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Jan. 24, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
44:56
Episode 797 Scott Adams PART1: Extra Cursing Today, Mopey Dick Trying to Harpoon Trump, Coronavirus, FISA Abuse
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
Well, yes, this is where Coffee with Scott Adams happens every day at this same time.
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Go. So...
As you're aware, the biggest news of the day is this coronavirus that seems to have started in China from eating bats or something.
I'm not sure I believe the story of where it's starting, but as you know, it's a major outbreak.
It's killed 26 people.
Hundreds of people have been infected.
China is closing entire cities.
Entire cities are being closed.
You can't get in, you can't get out, unless you're a medical professional.
So, obviously, this is the biggest story in the world.
And equally obvious, if there's this gigantic virus problem, we don't have any kind of cure for it, we don't have shots for it, So I think it's obvious that the United States government would shut down all the travel between China and the United States.
Now, I haven't seen any stories on that, but it's obvious, right?
I mean, there can't be this gigantic, deadly virus in China that's breaking out everywhere and they can't contain it.
It's fairly obvious that The U.S. government has closed all travel between China and the United States.
But I wanted to read you the official statement on this.
So if you'll bear with me, let me find this on CNN. Looking for the official statement from our government about how they're closing all travel with China to shut down that virus.
Okay, I don't see it on CNN, CNN.com.
But, I don't know, maybe they're just focusing on the impeachment or something.
So let's go to Fox News, because obviously it's the biggest story in the country.
And obviously our government is shutting down all travel.
I mean, that would be the only way to keep us safe.
Let's see, Fox News.
No, no, it doesn't seem to be on Fox News either, which would suggest that it's not happening.
I may have warned you in the title to this periscope that there would be some extra cursing.
This would be the point of the extra cursing.
So if you don't want to hear any extra cursing, this would be the time to turn down your sound.
Because there's a gigantic virus outbreak in China that's deadly.
And as far as I can tell, from my major news sources, the government of the United States has not yet shut down all travel with China.
Here it comes.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Are you fucking fucking kidding me?
We have not shut down all travel with China.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Give me a reason. Any reason.
This is fucking impeachable right here.
Now, maybe there's a reason.
Maybe there's a reason, but tell us the fucking reason.
If you're not going to cut down, if you're not going to shut down all traffic with China right now, until you figure out what's going on, you owe us a fucking reason.
Alright? Government, give us a fucking reason.
Or shut it down.
Otherwise, what the hell are you doing?
So China, so far, If you connect our technology to China's technology, what do you get?
You get a fucking spy virus and they steal your intellectual property.
So we can't connect to them technologically because they'll just steal our shit and send us spyware.
We can't have travel with them because they'll send us their fucking bat virus.
We can't have any kind of economic agreement with them because apparently...
They fucking cheat.
So, is there anything that we can do with China that isn't toxic?
Oh, okay. Sure.
We can at least accept mail from China.
That's safe. No, it's not.
Their mail is full of fucking fentanyl.
We can't take their mail.
We can't connect to them with a goddamn fucking technology.
We can't let their people travel here because they're filled with their fucking bat virus.
And we can't even do business with them.
The fucking country is completely toxic.
We need to decouple.
Let's just decouple.
Alright, that's enough of that topic.
But seriously. We need to shut down the travel, like right now.
Let me give you a little update on Twitter and Google and the questions about some alleged shadow banning.
I have a new hypothesis for why Twitter seems to sometimes, for some accounts, in some situations, you can follow people and then be unfollowed.
If you're following this story, you know that Ambassador Grinnell, his account, many people, lots and lots of people, including me, reported following him multiple times, only to find later that they had somehow been unfollowed.
So I did contact Jack Dorsey.
I was asking about it, and he's looking into it.
And I don't have an official answer yet.
He asked some follow-up questions that I answered.
So Twitter's looking into it.
But while they were looking into it, and as I mentioned before, this TikTok app that is owned by a Chinese company can, under some situations, ask for permission to To control your Twitter account.
I guess if you're going to post your TikTok videos to Twitter, it needs some permissions.
