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Jan. 3, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
56:01
Episode 776 Scott Adams: Iran, Celebrity Drunk-Tweets, My Conspiracy Theories About it All
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Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum 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.
Well, uh, it turns out that, uh, 2020 starting off with a bang, we got a lot to talk about.
Do you remember impeachment?
Impeachment is so last year.
What was that all about?
I'm having trouble remembering it.
What was impeachment again?
And why was it?
Was it about some paperwork or something?
Don't even remember.
But, today we'll have a very special simultaneous sip.
No, today will not be a normal simultaneous sip.
It's a special one. So today we're going to have a simultaneous sip.
For our men and women in uniform who have protected us so well so far.
And we're active in Iran.
Well, actually active in Iraq.
And this time, we're going to drink to them.
So this will be your very special simultaneous sip for the military as a thank you and show respect.
Get ready. One, two, three.
Uh-huh. Special military simultaneous sip.
It was as good as I thought it would be.
Quite good. Quite good.
All right, well, apparently it was an amazing military operation.
We're going to hear a lot more about it probably in the coming days and weeks.
But, so, congratulations to our military.
I'm amazed.
What? How well that went.
Now, we might find out later it was messier than we think.
But at the moment, it looks like we could follow a specific individual, we could target him from a drone, and we could take out his car from the air.
And, you know, of course we've been able to do that for a while.
But every time we do it, I say to myself, is ground war just obsolete?
I'm starting to think ground wars just don't make any sense anymore when we can do stuff like that.
Is it my imagination?
Of course we're going to be talking about the killing of Soleimani.
Soleimani? Soleimani?
I don't know how to pronounce his name, but I don't feel like I have to try too hard either.
Is it my imagination, or does he have evil eyes?
Now, when I say he has evil eyes, I think his eyes are actually spread across, you know, about an acre.
But before he was killed, did you see the pictures of him?
He had the most evil-looking eyes I've ever seen on a human being.
Part of it is because he had that sort of salt and pepper gray hair, but his eyebrows were black.
So he had like these dark, evil terrorist eyes.
Now, if you don't think that matters, you're wrong.
Because if he looked like a nice guy, I think it would make a little bit of difference.
Not a big difference, but it would make a difference.
So Trump tweeted an American flag last night, which was kind of perfect, because he was just reminding the country that we're all on the same team.
And things could get a little ugly.
I will remind you that we're in the fog of war.
So the first two days, you're likely to hear incorrect reporting.
Now, it's probably true that we killed Soleimani, the general.
But don't be surprised if we find out new facts about the whole situation that completely changes how you think about it.
So if it's like every other situation, you're going to have some surprises in the next few days.
But before we get to my own theories about this, I would like to read for you some celebrity tweets on the topic.
Now, a lot of you said to yourselves, hey, there's a big international story, I better turn on CNN, and I better listen to Fox News, and I better catch up.
But you're not really fully caught up until you've heard the drunk tweets of celebrities on this topic.
And so I like to read two tweets, one from actor John Cusack and one from actress Rose McGowan.
Now, I'm reading the tweet and it's got punctuation that's all over the place.
And he spelled the word until with two L's at the end.
And I'm feeling like Maybe he had a drink.
But this is the way I read his tweet.
Trump, in full fashion mode, 101 mode, steal and lie until there's nothing left to start a war.
He's so idiotic.
He doesn't know he just attacked Iran.
And that's not like anywhere else.
And then Rose McGowan, Dear Hashtag Iran, the USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people.
Oh, no.
52% of us humbly apologize.
We apologize.
We're so sorry.
We want peace with your nation.
We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime.
We do not know how to escape.
Please, please do not kill us.
Hashtag, Salameni.
Scene. Now I feel like you're up to date.
A lot of people, a lot of people haven't caught up with the drunk tweets yet, but now you have.
So, um...
I'm looking at some of the complaints, and the funniest complaints are the ones that go like this.
If somebody is a terrorist, and he's killing your people, you really don't want to piss them off.
That's actually the argument against what Trump did.
The argument against it is like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I know he's an international terrorist, and I know he's killing Americans by the hundreds, and he's trying to kill more.
But if you attack, you're really going to piss him off.
That's the counter-argument?
You're going to piss off a terrorist?
Because I'm almost positive that guy had a reason to kill people anyway.
Alright, let me put my spin on it.
Are you ready? I always talk about filters.
