Episode 828 Scott Adams: Blago - The Poor Man's Roger Stone, Russia Putin its Nose in Our Election, Robot Socialists
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
President Trump has obliterated public trust in...
...the press, congress and national intelligence agencies
NYT and Wapo push Russia helping Bernie and Trump stories
Anderson Cooper interviews Rod Blagojevich
Making Bernie's healthcare plan PRACTICAL
Why isn't China being accused of interfering with our elections?
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Yeah, I think you can feel your white blood cell count increasing.
I think you all look a little bit younger.
I can tell you're happier, more productive, smarter for sure.
And all of that, all of that, because of the simultaneous sip.
Yeah, you'd like to take some credit yourself, but I don't think that's appropriate.
I think it was the SIP that did it all.
All right. Yeah, somebody is reminding me in the comments here.
So Bloomberg did a post which he wrote in Russian.
So it was just a Russian tweet that if you hit the translate button in Twitter, it said, As in Bernie's slogan.
So, of course, it makes you think about why would he write it in Russian, and it's because the headlines are that Russia may be helping Bernie as much as they're helping Trump or they're helping one of them or something.
And so Bloomberg at least has not been accused of being helped by Russia yet.
So that was a pretty funny tweet.
So I'm hearing...
I haven't seen many...
Bloomberg commercials.
I guess I don't consume anything that has commercials on it.
But I hear they're good.
So people are saying that the quality of his ads are quite good.
So here's a prediction for you.
You know, Mark Twain famously said that we humans can't tell the difference between good news and bad news.
And here's one of those examples.
So here's something that It's widely considered bad news, but I think historians are going to look at it and say, you know, that was actually really good news.
It didn't seem like it at the time, but it was good news.
And here it is. True or false?
I think this is true. That President Trump has obliterated the credibility of the press with, you know, fake news, etc., True.
He's obliterated the credibility of the press.
He's obliterated the credibility of her own intelligence services.
True. Now you could argue that the press did it to themselves.
You could say the intelligence agencies brought it upon themselves.
But it really sort of took Trump to bring it home, didn't it?
Then, of course, the credibility of Congress pushing the fake Mueller report, the fake impeachment.
So I think historians are going to say that although all three of those entities may have already had some credibility problems, didn't most people, let's say most citizens, didn't most citizens think Most of the time, anyway, you could sort of trust them.
Sure, some politicians are crooked, and sometimes they do a little self-dealing, but you thought, basically, they're just doing their job.
But you probably don't think that anymore.
After watching the impeachment saga, you probably think, well, they don't even look like they're trying to do their job.
That doesn't even look like a good attempt.
It's not even in the approximate universe of honestly trying to do your job.
How about the press?
Does anybody honestly think that the press is independent and reporting the facts as they see them?
Well, I used to think so.
During the Obama administration, I would say, oh, Fox News is a little out there, at least with the opinion people.
But that didn't seem anything like what we're seeing now.
What we're seeing now feels like a whole different level of lack of credibility of the press.
And then, of course, our intelligence services.
We've never seen Of course, the whole weapons of mass destruction thing was a big blow to the credibility of our government and intelligence services.
But I think, at least this is my own opinion, it was still sort of easy to put that off as a one-time situation.
Sure, it was a gigantic miss.
Thinking that there were weapons of mass destruction, caused a war, untold consequences, ripple effect, horrible, horrible stuff.
But I have to admit, it kind of felt like just a one-off mistake.
But now that we've watched something that looks like a continuous march of incompetence, I think they've lost pretty much all credibility.
Now, of course, we're watching...
This play out in what only looks like a joke.
The fact that the New York Times reports that our intelligence services believe that the Russians were trying to help Trump, and a month ago, apparently the Washington Post reports that Bernie Sanders' campaign was told by the intelligence services that the Russians were trying to help him.
Now, here's something interesting.
The New York Times and the Washington Post, aren't they usually on the same side?
Right? You feel like they would be pushing both stories that would be anti-Trump, but one of them is pushing sort of an anti-Bernie story.
It's the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post.
Now, let me ask you this.
Would Jeff Bezos be happy...
To have a President Bernie.
Well, if I had the biggest corporation in the world and I wasn't paying my share of taxes according to Bernie, I would be pushing pretty hard to not have a President Bernie even if I were a Democrat and even if I hated President Trump.
