Episode 1098 Scott Adams: I Grade the Democrat Convention, Trump and Q, Goodyear Gets Deflated, Biden's Brain
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Joe's best feature...is a flaw
President Trump's response to question about Q
DNC speech reviews
Barak Obama, Michelle Obama, Kamala, Hillary, Warren
Parents need to see what their children are being taught
President Trump's call for boycott of Goodyear
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It's about time. Yes, this is the place you go to get your day off to a good, good start.
And it's going to work today.
Sorry about the leaf blower that seems to be blowing leaves right outside of my window.
Quite annoying. And I guarantee you that it will last the entire time I'm on Periscope.
Why? I don't know, but apparently there are a lot of leaves exactly in front of my window of my office.
No place else. But he's going to spend a good hour right in front of my window.
So that's how my morning's starting off, but yours will be better.
And all you need is the simultaneous sip.
And watch this. Watch this.
Normally, I have the introduction to the simultaneous sip written on this piece of paper.
Because after years of doing it every single morning, I can't remember it.
But watch this. And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tankard, Chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flasp, a vessel of any kind.
Boom. Join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Who would be calling me during the simultaneous sip?
I mean, really, who calls me during the simultaneous sip?
Join me now for the simultaneous sip that makes everything better.
Go. Now you might ask yourself, Scott, how is it that today is the day you can remember the entire sequence of the simultaneous sip?
And the answer is this.
It has to do with how people learn.
I think it was yesterday, I got in the mail, a suspicious box.
I opened it up and it was a whole bunch of wrapped up Different items and I thought to myself This could be bad.
I don't know what this is all about And I start opening them up and it's a whole bunch of different items And it was presented as a puzzle.
There was a little note in there saying it was a mystery box And so I assembled the mystery And I realized that it was one item for each of the things that I say in the simultaneous SIP So I organized them on my table And by the way, this was sent by somebody named Amy.
That's all I know.
Somebody who watches the Simultaneous Sip.
I assume you're watching now.
Hi, Amy. And thank you for solving my problem.
So my problem was that people learn different ways.
And I could read something a million times, and I would never be able to memorize it, no matter how much exposure I had.
My brain just doesn't work that specific way.
But the moment it was visual and I could touch it and feel it and put it on my table and then look at it, memory was instant.
So now let me take this to the world of education.
If you're thinking to yourself, hey, school got worse because it used to be in person.
People think that's pretty good for a lot of reasons.
Now it's just watching a video of a teacher.
Much, much worse.
But if you can imagine what the world will be like when you can learn anything in a virtual reality world or an augmented reality where you see the real world, but there are items placed into it that weren't there before.
So, for example, if I were trying to remember that sequence, I could have just called up those images, looked at them, and then memorized them.
The ability to give you the kind of learning you need, everybody being a little bit different, is extraordinary.
So pretty much all of the stuff that's non-visual in the current learning environment could become visual.
That one change, just taking all the stuff that you just had to memorize, names and dates and stuff like that, and just turning them into something visual.
An actual movie that you live in.
You're not watching it.
You're living inside it.
So, where education can go, it's probably three times as good as what it is now.
But we're not there.
We will be. I'll bet in five years you're going to have the beginning of the augmented reality education.
And it's going to be mind-blowing.
It'll be better than in person, by far.
Alright, I've got a new rule that...
I try not to watch the news after 5 p.m.
my time. It's hard, but the news is so unpleasant.
And by the way, I would also lump in there any kind of entertainment drama.
Anything that has an element to the entertainment that there's danger or tension or stress or just bad things happening to people, I'm going to try to avoid them after 5 p.m.
I would try to avoid them all day long, Except that I do this.
It would be hard to avoid the do's and do these periscopes.
So I tried that last night, and that involved not watching the Democratic Convention.
But that doesn't mean I'm not going to comment on it, because I did catch up on it this morning, watched the key videos and the highlights.
And I think that watching the highlights tells you maybe even more than watching every detail of the actual convention.
And here's the reason. The things that get pulled out as the highlight clips or the things to remember, you imagine CNN, MSNBC, etc., they're deciding what opinions to give the public.
And you can watch it in real time.
So you may have watched the convention on your own and had your own opinions about it, but then you turn on the news and they tell you what to think about it.
And at the end of the news programs, after you've seen a few of these opinions that are similar, You started thinking, yeah, that's what I think.
You can watch them assign your opinion to you about what you felt about the convention after you watched it.