I will now give you the Dilbert filter on this Iranian situation.
Now the Dilbert filter goes like this.
Everyone has a boss.
That's pretty much a summary of it.
Everyone has a boss.
And there's not that much difference From one situation to another where you have a boss and a subordinate.
There are a number of universal truths that just simply happen out of a boss subordinate situation.
And let me ask you this.
Do you think Soleimani was a very loyal general and he supported his supreme leader in all things and all he wanted to do was serve his leader?
Does that accurately describe General Soleimani?
Do you think he was totally just a loyal subordinate?
Well, maybe.
Can't rule it out. But let me put the Dilbert filter on this.
Everybody hates their boss.
Everybody thinks they could do a better job.
Imagine you're Khamenei, you're the supreme leader, and one of your subordinates, who happens to be this general, is becoming more popular every year, while you are becoming less popular every year.
You see where I'm going?
Do you see it yet?
So Khamenei, the supreme leader, is getting blamed for the economy and getting blamed for whatever bad stuff's happening in Iran.
His own population is protesting.
The general is just getting more popular every day because he's doing things that seem to be popular in Iran and seems to be like he was winning.
What would you think if you were the supreme leader and you were getting less popular every day and there was one of your subordinates who was getting more popular every day?
What would that make you feel like?
Now, do you think that Salameni, based on what you know about him so far, somebody says big time mind reading, this is speculation, right?
If I said it's true, that would be mind reading.
But we're in purely speculative territory here.
Do you think the Soleimani was the kind of guy...
Who was going to be happy being the number two guy forever?
Did he seem like he was sort of an alpha personality, but not totally?
Oh yeah, I'm like the baddest ass general there's ever been, but I'm going to do whatever the bearded guy with the holy book tells me to do.
Maybe. Maybe he was.
He might have been a dedicated servant of the republic.
And he may have actually wanted to be number two forever.
But is it likely?
Is it likely he wanted to be the number two guy?
So, let me ask you this.
What would you do if you were the supreme leader or part of his inner circle and You had a threat from within, at the same time you had a threat from without.
Let's say, hypothetically, just speculating here.
All right, it's just speculation, folks.
Thought experiment. Let's say, hypothetically, that the Supreme Leader of Iran actually kind of wanted peace.
What if he wanted peace?
Do you think that the Supreme Leader could have made peace?
As long as this general was still alive.
Maybe. Probably not.
So, here's the thing you have to ask yourself.
Alright, let me put this in the form of a thought experiment.
I'm going to simplify this for you.
There are two people in a room.
Doors closed, so they're just sealed in a room.
Just two people.
One of them has a Koran.
That's all he has. He has his clothes and he has a Koran.
The other one has his clothes and a gun.
One has a Koran, one has a gun.
They're the only ones in the room. Who's in charge?
Who's the supreme leader of the room?
The one with the Bible or the Koran or the one with the gun?
There's nobody else in there. The answer is...
Whoever the guy with the gun wants to be in charge.
So if the guy with the gun wants the guy with the Koran to be in charge, well then the guy with the Koran is in charge.
If the guy with the gun wants to be in charge himself, he's in charge.
He's got the gun. So let me ask you this.
Who is in charge of Iran?
Do you think that the Supreme Leader could have overruled Soleimani Let's say there was an internal coup.
Which way would the troops go?
Here's my guess.
My guess is that Soleimani was smart.
Everybody says he was smart and capable.
So we'll start with the assumption he was very capable and smart.
Evil but smart. Do you think that for years Soleimani has been making sure that the troops that are closest to the capital The ones that are physically around Tehran.
Do you think that he's made sure that they got better treatment than other people, even when the economy was going down?
I don't know. But I'll bet he did.
I'll bet he did a good job for his troops.
Do you think they're loyal to him?
Or were? I'll bet they were.
So, here's my conspiracy theory.
Are you ready? There's a non-zero chance, I'm not saying this is true, I'm just saying there's a non-zero chance, and I haven't seen anybody bring it up, that Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, or somebody in his closest circle, dropped the dime on him.
It could be, so remember, there's a part of the story that we don't understand, which is, how did we know which of the three convoys was the real one?
Now, it could be we just have good intel.
It might be nothing more than that.
Maybe we had intel from somebody on the ground.
It could be just that.
Most likely it's just that.
But there's at least one possibility that the Iranian government itself wanted this guy dead for their own purposes.