I still wouldn't want a President Bernie if I'm the biggest capitalist on the planet.
That's right. Jeff Bezos is the biggest capitalist on the planet?
Maybe? So, is it a coincidence that the Washington Post goes after Bernie?
Or at least creates a story that associates him with Russia?
I don't know. Could be.
Could be a coincidence. But you can't trust coincidences of that nature anymore.
As somebody said on Twitter, and I wish I wrote it down because I didn't know I was going to talk about it when I first saw it, but somebody said, is it a coincidence that Russia is always helping the candidate that is the biggest problem to the Democrat elite?
What a coincidence.
Bernie is shaking up the established power structure on the Democrats?
Well, he must be a Russian puppet.
Trump tries to get power.
Well, he must be a Russian puppet.
Is that a coincidence?
Well, it could be. It could be a coincidence.
But it's another one of those that you can't really trust to be a coincidence.
All right. I love the way Trump summed it up in a tweet.
So he tweeted this.
The reason for this is that the do-nothing Democrats, using disinformation hoax number seven...
Where did he get the idea to number the hoaxes?
Well, I don't know what specific person, but it's a social media thing, right?
On Twitter, are you not seeing people number the hoaxes?
Now, I know I did it a long time ago, and I've seen other people do it.
But this is in the category of, you know, if you write humor for a living...
You sort of recognize a category that you know other people had the same idea independently.
So you really can't tell who's the first person to number the hoaxes because it's a little bit too obvious that it would be a good thing to do to make a point.
So I love that the president has numbered it number seven.
And it makes you say, well, seven?
What were the other six?
Okay. Let's see.
There's the Ukraine thing.
There's the Mueller thing.
Were there really that many other ones?
Were there four others that I'm not remembering?
And it's kind of brilliant because it makes you count them up.
And you might even argue.
It's like, it's not seven.
At most, it's three hoaxes.
But you're still thinking in the way you want you to think that it's hoax after hoax.
All right, so the rest of his tweet is that using disinformation, hoax number seven, don't want Bernie Sanders to get the Democrat nomination.
So in other words, he's supporting Bernie in this tweet.
In the field of entertainment, what could entertain you more?
Then President Trump, the greatest, I'd say, funniest political prankster, if you can call it that, who really knows how to combine work and pleasure like nobody else ever did.
I mean, he can golf and work.
He can tell jokes and campaign.
He combines pleasure and work all the time.
then he's doing it again because there could be nothing funnier than trump destroying the democrat party by supporting their preferred candidate that's what he's doing but you know when i say their preferred candidate i mean the one who has the most votes so far it's still a plurality not a majority but he does have the most votes
so isn't this a noble thing that president trump is doing supporting bernie sanders against the evil evil fake news that's trying to take him down - Good.
Now, of course, the whole play here is that Sanders would destroy the entire Democrat Party if he gets the nomination, and they know it.
They know it.
And they know what he's doing.
The funny part about it is that it's obvious.
It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it wasn't 100% obvious to Democrats and Republicans that the president is just boosting Bernie to absolutely destroy the Democrat Party.
And Newt Gingrich comes on to bayonet the survivors.
And Fox News asked him on yesterday, talking about how the real problem is that with Bernie as the candidate, they're going to lose the House.
So Newt is coming on to make you think past the sale.
It's like, oh yeah, you're definitely going to lose the presidency.
There's not much else to say about that.
So let's just take that as a given.
So you've already given up on the presidency.
So now we're just talking about how badly you're going to lose the House.
And if you lose the House, you've lost everything.
So Newt is just coming on.
I just love, you know, he's usually the smartest guy in the game.
He put Newt in the room with most people, and the smartest one in the room is going to be Newt.
So, you know, he's 76 years old.
I just read his age in the article.
And, you know, he's at that point in his career that presumably he's just enjoying the ride.
You know, he's done all the hard parts.
He's just sort of enjoying the ride at this point.
And he comes in on Fox News, and he's just bayoneting the survivors.
It's like, well, yep. Looks like Trump won the battle, but there's still a few survivors.
Let's see. Let's see if there's anybody over in the house that needs to be bayoneted.
Bayonet. Bayonetting.
So anyway, this whole thing is the funniest.
Now, I started this by saying that the intelligence services have the lowest credibility.