So your own feelings about it, you brought to CNN, and by the time you're done watching, you're thinking, yeah, Kamala Harris, she was a tour de force, assuming that you're leading in that direction to begin with.
So watching that in real time is disturbing and fascinating.
So I have lots of comments about that.
First of all, have you noticed that the big thing that people are saying about Joe Biden is that he listens, he cares, and he has empathy?
I assume that's because Democrats believe that's the part of his brain that's still working.
Because if they thought to themselves, you know...
Joe Biden is a lot smarter than President Trump.
I feel as if they would mention that.
If they thought that Joe Biden was better at, let's say, strategy than President Trump, I feel like they would have mentioned that.
If he were better at really just getting things done, I feel like they would have mentioned that.
But instead, they go for the one thing that you are sure is true, that Biden cares and he listens and he shows empathy.
And I would say that he does all of those things.
In fact, I will go further.
I would say that Biden shows the caring and the empathy better than President Trump.
Boom! Better than President Trump.
That's also why you should not elect him your president.
Because the best feature of Joe Biden is literally a flaw.
Now, why do I say that?
It's the same reason I say that I'm a terrible manager.
If you want somebody to manage your, let's say, your big division of your corporation, don't ask me to do it, because I'm bad at that.
And the main reason I'm bad at that is too much empathy.
Too much empathy.
The job of a manager and or a leader is to make people do stuff they don't want to do.
That's really the point.
Getting people to do what they want to do, well, that doesn't take much skill.
Do you want to eat this cookie?
Yes. Give me a cookie.
There you go. That's it.
But if you want somebody to enlist in the military and go fight a war, you've got to make a pretty good case for that.
So I would say that the job of president, leader, manager, anything in that domain, is really about not being too empathetic.
Empathy is what makes you a bad leader.
Now, you have to have some, right?
If you had no empathy, you would be a sociopath, and that would be dangerous.
But if you have too much empathy, you lead with empathy, then you make the problem that all Democrats seem to make.
And it goes like this.
If you're designing a system for human beings, the number one thing you're going to have to think about is their motivation and their incentives.
Because whatever humans are motivated to do, whatever their incentive is, that's what's going to happen in the long run.
So I think that the Republicans have a less empathy-focused view of the world because that view of the world gets you the best result for the people you care about.
So in other words, in the Republican view of things, The best way to show your empathy or to act on it is to do a good job designing a stable system that makes the country as a whole work.
And if you do that, it's going to be worse for some people.
Nobody likes that. But it is going to be.
You can't make everything equal all the time.
It's just not something that works.
You can try. It could be your goal.
You could try to make everything better for everybody all the time.
It could be your number one thing you're interested in.
But you still need to design a system, and systems tend to be not perfectly even in terms of how they distribute benefits.
So that would be the main difference, is that the Democrats seem to want to build systems, whether it's how the economy works or anything else.
They want to build systems that are based on good intentions.
Compare these two systems.
One, That is based on good intentions of human beings.
Good intentions. And the other, based on real motivations of humans.
Our greed, our impulse to get away with stuff if we can.
Really the dark side of humans, which is, we're not all that good all the time.
If you design a system that harnesses The good and the bad of people, such as capitalism, such as democracies.
I would say that they harness both the good and the bad of people.
In other words, they understand the whole human being.
And if you can build a system that can withstand the worst of humans, that's a good system.
Capitalism does that. So capitalism, you still need oversight and control, so capitalism doesn't become too far out of control.
But you can't really build a system on good intentions.
Do you know what would be a system built on good intentions?
Chaz, right?
The Capitol Hill thing.
The protests?
The protests are like a little civilization because it's every night now.
If it were one-off, you'd say it's just a protest.
But once you do it every night...
It becomes almost like a lifestyle system, if you will.
And that's allegedly built on people's good intentions.
The good intention of having no racism, of having a fairer society that's better for everybody.
That's a good intention, wouldn't you say?
Socialism, all these things, are very good intentions, and I don't think you should take that away from.
Indeed, I've said that the The big problem with Republicans in terms of their messaging, I've said that they should embrace the goal of the Democrats.
The goals of the Democrats are great goals.
They're great. Equality, everybody's got a chance.
There are no artificial, systemic things that are holding anybody back.
Who hates that?
That's all great stuff.
It's just how you get there.
The Republicans will build systems that Understand human motivation.
The Democrats will build one based on good intentions.
And you don't have to be a genius to know which one's going to work.
It's pretty clear.
That's well beyond the realm of opinion that a system built on understanding the whole motivation of people is going to work better than one based on good intentions.