So I'm just putting that in the mix.
President Trump Tweeted a two-parter tweet, and the second part he said, while Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country.
Do you hear that? That's what President Trump decided to tweet in one of his first, you know, it was among the first things he said on the topic, and he said that Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country.
Do you feel the little bit of a hint, a suggestion, that maybe feared within the country?
Might not be just the public.
He might have been feared by the government itself.
And if they weren't afraid of him, what was wrong with him?
If you were the supreme leader, wouldn't you be afraid of this guy?
I'd be very afraid of this guy.
Didn't look like he had any limitations on what he was willing to do.
Then look at what President Rouhani of Iran said.
And let me ask you, does it seem like Iran is phoning in the response?
So what you should look for is if Iran is genuinely offended to the point of war or they're having a genuine reaction to it, you would expect to see something Unusual, you know, really, really hyper, what's the best word?
You expect to see a big reaction.
Here's President Rouhani's reaction to the United States killing the top general in their country.
The great nation of Iran will take revenge.
That's it. I could have written this tweet a week before the event.
Yeah, you know, Iran, we don't like it.
We're going to take some revenge.
Is this the most generic and emotion-free response you've ever seen?
We just killed their top general.
And the president of Iran says, the great nation of Iran will take revenge.
It's completely empty.
He phoned it in.
So you've got two hints here that are hinting in the same direction.
Trump is hinting, when he says Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country, that this isn't as obvious a situation as you thought it was.
That Soleimani might not have a lot of love, and we don't know who it is who doesn't love him, but we have to ask, is it the public, or is it the leadership?
If it's like every other big corporation in the world, there were factions.
We should assume that there was somebody.
Don't you think there's a 100% chance that within the Iranian inner circle at the top, don't you think there's a 100% chance that somebody in that circle was saying, maybe we got to get rid of this guy?
Let me ask you this.
If we tried to make a peace agreement with Iran, could we do it while Soleimani was still alive?
I'll bet no, because Soleimani, you know, his interest seems to be war and expansion and, you know, taking over the whole region or controlling it or dominating it or something.
But I can't imagine the Supreme Leader even being able to have a serious conversation about peace while that general was still alive.
So think about it.
It might be that Iran, Israel, and the United States are all on the same page.
But what President Trump said, and I quote, while Iran will never be able to properly admit it.
That's the actual language from the President.
While Iran will never be able to properly admit it.
So many was both hated and feared within the country.
He's signaling that That the Iranian reaction to it might not be exactly on the surface what it looks like.
Interesting. Now, I've told you before that there's an interesting thing about being close to war.
So, all the smart people are saying that we're closer to war with Iran.
Or that we're actually at war, because it's an act of war.
But remember, being close to war and being close to peace Look exactly the same.
When things are the darkest, that's when you can get something done, because nobody wants to go into the darkness.
If you're both right on the edge of darkness, that's when you get serious about, okay, we don't really want to get into this darkness.
Iran doesn't really want a shooting war.
We definitely don't want a shooting war.
So if nobody wants a war, and you're on the precipice of war, well, it's a very focusing situation.
So I'm going to say something that nobody, I don't think anybody said yet.
We're closer to peace with Iran than we've ever been.
We're also closer to war than we've ever been, which is a weird situation.
So there's no doubt that this makes things more dangerous, certainly in the short run, maybe even in the long run.
But it also shook the box.
Because remember, the last condition, the situation that existed a week ago was impossible to get peace.
Would you agree with the following proposition?
A week ago, the way the variables were holding up, there was no way to get a peace deal with those variables.
True or false?
Would you not agree there really wasn't any path to just talking it out?
There wasn't. Now this guy's gone.
Is there still zero chance of being able to talk it out?
I don't know.
I don't know. This might have shaken the box enough.
So it depends what people are thinking in Iran and what they're thinking in Iraq.
And we don't know that.
We know it's going to be all over the board.
There's going to be people on every side of everything.
But it's possible that we're closer to peace.
And here's what I say in all these situations.
If the variables that you used to have can't get you there, what do you do?
Trump always does the same thing.
It's the same move in every situation.
When the variables are not conducive to victory, he shakes the box.
And he makes sure that the variables change.
And then when he's done shaking, he looks at them again.
He says, all right, how about now?
And if that still isn't good enough, he's going to shake the box again.
So you might see some more shaking.