So if it's true, That our press and our intelligence services have just served up that the Russians are promoting both Bernie and Trump and they're trying to keep both stories in the air at the same time.
It's just so good.
It's just so delicious.
This could not be a better reality TV show.
I'm sorry. I mean, this could not be better politics.
It's not politics. It's some new hybrid that Trump has invented that is part entertainment, part government.
And I don't think this is a stretch to say that he's nailing both of them.
Right? Is it just me?
I don't think it's just me.
It looks like he's nailing both of them.
All right. We're good to go.
There's nothing funnier than the fact that we all know he's prepping to pardon or do something for Roger Stone, right?
We all know that's coming.
He's signaled it.
He's made it as clear as possible that he thinks Roger Stone has been treated unfairly.
And even with the new lowered sentence, everybody sort of expects the president to pardon him.
So that's the first thing that's great.
Because this president knows how to keep the suspense going.
Like, this is one of those shows where you know something's coming.
You know the script has it coming.
It's coming. It's going to happen in Act 3.
Oh, no! So you know that's coming.
And this is how Trump preps us for it.
By, is it commuting or pardoning?
Blaga, blaga, blaga.
I think the proper pronunciation is...
I think I nailed that.
But you know what I'm talking about.
And so this guy Blago, let's call him Blago, goes on CNN, and Anderson Cooper just tears into him for being the worst person in the world and a lying, hypocrite, criminal.
Oh my God!
It was just a bloodbath.
So Trump, and in my title to this periscope, I called Blago the poor man's Roger Stone.
You see where I'm going with this, right?
In your mind, haven't you already paired Blagovich and Roger Stone?
You have. You know you have, because they're in the same conversation.
Now, what do you think of when you think of Roger Stone?
You see that way too much gray hair for a man his age, right?
Now, what do you see when you see Blagovich?
You see a guy with way too much gray hair for a man his age.
Now, we're visual creatures.
We know they're different people.
Intellectually, knowledge-wise, they're just different people.
And of course, if we're wise and reasonable people, we know that they should be treated individually.
Your opinion of one should not have anything to do with your opinion of the other.
They're just different situations.
But we are not reasonable people.
And you can't help it.
You're pairing those two in your mind.
Roger Stone. And the poor man's Roger Stone, Blago.
Now, Blago has gone out and done, I don't think that Trump asked him to do this.
I think it was just, I don't know, good luck, or I guess maybe you could expect it would have happened.
But Blagovich goes out and makes such a bad case for himself that you start feeling sorry for Roger Stone.
You think, my God, this guy's terrible and he got a pardon.
Wait a minute. Wait, he's a Democrat?
Are you telling me that this Trump dictator...
He's a dictator, I tell you.
All he does is reward his friends and...
Wait, what? He just pardoned a famous Democrat who's guilty as all hell?
What? So that broadens your idea of what a presidential pardon can be, and it makes it easy to put Roger Stone right in the middle of that, because Blago sort of set the edges.
It's like, well, if you can pardon that guy...
I mean, what he did looked a lot worse than what Roger Stone did, right?
Selling us on his seat, I mean, it's not even close to being...
And here's the other thing.
Roger Stone is literally famous for being a fabulist, as I think somebody said, meaning that he tells lies a lot, and it's almost his identity or his brand.
He says things that aren't true in public.
That's his brand.
And even, apparently, privately.
So you get that guy in a situation where lying will send you to jail.
What the hell do you expect is going to happen?
Do you think that's the one time he's going to start telling the truth?
Well, maybe. But after a lifetime of...
Being a fabulist, you're probably going to be fabulist all the time, especially at that age.
You're not that nimble anymore.
Anyway, the Blago thing was just brilliant because it makes the Roger Stone thing easy.
Did you see that Trump's reaction...
To the news that...
I think he might have said this even before the news came out about Bernie being warned about Russia trying to help him.
And the first news was that they were trying to help Trump again.
And there was some doubt about that because no details have been provided.
And of course, our intelligence services have no credibility whatsoever, which is good.
Because we don't... I don't know if I finished that point, but...
It's good that we don't have credibility for the news or our intelligence services or our Congress.
That's the best possible situation.
Because if they're going to try to get us to do something, they're going to start with, we don't believe you.
That is the best place to start from.
Because you're going to have to convince us this time.
So I think that's a great thing that Trump did.
Maybe not for great purposes.
