holidays are coming.
So maybe this holiday season we could not hate on each other as much.
Maybe we could dial down the hate.
The hate, at least in terms of what team you're on.
Just dial down the hate.
Just appreciate Seth Meyers for an insane...
Good performance.
It's really well written. Now, somebody says it's not funny, but I remind you that humor is subjective, right?
Humor is subjective.
So, there's that.
But don't punish yourself for that.
Now, along the same lines, I'm not going to give you the details on this because I don't want to draw attention to it, but once again I'm getting some heat by just somebody on the internet, nobody I know, because I must have said something good about somebody and that somebody I said something good with or associated with has an opinion which they should be executed for.
Now when I say an opinion for which they should be executed, I'm using hyperbole.
But it's been my experience that just about everybody I've ever associated with, either personally or professionally, has at least one opinion that I think they should be executed for.
Including me, right?
I probably have at least one opinion that if you heard all of my opinions, You'd say, well, most of those are pretty good, but that one, I think you should be executed for that one.
It doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right.
It doesn't matter if it seems like you're the worst person or the best person.
Almost everybody has at least one opinion that I personally think they should be executed for.
Now, because of that, what do you do with that?
What do you do with the fact that almost everybody has at least one opinion that's so odious that you wish it didn't exist in your world?
Well, you could not associate with those people, and then you would be a hermit, because I wouldn't be able to associate with literally anyone.
Literally anyone. So, here's what I recommend.
When people push me for any association I've had, this hasn't happened yet, but I expect it's going to happen sometime in my life, sooner or later somebody's going to take a selfie with me, and it's going to be somebody who has an opinion about something that I think they should be executed for, or you think. Should I be in that picture?
Let me put down my marker right now, because this is public.
I will appear with whoever I want, for whatever I want, anywhere I want.
And you know what I say to the people who tell me that they would like to remove that right from my freedom as an American.
You know what I say, and it's two words, one of them starts with F. I won't use it today, because it's weekend, your kids are home.
But you know, you know my reaction to this is almost violent.
Nobody tells me who I can talk to.
Nobody tells me who I can take a picture with, who I can have lunch with, who I can associate with.
Nobody, ever, never.
And here's the first thing you should know about it.
Associating with me is good for people.
I think I'm a good influence.
Let me put it this way.
If I spend time with somebody who has, let's say, a terrible and wrong opinion about something important, whatever it is, is it likely that associating with me will make them more terrible, or are they more likely to get talked out of it?
You know the answer to that.
For the most part, I must have at least one opinion you would execute me for.
I just think that's universal.
But I'm not a bad influence.
Let me just make this as clear as possible.
If you saw me having lunch with David Duke, why should you think about that?
Should you think, my God, Scott's become a racist?
Nope. I mean, that's what people would say, of course, because that's the world we live in.
What you should say is, David Duke is becoming less of a racist.
Because that's what's going to happen.
He's not going to make me more like him.
It doesn't work that way.
If you spend lunch with me, you're going to be more like me when you leave.
That's how it works. In my case, it may be different for you.
All right. By the way, anybody who's had lunch with me can confirm that.
I know it's a strange claim, but it's true.
So, no, I don't have any plans to have lunch with David Duke.
I'm using that as the extreme example.
My point is... Associating with people who disagree with you is, first of all, necessary.
You couldn't live in the world without associating with them.
In fact, when you go to your holiday family greeting, you're going to be associating with a lot of people you think should be executed for their opinions.
I mean, you don't want them to be executed because they're your family, most of the time.
But, man, we have to drop that standard That people pick up the bad qualities of other people by being associated with them.
That's one of the most destructive standards I've ever heard in my life.
Alright. Let's talk about Trump says he welcomes a Senate trial.
For the impeachment stuff.
So in other words, Trump is saying, yeah, go ahead.
Take your best shot.
You're going to not like it.
And I guess if it goes into a trial situation, the Senate is a lot more like a judicial process, but different.
But they'll be able to subpoena people such as Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, and they'll be able to subpoena Adam Schiff.
Now, Be honest.
Don't you want to see that show?
Be honest. I know most of you do not want to see your president, because most of you are Trump supporters if you're watching this periscope.
I know you don't want to see your president impeached.