So one of the questions that people are asking, all the smart people, is what's his strategy?
What is Trump's strategy?
Now, I am somewhat famous for writing, the strategy is what you say, When you don't know anything.
Or let me put it a different way.
The people who are crying, there's no strategy to this.
What's our strategy?
They're the weakest thinkers in the game.
Strategy isn't really a thing, right?
People like to think that there's a strategy, but it has more to do with their mental comfort of why things are the way they are.
The truth is that every day we make a decision today That is independent of anything you've done before.
In other words, everything that you've thought about or decided yesterday is always a sunk cost.
Every day you wake up and you say, based on the variables today, what should we do today for our greater good?
And because the variables every day are changing, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have some overall strategy that was immune to the situation changing.
In the real world, people do what they can do as the situation presents itself, and then after the fact, smart people say, well, it looked like a strategy.
Strategy is often hindsight, where you go into the future and you look back and you go, well, I guess the strategy was to do this or that.
The truth is we make decisions as we go, and that's the only way to do it.
It wouldn't make sense to have some kind of strategy that isn't going to change if the variables are changing, and the variables are changing.
I mean, this change is a big variable.
But let me tell you a few of the things this accomplishes.
So this is different than saying it's a strategy.
I'm going to say there are several things this accomplishes, and that they're good.
So if you do something that accomplishes several good things, Is that a strategy?
Well, you don't need to put a word on it.
It's just we saw an opportunity to do several good things.
Here are some of them. One of them is it reinforces Trump's unpredictability.
You've heard Trump talk about it all the time.
I'm going to be unpredictable.
I'm intentionally unpredictable.
I'm using unpredictability as a tool.
Watch me be unpredictable and watch how well this works.
I mean, Trump has told us this as directly as you can say anything.
Now we're watching the situation and we saw that he didn't attack, at least in a kinetic way, after Saudi Arabia's oil refineries were taken out.
He did not attack and kill a lot of people when Iran took out a drone.
So then Iran is thinking, oh, he's not going to get tough.
Then he kills their top general.
What does Iran think about their ability to predict Trump now?
I guarantee that Iran is saying, we have no frickin' idea what this guy is going to do next.
That's exactly what Trump wants them to feel like.
So the first thing he accomplished was he reinforced unpredictability as an asset that we have.
In other words, Iran, you cannot depend on us reacting in a way that you think will react.
Our range of reactions is infinite.
So you have to take your chances, and that's scarier for them.
So that's good. Here's the other thing it reinforces.
However far Iran is willing to go, we will go further.
How important is that?
So Trump is beginning to establish the principle that no matter what they do, we're going to take it a little further.
And I would imagine that if they respond...
So most people are thinking that Iran just sort of has to respond.
And by the way, I disagree with that.
I think it's more likely they'll respond than not respond, especially since all of the surrogates are sort of semi-autonomous.
But they don't have to respond.
They really don't. I mean, they do have a choice, but most of the experts are saying they will.
What will happen when they respond?
Well, Lindsey Graham has made a pretty clear indication of what will happen.
So Lindsey Graham has said, you know, their oil refineries are basically next.
Other people have said, you know, if they were to mine the waters around Iran, if they were to interfere with international shipping, other people have said, yeah, it's in the comments here, sink the Navy.
We could sink the entire Iranian Navy.
What would it take? An afternoon?
So I think that Lindsey Graham and others have created the expectation that we will always go further and that the next thing you do to us is at the expense of your entire economy and all of your oil refineries and or, maybe both, the loss of your entire Navy.
So that's productive.
Isn't it productive to set the pattern that whatever you do, we're going to do more?
Of course it is. Another thing it does is it pecks away at Iran.
We're in a war, we're sort of in this long-term war of attrition with Iran.
So Iran is trying to make it harder and harder for us and more painful for us to stay in the region.
Meanwhile, President Trump has been pecking away at Iran's economy and ability to do things.
So this is one more peck in a strategy of infinite pecking.
And it's a really big peck.
So this perfectly fits our strategy of putting more pressure on them over time.
This certainly tells that story.
It also might slow down the slow pecking away that Iran is doing on us.
That's good, right?
So we've just said, yeah, you can cause some pain and death to our people, our contractors, our military in the area, but if you do, it's going to hurt you more than it hurts us.
So that's productive, to put that line in the sand.
Now, the administration is saying that the purpose of this was to deter future attacks, because Soleimani was planning future attacks.
