Episode 802 Scott Adams: Hunter Biden "Wrongdoing", Israel Peace Plan, Impeachment Hilarity, Coronavirus
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
President Trump's Middle East peace plan and Saudi Arabia |
What Joe Biden and Hunter did...was NOT illegal? |
Fentanyl will only be illegal for 8 more days |
Coronavirus, closed borders, restricted air traffic from China |
Impeachment witnesses?
Entertainment versus what's best for the country
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Ah.
Well, the news is coming at us fast and furious.
There's so much news, I can barely know what to do.
As you probably know by now, the President has announced with Netanyahu of Israel, they've announced their proposed peace plan for the Palestinians and Israelis.
Now, this of course, obviously, is one of the biggest stories in the world.
So let's go over to the CNN There's one little story about Alan Dershowitz patting Mike Pompeo on the back at the wrong time and maybe sending the wrong message.
What? Israel and the United States just announced a peace proposal?
And the only reporting on it on CNN's homepage is about Alan Dershowitz and his back-patting ways.
Apparently he patted Mike Pompeo on the back at the wrong time, thinking that the back-pat was associated with a different message than what he was thinking when he patted him on the back.
That's a story. That's a story.
But okay, so CNN... Obviously, he doesn't want to cover the story because it's bad for President Trump, so let's go over to Fox News and we'll find out the major headlines on Fox News.
Nothing. What?
What's going on here?
I'm sure I saw this as news yesterday.
Are you serious?
The two top online news organizations?
Nothing? It's not even a story?
Are you kidding me?
Now, I'm trying to swear less in this coming year, but it's really hard to look at stuff like this and not do a little bit of cursing.
I'm not going to. You don't need to turn down the sound.
I'm going to overcome it, but I don't quite know why this gigantic story didn't make the front page at least in one story.
Let's talk about it.
So the peace plan shows a map in which the So-called Palestinian state, if it were created, let's say everybody agreed and they created an Israeli state that's got revised borders, and then somewhere there, there's a Palestinian state that seems to be woven and surrounded by the Israeli territory, according to the initial map, which was really a first offer, if you will.
And the first thing you notice is that they've figured out how to keep things largely the way they are, meaning they kind of just drew the map around where people already are.
So there's a practical element to it, which is it doesn't require people to move too much.
One has to assume that there's going to be somebody who has to move, but it's not a major element of the plan.
So that's good. So the first thing is You're not making people move.
So it reaches the practical level on that.
Amazingly, the Israeli politicians seem to be in agreement about this.
The people who are vehemently opposed to each other on politics within Israel are actually on the same side for this plan, which is kind of amazing.
It's kind of amazing to get even Israel on the same side with a peace plan.
But it happened. Even more interesting is that Saudi Arabia has already signed on.
Now, can we do a little historical background on this?
What did people say when Saudi Arabia and MBS were accused of chopping up Khashoggi with a bone saw?
Well, pretty much everybody who was smart said, Arr, Saudi Arabia, you cannot be our ally anymore.
You've done this terrible thing.
We can no longer deal with you.
You must be punished. But interestingly, President Trump did not act that way.
He went very, very gingerly on Saudi Arabia.
Definitely treated them with kid gloves on something that he could have easily gone the other way.
And I said at the time...
It was probably the right play.
Because later you would need Saudi Arabia to bless any kind of a larger peace plan.
And there it is.
There it is. So what I told you was the smart reason to go gentle with Saudi Arabia just came through.
Saudi Arabia just signed on.
No hesitation. Absolutely.
Now, you have to wonder, is this A direct or at least an indirect payback for President Trump remaining allies and remaining a staunch supporter of the kingdom, if not that event.
Obviously not supporting the event, killing Khashoggi, but not dropping the entire relationship because of it.
Now, we don't know if this peace plan will go anywhere, but that's a very positive sign.
So he got something out of it.