We all know that's true.
And so here's what I would do if I were the Republicans and I wanted to kneecap the Democrats for their approach.
So they're taking the president-doesn't-care-about-his-job approach and he has no empathy.
Here's how I deal with that.
I would say, you know what?
Democrats are really good with empathy.
The world needs plenty of empathy.
In fact, I commend the Democrats for For their attention to caring and empathy, and I give them my full respect.
But the world doesn't run on good intentions.
The world runs when you've dealt the system that understands human beings.
That's what we're offering.
We're offering you something that works because it's a tested, motivation-driven, incentive-based We can tweak it, but that's what we're going for.
The Democrats are very, very obviously, and they're not hiding anything, they're going for a different kind of system, one that's built on good intentions.
You know how that works.
You're watching the protesters and the burning of the cities.
That's what good intentions get you.
Every bit of that problem, the burning of the cities, Every bit of that is based on good intentions.
You don't want to lose your good intentions, but you don't want to build a system that thinks that that's what drives human beings, because it's just not.
So I think that would completely kneecap the entire Democrats' point of view, which, by the way, is a similar play to when Bob Dole was running against Bill Clinton.
And Clinton Gore said, you know, all the niceness of Dole, we should appreciate it.
Very honorable, great service to the country, but he's planning for the past, and we're planning for the future.
It's the same play, just updated to the current situation, which is you give the other team their full due.
So the Democrats are trying to claim the mantle of the ones who care the most.
You should give it to them.
You should give it to them and say, you know, I wish we could be more like you.
And by the way, there's nothing artificial about what I'm going to say right now.
This is literally true.
You have to respect the Democrats for the caring and the fairness stuff.
You have to respect that.
Because their vision of where they'd like to be is incredible.
I'd like to be there, too.
Wouldn't that be great? But we live in a real world where you have to make real decisions and deal with real limitations.
All right, that's enough of that.
Jeffrey Miller on Twitter had this interesting poll.
He said, if Joe Biden turned up as your Uber driver, are you confident he'd get you where you need to go?
Now, I feel like that's something you could say of any president, because by the time you're president, you're a little disconnected from the real-world stuff.
You don't know what a loaf of bread costs, and you probably don't know how to drive a car after a while.
But that image is wonderfully visual, because you see Joe Biden, you actually see him sitting up there in his Prius, and he's confused.
He's trying to use his phone, and he can't figure out how to navigate.
But That is just a devastatingly good, persuasive question.
Joe Biden is an Uber driver and he can't get it done.
So here's my favorite part of yesterday.
Every now and then when you're watching the ugliness of politics, there'll be this little...
Flower that grows through the crack in the pavement.
You know, it's this bleak landscape of politics.
And there'll just be this little flower that finds a way, pushes its way through the concrete, and gives you this little feeling of happiness.
And this happened yesterday when the president was doing his press conference, and he was asked about Q, you know, the QAnon group.
And here's the question and the answer.
So the reporter asks, QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals.
Are you behind that?
And the president, as he often does, you know, this is a sort of a yes-no question.
You'd expect the president to give some kind of an answer that another human being might have given.
That's what you're thinking. It's like, well, here comes an answer that I would guess there are maybe a couple of ways you could go with this answer.
It's going to be one of those ways.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't. Here's what the president said.
He goes, is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
And then he says, we are actually, we are saving the world.
Now, this is what I call the Ping Theory.
I have to explain that.
The Ping Theory was developed when I was a teenager, and a guy I was working with We were talking about our summer job and this other person.
And this other person we were talking about, we agreed that he had this unusual quality, which is that he'll say nine things you think he shouldn't have said or were awkward or the wrong thing, and you'll think, you know, what's wrong with this guy?
He's like, socially, there's something wrong.
And then the tenth thing he says will be so smart that you just say, what happened?
Because you don't understand how this person who is one way so consistently, but then that tenth thing that he does will be beyond anything you could have done.
And you say, I don't know what I'm watching here.
And that's the ping...
And you can think of this as like an EKG, you know, a chart on a machine.
And the person is like...
Average...
Below average...
Average...
Below average...
Ping! And all of a sudden, the meter just goes off the chart.
And you go, what the hell just happened?
It's like this little slice of brilliance that just comes out of nowhere, and then it's gone again.
And you have to wait for it again.
It's like, I think there's another one in there.
So you wait for the nine bad tweets, the things that were imperfect, the time you didn't pass the fact-checking, and you're starting to think, man, you know...
