Episode 1082 Scott Adams: Beirut, Biden, Rapid Testing Option, Tik Tok Sale to Microsoft, Ranking Pandemic Leadership by Country
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Beirut explosion, interesting revelations
Fading empathy for Portland
Oprah is an open racist
Comparing COVID19 results by country
If HCQ is effective, CNN has killed
Latest Biden brain not working video
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You're probably thinking to yourself, hey, where is he?
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There we go. So the biggest news I would have to think is that explosion in Beirut.
You've all seen the video by now.
Holy...whatever. That is some scary stuff.
I've never seen anything quite like it, and I'll bet all of you have the same feeling I did, which is you're trying to decide if you're a good person because you can't stop watching that explosion because it's really quite a spectacle.
At the same time, you know that people are dying at that moment, and you're thinking to yourself, How many times can I watch this video for entertainment before I'm actually the devil?
You know, it's a sensitive situation.
So, what are we going to learn about this?
The first thing I will tell you is that whatever we eventually learn about this is probably wrong.
It's probably just fake.
I feel as though this is in the class of stories.
That you're just never going to know what happened.
There might be an official story.
There might be one that even all the governments agree.
But I feel like we're not really going to know the story here, sort of, ever.
But here are some things we do know.
It's almost certainly that this was the chemical, what was it, ammonium nitrate, which I believe is the same stuff that Tim McVeigh used.
And it's a known amateur bomb material.
Now, if an area that's Hezbollah controlled or just Hezbollah heavy, if they've got enough of this sitting in a warehouse to destroy much of the city of Beirut,
and apparently one of the customs people was aware of it, And a customs person, you may not have heard this yet, I just saw it a moment ago, apparently he had, in the past, sent six different memos to the judiciary officials warning that there was a dangerous substance that could explode.
So the government had been warned at least six times by somebody who knew what he was talking about and knew it was there, and they decided not to act.
Does that tell you anything?
Not necessarily, because It could be just a bureaucratic thing.
It could have been they didn't know what to do with it.
It could have been they had plans to do something with it later.
I think he was recommending that they export it.
In other words, basically sell it, because it probably had some value.
But you don't want to keep that much in one place.
Now, in a related story, the Jerusalem Post is saying that Hezbollah Kept it there.
So they're saying that it was Hezbollah who was in charge of that ammonium nitrate.
But did you know that in a storehouse in London, until MI5 found it, they also had a bunch of ammonium nitrate?
And did you know that Hezbollah also stored hundreds of kilograms of it in southern Germany until that was uncovered?
Now, what does it mean to you that massive amounts of this material, which is, I think, in this context, given the context was used for bombs, is massively deployed all over the place?
Is there any doubt that they were trying to blow up a lot of stuff that maybe you didn't want to get blown up?
So, I ask you this.
What are the odds that that blew up on its own?
Do you think that Israel, for example, do you think that Israel was aware that these chemicals were there?
Remember, MI5 found them in England, Germany found them in Germany, so we know that intelligence agencies can find this stuff, and we know that a Apparently it wasn't the biggest kept secret in the world because this customs guy in Lebanon was asking them to get rid of it.
So what are the odds that Israel was aware that there was a gigantic facility of bomb-making material?
What were the odds that they knew that?
Not zero, right?
We don't know, but not zero.
There was certainly a good chance they knew about it.
Now, what would be the chances that Israel would act on it and, let's say, do something to sabotage it or blow it up just to remove that future risk from ending up in Israel?
Because I don't know how hard it would be to ship this stuff into Israel if they wanted to.
A little bit at a time, but where was it destined for?
And I ask you this.
Would it be justified for Israel to take it out if they knew that it was going to be a big explosion and the collateral damage would be extensive?
Would it be justified?
It's a tough one, isn't it?
Kind of justified. I'm not saying they did it because there's some story about somebody welding a door shut And that seems at least reasonably possible that that was part of the problem.
I wouldn't rule that out.
I wouldn't rule out accident, of course.
But would Israel have a moral ability to take that out?
Because here's my take on this.
This is way bigger than than just removing some potential bomb material from potential terrorist acts.
It's way bigger than that, given the scope of it.