So one of the possibilities is that there's a third-party app that's controlling your Twitter.
And so I looked into my Twitter permissions.
I'm sorry. I looked into my permissions for any apps to see if I had any apps that had permission to change my Twitter account.
And here's the thing. I would never give an app, a third-party app, permission to control my Twitter feed.
I would never do that.
Now, there are a few exceptions.
One is Periscope itself, because it's a Twitter product, so I don't have a problem with Periscope being able to change my Twitter account.
It's all the same company. And I did have Hootsuite connected because Hootsuite is an app that lets you post to different social platforms.
But here's the surprise.
I had several apps, you know, minor apps, ones that you haven't even heard of, that had Twitter permissions that I was unaware of until I checked my phone.
That's right. A person, me, Who would never intentionally give a third-party app access to my Twitter account had given eight different, I think there were eight of them, eight different apps actually had permission to change my Twitter account.
If you had asked me, I would have said zero, because I would never consciously make that decision, except in those few cases that are obviously safe.
But there were several on there that were just apps I'd try down at one point and another.
Now, at what part in the process did I not see that those apps were asking for that permission?
Because I never would have given that permission.
Not in a million years.
Not intentionally. So, here's my new hypothesis.
It's third-party apps.
So, I would like to ask those of you who have had any experience of following and unfollowing anybody.
Or maybe even if you've been followed and unfollowed.
So anybody who's had the experience of having an automatic unfollow that was not yours, check your phone.
How do you check?
I don't remember enough to tell you, but just Google it.
How do you check your phone's app permissions?
It'll pop right up. Just Google it and you'll see the directions.
So, if I had to rank the possibilities, the names of the apps actually don't matter.
Because, as I said, it was a variety of them.
I had like eight different apps. So you need to just check all of your permissions.
Don't start with, do I have those specific apps?
Just check all the permissions.
Because it's the ones that are sneaking in there that are the problem, maybe.
So if we were to look at all the possible explanations for why Twitter seems to be performing in a way that we would not expect and had not authorized, the one is that it's senior management of Twitter trying to influence the election.
Personally, I give that essentially zero credibility because human nature is not such that people who are already winners In other words, if you're a senior management or you've got a ton of stock in Twitter, you're a winner in the game of life.
I mean, you've done well, right?
It would be insane for them to collectively decide that they would risk their reputations, their stock, their company, risk it all.
For a scheme that would be so obvious to detect, because we're all looking at it, we can detect it.
We can see that you followed and unfollowed.
So I would say the odds that Twitter management is behind it is basically zero.
You know, I'll always allow that there's always, you know, anything could happen.
You could never put really zero on anything, but it's close to zero.
The other possibility is that it's some kind of a bug.
I think that's also close to zero because it's so obvious.
It's just so obvious.
How would Twitter not know about it?
How would they develop a product that's this ubiquitous but it couldn't do the simplest thing technology can do?
A little handshake between the app and the central servers that says, did you get my signal?
Yes, I did. Okay, now I'm done.
Simplest thing you could do in technology.
So it's not a bug, and it almost certainly is not senior management.
But, having seen now how many third-party apps could have done this, I would say the odds are something like 80% that there are bad actors from the outside who are messing with your Twitter feed.
So that's my current speculation, current hypothesis.
I'll keep you updated.
I'm trying to schedule a discussion with Google about my demonetization on YouTube.
Maybe I'll talk to them Monday.
I'll update you on that as it happens.
All right. You've heard, of course, about the FISA warrant story.
Apparently the Department of Justice looked at all the FISA warrants regarding this Russia collusion stuff.
And found that at least the last two, because there were several renewals, the last two renewals they found were not legitimate, basically.
They did not have a basis in law.
Now, it was the last two.
What does that tell you?
Well, unfortunately, we have at least two hypotheses that are reasonable.
One hypothesis is that it was always biased.
And it was rigged.
So one possibility is that bad actors were using this process and abusing it, and they were using it to spy on the president and his team, and it was all bad actors.
So that's possible. The other possibility that cannot be eliminated, based on what we know, is that once you get a little bit invested in your plan, it's hard to change.