It's sort of ordinary.
And then, ping! This Q answer was a ping.
This is one of those times where somebody said this to me first, but I was feeling it too, that there are times when Trump makes you hate him.
Makes you annoyed. You might be disgusted with the way he did something that you would have handled differently.
But then there are these moments, and this is just for Trump supporters, of course.
It's very subjective. But there are these moments when he makes you fall in love with him.
Do you know what I mean? There are moments when he makes you fall in love with him.
And this was one of those moments.
Because the fact that he was...
Well, I called him the commander in troll for this answer, and it felt like the moment he was activating the troll army.
I felt that this answer, when Trump said, is that supposed to be a bad thing?
We are actually. We're saving the world.
And I think he said some more on the topic, but he was also not condemning Q whatsoever.
And he acted like he didn't quite know what they were about, but if they liked him, that was great.
And that they probably also liked, you know, a better world, etc.
Now, here's why it felt like he was activating his troll army.
And if you don't know what I mean by his troll army, come on, you know what I mean.
It's all of us, right?
It's basically the entire online world.
Now, I don't think he had that intention, but it just had that feeling that the election started yesterday.
That was the beginning of the serious election.
Everything else was sort of, okay, you better do some training with the troops.
Alright, maybe we should position our troops.
Wouldn't it be good if we had some assets over here?
I feel like everything was just getting ready.
Until he said this about QAnon, and then I feel like that was the bad signal to just release the trolls, the troll army.
Joe Biden has no idea what's coming for him.
But, alright, so the reason I love this is that what is the biggest problem that the Democrats have made that I would consider just a blunder?
Hillary Clinton did it.
They're doing it now.
And the blunder is this.
That they would ever treat any Americans, no matter how much they disagree with them, they won't treat them as bad people.
And the president, as long as these QAnon people are not breaking any laws, they're not acting like racists, right?
He did condemn the neo-Nazis.
That's an easy one. But if you're just a citizen, and you just have a different opinion, you might be right, you might be wrong, you might be following a conspiracy theory, maybe you're not.
But don't you want a president who's not going to throw you under the bus as long as you're obeying the law?
Think about it. If you're obeying the law, no matter how crazy you are, or not, or not, who gets to judge who's crazy, that as long as you're obeying the law, you're in.
You're in the club.
That's the Trump proposition.
We've got our Constitution.
We've got our laws. If you follow those things, you're in the club, period.
I'm not going to tell you what to think, what to write, what to say.
If you follow those rules, you're on my side, and I'm on your side.
Very powerful.
Even the way he did it was not as explicit as I just said.
But the fact that he wouldn't throw Q under the bus, he wouldn't throw them under the bus.
I love that. Even I've thrown Q under the bus, right?
But I'm not the President of the United States.
If you're just a pundit, you can say whatever you want, as long as you're following the Constitution, following the law, and I guess following the terms of service in this case.
But for the President to do that knowing, that's why I call him the commander in control, knowing exactly the response he's going to get, And knowing that his supporters are going to think this is the funniest thing that's ever happened, that's why you fall in love with him.
He just refuses to do what the other side wants him to do, and he refuses also to throw Americans under the bus unless they've done some horrible thing.
All right. Does it seem to you that...
The Democrats were trying to portray themselves as the party of women, primarily.
Almost a female supremacy kind of a vibe.
Do you get that?
From the Democratic Convention?
It felt like it had very much a female superiority vibe.
And if I had to make one prediction about one demographic group and how they vote, I think black men Maybe not women.
Probably not women.
But I think black men are way, way more, let's say, Trump-curious than is going to be picked up in any poll.
I feel as though black men are watching, if they watch the convention, they're saying to themselves, this doesn't seem so much about me.
This feels like a party for and about women.
I'm not saying that's good or bad.
I'm not putting a value on that.
I'm just saying that that's what it looks like.
It feels like that's what they're trying to project.
So much so that hilariously, if you saw the People magazine photo, I tweeted this earlier, they have Biden and Harris posing for a photo.
But as someone else pointed out, they had Harris with the male pose, male body language, and they had Biden with female body language.
And somebody asked if that was intentional.
I don't know. So Harris was sitting on top of a table, and she had sort of a male-looking pose.
Now, of course, there's no such thing as a male pose or a female pose.
So what I'm talking about is sort of the traditional 50s, kind of what you'd expect would be a male or female pose.
And then Biden was below her.
Surprise, surprise, right?
He's below her, but he's a little bit closer to Just a little bit.