I know you don't want to see him accused of things that are even impeachable.
I know you don't like any of that, but you don't have a choice.
You don't have a choice about what happens there.
We, the public, don't have a lot of, you know, sway on this.
So, if it's going to happen anyway, you know, I think the Senate trial is likely, because, you know, they're likely to vote for impeachment in the House.
How much would you enjoy that?
I cannot contain my level of joy that I would have for that spectacle.
I don't know if there's anything I could enjoy more than that.
In fact, there's no movie, no television show, no special, no play.
There's no poem, no book.
There's no YouTube video.
That I would like more than watching the Republicans be able to subpoena whoever they want.
Come on. You know that's going to be a good show.
And I think it's heading that way.
And I would love, I would love to be in the heads of the top Democratic leadership.
You know, Pelosi, Schiff, those guys.
What do you think they're thinking?
That's a serious question.
Because I don't have a good theory on that.
Is this one of those two reality situations in which Schiff and Pelosi, do they think they really have something?
And do they think that what they're doing is still a good strategy?
I don't know.
Do you? What would be your best guess?
I always warn you that we can't do mind reading.
So, you know, your guess and my guess are completely useless.
I mean, because they're not accurate.
I mean, we can't assume that any of us can guess anybody's minds at a distance.
But you still have to operate in the world in which you make those assumptions.
It's just we're bad at the assumptions, but you still have to make them to sort of operate and understand your world.
I don't know what the Democratic leadership is thinking.
Because if I put myself in their shoes, I'm bringing my own brain over there.
And if it were my brain in Nancy Pelosi's or Schiff's body, I would think I lost pretty hard.
But I think I'm just biased, right?
I consume more, probably more news that's friendly to the president than the other kind.
So I'm probably biased.
But it does look to me like the Democrats just stuck a gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger.
It looks like they committed political suicide.
But I could be wrong. I mean, I won't put that out as some kind of fact.
But I will say that I would expect that the polls will continue to show that the independents are not on board.
You're clearly not going to see anything like Republicans jumping ship.
If anything, you'll see some Democrats jump ship the other way.
It looks like a gigantic...
Loss for the Democrats.
Now, does that mean it was a bad play?
Probably not. It was probably a good play because they didn't have a better play.
What are they going to do?
Try to win the presidency?
With whom? With who or with whom?
I don't know which one that is.
What candidate for the Democrats do they really seriously, in their quiet private moments, think is going to beat Trump in a fair election?
I don't think they do.
Or at least they're pretty worried about it.
So did it make sense for them to try a Hail Mary pass and to get them impeached and to try to create something out of nothing?
Yeah, probably. You know, from a purely naked political perspective, it wasn't bad play.
And I'll even go further.
I will say that their persuasion game on this whole impeachment thing was extraordinary.
So if you would just look at their technique, the way they put it on the show, all the bad ways they spun everything, I would say that their performance, from just a persuasion perspective, Was really good.
I'm going to say A+. For the Democrats.
Collectively. For the show they put on.
And the persuasion. Because it did persuade their side.
It totally persuaded it.
Now. Their persuasion was excellent.
They had. They just had one problem.
Even though their persuasion game was on point.
Just one thing acting against them.
The evidence. If they hadn't had the evidence working against them, at least according to half the people in the country, which you would need to persuade to get anything done, unfortunately the evidence was not as friendly to them as it could have been.
Let's talk about Iran. So, there's not much reporting out of Iran.
We're getting these sort of generic reports about massive protests, about gas price increases, and Rouhani is blaming the U.S., and Iran is, you know, the Internet is almost totally offline.
So we don't really know what's going on over there, do we?
But of course, you know, it's all the U.S. and Israel's fault, according to Iran, which they've said, of course.
Now, I've heard it said that our president is being blamed and some of our politicians are being blamed for not speaking out more forcefully in favor of the Iranian public.
And I think that's probably a good strategy.
I think Trump, you know, I'm not going to say he's going to stay quiet about this forever, but if you're trying to play the persuasion game here right, as long as things are going the way we'd like them to go in Iran, meaning that the citizens are rising up against the government, the best thing the United States could do is stay as far away from that as possible.
Because you don't want anything based on reality That the leadership can say, look, look, you know, they sent these weapons to the resistance or they sent this message, it's clearly they're behind it.
