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Jan. 12, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
42:02
Episode 785 Scott Adams: Tweaking the Simulation From the Control Room While Talking About Iran
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Time Text
Today, I've got to do a little tweaking.
Some of the programming has some issues.
So this reality that you're experiencing, the one that you think is real, it's a simulation.
I'm actually in the control room that controls the simulation for reality.
I had to tweak a few things.
I'll be talking about that.
But not until, not until the simultaneous sip.
What do you need for the simultaneous sip?
Well, you don't need to be in the control room for the simulation yourself.
You can just be where you are.
All you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
You might be wondering how my coffee stays in my cup as zero G's, but it does.
Now... Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Simultaneous sip. Ah, space version.
Yeah, you're wondering, how do I, how can I possibly drink a liquid in a cup as zero G's?
And the answer is practice.
Yeah, it takes a lot of practice.
So here's the reason that I came up to the simulation control room.
There seemed to be some kind of glitch in the cause and effect chain, something that needed a little reprogramming.
You probably all saw the story about Iran downing a Ukraine airline with a missile, and your first reaction probably was, hey, that looks like Iran's fault.
Looks like Iran's fault because they're the ones who fired the missile and brought down the Ukraine airline leaving Tehran.
But then some Democrats and then some Iranians pointed out, we got that wrong.
It's actually, you have to back up a little bit in the cause and effect chain and see why did they fire the missile in the first place.
And as they accurately pointed out, it was President Trump's adventurism.
His adventurism. If President Trump had not killed Salmane, then there would be no reason for the Iranians to be worried about a counter-attack.
They wouldn't have blown up their missile.
So I think the Democrats are completely right.
They have to back it up and find out that President Trump was the cause of those problems.
But wait, wait a minute.
This is the reason I came up to the control room for the simulation.
You can't stop there, right?
Cause and effect did not start This week, cause and effect has been going on for a while.
I programmed it that way.
That's how the simulation worked.
So I came up to the control room to see how far I could trace it back to find out who's really responsible.
So the chain is that the Iranians fired the missile, but it was only because President Trump killed Salmane and they had to respond, and then there was danger.
But who created President Trump, right?
Because the cause and effect keeps going.
And I would say it was the voters.
The voters voted in President Trump.
So it's not really President Trump's fault.
It's the voters, right?
Well, that's not exactly true.
As I was doing some research, I realized that the voters, actually there were more voters for Hillary Clinton.
So I don't think you can blame the voters because the voters actually chose Clinton.
But you can't look at the Electoral College, because the way the Electoral College works, even though President Trump got fewer votes, which really absolves the voters, I think, he got them in the right places, so he won anyway.
So it's really about the Electoral College is the problem for why the airline got shot down.
But wait, the Electoral College did not create itself.
We'd agree, right? Somebody created the Electoral College.
It's in the Constitution. So really, the blame kind of goes back to the founders, right?
Because they created the Electoral College.
The Electoral College allowed the voters to vote in Trump with fewer votes than Hillary.
Trump gets in there, he kills Solomon A., and then the Iranians accidentally shoot down the Ukraine airline.
So it kind of goes back to the founders of the United States.
So I was going to put the blame on the founding fathers of the United States for creating this whole series of events, but then I realized, wait a minute.
Why were the founders writing a constitution?
They didn't do it for fun.
There was a cause.
King George, Great Britain.
So King George created a series of taxes in an uncomfortable situation for the colonies, which caused them to have a revolution, which caused them to write a constitution, which caused them to make the electoral college that caused Trump, that caused them to kill Soleimani, which caused the Iranians to counterattack, which caused them to accidentally shoot down the jet.
So I think we've traced this thing all the way back to the royal family in Great Britain.
And that's sort of where the trail goes cold.
So I thought to myself, probably exactly what you're thinking right now, right?
If the royal family in Great Britain is responsible for this whole Ukraine airline situation, there's probably some reparations that need to be discussed.
So I thought that seemed reasonable.
So I thought, I better call the Queen.
And see what she can do to make good on this.
I don't want to make this all public and everything.
But I wanted to call the Queen of England and just get her take on this, maybe remind her that it's her responsibility, her family anyway, the monarchy.
And so I placed a call to the Queen of England.
And now I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, you can't just call up the Queen of England because she's busy, right?
Well, you're thinking of the old days.
The current Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth, she doesn't have a lot of hobbies.
She's not jogging.
She's traveled everywhere that she needs to travel.
So it turns out that when she's not doing a public event, She's not doing much, so she's available to take a call.