He's like a foot closer.
Doesn't make much difference.
But he's below her. Now, to me, the photography is sending a clear message that she's in charge.
She had the superior body language, she had the in-charge position, and he had the more submissive position.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
I think everybody's trying to present her as the real leader.
Now, I wanted to teach you, in case you didn't know how to do this, you're seeing this on CNN and MSNBC, how to pronounce Vice President Kamala Harris.
Because when they say she's running for the position, or that she will be, if she wins, the first vice president, there's a certain way that you need to say it, and it's how you say the first part, the vice president.
You want to kind of mumble that a little bit and emphasize the president part.
So here's how to do it incorrectly.
If she's elected, she'll be Vice President Kamala Harris.
That's all wrong.
That's all wrong. Too much advice on there.
Here's how to say it. If she's elected, she'll be the first president Kamala Harris.
So you just want to go...
So instead of vice, you just go first, first.
It might sound like there was a sound in the room and it just gets swallowed up.
And you want to hit the president part.
So you'll notice that there's a lot of vice, President Harris.
Alright, so now you know how to pronounce that.
So that's good. So I've been fascinated to see how the pro-democrat press...
Would describe Harris' ethnic background.
Because it's kind of tricky, right?
Because she is Jamaican and South Asian.
So neither of those are your standard words that you hear a lot in American politics.
And didn't it feel like she started out being black?
I feel as though...
It was only yesterday that she was described as black.
And there must have been a lot of poll testing on this.
Because imagine if you were a South Asian woman, or just South Asian, and you see somebody that you identify with as being at least half or whatever the percentage is.
You identify as, oh, I'm South Asian.
She's South Asian.
And then you see her party describe her as black all the time.
How would that make you feel?
You'd be thinking, well, half black?
Isn't it? What about the half that's like me?
Why am I not included in this party?
So, in order not to lose the people who would identify with one half of her, in order to make sure you nail down the other half, it's kind of a tricky thing to balance.
And so it looks like they might be going for Jamaican and South Asian as their best description.
Oh wait, now I take that back.
They called her first Black and South Asian.
It was somebody else who described her as Jamaican and South Asian, yeah.
So they're calling their first black and South Asian.
Now, I'm not black and I'm not South Asian, but I have a curiosity about how you receive that if you are black or you are South Asian.
I don't know the answer to that.
Because I wonder if, does it feel pandery?
Here's how I think I'd feel.
If you gave me somebody who is half of whatever I am, And tried to sell it as, you know, representing me.
I feel like my first impression would be something along the lines of, why am I only getting half?
You couldn't find a completely South Asian candidate?
Why are you trying to sell me half a candidate?
And if you're black, are you saying the same thing?
Are you saying, Are you telling me you scoured the country and you couldn't find a woman who was just black?
Because that's the population we're trying to represent.
It's a fairly tiny part of the population who is both black and South Asian.
The combination of the two, that's a pretty small number.
But why can't you give us somebody who's just black?
13% of the public?
A big part of the Democratic Party?
Are you selling us a little bit short here?
I don't know that I would feel that.
I saw a video of a woman who apparently is South Asian who was just delighted.
She was like crying because she was so happy.
So it could be that the ideal situation is that Kamala Harris just appeals to everybody because everybody finds something to like about her.
Maybe. I'm just curious about how people do actually respond to that.
I'll never find out, probably.
Then Hillary Clinton talked and Elizabeth Warren talked.
And you're going to think this is sexist, so let me tell you ahead of time this would apply to men and women.
So the comment I now make, I deny somehow specifically about women because it's a universal comment.
But it just happens to be about these two individuals who happen to be women.
Have I protected myself enough?
No cancellation for me today.
And it goes like this.
Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren both have crazy eyes.
Crazy eyes. Now, specifically, it's a specific kind.
It's the eyes are too wide when they're trying to convince you of something.
I've talked about this before, right?
That If somebody is talking to you with these eyes right now that I'm modeling that you can't see if you're only listening to this, if their eyes are normal and they're telling you what you should believe and why you should think this, these are your priorities, that could be convincing.
But if somebody widens their eyes to make their case, and if you pick Joe Biden, everything will be good and we'll have unicorns and popcorn every day.
The wider the eyes, this is my personal interpretation of body language.
I don't know if there's any expert who would agree with this.
But keep an eye on it, so to speak, and see if over time you see this pattern.
If somebody doesn't believe their own story, that's how they tell it.
If you don't believe your own story, you open your eyes wide.