So keeping some distance from that is probably the most sober and smart thing to do.
Now, that calculation could change if, let's say, our intelligence services reliably reported That the public was organized.
They wanted a coup and all they needed was sort of a green light from the United States that the coup would be recognized as the new leaders.
So you can imagine some future situation in which the tipping point would be so close to tipping for a revolution Then under those very specific situations, you can imagine Trump coming out and saying, yeah, we're with the citizens of Iran.
Get this done and we'll give you a great trade deal.
But I don't think we're there yet.
I would say the odds of Iran disappearing in the next few months, at least the leadership, probably low.
Because I think they have the military backing.
They could probably last a long time, even if the citizens were complaining.
But here's a persuasion play that I'd like to see.
Tell me if anybody has done this.
WMDs. The WMD thing is an interesting...
Question. Because I think Iran has to pretend they're sort of heading toward WMDs without going too far.
Because there is some point at which the U.S. will get tougher.
And it's already pretty tough.
And I don't know if Iran can get to the point where they've got a nuclear weapon and therefore we say, oh, okay, we'll back off, no sanctions or anything like that.
I think they could have nuclear weapons.
And just like North Korea, they would still get sanctioned as much or more.
So I think there's sort of a race against time in which Iran wants to pretend it's making some progress, that might be actual progress, without being so close to a bomb that we just have to do something.
So that's a weird little balance there.
We'll have to wait and see how that comes off.
But here's my suggestion.
If we wanted to aid the Iranian revolution without a heavy hand, without looking like we're involved, this is what I would suggest.
We should publish, meaning social media or some friendly news organization, New York Times or something, should publish a best estimate of Iran's budget And here's the persuasion part.
The percentage of the budget that Iran is spending to support their proxies, you know, Hezbollah and in Yemen, etc., and wherever else, Iraq, I guess.
So, now you say to yourself, but wait, Scott, there's no way that the United States or anybody outside of Iran could have any idea What the budget of Iran is.
There's no way we could really know because they've got, you know, secret funds for their military and, you know, it's not going to be public and all that.
None of that matters.
None of that matters.
Let me tell you something as someone who was once a professional who made financial projections.
There's no such thing as an accurate financial projection.
I mean, sometimes by luck, But financial estimates, even for corporations, even if your job is to analyze Apple computer, right?
Some companies are more, you know, predictable than others.
But even a financial analyst who's predicting what a company will do, it's pretty close to just guessing.
Now, even though most of these financial predictions are closer to guessing than fact, Do they have an influence on people?
Yeah. People buy stocks based on financial estimates, even though they're worthless.
Because we can't not pay attention to them.
If you give somebody a spreadsheet, they act as if it's true, even if it doesn't.
So just putting things in numbers, if it's the only estimate out there and there's nothing to compare it to, people will accept the only estimate that's out there.
So, although it would be impossible for us to know the budget of Iran, surely there's someone out there who's willing to take a guess.
Somebody who's an economist, some organization, some think tank.
And they can say, well, the budget of Iran is X billion.
And their public is 30% in poverty, whatever it is.
And they're giving 20% of their entire budget to other countries.
How long does the leadership of Iran last?
With just that data in the simplest form on one page.
Just one page, no details, just say total budget of Iran, percentage in dollar amount that's going outside of Iran, so in other words it's not to the benefit of the people in Iran, and then poverty rate in Iran.
Three numbers, four numbers if you count percentage plus dollar amount.
Imagine that estimate and then you want it to come from some authority looking organization, maybe a think tank.
Produce that page, one page, make it look professional.
I don't want to look like, you know, a meme maker made it.
Make it look like it came from a government, from some think tank, and just put it on social media.
We'll tweet the living bejesus out of it.
Now, even though the Iranian public is largely cut off from the rest of the world, it's fair to say that things that are important to Iran are getting in.
Right? Wouldn't you agree that even though the internet is effectively shut down, something as important as that Not many things will get through, but something that's central to what they care about, well, that would get through.
And we could certainly, our intelligence agencies could easily make sure it got through.
Somebody says the internet is no longer shut down, so we'll have to fact check that.
So, here's why this works.
The Iranian public, if they're starving, they're not going to be willing to keep funding the revolution in other countries that they don't really care that much about.