So here's what's good about this plan, and I would go so far as to say this plan is stealthily genius, meaning that it's not obvious why this is such a good idea.
If you take the long view, you say to yourself, There's no way the Palestinians are going to agree to this, so it's a waste of time.
It's like every other time.
Even if they made a deal, they'd break the deal.
Arafat promised he'd do it, then he changed his mind.
They can't ever have peace.
What they really want to do is to destroy Israel.
Largely true. I mean, pretty much all of those observations would be based on reality.
That it's a tough thing and you would expect that the odds would be deeply, deeply, deeply against it working, except there are some differences here.
Let's talk about the differences.
What's different about this plan compared to any other plan that didn't work in the past?
And there are some differences and they're worth calling out.
Number one, it's detailed.
Apparently this is the first time That anybody came up with a detailed plan.
Now you say to yourself, well that's a waste of time, because if you can't get them to even agree on the concept of peace, what the hell is the point of talking about the details?
The details are a complete waste of time, because you're never going to get to the details.
You can't get past go, right?
That would be the common sense way to look at it.
But, it turns out that this The crew of people working on this are not standard thinkers.
And I mean that in the best possible way.
Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, who was called out by the president, and even Netanyahu and the president, they have special skills.
And you see that in this deal.
And again, if you didn't know Had to spot these skills, it would be invisible to you.
You would say, well, it's just like the other time.
We make an offer, they say no, back to square one.
But here's what's interesting.
There's something about this that has Master Persuader written all over it.
And the thing is that because of the details, it forces people to think past the sale.
Have you ever heard me talk about that before?
So instead of concentrating on yes-no to a peace plan, this forces people to look at the map and to look at there's one place where they cleverly are proposing to build an underground, well, it's a tunnel, so it's underground, a tunnel to connect the contiguous parts of what would become the Palestinian state so that they don't have to worry about being, you know, separated.
There would at least be a tunnel.
Now, what is that going to make people do?
Well, at first they may say, no, no, no, which I think the Palestinians have already said.
You know, it took them 10 seconds to reject it all on its surface.
But they're still going to look at it, because curiosity alone is going to make you look at it.
So you're going to look at it, and you're going to say to yourself, yeah, that tunnel isn't the worst idea.
But maybe it needs to be in a slightly different place, or a little bit longer, or maybe it shouldn't be underground because there wouldn't be enough security, it'd be harder to protect.
If somebody blows something up, wouldn't it be better if it's above the ground?
Etc. And maybe, maybe that's all true.
Maybe there's a better way to do it.
Maybe the tunnel would not be as safe as you want it to be.
But, if you can get the parties to start debating the details...
Then you've already brought their minds past the yes-no decision and into the details.
That's new. Making them engage on the details, even if they say they're not, they're going to engage on the details, even if only in their mind.
So even if they say, no, no, no, we're not going to look at even any part of this, they're still going to think about it.
They're going to still look at that map, and they're going to say, ah, I don't like where they drew the lines here.
If they draw the lines differently, I might react differently, but I don't like the way it is now.
As long as you can make them think about that your way ahead.
Secondly, the map itself, because it has details, as the roads and bridges and tunnels and all the areas selected, they've turned a concept into something visual.
Now, I don't know how often we've seen this before.
I think maybe in the past there have been maps.
But just because it was a good map, it was visual, that takes you to a new place.
Because now there's something in the visual part of your brain, which is the most dominant part, that you can react to.
And again, you stick it in that visual part of the brain, and then you make people react to the details, and it gets you past the sail.
The other thing they're doing is they put a four-year deadline on it, which coincidentally roughly matches President Trump's second term.
And I think that's smart, because you know that on day one they're going to say, no, no, no.
But what about four years from now?
Over four years, do you think anything could happen?
All right, now here's the best part.
Well, I'll give you another couple of best parts.
There's more than one best part.
As other pundits have noted, every time there's a peace plan offered to the Palestinians, it gets worse.