And I wonder what this does to the psychology of the Middle East.
If you wanted Hezbollah to have a bloody nose forever in its own backyard so that it didn't look so good, The best thing you could do is have Hezbollah responsible for destroying the entire city of Beirut, or much of it, in the act of getting ready to do a terrorist attack on some other city.
Now, if this story remains a Hezbollah error, it doesn't matter who blew it up, in a sense.
I'm not saying Israel did or did not do anything.
I'm just saying that we'll probably never know And it may actually change how people feel about Hezbollah.
So it might be one of these events that even though it's an anecdote, it's a one-off, it's not really related to any larger issue.
It seems like just a tragedy in one place.
But the way we think about this, anecdotes and stories are really persuasive.
And I've got a feeling that the, let's say, support for Hezbollah May take a permanent hit.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
The death toll, they say, is 100, but lots of people missing.
And you're probably having the same reaction I did, which is, it's a lot more than 100.
I mean, if you saw the damage, I can't imagine it's not in the thousands.
Can you? I mean, how could such an area have so few people who would die?
It's got to be in the thousands.
Let's talk about something else.
Did you all see the video on Twitter of the Portland protesters trying to stop a pickup truck and it didn't go well?
So far, of the genre of protest things that didn't go well for protesters, you know, it's sort of a growing body of work, this might be my favorite.
It might be my favorite.
If you haven't seen it, there's several angles to it, and only one of the angles is fun.
The other angles don't quite tell you what's going on.
But essentially, there's a pickup truck that somehow didn't look like a good idea to me, ended up in the middle of the protest.
The protesters...
Tried to stop it.
And one of the protesters who was especially bold, shall we say bold?
We'll keep our insults for later.
Let's call him bold. He comes up with some kind of a motorcycle, scooter kind of a thing.
Was it a motorcycle? And he pulls it in front of the truck and then he just, like he's a badass, he just pulls in front of the truck and he drops it on the ground to block the truck.
And then he gets up and he's going to walk over to the driver.
He's like, man, I just pulled a Batman move.
I mean, I'm feeling like some kind of a superhero.
I mean, I had my vehicle, my Bat motorcycle, cut him off, cleverly put my vehicle in front of his truck to block his response, and then I'm going to swagger over to that.
There he goes, dragging my motorcycle under his truck.
One of the funniest things you'll ever see.
So, I don't know who gets to talk to the insurance company for that motorcycle vehicle, but he's got some explaining to do.
Can you explain the nature of the accident, sir?
Can you talk to my mom?
Hands mom the phone.
That's what I think will happen.
All right. Does anybody care about Portland anymore?
My empathy for Portland is now basically zero.
I'd say zero.
I can't care about Portland.
It's interesting. I like seeing the videos.
I like seeing what's happening.
But don't ask me to care.
Don't ask me to help.
Don't ask me to, you know, mourn if something bad happens to somebody during the protests.
Don't care. Now, I do think that the Portlandiers...
Is that a word?
Who say, well, it's been limited to these certain areas.
Well, it's probably true. So there may be a reason that the Portland people don't care too much.
Maybe it doesn't have much effect on their lives.
And if they don't care, I certainly don't care.
Speaking of stuff like that, Oprah came out as a racist yesterday.
Sort of surprised me a little bit.
You can read about it.
I tweeted it. But apparently she's just an open racist now.
I'm not even going to give you the details.
I was going to tell you what she said and why that's racist.
I don't even need to. It was so racist.
I'm going to do it anyway.
Their basic message was that having white skin is a life advantage.
Just period. That's all you need.
You've got white skin. It's a life advantage.
I feel like that's a little oversimplifying.
And racist.
It's just racist.
Because it certainly isn't true in employment.
Certainly isn't true in education.
Certainly isn't true in socially.
I can't think of too many places as true.
Now, it would be true.
Let me give you some examples where it would be true.
Would it be true if you go to a store and you're black and you're just shopping, And maybe people keep an eye on you.
It's like, they think you're a shoplifter just because you're black.
Yeah, I would say that's bad.
And I would say that's real.
But it's not high on the list compared to getting a job or going to college or, you know, those things.
So as annoying as that must be, one has to ask this question.
Is that because of white people?