There's no way that they're going to favor that.
It would be huge fuel, and what would be good is that it would be a simplification.
Simplifications are one of the biggest parts of persuasion.
You know, it's repetition, simplification.
Build the wall, build the wall, build the wall.
Simplification and repetition.
So we could probably push Iran over the edge.
Just by providing a realistic, if not totally accurate, estimate of their financial situation and just giving it to the public.
That's all they need.
All right. Kamala Harris is on video.
There's a little video clip I tweeted around in which she was talking about lowering drug prices, to which I said, oh, that's good.
Lowering drug prices.
That's a popular thing.
What is her plan to lower drug prices?
I could be really in on this.
Maybe she's going to make a run for the nomination after all.
Because before, I was thinking that the Harris campaign was so bad that it was like they weren't even trying.
But now she's got this idea for lowering pharmaceutical prices.
And I'm thinking, okay, now you've got a good issue.
It means something to just about everybody.
Important, let's hear it.
Here's her plan.
If the pharmaceutical companies don't voluntarily lower their prices, she's going to have the government, quote, snatch their patents.
You probably think you heard that wrong.
The first time you hear that, you say to yourself, Ann, now add the context because obviously nobody's running for president in the United States and saying we'll take the patents away from private companies.
Now her reasoning is that many of these companies got to where they are Because of government research and funding.
So she's saying, well, the taxpayers made it possible for these companies to do what they're doing and earn so much money.
So if they don't lower their prices, she'll have the government...
She used this word, snatch.
Snatch their patents.
Have you ever heard of a worse thing to say on the campaign trail?
No, they're not going to patent their snatches.
They're going to snatch their patents.
Somebody says snatch your patents is my safe word.
I think you all just noticed something, which is that the word snatch and patents go together really well.
Those are two words you don't hear together.
I've often said that to make something funny and memorable, you just have to replace the boring words with interesting words.
Snatch is an interesting word.
If she said, we're going to reclaim them, It wouldn't be interesting.
We're going to, let's say, we'll use eminent domain or something on their patents.
It just wouldn't be interesting.
But snatch their patents?
I might remember that phrase for the rest of my life.
I'm going to snatch your patents.
In fact, I'm going to start saying that to people in my real life.
Anybody who makes me mad, if Christina does something I don't like, I'm going to say...
You do that again, I'm gonna snatch your patents so fast, your head will spin.
Yep, snatch their patents, hashtag.
Let's compare Kamala Harris's plan to snatch their patents with the Trump administration plan.
Which they're also making some noise about.
So apparently the Trump administration wants to do two things that should make a difference.
One is price transparency.
And I think that involves pharmaceuticals as well.
And of course then market forces we know would lower prices.
And we know that that works.
And, of course, how can the big companies complain too much about better information, you know, market transparency?
They can, but it's a hard argument for them to make.
Now, the other thing they're doing is apparently there's some kind of legislation going on where some states, but maybe not all of them, I think Florida is one, will be allowed to buy cheaper pharmaceuticals from other countries, maybe Canada.
And I don't know the details of that, but once again, the Trump administration is reducing regulations that shouldn't have been there in the first place, because they were put there, obviously, by pharmaceutical lobbyists, not by the public.
And price transparency.
The Trump administration is using all the things that the entire public thinks is a good idea, price transparency, market competition.
There's literally nobody who thinks those are bad ideas.
And Kamala Harris is running against that with her idea for snatching patents.
Tell me the truth.
You're sitting at home And you hear this phrase, snatching patents, did you say it out loud?
Even if you're alone, did you at least once say, heh heh heh, snatching patents?
You almost can't say it.
You almost can't avoid saying it out loud.
It's such a term.
Anyway. I do think I don't know if you saw that it was Jeff Billington who was tweeting around I think it was Nate Silver's website 538.com and I think they were tracking the number of Democratic important people endorsements for each candidate and the interesting thing is that the person with the most I believe it is Biden?
Is he first?
I forget who's first, but where I'm going with this is that number two is Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris has the most people who are important in the Democratic Party backing her campaign.
And apparently, that's very predictive.
So the candidate who has the most internal Democratic support from the big players is very likely to be the nominee.