Well... I'm pretty sure the number two guy could plan a future attack.
You know, I doubt, I kind of doubt that they don't have the ability and will to do future attacks, but maybe.
You know, I certainly wouldn't bank on deterring anything, but it's not impossible.
All right. The other thing that this did is it puts Iranian influence in Iraq on trial.
Remember I told you that what Trump is really good at is focusing attention where it helps him the most, and in this case where it helps the country the most.
Don't you think that Iraq should be having a much bigger, let's say, that they should be a lot more concerned about Iranian influence in their country?
What do the typical Iraqi citizens think of Iran dominating their country?
Let me put you in the head of an Iraqi.
You're an Iraqi citizen.
You're not in the government.
You're just a citizen of Iraq.
And you heard that Iran landed their top general in your country to cause some trouble.
What? Imagine that.
You're an Iraqi citizen, and you found out that the top general of Iran, a country that you have no love for, you know, remember it wasn't that long ago that Iraq and Iran were at war, and it was a bad war.
You have no love for them, and they could land their top general at your main airport?
Your own government?
Let me get this straight.
I'm an Iraqi citizen, and I'm watching the news.
I'm like, wait a minute, let me get this straight.
Are you saying that my own government, the Iraqi government, is letting the general from an enemy country, you know, trying to be friends, but sort of enemies, and they can just land in our country so he can organize criminal activity in our country?
And somebody in another country killed him when he came here?
Do I mind? Do I mind?
So I think the other thing that this does is it focuses the question for the Iraqi citizens what the hell is Iran doing in your country?
Because a lot of this has been like a slow progress of Iran gaining influence over time but I think this calls into the question Iraq what side do you want to be on?
Do you want to be dominated by the Iranians?
If not, maybe you're happy about this.
I've said before that this might have removed the primary obstacle to peace.
I don't have a way of knowing this, but this is just an understanding of big organizations.
In a big organization, it is not uncommon that the top people disagree.
In fact, I would say it's pretty common, right?
It's very common for the top inner circle to have some factions and disagreement.
Could it be that The Soleimani was one of the main obstacles to Iran getting serious about some kind of a lasting peace deal.
Totally possible.
Would it be possible that the United States is aware of the internal thoughts in Tehran and within the leadership?
Totally possible.
You know who had the smartest comment about this?
Every time Sleepy Joe does something good, I'm going to mention it.
I don't think he should be president.
But I don't think you can ignore when somebody on the team you don't want to win.
You can't ignore when they do good stuff.
They make a good play.
They play things right.
So Biden actually did a pretty, pretty good job in responding to this.
And here's what he said.
So Biden said, you know, basically complained that the president didn't get enough, I don't know, buy-in or it made things more dangerous.
So there's a generic complaint that something bad might happen.
Now remember, the Democrats mostly focus on imaginary problems and imaginary future problems.
So Biden takes the Democrat view, oh, this will create unspecified future imaginary problems.
Sort of their entire attack is future imaginary problems.
So he does that.
But here's the smart thing he did.
He says directly, I'm not privy to the intelligence, but here's what I think.
Now the statement, I'm not privy to the intelligence, tells you what?
It tells you that Joe Biden has been on the other side of the curtain.
And Joe Biden knows what a lot of people don't know, Which is that the story that the public hears, and even the other candidates hear, is not necessarily the full story.
Biden is signaling by saying, I'm not privy to the intelligence, that he believes there's enough of a chance that it was worth mentioning That there's something going on that we don't fully understand.
One of those things that could be going on that we don't fully understand is that Soleimani was as big a problem to the Iranian leadership as he was to us.
I'm not saying that's true.
I'm just saying that the possibility fits the evidence as we've seen it.
All right. The other thing that this does is it's a momentum changer.
It seemed to me that the momentum in Iraq was that Iran was pecking at us and there hadn't been much response.
So the way the human mind works is that we're far more influenced by the direction of things than where things are.
Where things are just wasn't as important as the fact that things were getting worse.
And it looked like Iran was winning, if you can call it that.
This changed the momentum.
This completely eliminates whatever they think they've accomplished and reverses it.
They are now clearly behind.
And reversing direction is an important thing, not even where you are.
So, that's good.
Now, I'm still talking about all the things That we're benefited by this without calling it a strategy.
It's just a bunch of benefits you get.
There are risks as well, of course.