So I placed a call to the royal family and, of course, some operator intercepts.
And I said, I'd like to talk to the queen about this business with the Ukraine airline being shut down.
It's her fault, her family's fault.
And they said, sir, we cannot just put you through to the queen.
It doesn't work that way.
And I said, oh, I'm Scott Adams.
I'm the creator of the simulation.
And they said, oh, very good.
We'll put you right through. So I get connected to the Queen, and I explain this whole situation.
And I said, the only thing that's going to make good of this is some kind of reparations.
I mean, you can't get away with this.
You just, you know, your monarchy, King George, of course, the revolution, the Constitution, the Electoral College, Trump...
The plane gets shot down.
What are you going to do about it? It seemed like there would be some kind of price for that.
And she said, you know, if we make it money, everybody's going to find out.
It becomes a big deal.
Is there any way we can do something on the down low?
And I said, well, I'll tell you.
If it's not going to be money, you know, money is sort of the universal...
Salve for everything.
Salve? Is that a word? So I said, look, we'll work something out.
This is what you've got to do.
And I said, Queen Elizabeth, this is a big deal.
There's got to be a price to be paid.
But if it's not going to be money, this is what I'll settle for.
I need you to pick two members of the royal family and kick them out of the family, and that'll be your price.
And the Queen said, I can't kick two members of my own family out of the royal family.
I can't do that. I said, look, I'm not even going to tell you who it is.
It doesn't even have to be one of your favorites, right?
It doesn't have to be Charles.
I know you like him.
You're kind of attached to him.
Just pick any two royals.
If you want, you can pick whichever royals are the biggest pain in the ass and just kick them out of the family.
Now, I haven't been following the headlines lately, so I don't know if she followed up on that, but that was our agreement, that because of this horrible chain of cause and effect, the monarchy is taking responsibility, and they're getting rid of two members of the royal family, the ones they like the least, to make up for it.
That's why I'm here. I'm in the simulation control room because every now and then things get out of whack and I've just got to go in there and push a button, you know, tweak something a little bit.
So we're all good now. Have you seen the pictures of the Iranian demonstrations?
So apparently the Iranian public, some portion of them, mostly students I think, are protesting their own government for lying to them about the downing of the airplane.
But I've got a little bit of suspicion about the size of those crowds.
Have you noticed that the images we're seeing, the videos coming out of Iran, and they're not many?
Because you could probably get killed for taking that kind of video.
But have you noticed that the pictures don't really show the full, let's say, perimeter of the crowd, so you could get some kind of aerial view?
I feel as though those protests might not be as big as we're hoping that they are.
I just don't know yet.
So I'm just going to put that out there, that based on the images we see, we may be getting a distorted view We know that to be true So here's the question.
Is this Ukraine airline flight sort of a turning point?
Because you know sometimes people need what I call the fake because.
We do things because we have reasons.
But sometimes there are things you already want to do, but you need a trigger.
You need something to get you going.
You need something to focus on and say, oh, that's why I'm doing it, because it's the final straw.
So sometimes people need a psychological crutch to allow them to do the thing that they very much wanted to do anyway.
They just needed that little bit of a fake because of this.
And I'm wondering if this Ukrainian airline situation, given that Iran shot down an airline with lots of Iranian citizens on it, I'm wondering if the citizens of Iran will say, all right, that's the final straw.
They could. You know, compared to all the other things the regime is doing, it's not worse.
It's not worse than all the other stuff they're doing.
But sometimes the public just needs a thing to grasp on and say, okay, now we're done.
Now you've taken it too far.
This is the final thing.
It might be that. But I'm suspicious.
If I had to bet, I'd bet against it.
But I'm hopeful that the public has changed.
There's a viral video, if you haven't seen it.
It's kind of... It's really interesting.
And it is apparently at one of the universities where these protests are going on in Iran.
The government or the university or somebody had painted gigantic Israeli and American flags at the entrance to the university so that everybody who walked into the university would walk on top of the U.S. flag and the Israeli flag.
I mean, think of that.
I mean, just think about the fact that there was an official, like, government act to put the flags of two other nations on the ground so you could walk on them.
I mean, just think about that.
Can we ever be friends with a regime that does that?
Anyway, the video showed that the protesters, in ratios of probably 97% or so, it looked, were walking around it.
So the protesters refused to walk on the flags of the US and Israel while they're protesting their own country.
I imagine that normally they just go, you know, walk on it because it's the fastest path.
Now, there were a few people who were making a point of walking on it, and the other protesters were yelling at them.