Meaning that back in whatever decades ago, originally Israel was going to give back something like all of the land they won in the 1968 war.
And then the next offer was, well, we'll give you back most of that land, but we're using some of it.
And then the next offer was, well, maybe a fraction of that land, because we've got security needs and we're using a lot of it.
We've got settlements and stuff.
So Direction matters a lot to decision-making because they've created a situation where the offer after this might be no offer at all.
Because you can see the pattern now.
Big offer, a little bit smaller, a little bit smaller.
This one is sort of the last offer you can get in which there's anything left.
And during this time, and I always talk to you about the psychology of where things are versus where they're going, our brains are far more affected by where things are heading than where they are.
And this pattern that Israel has created is that Israel gets stronger every year, the Palestinians seem to be worse off every year, and their potential to get better off is also shrinking every year.
So when is the best time to make a deal?
Well, the situation that the Israelis and, I guess, the U.S. have created is that it's really obvious now, really, really obvious, that the sooner you make the deal, the better off you will be.
But not the better off Israel will be.
Israel wants a deal, but they don't need it.
They just don't need it.
Because they found a way to stay pretty darn safe from incursions and terrorism, etc., relative to what it used to be.
So if you're in Israel now, the odds of being killed by a terrorist thing in any given week, pretty low.
So we've reached sort of an ideal situation.
And then I don't know the specifics of this.
Maybe somebody can help me on the fact-checking.
But because Iran is at least temporarily beaten down...
They don't have much money and they're not getting too adventurous at the moment because they lost their top adventurous general.
It could be that Iran, either by withdrawing support financially or even maybe more directly, may be promoting directly or indirectly, may be more of a positive than any time in the past.
So what the Israelis and the U.S. are asking for sounds impossible from the Palestinian perspective because, you know, there are a lot of radicals there, etc.
But here's the best part.
Yeah, I saved the real best part for the end.
Here's the real best part.
Israel does not need the Palestinians' agreement.
If you didn't catch that, you missed the best part.
Because what Israel has said is that this new map they're proposing is what we think Israel should become with adjusted borders.
Israel can simply just adjust their borders.
Nobody will stop them from saying, well, you can do what you want with what's left over.
We're just going to adjust our borders and then we're going to call it good.
If you'd like to be recognized as a state, as a proper nation, there are some steps that you need to take.
Denouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel and not paying terrorists for terrorist acts and a few other things, I guess.
But we also don't care.
That's the important part.
Does Israel really care if the Palestinians become a state?
Not really. Not really.
I mean, they think it would be better to have a proper state situation.
Maybe that would lead to more safety, etc.
But Israel can just make this a fact.
They just have to readjust their borders and say, four years from now, well, how'd it go?
How'd it go? It's been working for us.
So do you want to be a state yet?
Because if you say yes to a state, you get $50 billion for development.
$50 billion.
That's a lot for that little chunk of territory.
But they don't have to.
They can just keep doing what they're doing and not give $50 billion.
They cannot have a state.
They have the option.
So what's different about this plan is the specificity, the visual element of it, The fact that it continues this pattern of the sooner you do it, the better.
But we're in no hurry.
But the sooner you do it, the better.
For you. But it's not up to us.
So everything about this deal is kind of brilliant.
Now, brilliant doesn't mean it's going to work, right?
If you're a smart bettor, you always bet against it.
You know, you're always going to bet against the deal in the Middle East, right?
But you've never seen one this good.
In terms of the psychology of it, the practicality of it, the fact that you can just sort of implement it before anybody even agrees with any part of it.
Nobody has to agree with any part of it.
Israel can just start putting it into reality, build a fence here, a border there, a wall there, and it's done.
There's really a deep brilliance to this that I don't know if the news understands, but we'll have to see.
Here's something interesting that CNN does all the time.
I called them out for this, and I'm sure Fox News probably does it.