Or is it because of the statistical reality which causes everybody to be a little bit wary because we're not good at pattern recognition?
Well, let me say this.
We use pattern recognition as our primary mode of understanding our world, but we're not good at it.
We get false patterns as easily as correct patterns.
So if there's a high rate of crime in one community, is it really reasonable to expect The people outside that community and even within the community.
It probably doesn't make any sense if you're black yourself.
If you're seeing somebody come in who's a member of a community with high crime, are you expected to act exactly the same?
Well, you should, right?
If you're a good person and you're trying to overcome your biases, you should.
But we're also human beings who operate on pattern recognition.
And that's a big ask.
That's why I always say that Black Lives Matter is completely discredited in terms of their slogan of thinking that Black Lives Matter, because obviously they don't.
If they did, they'd work on the highest priority, not the lowest priority.
The lowest priority is the number of people who get killed by police.
It's a small number.
Compare that to the number of people who get a bad education.
That's a big number, and it affects everything, including The odds of you being stopped by the police, including the odds of the shopkeeper giving you a little extra attention.
If you fix education, a lot of things get fixed.
And right now it's the racist teachers union that keeps black people from getting a good education.
I mean, I think that's just a fact, you know, because they limit competition, they limit charter schools, and basically all the solutions that would Make a difference to black students are stopped by the teachers' unions.
So the teachers' unions are clearly racist in the worst possible way.
But that's what I got to say about that.
I'm very disappointed in Oprah coming out as being a racist.
All right. CNN has some fake news about marijuana.
Their headline says, weed can be bad for your heart, but the article doesn't.
The usual. The headline doesn't match the article.
But in any event, here's the question you should ask yourself every time you see any article, it doesn't have to be in CNN, any article that says marijuana is bad for you in a way that will kill you.
It obviously is bad for people in terms of lifestyle, depending on who you are and how you're using it.
And by the way, I would never argue that point.
Marijuana is one of those weird drugs that Well, I suppose any drug has this quality, that it could be good for some people, harmless for other people, and it could just ruin other people's lives.
That is the nature of the drug, and you should not downplay the fact that it could ruin your life.
I've seen that.
But here's the question you should always ask.
What is the total mortality rate?
In other words, how soon are people dying?
If they are chronic users of marijuana versus never used it in their life.
And it turns out it's basically the same.
Somebody says pot saved my life.
I would say the same thing actually.
I would say that marijuana probably has kept me alive.
That's a longer story, but that is my sincere belief, is that it is a life-saving drug in my particular case.
Literally and specifically a life-saving drug.
Other people have had that experience, but don't...
And if you're wondering how I can say it can be bad for some people and good for others, it's not just that there's a different chemical...
Response, which I just assume for any drug.
But also, the nature of marijuana is that it tends to make you more of what you already were.
So let me just digress a bit.
If you haven't heard this before, it's a good filter on marijuana.
If you are ambitious by nature and creative by nature, you already were those things.
You are already ambitious and creative.
Marijuana can make you more ambitious and more creative.
That's my experience.
But if you are lazy and unmotivated by nature, it might make you lazier and more unmotivated.
So when I say it can kill you or it can help you, that's a small part of what I mean by that.
And that's independent of the mental health, independent of the physical health part of it.
It just makes you more of what you're inclined to be naturally.
And for some of you, you might not want that.
If you're having trouble with motivation, I don't know that I would recommend marijuana.
But if you're terribly motivated...
In my case, I have a problem with over-motivation sometimes.
So I can cut it back a little bit.
Anyway, enough on that.
Andres Bacchios.
He was tweeting some German statistics showing that Germany's death curve and stuff seems to be moving in the right direction.
But as Andreas pointed out in a follow-up tweet on the same topic, he said it was quite fascinating how many people immediately seem to know whether the German statistics is good news or bad news, and whether the U.S. is looking better or worse compared to them.
None of that can be said with certainty.
So that's your data analysis lesson for the day.
So the fact that Germany appears with this data, it appears to have a better grip on it than the United States.
Can you therefore conclude that that's true?
Nope. And if you think you can, you don't understand enough about how to compare things, enough about the complexity of it, You don't understand how many variables are different.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
And you don't understand how unreliable data is.