But watching just this huge throng of crowd walking, so it's this big column of people walking toward the place where the flags are on the sidewalk, and they just split, and they walk around it.
It's kind of interesting, because that's...
That's one of those things that tells you what they're really thinking.
You can't always look at a protest and know what's going on because you don't know.
You know, is it a government protest?
Is it a bigger deal than we think or a smaller deal?
Is it just political or do they really feel this way?
But when you see them spontaneously unwilling to walk on the flags of the two countries that their government told them are the devil, you're seeing something basic happening.
I think it's respect.
I think that's what it is.
I think it's respect. And that's a really good sign.
And let me say to the Iranian public that respect is completely returned.
Meaning that the U.S. has a lot of respect for the Iranian protesters, a lot of respect, and a lot of respect for the public in general.
It's an excellent public.
And I think that maybe social media especially, if Iran ever got any kind of real social media, You'd find that public to public, we just don't want a war, and we may be at a point in history...
Think about this for a second.
Iran isn't quite there, but you can see the beginnings of this.
Imagine, if you will, sometime in the future, there are two countries, it doesn't have to be the United States, it doesn't have to be Iran, just two countries, and they're about to get into a war, or it looks like they might.
But social media allows the publics of each country to talk directly.
And the public talks to each other and says, do you want a war?
And the people in the other country say, no, we like you guys.
Do you like us?
And the other country says, you know, we kind of like you guys.
We don't like what your government's doing, but we like you.
And you like us.
Why are our countries getting into war?
Isn't the real problem our common enemy is our governments?
I think we're at the point where citizens will directly stop wars.
Think about that. This is an extension of my concept that the republic is already a legacy system.
So our constitution, the way it's drawn up, is a republic where we elect people and send them off to make rules for us.
But the public now, because of social media largely, can control the politicians in real time, down to the minute.
I believe you could change what's happening in government in 15 minutes now.
I'm just going to pick a number.
If somebody made a viral tweet Saying, you know, government, don't do whatever it is you're planning to do.
It would take 15 minutes to see that that tweet was so popular that the government would say, what?
And they'd look at the tweet and they'd see it has 28 million likes or retweets against what they're going to do.
They're going to wait. And they're going to say, whoa, did that tweet just get 28 million retweets in 15 minutes?
Hold on. Apparently we don't have the country behind us on this.
That's going to be a real problem.
Now, we're not there yet.
But you can see us knocking on the door, right?
The days of our idiot leaders bringing the nation into war might be over.
It might be over. We might actually be at a point where the government can't go to war if they also have social media.
Because the social media will say, not in your life.
You, leader, will never be re-elected.
We will go to the streets. We will tear you apart.
Do not go to war.
I think we're knocking on that door.
Also in the highly symbolic, but maybe not that meaningful, Iran's only female Olympic medalist.
I guess she meddled in Taekwondo.
Her name is Kimia Elizaida.
She just defected.
So the only Olympic medalist female in Iran just defected.
Good timing.
Good timing, right?
The So there's nothing to this except that it's symbolic.
And so here's the question I ask you.
Would Iran be the way Iran is if women were in control?
Probably not, right?
Wouldn't you agree that Iran would be a different place if women had political power to the point where they were making the rules?
Probably not. In the United States, wouldn't you say that women probably have as much, or many would argue, even more political power, if only because there are more of them.
There are more women than men.
And certainly on some issues, I would say that they dominate the conversation.
So, what's the difference between the Iranian women who don't have much power Compared to the men there.
And the United States, where it's at least closer to equal, you know, depends on the issue.
You know, there's still lots of prejudice and discrimination stuff.
That never goes away. But in terms of political power, one vote is one vote, and there are more women in this country than men.
So, in theory, they have slightly more power.
In reality, we don't know.
But it makes me wonder...
If there's something about the nature of the relationship of men and women in personal situations that makes this difficult.
Let me put this in the clearest possible terms.
This is speculation.
I don't know enough about the culture to know, but I'll put this out there as a question.
There are X number of men on the street protesting.
Probably, a lot more men would like to protest, but they're being reasonable about their personal risk.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think it's the women of Iran, or at least the big variable that is the women in Iran, who are preventing the men who are not protesting from going to the street?
In other words, and maybe not directly in the sense of don't go out there, but even indirectly as in the man doesn't want to go in the street because he's the only form of support for his wife, his mother, his sister, whatever.