I don't think he thought of it that way.
But I think that we're all way, way better served by losing all credibility in those institutions, so long as they stay intact and so long as we challenge them to prove their credibility.
And we're a little bit harder on them than we ever were.
I think that's all good.
You know, as long as the institutions remain intact.
All right. Let's see.
What else we got going on?
I always talk about the two movies on one screen, and when I see great examples of it, it's still mind-boggling when you see it starkly.
Here's another example of this.
On Twitter, I end up looking at a lot of conservative tweets, and every now and then, I'll wander over into some tweet thread that has some Democrats in it and some anti-Trumpers, and it'll be like entering another movie, because the facts that they believe to be facts are so entirely different from the facts believed to be facts that the left and the right have different facts.
Here's a perfect example.
So, the Democrats believe it is objectively true, and nobody could doubt this, that Trump is soft on Russia.
And of course, to every conservative observer, it is objectively true that Trump is the toughest on Russia.
Now, what would be the argument most of you are going to say?
What, are you kidding me? I mean, it's not even close.
look at the facts.
And some of the facts that you would say, for example, are that Trump gave deadly aid, these javelin rockets, to Ukraine.
And that's more than Obama did.
So Trump is at least more badass than Obama was in terms of Russia.
And I go over to the Democrat part of Twitter, and the Democrats have a belief, and I don't know if this is true, by the way, So here's the fun part.
It's a belief that they have that is a fact that I'd never heard before, I don't know if it's a fact.
I don't know if it's not a fact.
I'll just give it to you. They believe that, for reasons that weren't listed, that the Ukrainians were not allowed to use the javelins.
What? Now, I'm not saying that's not true.
I don't know what it means.
But then somebody else weighed in and said, Were they not actually delivered?
What does any of this mean?
Now, I don't know the answer to it.
I wish I could have come to you and said, I looked into this and I found out what the truth is.
I don't know. My point is, how different that movie is.
How different the movie is that one says we gave them deadly weapons to use against Russia and the other says, no you didn't.
It just didn't happen.
I don't know. No idea which one of those is true.
Alright. Here's a stoner question for you.
Is history fiction or fact?
You probably see where I'm going with this right away.
Is history a matter of fact or a matter of fiction?
Now, of course, you're all immediately, the first thing that pops into your mind is that the history is written by the winners, right?
So somebody's going to say that in the comments, because by now you've already typed it out, and it's too late to call it back because there's a little delay in the comments.
So somebody's going to be telling me, yes, history is written by the winners, and that's true.
But for every history, there are some winners and losers, and they get to write their own histories because they have different countries, and we have enough of freedom of speech that there are different versions of it, etc.
But wouldn't you say that the thing that we agree is history is just the consensus?
I'm not sure it's so much the winners as it is the consensus.
So I would say that history...
is a fictional consensus, meaning that it's not really even intended to be exactly the facts.
It's an interpretation that the majority feels comfortable with.
It's not even a question so much of winning and losing, so long as all the entities still stay intact and they can make their own textbooks and tell their own stories.
It's not like one group is just dead or can't talk.
Just think about that. Just think about the fact that history is a lot closer to fiction than it is to fact.
Now, that's not to say that there isn't an objective history.
I'm not even in that conversation.
I'm just saying that the way we live it and experience it is as a fiction that is hardened by consensus, not necessarily what happened, except for the big stuff.
We get the dates and the explosions right.
All right. I want to call your attention to something I tweeted.
It's near the top of my tweet feed today, over on Twitter.
That's something that Matt Taibbi wrote for Rolling Stone.
Now, this is not the first, second, or probably even third time I have recommended that you read an article by Matt Taibbi.
And it's always the same reason.
Good God, he's a good writer.
I mean, you can just enjoy every sentence.
And that's so strange.
Most writing has a lot of filler in it.
You know, here's my background, and I'll eventually get to the point, and won't you be happy when I stop blabbering and get to something interesting?
But you read a Matt Taibbi article, and almost every sentence is a payoff.
Because you like the sentence itself.
It's very rare, so I recommend it.
But anyway, here's one of the sentences I pulled out.
I'm not going to say this is the best one.
It was just one I pulled out.
And he says that Bloomberg has been touted as a potential Democratic Party savior across the top ranks of politics and media.
There's an extraordinary indictment of that group of people.