And you don't understand that we're only at halftime and that there's a lot more to play.
And there's no reason to think that Germany or any other country that gets a really good grip on it will keep it.
What would keep it? What would keep your country that gets a really good grip on it and really drives those...
Let's say it drives the deaths down to zero.
Let's say Germany drives the death stent of zero, keeps it there for two weeks.
Impressive, right? I don't know if that'll ever happen, but let's say they do.
But the rest of the world is raging.
Did Germany win?
No. No.
Hey, Carpe Dunctum?
Carpe Dunctum isn't back, is he?
I need to check into that.
So anyway, don't trust any data about anything.
That's the general thing you should learn in 2020.
My new exciting topic, which I'm trying to understand and I'm having a hard time of it, is the idea of the rapid but less sensitive testing.
So Carpe Dunctum is back on Periscope.
Can you be banned on Twitter but not on Periscope?
So I don't know what that means.
Alright, we'll look into that.
So anyway, there's a concept out there that I'm trying to understand its practicality.
And the idea is that for a dollar, maybe five dollars, you can make these easy spit tests where you could just test yourself by spitting in something and seeing if it changes color in a few minutes.
Now the downside, and here's a correction to what I told you yesterday, I think I refer to them as being less accurate.
That's not the best way to look at it.
The best way to look at it is less sensitive, meaning that it's not going to get somebody who has a little bit of virus that they just picked up.
But if you get a good viral load, it will pick it up fairly reliably.
And the thinking is that even if you missed Some people who just coincidentally were in that little zone of not much virus yet, you could miss all of them.
And you would still have something that would be so powerful if it caught the people who were really the big shedders who had, presumably you would shed more if you had more viral load, but I think that's subject to verification.
And so the question is this.
What is the regulatory barrier to that?
Because there's some kind of FDA emergency approval that's hard to get or they don't want it or something.
So there are a bunch of unknowns I'm trying to suss out of this.
But the basic idea of could there be a test that is accurate Sensitive enough, I'll stop using the word accurate.
So you should do that too. If we're talking about these cheap spit tests, you should talk to them in terms of sensitivity, meaning they're not going to get the small cases, not accuracy per se.
But of course accuracy is part of the story.
So here's my question.
Is it possible for a private company in the United States To produce this test in large quantities and also do their own internal testing to find out that it's sensitive enough.
Somebody says Carpe Dunctum at 2 p.m.
Eastern Time has a Greg Gottfeld on.
So you should watch that.
So I'm still looking into this.
I know that the...
I know that the task force has probably looked into this by now, or at least they're looking into it.
But I got some real questions.
Because if a private company could make this thing, the demand would be off the chart.
Let me ask you this.
If you could buy a, say, a $1 to $5 test that would be sensitive enough to know if you had a bad case, but maybe not that first day or so, Would you buy it?
I would. I'd buy a whole bunch of them.
I'd be testing away every few days, just in my own house, if I had them.
But here's the money shot.
Are you ready? When masks first became recommended, Maybe you didn't see this, but it's something I saw, which is that private companies really needed to get masks, and they were scrambling to get them for their employees.
Because if you're a private company, and there's something out there that can protect your employees, let's say masks, you have to get it.
If you think it's optional that a big, let's say, a Fortune 500 company, if you think it's optional, For them not to make sure that their employees have the right safety equipment, which in this case would include masks.
If you think that's optional, you've never had any experience with corporate America.
The moment something is known to be safer, in other words, will protect the employees, the moment that's true, or looks like it's true, they have to get it.
They just have to.
Because otherwise you're explaining later, you know, Why did you let this outbreak rage through your meatpacking plant or your call center when this cheap test was available?
How can you, this is a hypothetical of the future, you can imagine this conversation, how could you, Facebook, let your employees get this infection, X of them died, how could you let that happen when you knew there was this cheap test that probably would have prevented it?
It's a big liability.
It's something they need to explain.
And honestly, corporations are not the devil.
They're staffed by human beings.
And the human beings, even in human resources, who are barely human, sorry.
I created a character named Cat Burt, so I can say that.
But it's not personal.
There's probably no human who wouldn't want to protect their co-workers as well.