So it could be that people were just a little bit stuck in confirmation bias.
There was a little bit of inertia going on, a sprinkle of incompetence.
It would be easy to imagine that because the other ones had been renewed, that people just let their guard down.
They just let their guard down.
Well, the last ones got renewed.
Here's another one. Blah.
Sign it. Do the judges read every word of everything they sign?
You hope so, but probably not if it's a renewal.
If it's a renewal, you probably skim it, don't you?
If you say, well, I've approved this thing three times in the past, it looks like it's just more of them, the same people I trusted last time, say to sign it, maybe give it a cursory review, get on to other business.
So I don't think you can eliminate the possibility of incompetence.
But certainly, If you believe that there are bad actors, it's going to lead you in that direction.
The President very cheekily retweeted a meme that I think came out a few years ago.
It's a painting that showed him standing next to a window inside Trump Tower, one assumes, with a Barack Obama on the outside of the window looking in.
So in other words, it was a meme about Obama or his administration Wiretapping or spying on the president.
So rather than add any commentary, he just tweets the humorous meme, which I thought was kind of brilliant because it makes everybody talk about what it means.
Anytime you can get people to talk themselves into the thing you wanted to say, as opposed to saying it to them, it's good.
It's more persuasive to get somebody to You know, to work on the idea and come up with it on their own based on a few clues, if you can get them to do that, because that really makes them focus, and that's what he wants people to do.
Focus on his point of view, that he was right all along, that the government, members of the government, were spying on him and his campaign.
At this point, you can just say it's true, right?
I mean, it's two movies on one screen, so some people are going to say it's not true.
But I think we can say, yeah.
It's true. A funny story coming out?
Well, it's funny even though the topic is not funny.
So there's nothing funny about discrimination.
Except maybe this.
There was a man, an African-American man, who is suing a Michigan bank for racial discrimination.
After he says the staff refused to deposit a settlement check from his other racial discrimination case.
So the story as it's reported is that an African American man successfully sued somebody, doesn't matter who, for racial discrimination and won.
And he got a big check.
So he takes his big check into a bank and they look at him and they look at the check and they think, This doesn't fit.
They called the police on him.
Now, like I say, there's nothing funny about discrimination, except this story, which is kind of funny, because first of all, he won a bunch of money, so in the end, he's kind of a winner.
He's getting some attention. I'm sure he cares that his topic is getting attention, too.
So he's kind of a winner, and he's also a fighter.
I like the fact that he's a fighter.
He fought the first case, and he won.
It happened again. Let's fight it again.
I kind of like this guy.
I don't know the details of the case, so I'm not going to presume who's guilty or innocent, but I like a fighter.
But here's the thing.
The story as it's told is that it's a story of discrimination being so bad that this one guy runs into two major examples of it, one after another.
And that's entirely possible.
So it might be that the way this was reported is exactly accurate.
There's so much discrimination in the country that sometimes, maybe not often, but there's enough that sometimes you'll have two really bad cases right in a row.
Maybe that's what happened.
But there are at least two other possibilities.
Two possibilities.
The other possibility is it's fake news.
Because It fits in that category of news where by its nature you should doubt it's true.
Right? Because it's a little too clean.
It's a little too perfect.
It's a little too...
the edges are wrapped up just a little too nicely on this story.
So I'm not saying it's a fake news.
I'm saying that the nature of the story fits into the category of stories They're probably fake news at least 80% of the time.
That doesn't mean his is.
I'm just saying it's in that category where you should just automatically put a filter on and say, maybe, maybe, but it's in that category.
It's a little too perfect.
Here's the other possibility, the third possibility.
And again, I'm not saying that there was not two cases of grotesque discrimination.
It's entirely possible, if not likely, that that's what happened.
But here's the other possibility.
Maybe it's him. Maybe it's him.
Now, I'm not saying it is, but I think it's funny that that possibility is not considered.
One of my favorite comics from long ago was a guy sitting in jail, and he was saying to his bunkmate, he goes, 17 arrests, 17 convictions.