I thought to myself, yeah, that is an extraordinary indictment.
So all the smartest people thought that Bloomberg, well, he's the guy.
I mean, once Bloomberg gets in, that's going to be it.
I mean, all his money and everything.
Once he gets in, and then you see him in one debate, and you say to yourself, wasn't there anybody who knew Bloomberg who could see this coming?
Was there nobody in the top echelons of the Democrat Party who said, yeah, he's coming, but it's going to be with a whimper, not an explosion?
Didn't anybody see this coming?
Now, I'm not sure if I did.
Maybe some of you can remind me anything I said about him before we knew he was as weak a candidate as apparently he is.
Maybe he'll get better in the next debate or something, and we'll all be surprised.
But I think he's a certain age.
I think he's lost a step.
I just don't think we're going to see much better coming from him in terms of his connecting with the audience and his charisma and all that.
I don't see that changing too much.
But read the rest of Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.
All right. The whole health care debate, which may turn out to be the big topic, or at least Bernie might try to make it the big topic if he's the candidate.
I've said this before, but I want to say it again because I think I've got a better, cleaner way to say it.
When Bernie talks about everybody getting healthcare, he talks about trillions of dollars, and you don't even have to be an economist.
You say, wait a minute, how big is our entire economy?
Wait, what's he want to do?
None of it adds up, even just the broad brush.
It just looks impossible.
So he's doing a terrible job of selling the idea that we could go from 89% have insurance now to 100%.
So that's 11%.
Now, I used to do budgets and business cases, meaning write up the financials and projections for decisions for corporations.
So that used to be my job for a while.
And I've got to tell you, they need somebody to try to sell these plans, whether it's Trump, and I'll talk about that, or Bernie, who's better at this.
Because Bernie is terrible at selling.
Let me tell you how I would sell how to get to 100% coverage, and I'm going to give you the Republican version.
So this will not be the Bernie socialist version where I guess he just raises taxes and costs trillions of dollars and it sounds very impractical.
So forget about that.
Here's how I would sell it if I were Trump.
89% of people are insured.
That leaves 11% that we need to do something about.
I agree with Bernie that we should try to get to 100%, but we should get there with a rational system that the system can handle and takes into account people's incentives, etc.
So you've got 11% you're dealing with.
So in theory, if you had 11% more money, Everybody would be covered.
If you had 11% more that could be dedicated to that.
So how much is that? Well, 11% more would cost us, I'm going to round up, another 400 billion per year.
Could the United States find 400 billion on top of what it already pays per year?
Now suddenly you're talking hundreds of billions instead of trillions.
So the first thing I've done is I got you out of talking about trillions.
As soon as Bernie starts talking in trillions, we're all, uh, eh, trillions?
No. No, I'm not going to sign up for a trillion anything.
Trillion is too much. My taxes are going up.
That's all I hear when I hear trillion.
So the first thing you do is you take it down to, well, it's only 11% more, $400 billion.
And then you say, how am I going to take pieces out of that?
This is how a corporation would do it.
They'd say, all right, the first thing we're going to do is cut drug costs quite a bit.
Now, that would give you back a little bit of money so that that amount is taken out of the system.
Let's say that's 1% of it.
We'll cut the paperwork.
We'll get rid of some insurance overhead.
We'll do things with competition and efficiency.
We'll have better prevention because we'll have more big data.
We'll target key areas where there are big expenses.
Let's say buying an MRI machine is really expensive, so we'll fund startups that are in that area that are trying to bring down the cost of MRIs.
Stuff like that. So you say, look, it's $400 billion a year.
That's our national target.
If we can carve that out of healthcare expenses, we've got enough money with what we already spend to get everybody covered.
So let's figure out how to carve that up.
Now I think that story sounds doable, doesn't it?
Even if it's not doable, doesn't that sound doable?
Because I just broke it down.
Well, it's only 11%.
Because you say to yourself, if anything in my life increased in cost by 11%, I'd figure it out.
I mean, I'd hate it, but I'd figure out how to make it work.
So that sounds practical just by its nature.
That's the way they should sell this thing.
Anyway. Okay.
I can't get over this question.
Why does it make sense to be enemies with Russia and for Russia to be enemies with us?
I still need somebody to explain it to me.
Because here's the thing.