Forget about the corporate, forget about the liability, forget about how it looks for their brand.
Corporations are people.
They're going to protect each other.
So the demand for such a test, if it could be created, if it could be sensitive enough and accurate enough at the same time, the demand would be unbelievable.
There's no way we can make enough.
You don't even need the government to lay down any rules.
If you simply said, let's open up, just open up the businesses, do what you can, but at the same time, tests were widely available.
If you were a bar, would you open up or would you say, look, it's only five minutes to get into the bar.
You just stand in the line outside the bar, spit in the thing, it won't get all of you, But at least we're doing what we can do.
I think even a bar uses it.
Because, you know, a dollar per customer might be worth it if you could get it down to that.
Anyway, David Boxenhorn has been helpful in collecting a lot of these tweets and ideas and talking about this.
So if you want to follow him, you'll see him in some of my tweets at David Boxenhorn.
B-O-X-E-N-H-O-R-N I should say that Adam Townsend on Twitter if you follow him you know that he probably has the widest talent stack you'll ever see in your life.
It's like ridiculous the number of things he knows in different areas.
He speaks fluent Mandarin apparently.
And he is not sold on this idea of the cheap tests.
But... His explanation for why he's now sold on it, I don't understand.
So that's where I am at the moment.
So there is an argument by somebody who knows a lot more than I do, but I don't understand the argument.
That's where that's at. Just be aware that there's a counterargument.
George Takai, you may know him from playing Sulu in the original Star Trek series.
But also, at the moment, he's a big anti-Trumper, and he's very funny on Twitter.
He's come after me at least once on Twitter, but I like him.
I can't not like him because he's so damn entertaining.
And I think it's hard for me to dislike anybody who clearly has good intentions.
I mean, you could disagree with him on everything, but I can't dislike him.
First of all, I liked him as an actor.
I like him even better on Twitter because he's hilarious.
And he has good intentions, I believe.
I mean, it's what I see from him.
So somehow he doesn't bother me at all, whereas other people might, because I feel like their intentions are not pure.
You know, they just want to win or something.
I don't think that's the case with George Takei.
I think he's a good guy. He just has a different view of what a better world looks like.
But he tweeted this, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have it in front of me, but basically he asked, you know, he was trying to imagine how hard it would be to be the White House staffer who was asked to make a chart showing that Trump had done a good job on the coronavirus.
In other words, compared to other countries or anything else.
And I saw that and I thought, if I were that staffer, I could do that.
It wouldn't even be hard. How hard would it be To come up with some graphs that show that the United States is doing a good job on the coronavirus compared to other countries.
It would even be a little bit hard.
Now, if you think it would be hard, you've never done this for a living.
I've done this for a living.
So in my corporate days, this is exactly what I do.
I would present information to management.
And I would have control of what I showed them and what I didn't.
Do you know how easy...
Was for me to make something to look good or to look bad with the same data?
It's easy. You just make some assumptions, slap it together, and suddenly good becomes bad or bad becomes good.
So regardless of how the president is actually doing, so there's two parts here.
Is he actually doing well?
But independent of whether he's doing well or not, I could totally put those charts together.
Are you kidding me? Lying with data is the easiest thing in the world.
Wouldn't even be a challenge. I was going to tweet back at him, but I got bored with my own tweet because it was going to be too long.
But here's what I was going to say.
Well, let me show you my no Cuomo slide.
You know, the slide where we show how the president did if he had no Cuomo.
So I'd call that the no Cuomo slide.
The United States death rate without Cuomo.
Now, again, none of these individually are going to tell the case.
How about comparing the president only to the other countries that have similar strong states' rights with governors?
How would that look?
I don't even know who that is.
Can anybody tell me who would be our comparables in terms of having 50 or a lot of states that have individual power?
Is there any comparable?
Because if you're not comparing us to Countries that have that same state situation.
Is that an accurate comparison?
I would think not. How about comparing us to countries with the same average age?
Who's doing that?
Let me ask you this.
You know, you keep hearing that Africa doesn't seem to be having the calamity that you thought it would because they have less health care, we assume.
Here's a reason why.
Maybe. The average age in the United States, not average, the median.