I just notice it more on CNN. What they'll do is they'll have an opinion piece, an opinion writer, Who will write a bunch of opinions about, usually, Donald Trump.
And embedded in the opinion piece is a statement of fact that just isn't true.
And I think to myself, what is the internal policy or rules for CNN when a pundit does an opinion piece but includes in it a fact that's just not true?
So, here's one.
So Zachary Wolfe, writing for CNN, so this is on CNN.com, writes this exact sentence, quote, There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.
Talking about Burisma, right?
There is no evidence of wrongdoing.
Stated as a fact.
There's no evidence of wrongdoing.
Is that a fact? Does that feel like a fact?
So I ran a little poll.
And I asked people on Twitter just before I came on here live, I said, which of these words best describes the Hunter Biden Burisma situation?
Choice one was perfectly acceptable, and about 2% said, yeah, it's perfectly acceptable.
Then the next two choices were criminal and legal but wrong.
Remember, the thing we're testing is the word wrongdoing.
CNN has stated as a fact, embedded within an opinion piece, stated as a fact that what Hunter and Joe Biden did, collectively, was no wrongdoing, no evidence of wrongdoing.
But when I put it to a poll, I think actually it's above 50% now, half of the people said it was criminal.
Now, of course, almost all of the people answering a poll on my Twitter feed are pro-Trump people.
But that's, you know, 60 million people or whatever.
So of that group, not 60 million people answering the poll, but a sample of that group, half of them think it's criminal.
To which I say, there actually is no evidence of criminal behavior.
What are you watching?
The half of you who said...
That what Hunter Biden was doing was criminal, or what Hunter and Joe Biden were doing collectively was criminal.
Do you know that there's not one lawyer involved with Trump's defense?
There's no TV lawyer who's ever said that it's criminal?
Where are you getting this?
I mean, I'm on your side directionally.
I get what you're saying, that there's something deeply wrong with this Burisma situation, but where in the world did you see some news or an expert opinion that there was something criminal going on?
Have you not noticed that no TV lawyer says it's criminal?
And I'm pretty sure the president's people would say, it's a criminal act, here's the code, here's what you violated.
What is making you think it's criminal if the top experts, who certainly would say it's criminal if it were, they're not even saying it.
Where are you getting this? Where is this coming from?
I'm confused.
But the third choice was legal but wrong.
So I put the word wrong in there because the question is, is there any evidence of wrongdoing?
And something close to half the people said it was legal but wrong.
Then, so I'm giving you my opinion based on 10 minutes ago, but I've updated it.
I've updated it.
So, Twitter user Dr.
Chris, or Chris Christus, or something, D-R-C-H-R-X-I-S, however you want to pronounce that, that's his Twitter handle, reminds me, or tells me, sends me a link, That JPMorgan Chase settled two years ago.
They paid $264 million to settle a case in which there was criminal behavior, in which they had a program in which they were hiring the sons and daughters of important Chinese officials so that they could get more banking deals in China.
This was found criminal to the point that they had to pay a $264 million fine.
That's a big, big fine!
$264 million fine?
That's not playing around.
I mean, they're a big company, but that's a serious fine.
And the reason, of course, is that it basically fits some U.S. law about bribery.
So, in effect, JPMorgan Chase was found guilty of bribing Chinese officials for banking business.
Now, the bribery was in the form of hiring their unqualified kids and just giving them a salary for doing probably close to nothing.
And now, in this case, there was no doubt about what they were doing.
Because the investigation kicked up Well, first of all, the name of the program was the Sons and Daughters Program.
Internally at JPMorgan Chase, they actually called it the Sons and Daughters Program.
And they had spreadsheets that showed which son and daughter got hired.
And then on the spreadsheet, you could see what new business they got related to that top Chinese official whose son or daughter was hired.
So in the JPMorgan Chase case, there was no doubt That they were using this as bribes.
Right? So the factual basis totally beyond dispute.