So, we've seen that Harris got rid of, at least for now, she got rid of her laughing at her own jokes, her silly giggle.
She had a good debate.
And we're watching Biden...
Bernie and Warren go down.
Who's going up?
Who's going up?
Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg, again, I have to compliment him for persuasion and just being an all-around capable guy.
Pete Buttigieg...
That's a really strong game for a mayor of a small town to be nipping at the buds of the leaders in the Democratic Party.
You've got to give that some props.
I don't know.
He had some minor hiccups that the news was getting on him.
I was watching a clip where Jake Tapper was listing some of the things his campaign did.
You've heard him probably. They used a stock photo that came from Africa to say that it was a mother talking to her kid.
And they used that in their thing saying that they had a lot of African-American support.
And people said, that's not even an American.
That's actually an African in your picture.
Does that matter? No.
That's like the least important thing.
Then I guess they had this list of black leaders who were supporting Buttigieg, but some of the people on the list were not black and some of them were not supporting them.
So that was an embarrassment from the campaign.
And I think there might have been one other thing.
Anyway... So Jake Tapper mentions these things to Buttigieg on camera so that Buttigieg can respond.
And I was really waiting to see how he handled it.
And man, did he handle it well.
If you didn't see that, I want to call attention to one of the best The best ways I've ever seen something like that handled.
So this is the question Buttigieg gets is, you know, your campaign has made all these missteps and they seem to be in the same category, the category of your black support.
You know, what about that?
And I'm paraphrasing, but Buttigieg, you know, doesn't react.
Like, visually, so he doesn't look like he's bothered.
That's good. So he's not reacting like he did something wrong.
And he looks straight in the camera, and he says, I take responsibility for any mistake my campaign makes.
That's on me. And then he starts talking about the good stuff he's doing.
And I thought, that was really good.
That was really good.
He looked right in the camera and said, I take all responsibility for everything my campaign does.
Any mistake they make, that's on me.
And then he talks about the good stuff.
It was really, really well done.
You know, it's a small...
You know, the news doesn't focus on technique so much.
But technique-wise, that was as good as you can get.
That was about as good as you can get.
Now, I believe that Buttigieg's support in the African American community is too low to get him elected, and I believe that Democrats know that.
When Kamala Harris was making noise about, you need somebody who can bring the, quote, what she called the Obama coalition together, she's really saying Buttigieg can't do it.
She doesn't have to say Buttigieg, because everybody fills it in the blank.
It's like, oh, Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg, they can't get it done.
But maybe she could.
Now, I don't know what her support is in the African-American community either, but if she became the nominee, I think it would be pretty high.
So there's this news that there's something going to come out.
We only have leaks and anonymous reporting that I guess the Horowitz findings concerning the falsified FISA document were turned over to Durham and Durham's the criminal investigation guy.
So some ex-FBI lawyer Allegedly changed something on a FISA document to try to get the court to approve their FISA request.
And that change is being reported as significant.
But I don't know if it's significant.
I would say we're in fog of war.
So here's what I would say about that.
Everything you hear about this story you should assume is false.
Somebody says, hold your fire on this one.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.
So you got ahead of me a little bit.
This is fog of war stuff.
Your early opinion on this should be that you don't know anything.
That nothing is happening.
My prediction is there's not going to be a bombshell.
I think probably it's just going to be a fizzle, which doesn't mean there's nothing in the future that will be a bombshell.
But every time you see a story that sort of feels like this, it's like this kind of thing, there's a little leaking and it might be a bombshell, but other people are saying, well, probably not.
I think you can bet on probably not.
If there's anybody saying it's a bombshell and there's anybody saying it's probably not, bet on the probably not.
Probably not wins 8 out of 10 times.
Did you see that Trump tweeted...
A meme about Chris Cuomo when he was testing that cell phone to see if you could hear a cell phone conversation coming out of the speaker when it's not on speakerphone.
And you probably all saw this, you know.
So Chris Cuomo did a little live demonstration of this with his cohort, who's Data Bash.
And he called his mother, Chris Cuomo did, and then held it up, you know, away from Data Bash to see if Data could hear his mother on the cell phone without the speakerphone being on.
Now, he wanted to show, I'm sure, that you could hear it.
But it was sort of a fail because Dana Bash couldn't hear it.