So half of the people are below it, half of the people are above it.
In the United States, the median age for all of our residents is 39.
I didn't know what it was until I looked it up.
Very similar to China.
So the median age in China is 38.
Italy, older, 46.
And sure enough, they had a bad outcome.
And they have one of the oldest countries.
But what do you think is the median age in Africa?
What would you guess?
In the comments, before I tell you the answer, guess the median age in Africa, the age upon which half of the country is below it and half of the country is above it.
What would you guess? If the United States is 39, Italy is 46, what do you think Africa is?
It's between 16 and 18.
That's right. The median age in frickin' Africa is between 16 and 18 for a number of the countries.
I didn't look at every country.
But a lot of the countries in Africa, yeah, it's teenage.
Teenage is the median.
So is there a reason that Africa is doing fairly well?
Probably that. I mean, it's got to be some of that.
So where are the charts that only compare us to countries that have the same median age?
Haven't seen that yet.
Where is the country that shows the vitamin D levels in each country?
Where is the chart that shows the quality of the data?
So the only countries we're compared to are the ones where we trust the data.
Do you trust China's data?
I don't. How about Turkey?
Turkey's doing a great job, huh?
Don't know. Do you believe any data coming out of Turkey?
So the first thing I would do is do a slide of countries that we could trust the data or we think we can.
How do we look? If we're only compared to the countries that have reasonably good data, do we still look bad?
I don't know. I'd have to see.
How about countries with different quality of health care?
That's got to be a factor. How about different weather, different styles of outdoor living?
And then hydroxychloroquine.
I hypothesized that if it turns out that hydroxychloroquine works, that we should see a CNN effect, meaning that the more penetration CNN has on the Consciousness of the country in other countries, the less likely they would use hydroxychloroquine because CNN's been saying it's poison.
So the hypothesis is that if you just took all the CNN countries and compared them to all the non-CNN countries, that the countries who did not watch CNN as much, because I think it has penetration everywhere, but the ones who didn't watch it as much, or, wait for it, Didn't watch it in English.
Because if you don't watch the main, let's say, American news people in English, I don't know if you're watching them at all.
So, at the same time that I ask this question, and I'm keeping my My estimate of whether hydroxychloroquine works at 50%.
So later, if it turns out it doesn't work, do not come to me and say, Scott, you said it would work.
No. Never.
Never said that.
I said, looks like about a 50-50 chance to me, based on the unreliable information we're getting.
But, but, turns out there's a little kicker today.
Not only did the Swiss decide that they're going to use hydroxychloroquine, but can somebody remind me, does Switzerland also have doctors and scientists in Switzerland?
Because I was pretty sure that doctors and scientists and experts don't think hydroxychloroquine works.
And yet, and yet, suspiciously, the Swiss, who I think have doctors, I think they have experts, they've decided, they've looked at all the information, and while the RPT gold standard kind of test does not exist for the early use, they've decided that it's worth using.
Huh. Oh, that's just an appetizer.
Are you ready for the main course?
Here it comes. The next thing I tell you, I don't know how much credibility to put on it.
I really don't. But I'll report it.
I tweeted it. You can see for yourself.
So, Twitter user GummyBear.
And if you're not following GummyBear, just look for my tweet and you should follow GummyBear.
Is an alias, obviously, of somebody who knows what they're talking about but does not want to be public.
And a point alerted me to a test or an analysis by atcovidanalysis, another one you should follow.
And they're talking about a test, a trial, a pretty big trial.
Is it a trial or a study?
I guess it would be a study.
So what they did is they looked at all the countries where you were pretty sure, you know, they could verify with experts that hydroxychloroquine was being used early and often, and then they compared it to the basket of countries that were not using it or were using it sparsely.
What do you think was the difference between the countries that used hydroxychloroquine and the ones that did not?
Well, according to this study, And again, remember the context.
This is 2020.
The most important thing you should keep in your mind whenever you hear data is that it's wrong.
All data is wrong.
In 2020, all data is unreliable.
It's just, I'm sorry, I want this to be true.
But they say there was a 79% lower death rate in the countries using hydroxychloroquine early.
79%. Is that true?
Well, all data is wrong.
So I'm still at 50-50.