And so J.P. Morgan settled.
$264 million.
Apparently they made something like a...
Or they got something like $100 million in new business so this didn't work out for them at all.
Now, here's the question.
We have a law in this country that you can't bribe other countries to get business.
But... Do we have a law that says that we can't be bribed?
And would that law say that we can't be bribed for political access?
Because in the case of Hunter, it's not the only person making money was Hunter himself.
It wasn't the U.S. making money.
So is there any law that would make it illegal For Hunter to do what he did, given that we know if the situation were reversed, and we were bribing, let's say if we were hiring the sons and daughters of Burisma to get some extra Burisma business for some US company, that would definitely be illegal.
But if you reverse it, is there any statute that covers that?
This is reminding me, a lot of you are saying yes, but I'm thinking probably no, based on the fact that the people who know the most about this are not presenting it as an argument.
Don't you think that somebody like Jay Sekulow or Dershowitz or somebody, don't you think somebody who knows how these things work would have said, oh, it's not just swampy behavior.
You violated this very specific law about foreign corruption.
Nobody's making that argument.
So I'm going to guess that there is no domestic law that says that Hunter can't do that.
It's just sloppy.
Now, here's the question.
When Alan Dershowitz was talking about what makes something a criminal enough situation to be prosecutable or to be impeachable, he made the case that it doesn't have to be technically a crime.
It just has to be at least crime-like.
In other words, there could be some technical reason why you can't prosecute it, but if it's exactly like a crime that's on the books, you still say, well, it's not technically a crime, but it's so crime-like we're going to impeach this guy anyway.
This is that situation.
It might be that what Hunter Biden and Joe Biden did doesn't violate a specific law technically, But it is exactly what was happening with J.P. Morgan.
That was a crime.
So I think you could say that although there's no impeachment on the table here, that was as crime-like as you could possibly get.
Now, not necessarily for Joe Biden.
There's no indication that Joe Biden did anything illegal.
Or even crime-like.
Or even swampy.
Because he wasn't the one who made the decision to go work for Brisma.
That was Hunter. So I guess the question I ask is, is it appropriate for CNN's opinions pieces to have an embedded fact in it that's so obviously wrong?
Because by saying that there's no evidence of wrongdoing challenges our own observation because we're looking at it.
We're saying, what do you mean there's no evidence?
What you report about this situation is the evidence.
CNN's own reporting.
Got a job, wasn't qualified, overpaid.
Clearly it was for political purposes.
How is that not wrongdoing?
All right. Even if it's not illegal.
Joe Biden said that in a recent town hall-looking situation, he said this.
He was asked about his VP pick.
And he said, whomever I pick for VP must be capable of being president.
Common thing. They always say that, right?
I'm only going to pick a VP who is capable of being a president.
So I must be capable of being president because I'm an old guy.
No, I'm serious. That's what he said.
Because people laughed when he said, because I'm an old guy.
He goes, no, I'm serious.
Now, I think he also talked about somebody younger.
And so in his context, he said that there are several people, people of color he would consider as vice president, running mate.
There are some women he would consider.
And of course, because of his age, The implication is that it has to be somebody younger.
This is what I call foreshadowing.
Let me ask you this.
If Joe Biden had a choice of getting a woman who is also white, is that as good a choice for his purposes of running for president as a Democrat?
Would that be as good as having somebody who is a person of color?
Which is better, to have a woman running mate or a person of color?
It doesn't matter because he can have both.
Why in the world would he not choose someone who is both a woman and a person of color?
That would be stupid, right?
Am I right that that would just be stupid?
You can't even make an argument for picking someone who is only one of those two things, either a person of color, let's say Cory Booker, or a woman, let's say Elizabeth Warren.
So I think it's just obvious that his first choice would be a younger person, younger than him anyway, and a person of color.
Now AOC of course is too radical and she's too young, so she's off the list.