Now, some meme maker took that video and changed the label on the bottom of CNN's screen to very funny versions and then instead of the blank space where the mom would have been talking on the phone if you could hear her, they inserted clips from Trump's speeches You have to see this thing.
It's really funny.
It's funny for two reasons.
One is that the little label on the bottom of the screen says that Trump is at Chris Cuomo's mother's house.
So he answered the phone.
If that's not funny, you're dead on the inside.
The fact that Chris Cuomo's mom might have been with Trump, because your head goes to the funny place.
Wait, what's Trump doing with Chris Cuomo's mom?
Okay, so it's funny just by itself.
Is somebody saying that Carpe Dantum did it?
I didn't see his watermark on that, but it seems like it would be his work.
So let's fact check that.
If it was Carpe Dantum, then that's another home run.
But I want to fact check that.
So the first funny part is that Trump is being reported at Chris Cuomo's mom's house.
That can't get any funnier.
And then when you hear what the clips are that he's saying, it's just solid gold.
But then, oh, somebody says he pinned it.
It's a pinned tweet. So the second funny part is just that the President of the United States tweeted it.
It's hilarious by itself.
And, you know, it's hilarious just that, you know, the setup, it's hilarious the way it was executed, but then it's triple hilarious because the President of the United States, who's always being criticized for being unpresidential, tweets that frickin' thing.
And you practically cry when you see it, because it's just so wrong.
That is perfect.
And for the people who can't understand the humor in that, you have to understand that the wrongness of it, the fact that it's coming from the office of the president, is what makes it funny.
That adds to the humor.
And of course the president knows that.
And he knows that his supporters love it.
So we talked about the Tesla Cybertruck that Elon Musk introduced, and of course he had the bad luck of they threw the ball bearing at the window that was supposed to be bulletproof, and it broke the window.
And then they said, well, let's try this other window, and it broke that one too.
And of course I said, maybe you shouldn't try that for the first time on live TV. But I thought to myself, Also, is it really possible that Elon Musk and all of these engineers, the top engineers and smartest people in the world, is it possible they wouldn't have tested that first?
And sure enough, Elon is taking it with a good sense of humor, because he has a good sense of humor, and he tweeted out a behind-the-scenes picture where they showed the same guy with the same object testing it against the same car.
And he's throwing it against the window and it's just bouncing back.
And so then the next question I ask myself is, do you know what the next question is?
Some of you are saying you did it on purpose.
I think that's unlikely.
But, do you know what my second question is?
Put your engineering hat on.
What's the second question?
They tested it and it worked, but then apparently it didn't work in the real thing.
What's the second question?
You're an engineer now.
Somebody says sabotage.
I mean, that would be very clever.
Somebody said two hits is not enough to test it.
Yeah, that's a fair engineering statement.
He threw, I think, some kind of a ball bearing that was maybe the size of a small baseball.
Somebody says maybe it's only bulletproof once.
Bingo. Whoever is the engineer or smart enough to be an engineer who said, maybe it can only take two hits, there you go.
I don't believe that a bulletproof window is designed to take infinite bullets.
I think it's sort of time to run away, is all.
And when he threw the object against it, it didn't actually...
I don't know that it actually penetrated...
Through. It just cracked it and depressed it.
You know what I would call it?
If you shot a bullet into a window and it cracked it and depressed it, but it didn't let the bullet through?
What do you call that?
Bulletproof. Yeah.
I think his demonstration actually proved it was bulletproof.
Now let me...
So...
Obviously it was tested.
But I think there's some reason to believe that maybe the early tests weakened the structure of the thing, and so maybe there was a reason that it broke.
All right. Let me tell you a funny story.
This is a true story. When I was a bank teller, I got robbed a couple of times at gunpoint.
Now, I was working in the branch, so I was just a teller at the window, and somebody came up and, you know, one case put a gun in my face, and the other case did the simulated pocket gun thing.
But I got robbed twice at gunpoint when I was a teller, and my boss told me this story about when he was a teller.
They put him on the drive-up window at the bank.
Now, if you've seen the drive-up window, you know it's got this bulletproof glass And they hand things through the little pocket there so that you can't get robbed.