So could there be a whole bunch of men Just putting this out there, who individually are absolutely brave enough to go out there and risk their life for their country, but they're not brave enough, and I'm not saying this is a flaw, this would be a reasonable decision, they're not brave enough to put their wife at risk, their mother at risk, or their sister at risk.
Could there be a gigantic bunch of men who are just itching, Itching to just throw out their government.
Because, you know, it's going to be the men.
Physically, it's going to be the men.
I'm talking about the kinetic part, the part where people get hurt.
That's going to be the men.
And right now, there's X amount of men, usually younger ones, who have a different risk profile.
Maybe they don't have the family situation, etc.
But let me ask you this.
If the women of Iran, if they ever unleashed their men, and leash is the wrong word, I don't want to put this in a negative context, everybody's acting reasonable, so there's no unreasonable people in the story I'm telling.
But if the women of Iraq decide to let their men go, meaning, don't worry about me, do what you gotta do, it's over.
Right? I think the women of Iraq, maybe not directly, they may not be telling their husbands don't go outside, they may not be telling their sons and brothers don't go outside, but those sons and brothers and fathers are saying, if I go outside, these people in my family, both men and women, will suffer.
You know, because if I get hurt, they get hurt.
It could be that the women of Iraq are getting close to saying, go do it.
Because if they do, it's over.
Because the men in Iraq, I think, have unlimited capacity for danger.
Danger in a positive way.
I think the men of Iraq have unlimited capacity to take the risk for themselves.
But they don't have unlimited capacity to take risk on behalf of wife, mother, sister.
Nobody has that.
If the women say go, it's on.
That's just speculation, by the way.
Again, I don't know that much about the world over there, so that's just a maybe.
So President Trump, quite provocatively, tweeted in Farsi.
So the English version of what he tweeted, so he did an English and a Farsi version, speaking directly to the Iranian public.
And if you haven't seen it, it's historically really interesting.
So the English version says, To the brave, long-suffering people of Iran, I've stood with you since the beginning of my presidency, and my administration will continue to stand with you.
We are following your protests closely and inspired by your courage.
Now, don't we always talk about other...
Who's saying Iran?
Did I say Iraq?
I may have said Iraq instead of Iran.
People in the comments are correcting me.
So what I'm talking about is Iran.
Everything I've said recently is Iran, Iran, Iran.
So if I said Iraq, just erase that from your brain.
So here's the interesting thing.
We're supposed to, we meaning countries, are not supposed to interfere with the internal politics of other countries.
That's kind of basic, right?
That's all we've been talking about.
All we've been talking about for two years is the other countries interfering with our elections.
And here's the President of the United States.
He's not just interfering a little bit.
This is a lot of interference.
And it's not subtle.
The President of the United States is saying, go protesters, basically.
He's actually encouraging them to overthrow their government.
Now you talk about interfering in the local politics of another country.
You can't interfere any harder than this.
This is pretty hard interfering.
Because it suggests that the Iranian public would get...
Some support, whatever that means, should they have some success in changing the government.
It's very provocative.
I'm not sure if other presidents would have done this.
I suspect another president would have stayed out of it, but I'm not sure.
Or at least maybe he said something a little more neutral like, well, we hope everybody's safe or You know, I hope their voices are heard, or something somewhat generic.
But I think Trump leaned into it.
All right. So there's talk about...
So this part is about Iraq.
So the question of whether the U.S. should pull its military, we've got 5,700 troops there, I guess, still in Iraq.
And... Iraq is asking us to leave.
And apparently Trump has threatened that we'll shut down some account that Iraq has, that the, I don't know, central bank accounts that the Federal Reserve controls or something.
So we're going to put sanctions and penalties on the Iraqi government if they force us to leave their country.
I don't know what to think about that.
Now, I suppose it's just part of the normal give and take.
You know, we're negotiating to not be kicked out of the country, but I don't know why.
I don't think our government has made a good argument to the public why we need those 57 troops, 5,700 troops.
Have you heard? I have not heard any argument from my government that's credible that says why they should stay.
So now we have this absurd situation where my government is threatening another country to prevent them from forcing us to do the things that I want my government to do.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
You might as well sanction me.
I mean, you're randomly sanctioning people who are trying to help you do the thing that your citizens want to be done.
One of two things has to happen in Iraq.
From a voter perspective.
So just talking as a citizen of the United States, I want to see one of two things.
Either get all of our forces out of Iraq, in whatever schedule makes sense, or make an argument to the public why we should stay.
I'm open to an argument.
Wouldn't you listen to an argument?