But it kind of comes down to Kamala Harris, right?
So, now I know you're going to say to yourself, what about Stacey Abrams?
Well, here's the next part.
And if you haven't seen this yet, this might fill in some blanks.
When you're running for president, you want the person who compliments you the best.
And Biden is saying, and actually I give him credit for this.
this.
There's a lot about Joe Biden that makes him unqualified to be president, in my opinion.
But there's a whole bunch about him that I just respect.
And one of them is, sometimes he does tell it like it is, right?
He still lies about the Charlottesville hoax.
But sometimes he'll just say things the way it is.
And he says he's an old guy.
And so he needs to make sure he gets a proper vice president who can step in.
That is really honest.
I got to say, That was super honest and maybe more honest than he should have been.
It probably hurts him. But I appreciate it because it was so honest.
So let me give you some examples.
When Bill Clinton ran for president, he was a governor from a smallish state.
If you're a governor, you do not know where all the skeletons are and where all the keys are in Washington, D.C., So if you've been a governor, you have experience managing an operation, but you don't have experience of operating in Washington, D.C. at the federal level.
So what Clinton did to fill in that gap is he picked a senator, a respected senator who was also easily capable of being president.
So he picked Al Gore.
So keep that in mind. The top of the ticket picks somebody who's the best complement.
Now, Stacey Abrams has never won a contested election.
She's won uncontested elections and then lost for governor.
But she's only been involved in state politics and not really that successfully.
Compare that to Kamala Harris, who...
Because Biden is talking about his own age being a risk factor, I appreciate the honesty.
He's also saying that he could be gone on day one.
Because it's true.
He could get elected on a Tuesday and already be incapable to do the duties of the office by Wednesday.
It's a real possibility.
I don't know what the odds are, but you have to plan for it because it's the whole country.
So could Stacey Abrams...
Take over as president with no federal experience whatsoever and would not have a vice president at that point, so would be sort of flying alone on day one.
And the answer is nobody believes that.
Nobody believes you could take somebody whose best experience is losing the governorship, you know, losing the election, and say that's her best experience.
Nobody thinks that person can step in to be the president of the United States.
So Stacey Abrams just doesn't rise to the level of serious enough that she could help him.
She probably heard him more than she helped him.
But Kamala Harris?
Senator? Experienced senator from a major state?
If Joe Biden became incapacitated the day after the election, could Kamala Harris credibly, credibly, in other words, would the country look at her and say, okay, we're okay.
We're okay. We got somebody who knows where the keys are.
At least she's been in Washington.
She knows how that business runs.
She even ran for president.
She's about as close as you can get to being ready to take over tomorrow.
A senator is a good choice for that.
So I would say that the foreshadowing is now complete.
You're going to see Kamala Harris, this is still my prediction from long ago, will be picked as the vice presidential running mate.
Because she has the most connections to the old Clinton machine, and it would put Hillary Clinton back in control.
So Hillary Clinton's play to run the country without actually having to do the job is to get Kamala Harris there and have her advisers advising Kamala.
All right, so that's where we're going.
So let's talk about the...
Did you know that the law against fentanyl in this country, the thing that makes it illegal, is going to expire in a little over a week?
What? Did you know that our law against fentanyl wasn't even a permanent law?
And that because of impeachment, they probably won't get around to it?
Holy cow!
You want to pick a topic that's going to piss me off?
You couldn't pick a topic that pisses me off more than that.
If anybody's new here, I lost my stepson to a fentanyl-related overdose in 2018.
So this is personal to me.
If this impeachment and these Democrats cause that law to lapse and fentanyl becomes illegal even for a day, Even if it only lasts a day, I'm just not going to be a happy camper.
And you're going to hear about that.
So, Hong Kong is looking at closing its borders, or maybe it already did.
Tibet closing its borders because of the coronavirus.
China, of course, is closing more cities.
The number of people affected is doubling every day or two.