When you tell it, Because you're trying to sell that you're honest.
If you wanted people to not think you're being clever and shifty, you don't want to have squinty eyes, you don't want to be no eye contact, and sort of looking around, because that would sell that you're trying to put one over on somebody.
But almost as obvious as if you correct for that and you overcorrect.
No, I'm not shifting and looking away.
My message is so believable.
Oh, look, you're right in the eyes.
Oh, look, you're right in the eyes.
And I'll wipe my eyes like big old saucers.
Oh, yeah? If you see that, that's somebody who doesn't believe their own message.
And you saw that from Hillary.
You saw that from Elizabeth Warren.
You can think of other people that you've seen that from.
So look for that. I watched Kamala's speech this morning, and I want to say two things.
First of all, Chris Cuomo and Don Lennon were doing their duo act talking about the convention, and both of them mispronounced Kamala Harris's name.
They both called her Kamala.
And this is after the Democratic operative gave Tucker Carlson a hard time acting as if he was disrespectful to her by intentionally mispronouncing her name as Kamala.
And then you turn on CNN and there are two biggest supporters, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, both calling her Kamala.
So that was pretty funny.
Anyway... Here's what I think Kamala was going for in her speech.
I think she was trying to sell herself as more friendly, personable, relatable, human, kind, empathetic, etc.
Because you think of her with a little bit of harshness.
If all you know is before the Democratic Convention, that's what you know of her.
You'd remember her for attacking Joe Biden, her friend, for being a racist on the debates.
That's pretty harsh. You'd remember her for attacking the President, saying bad things about him lots of times.
You'd remember her for being unkind to Brett Kavanaugh.
You'd remember her as a cop, allegedly kept innocent people in jail after there had been exculpatory evidence.
So these are all the allegations and feelings.
So if you're trying to soften that hard edge, you might want to have an impactful speech in which you try to be the softer, kinder, happier version who can give a positive message about the world.
I would say it failed completely.
It's very obvious that she's been coached hard, meaning that There's some serious outside influence that's really obvious in her presentation.
And she gave a speech yesterday that I'd never seen before.
In other words, her mannerism, her approach, her delivery, her body language, everything, was completely different than anything I've seen from her before.
And I would say it completely failed, in my opinion.
Now, I think she can correct that.
Because she was in the general area of where she needed to be, but she missed.
And the mismatch is that her personality does not fit with the skin she was trying to put on herself.
Let me make it not skin because somebody's going to say that was racist.
It didn't fit the uniform she was trying to put on.
And I think she would have done a lot better...
If she had found an artificial personality that was closer to her actual personality.
And what I saw was somebody who was trying to smile, and it wasn't real.
So she had this sort of over-smiled, I'm not going to lose the smile on my face.
And even if I'm going to say something that doesn't make you happy, you just look at my mouth, it's ready to smile.
It's so ready to smile.
I'm the happiest person.
Look at my optimism.
My mouth, it looks scrunched up like I just ate an lemon.
But I'm still smiling.
I'm still smiling.
And look at my eyes.
My eyes are...
I've got kind eyes.
And I'm smiling.
No matter what I say.
I'm suicidal. I'm smiling.
And it looked...
There was some sort of...
Uncanny Valley situation going on that it looked so fake that I was really sort of turned off by it.
And I kept wanting her to just stop making that face.
But I think that was the face that she was coached into.
And then in terms of her delivery, it was slow, boring, forgettable.
It was really bad.
As speeches go...
I thought it was quite, quite bad.
That said, how do you think Democrats received it?
Because they're the only ones who matter.
And the answer is, they probably loved it.
They probably loved it.
Or at least the people on television talking about it said it was an amazing speech and she was introduced to the world and everything will be different.
But I think she got a little overcoached and she didn't get rid of her nervous body language.
I make fun of this all the time, that she moves too much when she talks, and she was doing that again.
So now she had a mismatch between the trying to talk slow and kind.
I'm trying to talk slow and kind about all the things in my background and what made me the person I am.
But her body was doing something and a touch with what she was talking about.
Her body was acting like there was a problem.
I got ants in my pants.
I've got a little itch.
I wish I could... I've got an itch in the middle of my back.
I wish I could scratch it, but I'm talking.
So the facial expression, the voice, the body language, they just looked like bad acting.
So I would say it didn't work at all.
However, where her coaches are trying to get her is definitely closer to what she did last night than what she normally does.
They haven't found that sweet spot.
I don't know if they will. But what I've said before about Eris is, don't underestimate her ability to learn.