And my boss tells the story that his boss, when he told them about the job, he said, if somebody pulls a gun out and tries to rob you, don't give them any money because you're behind a bulletproof glass.
And so my boss hears this training.
He's like, all right, bulletproof glass.
Even if I see a gun, I don't need to give them the money.
So one day he gets robbed.
Guy drives up, pulls out a Magnum 44.
Now, if you don't know your guns, and I don't know, I'm not like a gun guy, but if you've ever seen the gun that Dirty Harry used, it's a handgun, but it's like this long.
It's like the most horrific-looking handgun you've ever seen in your life.
It looks like it could shoot through...
You know, titanium. So he pulls out this handgun, puts it up to the glass.
The guy's on the other side of the glass looking at this handgun.
It's like the biggest handgun in the world.
And he starts shoveling money through.
You know, here you go, here you go, here you go.
So the robbery is successful.
And then afterwards he's being debriefed.
And his boss says to him, I told you it was bulletproof glass.
You know, I told you it's bulletproof.
Why did you give him the money?
And as my boss tells the story, he turned to his boss and he said to him, define bulletproof.
Which is one of the all-time best lines.
Because I think with those two words, define bulletproof.
Of course, he was out of trouble.
Because bulletproof does need a definition, doesn't it?
Does bulletproof mean in every case it will stop every bullet?
Does it mean it has a good chance of stopping the first one?
Does it mean it works great for lower caliber handguns?
Does it mean it will stop a shotgun but not a machine gun?
Define bulletproof.
So I think with the Tesla truck, there's a similar situation in which it would have been a great demonstration if the window had not cracked in any fashion like they did in the tests.
But the fact that this thing took a whole bunch of hits with a ball bearing in practice, and then even though it cracked, it didn't crack through.
It's pretty impressive. I gotta say, it's pretty impressive.
So, it didn't give Tesla what they wanted on that.
But it looks like it's still pretty good glass.
Alright. Here's my question.
This is the dog that didn't bark.
I'm going to ask you why we don't know the answer to this.
We know that China is doing all kinds of bad stuff to the United States.
They're stealing our IP, they're giving us bad trade deals, they're shipping fentanyl here.
So we know all that.
Let me ask you this. Are they doing it to Russia?
And you just had a thought to yourself, why don't I know that?
Why don't I know the answer to that question?
Is China screwing Russia as vigorously as they're screwing the United States?
Yeah, you just had a reaction, didn't you?
Because you don't know the answer to that question.
You probably have some assumptions.
But here's the question.
If they're not, shouldn't we learn why not and try to get in on it?
If they're not, But here's where it gets more fun.
What if they are? What if they are?
I keep telling you that we're negotiating with these big, let's say, frenemy, rival countries.
We negotiate with them as if there are shortages.
That if they get something, we don't get it.
But we're not in the shortage world.
We're in the world of abundance.
We're in the world where if we get along, we both make more money.
It's really that simple. If we don't get along, we both lose money.
If we do get along, we both make money.
Every time. I don't think there's any exception to that.
You know, in the past, you could actually conquer another country, hold their territory, tax them.
You could make a profit. You could actually make a profit from war.
Not every time. Obviously, the losing army didn't make any profit, but at least you had a chance.
In today's world, there's no way to profit from more.
And there's not even a way to profit by being at each other.
Now, obviously, China thought it was getting away with something, stealing our IP and getting away with good trade deals and stuff.
But it can't last.
Because eventually you get a Trump.
And Trump says, how about no?
And then China says, well, if we can't do what we've been doing to you for years, we'll stop trading with you.
And then you get a Trump who says, okay.
Okay. If that's your other choice, we're happy to just tariff the hell out of your products, and we can do it as long as you want.
We're just not going to do the old thing we used to do, where you just rob us every day.
So, here's where I'm heading with this.
I think we should be making China and Russia compete for our affections.
Now, why is it the first time you ever heard that?
I bet it is. We live in a world where we're like, they're our enemy, and we're poking them, and they're poking us, and we're poking them, and they're poking us, and we're trying to contain them and all that.
Why don't we just say, you know, we're the big three countries, and we'd like to be really good friends with both of you, but if that's not an option, we'll take one of you who wants to go first.
Because whoever goes first is going to make a ton of money, and you will be militarily completely safe.
I mean, we're pretty safe right now.