And I guess United Airlines is canceling flights for lack of demand, and British Airways is considering, or maybe already did, ban flights.
So the obvious question you might ask is, why are we not banning all flights coming into China, coming in from China?
What? Can we really control this thing so reliably that we don't have to do that?
I'm not buying it. I think that people who are bad at risk management are saying that, well, it's fewer people than will die in car accidents and we allow cars.
The worst argument you could ever make.
Because there's no correlation between cars, which are somewhat necessary for civilization at this point, versus a virus which is not necessary for civilization.
So they couldn't be more different situations.
And anybody who compares the virus to anything else, even other flus, is just being stupid.
That is a stupid comparison because it is its own thing.
It's its own thing.
As soon as you compare it to another thing, you're just going into stupid land.
Because everything you need to know about it, you can determine from just looking at it.
You don't need an analogy.
If you go to the analogy, it's a sign that you don't have an argument.
So we really have to ask...
What's wrong with our government?
I would say our government is failing us on this topic.
They're failing us.
And I think Trump has to take responsibility for that.
The buck stops there, right?
If Trump does not tell you why the airports are staying open, and he also doesn't close them for flights coming in from China, if he doesn't say anything about it, he's failing you.
He's failing as a president on that topic anyway.
No matter how much you like his other stuff, that would be just an absolute grade of F. And that's where he is right now.
He's at a grade of F in handling this crisis.
And by the way, only because of lack of communication.
If he did communicate, and he said, we're looking at this really carefully, and the cost of closing the airports, all things considered, It could actually be greater than the risk of this thing, but we'll close it in a moment if that changes.
If he said something like that, I'd say, all right, well, at least the smartest people are looking at it.
They're watching it. Maybe they know more than I do.
I could be convinced. But the lack of your president saying anything about closing the airports, or even why it's still open, Complete failure.
That is a complete failure of government.
You can't fail harder than that, really.
That's 100% failure.
There's nothing you can say about that that makes that less failure.
I don't know how much you love your president, but there's nothing you can say about this that absolves him from not explaining this to the public in a way that we can say yes or no.
I hear... The polls say that 75% of the public wants to hear from witnesses in the impeachment.
And what should you make of that?
The politicians, some of them anyway, are trying to say that that's telling the politicians that the public wants this.
I don't think that's what's happening.
I don't think that's what's happening.
I think that the public votes for the best spectacle.
There might have been a time in the past when the public would vote, would answer a poll based on their self-interest.
I just don't know that that's today.
I think, and this is something I've suggested before, that one of the prediction methods I use is that if you don't know how things are going to go, and let's say, just to simplify, let's say there are two ways the future could go.
One of them is boring, and one of them would be great headlines.
It feels to me, and this is just anecdotal, I have no science to back this whatsoever, but it seems to me that we almost always go in the direction of greatest story.
In other words, if it were a movie, one of those stories would be a better script.
I feel like we always go in the direction of the better script.
What would be better Just for entertainment.
Not what's good for the country, not what's good for you, not what's good for the parties or the president.
But what would be the most fun to watch?
Witnesses. What would be more fun than watching Hunter Biden, Schiff, Joe Biden, Bolton?
What would be more entertaining than watching all of them testify?
Not much. Not much.
Tell me one TV show or one movie that you immediately say, I would rather watch that TV show or that movie than to watch John Bolton testify?
To watch Schiff get grilled by the Republicans?
I mean, seriously.
We're talking about some super entertaining stuff.
Really entertaining.
I have mixed feelings.
Because strategically, I think...
The Republicans should let the arguments play out.
And then before considering witnesses, they should have a vote.
And they should have a vote narrowly, narrowly on the Dershowitz argument that these things do not rise to the level of impeachable.
And therefore, even if more came out about the details, it wouldn't make any difference.
It wouldn't matter if there's a quid pro quo.
It wouldn't matter what the President said.