Risks of greater violence.
But there are benefits. All right.
Here's another one. Tinkerbell just tweeted this, and I thought it was a great point.
Sometimes you can lose sight of context when you're looking at the details.
How awesome is it That we just entered a war.
That's not the awesome part.
Entering a war is not awesome.
How awesome is it that the first casualty of the war was a senior citizen?
Now, I don't know how old Salome was, but he was at least over 50.
So you've got a senior citizen, Trump, killing another senior citizen, and we call that a war.
Somebody's saying that Soleimani was 61.
Senior citizen. Traditionally, you're used to war being something where the senior citizens send the 20-somethings off to die.
That's what we've always called war before.
In the age of Trump, war is economic war, and I'm going to kill your senior citizen who caused this problem.
I'm not going to send my 20-year-olds...
Unless I have to. If I have to, I'm going to send them.
But let's handle this senior citizen to senior citizen.
Now, I don't know that this is a trend or anything, but isn't it kind of refreshing that the senior citizens who are in charge are just killing each other?
You know, in this case, it's good that we did the killing.
So, that's some context.
Alright, let's talk about how effective we think this will be.
Now, one of the things people are saying is that this character, Soleimani, was unique.
So, was Soleimani unique?
Was he unique in the sense that he can't be replaced?
Do you think that?
Have you ever had experience in a big company in which there was somebody you thought couldn't be replaced and then they quit?
What happened when the person who couldn't be replaced quit?
Nothing. Nothing.
You've had that experience, right?
The irreplaceable person leaves.
It didn't make as much difference as you thought.
It didn't make much difference.
So, will the quality of work go down in the terrorist Iranian troublemaking world?
Maybe, but probably not.
I don't think you could depend on it.
But it is true that there are people who are singularly capable.
He might have been one of those.
It's not like working for IBM where the irreplaceable person is a second-line manager.
It's a lot easier to find a second-line manager.
But this guy might have been special.
He might have been special in a few different ways.
One of them might be his connections.
So he might have good relationships with a lot of people.
And if you replace him with somebody who doesn't have those same relationships, and I would think relationships are 80% of the game over there, if he doesn't have those relationships, maybe that person is less effective.
I've always thought that killing the Killing terrorist leaders, starting from the top and working your way down as they replace the leader, it has to lower the average IQ of the leader, doesn't it?
Doesn't it seem likely that if the top guy's a genius, well, maybe the first one who replaces them is pretty bright too.
But what about the fourth one or the fifth one?
Do all these terrorist organizations, do they have a fifth guy who's as good as the top guy?
Because the first one or two, maybe the first three are going to be really good.
But you very quickly leave the talent zone and get into the average zone.
It's possible this guy was special and taking him out makes a difference.
I like also that this sends a message that you can't make us leave anywhere by picking at us.
This sends a very clear message that the decision to be in Iraq or not be in Iraq is going to be made by Trump.
There's nobody else who gets a say in the decision.
This reinforces that message, right?
Because before, you could have said to yourself, well, you know, they're going to cause so much pain that I guess Trump will be sort of forced to leave because we don't want to lose a service person every few weeks.
It's going to be unbearable.
But I think you just changed that.
You just said, all right, let's at least establish whose decision it is.
It's mine. I'm going to kill your general.
So it's my decision if I leave.
One of the things you're going to see is Tulsi Gabbard getting a lot of attention.
You've already seen her probably on the news.
So Tulsi Gabbard's message fits perfectly.
With, you know, what's happening in the world.
So she's famous for the don't get involved, don't escalate, and she's pointing out that this escalation could be dangerous.
She is right.
it could be dangerous Dilbert great analysis Yeah, you know...
99.9% of all the people who are going to be talking about this Iranian situation are unqualified to do so.
And I'm certainly no exception.
But there are some universal things that I think are worth considering.
And one is that this guy was as much a problem to Iran as he was to us.
So I think you have to at least put that in the mix as a good possibility.
Tucker Carlson doesn't like it.
Somebody says, well, I don't think we've heard from him yet.
He's probably still on vacation.
But I think you're probably right.
Does it feel like you don't want to talk about any other topic?
Have you noticed that this topic just wiped the board clear of other topics?
I mean, I don't care about the presidential race.
I don't care about the impeachment.
Suddenly, I don't care about any of it.
It just focuses, because this is such a big deal.
But I'm going to talk about a few other things anyway.