Now, the fact that they looked at all those countries, it feels like it's something that somebody else could check, right?
Doesn't it feel like somebody could say, all right, show me your work, This country, you got wrong, take that one out or something.
So I feel as though in the next week or so, people are going to pick it apart and they'll either confirm it or they will exclude it.
And by the way, this study also made some adjustments for some of the other factors.
Some of the other factors such as age, disease, etc.
Now, I don't think they probably looked at every factor you could look at.
But they did take out some of the major ones like age and disease.
79% lower death rate.
What if that's true?
Seriously. What if that's true?
Do you know how many people CNN killed if that's true?
And I mean that.
I mean CNN killed if this is true.
Because I do think there's a CNN effect.
Now I use them as a stand-in for the anti-Trump media, but They might have some explaining to do, I think.
I heard that Turkey has a good result because partly they're using hydroxychloroquine and partly they say that they have an extensive testing and tracing system.
That's right, Turkey reports that they have an extensive testing and tracing system.
So you say to yourself, what?
If Turkey can have an extensive testing and tracing system, why can't we have that in the United States?
The United States has mostly testing for people who have some symptoms, which is different from testing and tracing in a way that you can actually tamp down the virus.
Ours is more a medical diagnosis.
Testing to see if you have it, so that they can treat you, and by the way, keep away from other people for a while.
But we don't test in the way that we're trying to use testing.
to suppress the virus.
We don't have that. That's what the cheap tests could do if they work.
Now, do you believe that Turkey really has an extensive testing and tracing system?
Let me say this, having worked with many large organizations and in my capacity, not as mind reader, but as the Dilbert creator who knows a thing about bureaucracy, Here's my belief.
There is no country that's doing testing and contact tracing in any real useful way.
Oh, there are countries that say they are.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there are countries that say they're doing it.
But it is my belief there is no country doing it.
I don't believe it for a second.
And remember, all data is wrong.
Don't tell me data is plural.
I'm not hearing any of it.
Data is wrong.
And I'm going to make that common usage if it's the last thing I do.
Yeah. So don't believe anything about another country doing all this great testing.
That's BS. All right.
Have you seen today's latest Biden's brain is not working video?
I don't know if they're getting sadder as we go.
But I want to have fun with politics, because I use it as my entertainment, as many of you do.
I want to enjoy the horse race of it.
I want to enjoy the election, the back and forth, the tweets.
I want to enjoy it.
But when I watch Biden struggle to form sentences, I don't have enjoyment from that.
That kind of brings me down.
Because whoever is letting him do this is just unkind.
It's beyond unkind.
They're just jerks at this point.
I mean, the Democrats are just jerks for letting this go on.
Now, one assumes they have some kind of plan or backup plan they're working on.
But at this point, if you can't manage this...
If you can't manage this, it's just one guy who's got a medical problem.
Obvious one. If you can't manage this...
Oh, don't give me stutters.
Come on. We're way past that.
We're way past it's a stutter.
We're not even close to that.
But I hear what you're saying.
I don't know. My personal opinion is there isn't the slightest chance that Joe Biden can win the presidency.
I think all the polls will just continue narrowing, and they'll just narrow until the president has a solid lead, or at least maybe they'll get close.
Actually, some of the polls I assume are fake, so there should be some polls that show it's close on Election Day because they'll be trying to get their people out to vote, but I think the ones that are accurate If I had to guess, I'll bet on Election Day Rasmussen is going to say that Trump is ahead.
So that's my prediction.
My prediction is that on Election Day Rasmussen may be standing alone or possibly with a few credible polls saying that Trump is going to win.
And maybe the others will not.
If they're maybe not as accurate.
Or not as honest, if you will.
So... Yeah, the Biden situation, I'd love to tell you that it's stuttering, because most of you know I had a voice problem for several years, ten years ago, and I tried to form sentences that I could say, like a stutterer does, as opposed to sentences that were the right words.
So you end up saying all these weird, awkward, stilted sentences because it's what you think you can get out as opposed to what you think would be the best choice of words.
So I get that.
But that's not what I'm seeing.
That's not what I'm seeing at all.