Maybe it's me. I've been laughing about that for years because it's a joke about how the last thing we consider is that it's us.
Because it's always something else.
It's other people. And when I say maybe it's him, I'm not saying it is.
I'm just saying that if you're looking at all the possibilities of this story, one you can't rule out is that he looks suspicious.
Not because he's black, but because some people just look suspicious.
Am I right? You know who else looks suspicious?
Me. I have a lifelong problem that I look suspicious.
I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of things I haven't done.
All the time.
And I think the reason that people regard me as suspicious is because they think I'm clever enough to get away with stuff.
And if you're clever enough to get away with stuff...
Well, maybe you're doing it now.
So, in my own way, I'm one of those people who has gone through life continually being questioned about my honesty or my credibility when I'm actually being honest and totally credible.
I am one of those personalities that people don't trust, for whatever reason.
I hope you do, and I hope I've created enough of a track record That I have credibility on here.
But I'm just saying that in my interpersonal life, it's common for people to imagine I've done all manner of bad things when I haven't.
So one possibility is that there's something about this individual that has nothing to do with his color that made the teller at the bank say, there's something wrong with this situation.
It has nothing to do with his ethnicity.
So that's a possibility. Anyway, but good luck to the individual involved.
I do not mean to suggest anything beyond what the story itself said, that he got discriminated against twice.
He's a fighter. Good for him.
I hope he fights and wins this if the story is accurately reported.
Let's talk about Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan has lit the Twittersphere on fire.
By saying recently, I guess, on his podcast, that he says, quote, I think I'll probably vote for Bernie.
And here's the reasoning he offered.
He's been insanely consistent his entire life.
He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life.
That in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.
What's that mean? What does it mean to say that consistency is a powerful structure to operate from?
Well, I would put a different word on it.
I would call it authenticity.
Because I think that's what both Trump and Bernie have in common in a weirdly different way.
But there's something about the fact that Bernie is always Bernie that makes you trust that at least he has good intentions.
And at least he believes what he says, which is a lot, right?
So when Joe Rogan says that alone, that consistency, and I do believe that all of the people running for president actually have the best interests of the country in mind.
I really do believe that.
I don't think you put that much work and risk into running for president until you've really bought off on the idea that you're trying to help the country.
I just don't In our system, I don't think you get that far unless you really believe that.
So I believe Bernie believes that, as well as all the other candidates.
So how did that work out for Joe Rogan?
Well, not so well.
You would think that backing Bernie would be the safest thing he could ever do.
Because if you want the social justice warriors to be happy, well, pick a Democrat.
Right? Safest thing you could do in this country if you're a public figure and you're in the entertainment field, by far the safest thing you could do for your career, your own personal safety, for everything.
Pick a Democrat. That did not work out as well as he may have hoped.
Because it turns out he's now being accused of being a white nationalist transphobe.
You can't even win.
There's just no way to win.
He's a... Now, obviously, if anybody has spent any time watching Joe Rogan, he's definitely not a white nationalist.
Or even close.
He's not even in the zip code of a white nationalist.
So this accusation against him, this is what, you know, idiots on Twitter saying this stuff.
This is the most grotesquely defamatory...
It's just horrible.
Just horrible that he would be slimed by that kind of accusation.
Now the transphobe thing, at least there's a little meat on that in the sense that he's talked about athletes.
That there's a risk to female athletes if there's a larger...
somebody who was born...
With male body parts and testosterone, competes, you know, blah, blah, blah.
The smaller person can get hurt.
So that has targeted him for, you know, for abuse from the left.
So he kind of created a position where he can't win.
But let me pile on a little bit.
May I pile on?
Sure. Why not?
So I love Joe Rogan.
Personally, and as an entertainment professional, one of the best people in the world, one of the best entertainers in the world.
Nothing negative to say about him.
But, but, I don't think he's an economist.
Is that fair to say?
You know, if I said that to Joe Rogan in front of him, I said, Joe, you know, I understand why you're backing Bernie, but would you agree That you do not have a deep understanding of economics.
I think he'd say yes.
Would that be an unfair statement?