Did you see the photo I tweeted around of Mike Bloomberg standing on a subway?
And he's reading a paper, just standing there.
And... He tweets that he stands on the subway like it's going to be some I'm a man of the people thing, similar to his tweet about the cubicles.
And there were so many persuasion mistakes in that, I tweeted it and asked people to spot them all.
And people spotted even more than I saw.
But here's the thing.
You don't want pictures of your leaders looking not like leaders.
If you're running for president, I just think he's completely misreading the mood of the public.
You know, we don't mind if our mayor is casual.
You might even be okay with your governor being a little casual.
But I think it's a complete misreading of the American mind and also a misreading of what's important.
I think we want a president who looks like a president.
I think we wanted Trump because he wore a suit every day and he arrived, even as a candidate, he arrived on a jet that looked like Air Force One.
Trump played the part of a president from day one.
Mike Bloomberg is trying to do this man of the people stuff.
And I'm thinking, well, that's great.
You know, we love that you're a man of the people.
In fact, by the way, I have positive feelings about Mike Bloomberg.
He's brilliant.
I think he means well. I think he wants what's best for the country.
I have very positive thoughts about him.
But he's so completely wrong about what I think, in my opinion, about what these citizens want from a president.
The president is a...
He's not just an employee.
He's also a style preference.
He's the mascot.
He's the face.
He's the brand. And I don't think people want that casual.
So, there's a cult expert named Stephen Hassan who's been writing books and doing interviews and stuff talking about how Trump supporters are a cult.
Now, he used to be in a cult And he escaped the cult and now he writes about people who have been brainwashed by cults.
And so he says, based on his expertise and research, that Trump supporters are like a cult.
And he tweeted this in support of that theory.
He says, when you look at every characteristic on this chart, so it was a chart of cult behaviors, and then add that Trump thinks he's above the law, very cult leader-like, and that he lies incessantly, also very cult leader-like, the answer is clear. also very cult leader-like, the answer is clear.
Trump is acting like a cult leader.
Americans are being manipulated.
So here's the central claim.
I'll read it again.
He says, Trump thinks he's above the law.
So it's a cult expert telling you that he can read Trump's mind, and that when he reads Trump's mind, inside there, there's something that says he's above the law.
Based on what?
Have we seen any evidence that he thinks he's above the law?
No. Now, you've seen evidence of every human you've ever met that they'd like to maybe weasel around the law.
You've seen people who wish they didn't get caught.
You've seen people do all kinds of stuff.
But in the entire history of people, unless somebody is actually claiming to be descended from a god, is there anybody who's a leader who's claiming they're above the law?
It's not even a thing.
It's just not even a thing.
So, cult expert.
I would say that the cult expert is in a cult, and that he left one cult and went into another, and it could be, and the new cult is the anti-Trump cult.
So it's a cult expert who escaped a cult, became an expert on cults, And joined another cult.
Doesn't know it.
And he's writing publicly that other people are in the cult.
Because they're not in the same group he's in.
And doesn't realize he's in a cult.
So that's ironic.
New York Times had an article about how there's more depression than suicide since Trump came into office.
Many problems with this.
One is that, how do you know how much depression and suicide there would have been if somebody else had won?
I mean, I'm willing to believe it's more likely that the Trump administration has caused more depression and suicide than normal.
I'm totally willing to believe that.
It passes the sniff test.
You can observe people very upset about his administration, so it wouldn't surprise me.
If it's true that there's more depression than suicide and it has some Trump-related thing.
But here's the problem.
The New York Times assigns the blame, if you will, to Trump and his supporters.
I don't know if they say it directly, but that's the implication.
If it's true that the Trump administration is a cause, let's say it's one of the variables that's part of the cause of people's greater depression and anxiety and suicide, Is that the whole story?
Because the way I see the world, it's the press's treatment of the administration that's causing the mental illness.
And that's a big difference.
And here's the thought experiment I use all the time, and it works well.
Imagine, if you will, if the press simply reported what Trump says and does without any opinion.
And let the public form their own opinions based on just, well, here's what he does, here's what he said.
Would there be massive depression and suicide?
I believe there would not be a chance of that.
There isn't the slightest chance that if the news simply said what he does and what he says, here's the tweet, make up your own mind.
I don't think the public would even be a little bit concerned.
Almost Close to 100%, I would say, of how we feel about it is opinions that have been assigned to us by our preferred media silos.