Does Russia really have the belief that it would be to their best interest to remain sort of permanent enemies with us where we're doing stuff to them to weaken them and they're doing stuff to us?
Because here's the thing.
We are much stronger than them, our economy, etc.
If you're the weak one, do you want to be poking the strong one?
I've never heard anybody explain the three-dimensional chess that Putin is playing where any of this makes sense.
Because remember, when Russia pokes us, it seems like we always figure it out.
And maybe that part's not real either, but it seems like we keep catching them.
Why would you poke somebody who catches you, and they're bigger than you, and they punish you for it?
Explain the endgame.
How does that work? I just don't understand it.
And if it does work, and there's something to it, why aren't all the other countries doing it?
Now, we'll talk about China in a moment.
Maybe they are. But is every country doing this sort of thing to every other country?
Because it's such a good idea?
I don't really understand why we think Russia is doing this.
And if they are doing this, let's take it as a fact that it's happening, that they're poking us in all these various cyber ways, etc., and we're poking them back, I guess.
We couldn't talk each other out of that?
There's no way to have a conversation and say, look, I get it.
We poke you, you poke us.
As long as one of us is poking, We should not expect the other one not to poke back.
But are you getting anything out of this?
Because we don't see us getting anything out of this.
There's just nothing that we're getting out of it.
Are you, Putin?
Did you get something out of this this year?
Did your economy go up because you messed with us?
What happened exactly?
And let's put it this way.
How bad is the risk?
Most of our elections are close to 50-50, right?
So our elections are sort of, you know, 49-51% situations.
What difference would it make, really, if, you know, the person with 49% of the vote became president?
Would that really be, you know, given that most people are voting randomly and just vote for their party and don't even know what the policies are, are we really going to get a worse result?
Well, the people who lost would say, yes, hey, it's unfair.
But I don't even think there's a risk, at least in terms of our democratic system, if all that happened is the person with 49% won instead of the person with 51%.
We just survived an election in which the person with the most popular votes didn't become president.
That didn't break the system.
So the most that the Russians could do...
Is tweak it from the 51% to the 49%.
Now, in the case of Sanders, I think it would make a big deal, but he's not going to get within striking distance if he runs.
So even that won't make any difference, because even Russia couldn't put him over the top.
So I just don't get it.
Somebody needs to explain it to me.
Here's another question that was asked on Twitter.
I think it was Adam.
Yeah, I think it was Adam who said this.
Why isn't China being implicated in meddling in our elections?
Are you telling me that our intelligence agencies briefed Congress, or members of Congress, about election interference, and that China wasn't on the agenda?
What? I mean, is that real?
Is it real that we have evidence of China trying to hack us, but no evidence of China?
Or do we have that as well, but that's still being held as non-leaked?
Is there no leakage because of the China stuff?
So how do we explain this?
Again, it goes to the credibility of both our government and the intelligence services, because this doesn't make any sense.
There's no world that I live in where it makes sense that Russia would be doing all this meddling and getting caught so easily.
And China doesn't think that works?
Or they decided not to do it this time?
Maybe because of the trade deal?
I mean, isn't there a gigantic part of the story that's missing?
Like, where's China?
All right. Here's some Bernie Sanders kill shots.
I'll just get these ready in anticipation of him maybe being the nominee.
I still think there's a really good chance that the people in power won't want to destroy their party with Sanders as the candidate, but might take their chance of destroying the party by having some kind of a brokered convention where they put a moderate in charge.
So I think that's still at least a 50-50.
If I had to put odds on it, I'd say 50% it's Sanders and 50% they steal it from him and give it to some moderate.
Which, by the way, could be quite defensible, I think.
I think they could defend that easily because the total of the moderates put together is a lot of people.
It's a very defensible position.
But in case it's Bernie, here are some kill shots.
Imagine saying some version of this.
You imagine this comes from the president or somebody in that position.
Bernie's heart is in the right place, but he doesn't understand economics and human psychology.
Because one of the best things you can do for persuasion is to agree with somebody on an important point.
And one of the things that you can say about Bernie that his supporters would never be talked out of It would be consistent with what the President said up to this point about Bernie, is that he's got a big heart.
And I think you should just say that, yeah.
And by the way, yes, so you're already on me.
Bringing up Bernie's heart, but in the context of a compliment, meaning figuratively he has a big heart, sounds like you're just giving him a compliment.
But what do you think about it?