That's not an insult.
It's not an ad hominem.
It's the same thing I said about Greta.
And I'm not insulting Greta Thunberg on climate change.
It's not an insult. It is simply a statement that some people have experience in different domains.
And I think that Well, I completely appreciate it.
In fact, I've said the same thing.
That Bernie's authentic personality is much to be admired.
On many levels, I admire it.
I have mad respect for Bernie for that reason.
But it's still an economic decision, isn't it?
I mean, no matter what you think of Bernie's character, the ultimate decision of Bernie versus not Bernie is really an economic decision.
And I don't know how you could make a decision about voting for Bernie without a background, or at least enough background, on the basic concepts of economics.
So, I feel sorry for Joe Rogan.
I'm sure he doesn't feel sorry for himself.
I doubt that's in his...
In his mental vocabulary to feel sorry for himself.
I get the sense that that's just an unproductive feeling that he would be unlikely to experience, because he's mentally very tough.
Or so it appears.
We can't read his mind. But if he ever thought that backing Bernie was going to be the safe harbor, I don't know if he thought that.
But if he did think that, I guess he found out otherwise.
Here's another story. I'll be talking about impeachment in a minute.
Did you hear about the pillowcase rapist?
So there was somebody named the pillowcase rapist because he would put a pillowcase over his head many times.
And he was a serial rapist.
There were lots of unsolved rapes.
And he was just caught, they're pretty sure they caught him, because his son got in some legal trouble and they got the son's DNA. And as soon as they ran the son's DNA through the database, boop!
They found that it matched close enough to be a close relative of whoever was the actual rapist, and then it was a simple matter to find out that that guy's father also had some prior criminal record in that domain, and then it was an easy matter to pick him up, test his DNA, and they got him.
Here's my point to all this.
We are at a point, right now, we don't have to wait for anything.
We already have everything we need, and this is going to happen guaranteed.
100% of serial murderers and serial rapists will now be caught probably in the next 12 months.
Think about that. We now have the technology that if we have some DNA, and I would say that in the case of a serial anything, you're always going to have DNA. Serial rapist, you're going to get some DNA somewhere.
Serial murderer, you're going to get some DNA. Guaranteed, you're going to get some.
If they keep doing that kind of crime, you're always going to get some.
So in the next 12 months, thanks to companies like Othram, that can do this kind of thing, they can look at a database and find out if you're related to anybody and then track you down.
2020 is the year.
Think about this. This is enormous.
2020 is the year that 100% of serial violent crimes get solved.
All of them, every one of them.
I think, I don't think we'll have a single one left on the books by the end of this year.
I mean, just think about that.
That's mind-blowing.
You know, I predicted years ago in my book, The Dilber of Future, that all crime would be solved in our lifetime.
And here's the first concrete example.
All serial crimes, violent ones, will be solved.
All of them. If you're tracking my predictions, and you should, here's one that's starting to shape up.
How many of you have laughed at me?
Ha ha ha, cartoon boy.
Stick to Garfield, as they like to say.
When I said that Kamala Harris would be the Democratic nominee, ha ha ha, you're so wrong, Scott, because of all the reasons.
And then she suspended her campaign.
Double ha ha ha, Scott.
Ha ha ha, you're so wrong, she's not even in the race anymore.
And then I said, hold.
Hold. Hold.
Because she has another path to the White House.
And that path is now being talked about by more people than me, including the New York Times, including the Sacramento Bee.
They're now talking up.
Senator Harris has been weighing an endorsement of Joe Biden.
Oh, that's interesting.
Kamala Harris is now It's being reported in the New York Times that Kamala is considering endorsing Joe Biden.
Huh. Interesting, isn't it?
And Sacramento Bee reports that they interviewed Joe Biden, and they asked him about picking Kamala Harris as a VP, and he said, would he consider her?
He said he'd consider her for anything she wants, including vice president.
You would consider her for anything she wants, including Vice President.
Now, if you were to look at Kamala Harris on her own, you'd say, not so strong.
In fact, that's why she had to suspend her campaign, because compared to the other Democratic candidates, she didn't quite have the necessary parts.