And the press has decided to assign an opinion of great risk and harm and fear and the republic's about to end.
None of that comes from Trump.
If you simply reported what Trump says and does, it would be Trump saying, you know, the economy is great.
What would be your opinion to that?
Suppose you're a person who doesn't know much about the economy and the news simply reports that Trump tweeted that unemployment's a new record and the stock market's up and wages are up.
What would be your opinion?
Well, I think it would just be positive, right?
But what is your current opinion if you watch CNN or MSNBC? They say, well, you know, these things would have happened anyway.
We're probably at the edge of a depression.
And then suddenly you think maybe the economy is not so good.
What would you think about, you know, the Charlottesville hoax?
If the media had simply reported what Trump said in Charlottesville, with no opinion added on, what would the public think about it?
Well, they would have looked at what he said.
And what he said was, I condemn totally the racists, the white nationalists, and the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
That's what he said.
He said it in those direct words.
Would the public have interpreted the statement, I condemn them totally, as being supportive of them?
Would that have been the public's reaction to that?
I don't think so.
I think they only have that impression because the news hypnotized them into it.
All right. So, we will keep looking at the Iranian situation.
The only thing I had to add today, if anybody's coming in late, is that don't be surprised if Soleimani was the variable that was preventing peace.
And now he's been removed.
And don't be surprised if If the supreme leader of Iran is not so sad that his greatest domestic rival is gone.
So this might turn out positively, but I don't want to get too optimistic about this because there's a high likelihood there'll be more danger before things improve.
All right. Why was he in Baghdad?
I think everybody believes he was in Baghdad to cause trouble.
So, I would also suggest that the president's timing on this, because there's going to be a lot of question about, you know, why now, etc.
Well, I think the why now is that we had a good shot.
So that's the first part of why now.
So you can't kill somebody until you have an opportunity to kill them, and they obviously have an opportunity.
Secondly, it's sort of a perfect time to do it, because of the embassy thing, etc.
And domestically, it's kind of perfect, too.
Now, I hate to even say that, because it's so icky, but you know the Democrats are going to say that Trump is only doing this because of an impeachment.
I don't think he's only doing this because of an impeachment.
But it's really good timing.
So I don't think that the impeachment talked him out of it.
It may have talked him into it.
Yeah, so in my book...
In my book, Loser Think, I have a section in which I talk about anybody who says, why didn't you do it sooner, is an unproductive participant.
Because everything could be done sooner, and nobody really can answer that.
Well, sometimes there's something specific.
But most of the time, there was something you could have done to do it sooner.
So that's the people who are bad at analyzing always say that.
Why didn't you do it sooner?
That's the lowest level of commentary.
Iran may be related to Strzok Page.
So people think that Iran might have some relationship to our domestic situation.
I don't know. Probably not.
Somebody says we've killed every dictator we've made a deal with in the past.
Well, yeah, so some of you are asking about how this will affect North Korea.
Kim definitely has something to worry about.
But I also think that North Korea is a completely different situation because they're not actively killing Americans.
If North Korea doesn't kill Americans, we're not going to kill them.
I just don't think there's any chance.
I mean, you could argue that Warren Beer was an American who got killed, but my take on that is that that had to do with the local jailers.
I mean, I doubt Kim Jong-un ordered him to be killed or beaten to death.
It just seems unlikely.
Not impossible, but unlikely.
Do I have a long-term prediction on North Korea?
Yes. I believe that they will morph into an ally.
Now, it might be a weird kind of frenemy ally that you don't trust, doesn't join NATO, but I think we're going to convert North Korea into our side.
And here's why I say that.
We live in a time where the strongest players we should recruit to our side.
North Korea is a strong player militarily.
And when there are strong players militarily, wouldn't you rather have them on your side?
We can't get China on our side, apparently.
But we can certainly move North Korea closer to our realm, and that would be enough.
So my guess is that North Korea will not denuclearize.
But I think there's a high likelihood, I'll put it in the 80% range, a high likelihood that someday, within the next 10 or 20 years, North Korea will be so non-interested in the United States, and we would be non-interested in them.
Because that's the best place to get, right?
Where you want to get with North Korea is mutual non-interest.
That they're not interested in attacking us, we're not interested in attacking them, we're just not interested.
So I think that's where we'll get to, and maybe some investment.
Alright, that's all for now.
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