You think about his heart.
You think about his recent heart event, and you wonder about his age, and you wonder if there's another one of those.
So that would be the first part, is that you're not only acknowledging that he does have empathy, he has a big heart.
And I think that the president would do well to recognize that that's a real thing, worthy of respect.
Having empathy and having a big heart for people, Good so far.
But he doesn't understand economics and human psychology.
In other words, he doesn't have to get there.
He's just impractical.
And I think it would be an easy sale to say that his heart is in the right place and also you, his followers, your heart's in the right place too.
So you don't want to start insulting the Bernie followers because there could be a lot of crossover votes there.
Just say, you know, Every one of you Bernie supporters, your hearts are in the right place, too.
But here's how human psychology and incentives work, and here's what we know works, and here's what we know doesn't.
And we just want to do the things that have always worked instead of the things which have always failed.
Now you could argue whether that's accurate, but that's the message.
Here's another one. And, of course, you all know this one.
Explain how we can have open borders and also free health care.
Because I think that's the ultimate kill shot.
Because I don't think Sanders can retreat from either of those positions.
He's not going to suddenly say, we don't want open borders.
And I don't think he's going to back off from giving free health care to anybody who comes in.
And there's nobody who can explain...
Why that could possibly work, letting everybody in and giving them free healthcare.
So I think that's all you have to point out, and that is sort of the end of the game.
I mean, that would be it. Let me ask you this.
In the age of robots, let's say someday in the future, when robots are doing all the menial labor, I wonder if we're reaching a point where socialism is the better system.
Now, you still want to keep your republic and your democratic principles.
You want to keep that stuff.
You don't want to change the form of government.
But, do you need as much human incentive when the robots are providing all the basic living goods and they're doing the work?
You just might not need...
I'll just put this idea out here, right?
So, before you go nuts, because I know this is a trigger word for you, I'm not recommending it.
I'm not recommending it.
I'm just asking this question because I think it's interesting.
If the whole reason that socialism doesn't work is because it doesn't match human incentives, meaning people won't work hard unless they can get a little extra gain compared to their fellow citizens.
So if you don't have that kind of a system, it's all going to fall apart.
But suppose robots are doing all the hard stuff.
Yeah, I think Yang was already there.
Somebody says Naval disagrees, which probably means I'm wrong.
You never want to hear that.
You never want to be talking in public and then have somebody write on the comments, you know what you're saying, Scott?
The smartest person in the world disagrees.
I'm like, oh, crap.
Oh, crap.
If you don't know Naval Ravikant, if he has an opinion and you have an opinion and they're different, just give up on your opinions.
Just adopt his opinion.
You know, play the odds.
He's smarter than you. So just go with whatever he says.
So if he disagrees with what I said, I don't know that that's true.
He may disagree in some minor part of it or more.
But I think when we have the age of robots, we may have to reassess what kind of a political or not political, well, maybe political too, but economic system we need.
That's a long way away. I'm not going to worry about that.
All right, here's a tip.
I saw this on one of the websites, I think it was on CNN, that murderers are using the following alibi, if you can call it that, maybe excuse.
They're saying that they didn't kill their spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends intentionally.
It happened during a rough...
Let's shall we say intimate situations.
And so people are trying to get away with murder by saying, no, it wasn't intentional.
We were making love and we just, you know, we like it a little rough and that's the way it is and we just went a little too far.
Now, here's my recommendation to you.
You should tell at least one friend today that That you and your partner, it doesn't matter male or female, irrelevant to this point, tell one friend privately, you know, I've got to tell you, you know, my partner and I, she or he really likes it rough.
Really likes it rough.
So you just want to put that out there.
Because someday, you may be accused of murder, and you can say, look, I've got a witness.
You call up Bob and you say, what did I tell you five years ago?
Yeah, you said you guys like it rough.
Alibi. Bam.
Somebody says, no, no, Scott, don't give people ideas.
I'm not serious.
Lighten up. You'll have to figure out how to get away with murder on your own.
Don't listen to me.
Alright, that's all I got for now.
And I will...
Somebody else in the comments says, also mention how clumsy they are.
That's funny. Yeah.
My husband or wife, every time he goes up on that ladder, it just looks so wobbly.
I'm afraid one day he's going to go up on that ladder and he's just going to lose his balance and fall off that ladder.