But she's a really good complement for Joe Biden, meaning that she's tiptoed into the progressive field a little bit, But not so much that she can't pull back and become a little bit more mainstream and still have a little bit of credentials in that progressive field.
Because we like people who used to be something and then changed their mind, even though we say we didn't.
Because we at least know that they've lived in both heads.
They used to be a Democrat, now they're a Republican.
That's an advantage, I would say.
As somebody who's lived in both worlds, they've got a little appreciation.
We treat it as if it's flip-flopping and as if it's a fault, but probably not.
Now, the reason that she's a good complement to Biden is that Biden's opinions will be the focus, and she would just be a supporter.
And as a justice supporter, she's not going to say too much that isn't just what Biden is saying, and so there won't be much ammunition to go after her for her own opinions.
Nor does she need to be especially charismatic.
Remember I told you that it's going to be very hard for Biden to pick a running mate if he gets nominated.
Because he's got to pick a running mate that's a worse version of himself.
Because that's the best look.
Because you want to think, oh, the top person is definitely the top person.
But you've got an emergency spare.
It's a little smaller. It can get you 50 miles.
That's all you need. Just a good...
Small tire, emergency spare.
It won't take you all around the world, but it'll get you to the service station.
Kamala is the exact antidote to Biden.
She's young, and she's experienced.
She's a senator. She knows where all the parts are, so she knows how the town works.
Her weaknesses will be somewhat hidden by being a vice presidential candidate, but her strengths will be magnified.
Because every time you see them or talk about them, you say, okay, he did pick a woman.
He did pick a person of color.
Check, check. We have less to worry about.
Now you say to yourself, but Scott, Scott, Scott, Kamala Harris is not popular in the black community.
Does it matter? Doesn't matter.
Because Biden is.
Biden will give her what she needs at the same time that she's giving him what he needs, which is the emergency spare tire in case he fails.
And he's unlikely to, even if he were to win, which is deeply unlikely, he is very unlikely to go for a second term because of age.
Who's the obvious next candidate if he doesn't go for a second term?
His vice president pick.
If he picks the right vice president...
She would be established.
Now, the best part of this is that Kamala and Biden have the most endorsements from establishment Democrats, which means the establishment likes them.
And I believe that Warren has the most connections to the Hillary Clinton machine, if you will.
So it looks like Hillary Clinton will be the shadow president under the scenario that Biden wins and has Warren as the vice president.
That would basically put Hillary Clinton back in the White House without having to run because of the chain of influence.
All right, let's talk about...
So I put that out there.
If you're tracking my predictions, that would be one of the most wild predictions I've made.
And it's shaping up to be more likely than you think.
That's more likely than you think.
Here's another one. Do you remember from the start of this whole impeachment business, I kept saying that there was one defense that I'm not hearing from even the supporters of the president that needs to be the defense.
And what I said was that you need to establish that there was a national interest in looking into the Biden-Burisma situation.
And did you know how frustrated I was getting Because for weeks, you know, I don't know how long, but it seemed like weeks, I kept saying, you just have to say there was a national interest, and you're done.
That's it. That's the whole story.
Was there a national interest?
Yes. If it's yes, it doesn't matter that it's also good for the president.
So here's what's developing.
So as I started out being, I think, just about the only person who was saying that, and now we see that it's Lindsey Graham's primary argument.
So Lindsey Graham is saying, you know, we don't want to call witnesses because we don't think we need them.
But if we did, the central question is going to be, did the president have a legitimate reason to look into Burisma and Biden?
And there's a suggestion, yes.
On top of that, the Democrats' own lawyers have made the case that President Trump believed what they call conspiracy theories about Ukraine.
They say he believed that Ukraine had interfered in the elections.
That, my friends, should be the end of the impeachment.
Because all you need to know...
It's the evidence that the Democrats themselves have introduced.
All you have to do is accept it.
Accept their case. Don't accept even the Republicans' case.
If you accept the Democrats' own framing for this, it's over.