And, you know, as a fellow sufferer of exactly that, not a stutter, but a voice problem that caused me to do workarounds the same way, I think I'd know what it looked like.
Somebody's asking about Kamala.
Well, I think she's still top choice.
I don't see any of the other candidates that have been mentioned as even being in the top tier.
I can't even imagine at this point.
But you know, the vice president pick is the hardest to predict.
All of the smartest political people will tell you the same thing.
If there's one thing hard to predict, it's who the vice president pick will be.
Because lots of times they just come out of left field.
Mike Pence was not on my radar.
So when I was guessing who Trump would pick, I just guessed from that small pool of people that I heard of and seemed like they fit.
And, you know, so I missed that one by a mile.
And I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong with the Kamala situation.
But let me ask you this.
So, and I'd like to remind you of this, because if I get this right, this will be my greatest prediction.
And the prediction was, from 2018, I said it was Kamala Harris would be the head of the ticket, you know, the nominee.
When she dropped out, I doubled down and said she's going to be the nominee.
After she dropped out.
Can you sit for a moment and register that in your mind, that I predicted in public that she would be the nominee after she dropped out?
Do you realize how big of a reach that was?
And here we are.
If I had to ask you, is it more likely that Biden will continue through the nomination process, become the nominee, and go on to finish as the nominee on Election Day?
After you saw this video today, if you saw it, watch this video today and tell me you think that the Democrats are going to go ahead and nominate him for the top of the ticket.
And if he's not at the top of the ticket, who is?
Now, I ask you this.
If Kamala Harris does not get selected as the vice president, is it because they're holding out that she might be the top of the ticket?
I'm just putting it out there.
I don't think you can guarantee at this point that Kamala will be the choice, because like I said, the vice president is just too hard to pick.
No matter how smart you are, no matter how good you are, it's just hard to pick.
So I'd probably bet against myself if I had to place a bet, but I'm going to stick with it.
I'm going to stick with it, and I'm going to say, we've never been so close to Kamala Harris being the nominee.
We've never been that close.
So if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, but we're close.
All right. Was I using daily affirmations for that prediction?
I was not. You know, I was trying to figure out what it was that made me think Kamala Harris was the one.
And some of it was, you know, she's a senator and she was good in at least the committee hearings.
She wasn't so good as a campaigner.
But, you know, she's a woman of color.
I mean, all of that seemed good.
But I was looking at it the other day and she has...
She has predator eyes.
And I ask myself, I wonder if that's predictive.
Predator eyes.
Meaning that you look at her and you say, oh yeah, she could kill somebody.
Right? You want your president to be able to kill somebody.
I want a president that I know...
If there was a home invasion, let's say they weren't actually the president with Secret Service, I want to know that if my president, the person whose personality I'm trusting to defend the country, I want to know if they were the victim of a home invasion and they got the upper hand on the invader, that they would finish him off, that they would actually kill him, that they could take a life in person.
Could Kamala Harris just look at her and ask me this, does she look like she could take a life In person?
I think yes.
Right? Look at Hillary Clinton.
Okay, I don't even have to finish the question right.
You look at Hillary and you say, could she take somebody's life in person?
Probably so. Probably so.
Could Trump take somebody's life, you know, if there was a reason?
In person? Yeah.
Yeah, I think he could. I think he could.
So, and even Obama...
I would say was a predator, right?
Meaning that you look at him and you say, does he have what it takes?
Like if he had to shoot Bin Laden himself, maybe that's too easy.
Everybody would shoot him. But could Obama kill somebody in person if he had to?
I think so. I think so.
So it has nothing to do with It has nothing to do with being white or black.
So whoever said that, you're on the wrong planet.
I think that we may pick our presidents based on just a feeling that they look more like predators than prey.
Let's take Jimmy Carter.
Did Jimmy Carter strike you as someone who could kill somebody if he had to?
Nope. He only served one term.
How about George Bush Sr.?
That's sort of a harder one.
But does he seem like he could kill somebody in person?
Well, he could. George Bush Sr.
could. I was going to say he was a one-term president, but yeah, both of the Bushes could kill somebody in person.
They both look like predators to me.
All right. That's just a theory.
That we want predators as presidents because they, in effect, they're being a predator on our behalf.