I would certainly listen to an argument that says why those few thousand troops should stay.
I haven't heard one. I've heard general vague things about blah, blah, blah, but I haven't heard an argument.
Give us an argument or get out.
That's what I say. Apparently the public and 57% of independents who are the ones who decide most elections are against Trump's actions on Iran.
Are you a little surprised by that?
Are you surprised that the majority of independents are opposed to Trump's actions in Iran?
I don't know if that means what we think it means.
I think it's easy to be opposed to his actions at the same time you acknowledge they worked.
Am I wrong about that?
I think the world is of two brains simultaneously, at least some of us are.
I think you could say, President Trump, I am totally opposed to you getting all warlike and threatening military action against Iran.
That would be normal. I mean, it would be a pretty reasonable opinion that you're opposed to any warlike threats against Iran.
But you could also say, well, I watched you do it.
I watched you take out Solomon A. I definitely would not have done that.
But I watched you do it.
And it did work out well.
I think you can have both.
You could say, I wouldn't have done it, but I acknowledge it worked.
I think a lot of independents are somewhere in that gray zone where the survey that says that 57% of them disagree with the president, it might not mean what you think it means.
I think this one's sort of conflating a lot of stuff, and maybe it's more misleading than useful.
Let's see what else we got going on here.
Let's talk about North Korea.
So, when you see me talk about North Korea, as you know, It's not like I'm some kind of North Korea expert.
So it helps when somebody who knows what they're talking about agrees with me, which happened recently.
So Devin Stewart, who may be watching this right now, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, And was founder of the Council's Asia program, and he's taught courses on Asian politics and international affairs.
I'm only bringing this up to say he has qualifications and expertise in the area that we're talking about.
And he's talking about North Korea, and he's writing in a publication called The National Interest.
And I'm just going to read this paragraph to you.
Largely because it agrees with what I said, But even more largely because it's such a big opportunity that I don't understand why we're not taking it.
So look for the big opportunity.
So this is from Devin Stewart in The National Interest.
Most crucially, this is at the end of his article, Kim warned his country to not sacrifice security for economic benefits.
So in other words, Kim is signaling very clearly That, yeah, it'd be great if we could develop our country and make more money, but that's not the main thing.
So I think we're all on the same side that the main thing is that Kim stays in power and the country stays safe.
All right? So North Korea is not asking for golf courses or to become another South Korea.
True. But at almost no cost, the United States could alter the security environment in a positive way in Asia by jointly declaring an end to the Korean War, which is what I'd suggest.
The United States has learned from its endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and on the Korean Peninsula that it cannot spread democracy by force or edict.
But American power can be used for good by creating incentives for peaceful behavior.
As Reagan defense official Fred Ickel noted, every war must end.
It's past time for the United States to declare an end to the endless Korean War.
Kim has left a small opening for Trump to move forward.
Trump just needs to push on an open door.
Now, I love that analogy you've heard before, pushing on an open door.
That's what I'm saying.
Does anybody have a reason why we can't just declare an end to the Korean War?
Now, given that Kim is watching, I'm sure he's watching on some level, how the Congress of the United States is trying to put some controls on the president waging war.
So, Kim trusts that President Trump does not want war.
I think Kim trusts that.
So there's evidence to suggest that Kim likes Trump personally, which suggests he's not as afraid of Trump as he might be of some other president.
So, then you've got to worry about the rest of the country, then you've got to worry about Congress.
And Congress seems pretty anti-war-like at the moment.
If you're Kim and you're looking at the Iranian situation, You're probably saying to yourself, uh-oh, it's a good thing I'm not killing any Americans lately, right?
So that's the first thing you're going to say if you're Kim, because the, we're going to kill you if you kill an American, that foreign policy rule seems to be now the American red line.
You killed even one American, that's it.
Now we're going to get tough.
Now, of course, North Korea is nuclear, so all the calculations are different.
But I would say that we could declare an official end to the war in North Korea, and Kim Jong-un could reasonably imagine, at that point, that we have no intention Of any military action against North Korea, and that might make him flexible on the nukes over the long term.
So, cost is nothing.
Let's declare an end to the war because we have a psychological problem with North Korea.
We don't have a military problem.
Remember I always tell you that in order to have a war, you need at least one of the two sides to think it's a good idea.
Right? I don't think there's any such thing as a war, at least in modern times.
I don't think there's ever been a war unless at least one of the sides thought they had something to gain.
What would we gain by a war with North Korea?
We can't even imagine it.
What would North Korea gain with a war with the United States?