Because the Democrats have suggested strongly, and based on actual evidence of the President's conversations with real people who report them, there is real reporting from direct evidence people That the President seemed, as far as they could tell, to believe that Ukraine was legitimately something to be looked into.
Now, as long as the President believed that to be the case, does it matter if it's true?
It doesn't.
Because the entire case revolves around the President's intentions.
And if it was true that he legitimately believed, as the Democrats themselves are reporting, this is not even the Republicans' case.
This is the Democrats' case against him.
They say he believed the conspiracy theories about Ukraine.
We're done. If he believed it, their own case, that's what they say, that's all you need.
Because he can be wrong and not get impeached.
It is not impeachable to make an assumption which is wrong.
It is not impeachable to believe something that turns out to not be true.
But beyond that, if we have witnesses, you can guarantee that Hunter Biden's right on the top of the list.
So Lindsey Graham has focused on this.
By far, he has the best framing for how this whole thing should be run.
The best framing outside of Alan Dershowitz, who says you don't even need to talk about the details because it just doesn't meet the constitutional test on the surface, so the details are irrelevant.
You don't even need to get that far.
But you saw I did a big tweet thread on the same point saying that the main question is whether Burisma was worth looking into from a national interest.
You saw that Rush Limbaugh, or I told you, Rush Limbaugh did an extended segment talking about my tweets.
And talking about the same point, that there was a national interest to look into this stuff.
And now we see in the New York Times, they've printed an opinion piece by Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.
And he basically explains that it's completely acceptable in our system To have a president do something that's, in his own mind, primarily for re-election.
That that's not impeachable.
As long as there's also an argument that has something to do with the national good.
It doesn't matter if it's 90-10.
You know, 90% of it is for my own good.
Or 99% of it is for my own good.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter if the candidate thinks 100% of it is only for their self-interest.
So long as there's also a national argument.
And there is. There is a genuine national concern.
So the New York Times, of course, it's an opinion piece.
That doesn't mean that the New York Times editorial board or anybody else agrees with it, but they printed it.
So now you're seeing that the weight of argument is shifting in that direction.
So if you're trying to determine if I'm causing the simulation to change or simply predicting it, Well, hard to tell, isn't it?
I'll just leave that out there.
And even Jay Sekulow has said that that question is now relevant because he said that the Bidens were now fair game in the trial because the Democrats have, quote, opened the door.
So in legal terms, if one side brings up a topic, that makes it fair game for the other side to discuss it.
Now you could argue that they shouldn't have brought it up, but they did.
So now the Democrats have opened that question of whether the Burisma-Biden thing was appropriate, which means if they want more witnesses, they're going to have witnesses on that topic.
And also Senator Josh Hawley, Republican in Missouri, is also echoing the same point.
He says, it's now clear we absolutely must call Hunter Biden And we probably need to call Joe Biden.
So you see that the president's defense is starting to move toward that.
Now, the other day, yesterday, I think, some people pushed back a little bit because I said that the president's lawyers were very good.
They're excellent lawyers.
I said that they have so far botched the defense.
Let me clarify that.
They're not done with the defense.
So one cannot say that they have botched the defense like as a statement of the end, because we're closer to the beginning than the end.
When the president's defense seriously kicks into gear, I think they're just going to demolish the Democrats.
What I said in terms of it botched so far, I'm going to stick to that, because now that you've seen the Lindsey Graham framing, And now, you know, Sekulow's framing and Josh Hawley's framing, my framing, Rush Limbaugh.
You see a lot of people thinking about this and watching saying, you know, maybe the focus should have been that one question.
And if I said to you, tell me the president's defense, all right, if you watched the opening statements from the president's lawyers, what's their defense?
I actually don't know.
I actually don't know.
Do you? If I said, what do you remember from what the Democrats are saying about the president?
You probably remembered, because they've repeated it so many times, they're focusing on it.
They're withholding the information because the president tried to force a foreign country to interfere with our elections.
You know what the Democrats are saying, right?
You know they're saying he used it to dig up dirt, And that they're withholding documents.
That's all you know, all the details the public doesn't know.
It's just too confusing. But you know that.
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