Because she is ambitious, she is smart, she got all the way to here.
That's not an accident.
She can learn.
So you might see, even in 30 days, you might see an entirely different look from her, and it might be good.
Because her ability to find the right...
Sweet spot that actually matches her natural personality better.
I think she could do it, but she's not there.
I predicted that you would see last night what I call generic attacks on Trump because they can't attack him on specifics.
The reason they can't attack him on specifics is that leaves too many counterattack possibilities.
If you say, well, he ruined the economy, I think people would reasonably say, uh, there was a coronavirus.
Sort of made a difference.
People will say, well, he botched the coronavirus response.
And then people would say, well, what is it you're proposing we would do?
And if they ask that, you would find out it's what we're already doing.
So anything that they would attack on the, you know, and how about, you're not good with terrorists.
And then the Republicans would say, tell Soleimani that.
Soleimani? Soleimani?
Tell ISIS he's not good with terrorists.
I mean, it's really hard to make an attack on the details because he's so good on the details.
If you can measure it, he probably did well.
Can you measure the number of people he put on the Supreme Court?
You can. You can just count them.
It's a measurable thing, and according to the people who voted for him, did well.
Can you measure unemployment before the coronavirus?
You can. Can you measure GDP? You can.
Can you look at the stock market and see if at least the people are optimistic about the future, which is sort of what it tells you?
You can. There's an actual number.
It's called the Dow Jones.
So they're staying away from anything you can measure, because that's just trouble.
Which is, if you only knew that, let's say you came from another planet and you were trying to decide who would be the next best president for the next term, and the only thing you knew is that one side was talking about measurable accomplishments, and the other side was criticizing them on things that have nothing to do with the accomplishments.
Who would you pick if that's all you knew?
So here are the non-words and generic attacks that we heard from last night.
By the way, I tweeted yesterday, before last night's stuff, that what you'd see is this.
People would be saying, Orange Man is, and they fill in the character flaw, whatever character flaw they want to give Trump, and therefore, some bad outcome.
But they won't be connected.
Yeah, Baghdadi, Soleimani, he did get rid of a few people.
Trump did. All right, so here are some of the things that they said about Trump.
So they said that Biden has decency, honor, and dignity, which implies that Trump doesn't have decency, honor, and dignity.
So then I say, okay, suppose that's true.
Suppose everything you said is true.
How does that matter to me?
You're not connecting the dots.
Okay, let's say Trump doesn't have as much decency, honor, and dignity as Joe Biden.
Let's say I accept that.
How did that make my taxes change?
Did China attack us?
Did NATO kick us out?
How in the world does any of this translate into anything that matters to the bottom line?
I can't even see the argument for it, much less see it in the outcome.
Here's some more. Kamala Harris said that one of the things that Trump has done that's bad is that we have a loss of certainty.
A loss of certainty?
When did we ever have certainty?
Do you ever remember a time back in Obama's days when we had certainty?
About what? We don't live in a world with certainty.
What kind of a dumbass thing is that to say about a president?
That he's caused the loss of certainty?
I don't know. And of course, chaos.
They like to use chaos.
What is the Republican version of chaos?
If you're going to say...
If you're going to say this president has too much chaos, here's what I'm going to say.
We call it shaking the box.
I'm not a Republican, but I'll use we in this case as pro-Trump.
He shakes the box.
We talk about this in positive terms all the time.
In every realm that he enters, the first thing he does is he shakes the box.
Because whatever was happening before he got there wasn't working.
And if And if you couldn't fix it with the current situation, whatever topic you're talking about, if there's something about it that's just stuck and a solution is hard, the first thing he does is he just grabs it and shakes it.
Alright, now what? It looks like things are a little different.
At least the way we're looking at it is different.
Did that work? No?
Let me shake it again. And watching that happen in real time, It's easy to say that's chaos, because it looks like he's just trying stuff all the time.
He'll just toss out an idea.
How many times have you heard, as it happened, that Trump would tweet something, and then some agency within the government would say, no, we don't do that, or we can't do that, or they'll disagree with him, or that's not our policy or something?
Happens all the time. Is that chaos?
Nope. Because do you know what happens every time that happens?
Every time that happens, the entire brain of the country, all of us individually, we start focusing on that thing he wanted us to focus on.
Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong, maybe he disagrees with his own administration.
But what happens is, the actual practical outcome is that we all learn about that thing.
We learn why he was wrong, if he was wrong.
We learn what is right.