Well, we can't even imagine it.
You've got two countries who only want to not have a war.
How in the world can you not make an agreement?
How do you not make an agreement when you already agree?
You don't even have to negotiate anything.
Because you're both actually starting at the end point.
The end point is, under no conditions do we want to be a threat to each other.
That's where you want to get to, but it's also where you're starting.
There's nothing to negotiate.
It's a completely psychological problem.
It's 100% psychological at this point.
There's no physical reason for a war.
Just how we think about stuff.
That's it. Now, of course, it does matter if they get rid of their nukes.
But the only reason for the nukes is their psychological...
At one point it was real.
They had a real threat in the past.
But the real threat in the past from the United States has now morphed into just a psychological one.
And so you need a psychological solution.
Somebody says, have I talked about Krugman?
Yes, I have.
We did that. All right.
I'm just looking at your comments here, because I've been jabbering a little bit.
Oh, where's Hunter? Yeah, so President Trump humorously says that he can, you know, in his debates, all he needs to say is where's Hunter?
And now some protesters are showing up at Biden's events with a where's Hunter chant.
I don't know. None of that's important.
It's just kind of fun. Um...
The erased Epstein footage, I think Epstein is getting boring to me because I feel like there will be an endless drip, drip, drip of new Epstein stuff, but I'm pretty sure he killed himself and it would take a lot to change my mind.
And what's not going to change my mind is some evidence disappeared.
That's not going to change my mind.
For those of you joining late, I'm coming to you from the control room of the simulation, where I had to tweak the simulation a little bit.
You probably don't know this, but this is the simulation control room.
Impeachment. Have you noticed that I barely talk about impeachment?
It's because there's nothing left of it.
Impeachment is the big issue that sort of rotted on its own.
I feel like impeachment was this nice, fresh piece of fruit a few months ago.
And a few months ago, we were like, eh, nice piece of fruit.
And then we all went on holiday for the holiday season.
Everybody wanted vacation and started thinking about everything else.
And we left the fruit on the kitchen counter.
And we came back from vacation, that beautiful fruit had rotted into this little rotted, stinking thing, and that's what's left of impeachment.
I can barely even talk about it, because it has no relevance to anything.
Nothing's going to happen.
It's just politicians wasting my time.
Every single moment that a politician talks about impeachment...
I want to get rid of that politician.
Every minute I see of any politician talking about a stupid issue that has no importance whatsoever is purely symbolic.
It's wasting our time.
I'm starting to get to the point.
I hate to be this person, but don't we pay Congress?
I mean, seriously. We pay them to go make independent-ish decisions that are compatible with their constituents, but we pay them.
Does this impeachment stuff look like doing work?
It doesn't look like work to me.
What the president does mostly looks like work.
Every day we wake up and the president goes to work.
Every day we wake up and hear about impeachment, Congress isn't going to work.
I can tolerate a great range of disagreement and silliness about politics if the people are doing work.
Here's sort of my red line, where I'm no longer just joking around.
If we're paying you, and you're not working, I don't care what your opinion is.
I don't care. I don't care what your policies are.
I don't care what your internal thoughts are.
I don't care what you did with your day.
If it wasn't work, and I'm paying you, I think you need to be fired.
Right? Are you with me?
At some point, it's no longer a political conversation.
At some point, it's an employment conversation, and I think we're right on the border of that.
At some point, this whole bullshit about walking and chewing gum has to be called out.
They can't walk and chew gum.
Do you know why? Because nobody can, in the sense that you can't focus on everything the same way.
If you're focusing on one thing, that is energy and attention that we're paying you to put on other things.
If you're putting it on the wrong stuff, you're not walking and chewing gum.
You're taking your focus off the ball.
You're not doing infrastructure, you're not doing other things.
So, I think we have to, I'm starting to lose the frame that this is even a political difference.
It doesn't feel like that.
It feels like people who are getting paid and they're not showing up for work.
That's what it feels like to me.
Trump, love him or hate him, Trump shows up for work.
Right? Every single day.
Has Trump even taken a sick day?
I don't think so. I think he's worked for three years, including weekends, because presidents don't really take weekends off.
I think he's worked every day since he's been elected.
He's suited up and he's gone to the office probably every day.
And even on the golf course, he's working.
I think it's time to call the question.
You know, it's one thing to disagree politically.
Fine. I'm okay with that.
But you've got to go to work.
You've got to go to work if we're paying you.
That's not optional. All right.
That's enough of saying the same thing over and over again.
All right. That's all I've got for you today.
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