But if we were to say, hey, Russia, here's the deal.
You stop poking us.
We'll stop poking you.
You stay out of our elections and all that stuff.
We'll stop trying to overthrow your regime with whatever we're doing, because we probably are.
And the only thing we want from you, besides not poking us anymore and we won't poke you, is that you be our friend.
And how does China feel about that?
So I think we should be negotiating with these countries from a mindset of abundance.
Trump used this with North Korea, but he has not used it as, let's say, as cleanly as I'm stating it with Russia and China, although he has expressly said these same things, that they could make more money.
I think we could push on that harder.
Here's what's missing. I think what's missing is the way I framed it.
The way I framed it is that we have an old mindset that we have to be enemies and that by being enemies we can maximize our own gain.
That's an old mindset.
It just doesn't match anything in the current world.
The new mindset should be abundance.
That if we can work together productively, we just get richer.
And the way I just said it is almost...
It's almost indescribably effective because everybody likes more money, and there's nothing to argue with in that statement.
I think every smart person would agree that if we can get along, we both make more money, and if we don't get along, we both lose money.
It's really as simple as that.
All right. I saw a video...
And I heard a fact that I didn't know that it might actually modify some of my opinions on Joe Biden.
Were you aware that he had a lifetime struggle with stuttering?
Did you know that? I didn't know that until yesterday.
So apparently Joe Biden had quite a bad stutter when he was young, which first of all would explain why he has such a negative reaction to Trump and who he sees as a bully.
Somebody's saying stammering.
I don't know the technical difference between the two, but something in that family, stuttering or stammering.
And so he was...
Biden was the subject of intense bullying as a kid.
So you can imagine that he's pretty triggered by anybody who reminds him or acts like a bully.
So I can imagine that Trump is exactly the kind of person he would like the least.
So that was like really interesting.
But it also... Gives you some, let's say, context for his gaffes.
So he has a lot of gaffes.
And I'm going to tell you something that you would never know if you didn't hear from somebody who also had a lot of experience with a voice problem.
So, as most of you know, for three and a half years I could not speak because I had this exotic problem called a focal dysphonia.
Now, when I say I couldn't speak, I could make noise, but I couldn't form lots of vowel sounds.
And some vowels triggered me, vowels, consonants mostly.
Some consonants triggered me so that I couldn't speak, and others did not.
So, for example, the letter D or T Would cause me not to be able to say the word.
And so if I tried to communicate, I would be trying to think the thought I'm trying to say, and I'd be trying to think what words to use, and then I'd have to also evaluate whether any of the words in the sentence had a consonant in them that I couldn't pronounce.
And so the first sentence I'd think before I would say it, I'd have to read it in my mind and say, is there a consonant in there I can't pronounce?
Crap, there is. What can I substitute?
I'll substitute this different word.
It's not going to sound like it makes sense, but I'm going to try it.
No, that won't make sense.
Now you have to think of all those thoughts in real time while you're talking in public.
Imagine being on camera and knowing that there are certain words, especially in high-stress situations, certain words that are going to make you stutter.
And you don't want to do that.
So you're thinking of the right word and then rejecting it because it has the wrong consonant and then trying to substitute it and you're doing all that thinking in public while you're trying to convey a difficult concept.
Would that make you have a gaffe?
Well, it doesn't make you have the gaffes where you don't know what state you're in, those sorts of things.
But it would make you stutter.
It would make you stammer To make sure that you're not dealing with one of the hard words.
So I'm just going to say keep that in mind.
Everybody who...
All the people who talk about Biden, have you ever heard this about any other politician in his situation?
Have you ever heard a politician who even all the people on the other side say, well, but one thing's true.
He's a great guy.
Even the people who dislike him say, he's a really great guy, like one of the best guys ever.
And I think that maybe that's true.
You know, somebody's talking about exponentially.
Yeah, maybe he is trying to avoid a word he can't pronounce.
Maybe, I don't know. So I would say of Joe Biden that you should at least factor in his age, factor in the fact that he's got some speech difficulties that no doubt linger.
So put that all in there.
And remember, he's a nice guy, so we don't have to hate him.
I don't think he's qualified to be president, but we don't have to be mean about it.
All right. That's all I got for now.
And I will...
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