The most rational way to go here would be for Mitch McConnell to say, all right, let everybody have their say.
But then before we decide on witnesses, the logical step is to have a vote on whether there's any more information anybody needs.
Because if you're going to vote it away based on doesn't reach the constitutional level for impeachment, don't need any witnesses.
Because there's nothing anybody is suggesting the witnesses would say that would change that fact.
It doesn't change the constitutional argument at all.
So we'll see.
If Mitch McConnell gets pressured into getting these witnesses in here, well, that would be another success for the prediction that says the best move he wins, the one that's the most entertaining.
So you can't rule that out.
So, and here we have, this is maybe a clean case, because what the Republicans should do is have that vote and dismiss it on constitutional grounds.
But if they don't, then there's something predictive about that best story idea.
All right. Let's see what else we got going on here.
Just make sure I haven't missed any big points.
I don't believe I have.
I think I hit all the big points.
Somebody says, did Trump leak the Bolton book details?
If I had to guess, I would guess it's somebody in the publishing printing area.
Do you know how many people see a book before it gets published?
It's kind of a lot.
It's kind of a lot.
So I'll just give you my experience.
So I have an editor.
So my editor would see the book.
The editor is sort of a high-level editor that's more directional and, you know, did we get the book concept right?
You know, that kind of editing, high-level.
And then there are one or two other editors who might get involved in the details.
One of them would be about the grammar and the spelling and the structure and that sort of thing.
So you've got, you know, three different editors.
Of course, the publisher.
All of the assistants who work for those editors, they all have it.
And then what about spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends?
Because I imagine, I assume, that a lot of these editors take work home.
Don't you think that that manuscript, the Bolton manuscript, has left the publisher at one point and somebody took it home to work on it and edit it?
Of course. Why would they?
And then it goes to the printer.
How many people at the printer's office have access to looking at the manuscript?
All of them. All of them.
The entire printing company could probably walk by a big bin of books and just take one.
Or just open it up and take a photograph of the page.
So there are probably something like, if I had to put a number on it, Maybe 25 people who were in the publishing chain of custody who could have seen it.
At least 25.
It could have been 100. But at least 25 had access to it.
And that's not counting the government.
So it could be anybody who leaked it.
So could it have been Trump?
Maybe. Can't rule it out.
But a lot of people saw it.
Somebody said they would think only four or five.
Yeah, there are only four or five people who would have a direct business reason to have it.
But unless the publisher had an unusual set of strict rules of secrecy, all of their assistants had access to it.
It was probably just laying on a desk in the office.
And they probably took it home, etc.
So, there you go. And they also probably talked about it.
Don't you think that the people who edited it might have had a drink at some point and said, you know, I'm editing that book.
Don't tell anybody, but you should see page 128.
So it's easy to imagine there are just tons and tons of people who could have leaked that thing.
All right. This was timed.
Yeah. I don't think you can rule out the possibility that it was a timed leak.
That's a little too coincidental.
Yeah, somebody's saying Vindman's twin brother had access to it.
True. But, you know, here's the thing.
If you're looking at risk management, you wouldn't want to be somebody in the government who leaked this.
Because if it's somebody in the government who leaked it, The odds of being discovered are pretty good, and you're done.
But if you're an editor's assistant, just as an example, and you leaked it, no impact.
Probably no impact on, you know, especially if they don't find out who you are.
probably no impact so the most likely people to leak it would be the people who had the least to lose itchy Bernie brothers Yeah. So there's another Project Veritas video of a Bernie bro, some organizer type person with long hair who can't stop scratching himself.
I think he has fleas. I'm not sure.
Saying that there would be trouble if Bernie doesn't get elected.
So I can't imagine Bernie having a chance of winning this thing.
So if he does get nominated, it's sort of over.
I think Biden would be the same situation, but Bernie would be over faster.
Somebody in the comments says, Oh my God, what kind of world makes two effing Vindemans?