We learn why they're doing it the way they're doing it.
And we learn what the obstacle is.
And we learn it instantly.
And sometimes, that helps.
Does it ever hurt?
Not yet. I can't think of a time.
Can you think of a time that Trump tweeted that thing that wasn't true and something bad happened?
I can't. The only times that something like that may have sort of happened Is when the illegitimate press, the fake news, turns it into something it wasn't.
If you take away the impact of the bad intentions of the press, if you took that into the equation, he doesn't really cause any trouble with his tweets that are accurate, inaccurate, provocative, not provocative, offensive, not offensive. It doesn't really seem to hurt anything.
It just makes us smarter.
And it makes us focus.
They call it chaos.
The other thing Harris says is we need a president who will do the work.
Do the work?
That's sort of an identity politics term.
Doing the work means brainwashing yourself into a new point of view.
Because you do have to brainwash yourself to adopt any view.
The current view you have is probably a result of brainwashing.
But doing the work is the process of re-brainwashing yourself in a different way.
But it's kind of non-specific.
And then Obama...
So watching the CNN hosts and guests talk about Obama and Michelle Obama's speeches is really...
It's really fun if you're not on the same page.
Because you're just seeing like it's a different world.
And apparently they think that Michelle Obama did a great speech, one that was better than anybody else's speech.
I watched much of it.
I didn't see that at all.
I didn't think it was even good.
Did you? Now, I can't tell how much of this is bias, because the team element of just wanting to agree with your team is so strong.
But I don't feel as if AOC had given a speech.
I use her as my generic example of somebody who's a good communicator.
I don't feel like I would have had that same feeling if AOC had given a speech.
Because I think she's a whole different level.
I don't think Michelle Obama...
As good as her intentions are, I think she's a quite honorable person, but her speech?
I didn't even feel that was above average, really.
And then Obama gave his speech, and I thought, well, I've watched him for a long time.
That man can give a speech.
And I thought to myself, Obama's going to be strong.
He's really going to be bringing the heat.
And of course, CNN says that's exactly what happened, that he was He just, you know, eviscerated the president and, you know, really came strong.
And then I listened to what he said.
It was the weakest damn thing.
Here's some of the things he said.
Now, remember I told you that the leaf blower would find leaves directly below my office window for a solid hour?
I wasn't wrong.
It's been a solid hour of weed blowing right below my window.
How is that even possible?
Anyway, here's what Obama...
I might murder the leaf blower guy in a minute.
Obama said that I never expected that my successor, meaning Trump, would embrace my vision or continue my policies.
So I'm already bored.
My successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies.
So that's pure Obama talk.
Every word is a lawyer trying...
Seriously? I think the leaf blower is going to come into my...
Alright.
Don't swear. No cursing.
But if that leaf blower shows up in my office, I would not be surprised.
I don't know how much closer he can get to where I'm sitting.
Oh God, this is bugging me.
I'm going to try to get over this.
And by the way, this is what Obama said.
If you can hear me over the leaf blower, this is what Obama said.
I didn't expect him to embrace my vision or continue my policies.
I did hope for the sake of the country that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously.
What? His attack His attack on Trump is that he read his mind and he saw on the inside of Trump's mind, where nobody else can see it, he saw in there that Trump doesn't take the job seriously.
Do you get that?
Is that what you're seeing?
Are you feeling as if the president doesn't take the job seriously?
How about, why don't we ask ISIS? Hey ISIS, do you think the president took the job seriously?
Oh that's right, you're all dead.
How about, let's talk to Iran.
Hey Iran, do you think the president's taking his job seriously?
Yeah, you do. How about China that we're decoupling from?
Didn't see that coming, did you, China?
Hey China, do you think the president's taking it seriously?
He's decoupling and destroying your whole damn country for the benefit of the United States.
Is that taking it seriously?
Because that sounds pretty serious to me.
The president is willing to send in the National Guard to fix the democratic violence in the cities, but they have to ask.
They're ready. Does that sound like not taking the job seriously?
No, it's the opposite.
That's taking the job really, really seriously.
How about the fact that he brags about, before coronavirus, how good the employment was for black Americans and every other group?
Does he say that a lot?
Yeah! He can't stop saying how good employment was before this trouble.
So, I've never seen anybody take anything more seriously than the presidency, and for that to be their line of attack, they're reading his mind, and he's not taking it seriously?
Are you kidding me?
If there's one thing that I would say with complete certainty, he's taking it seriously.
And here's the other thing.
I always think that it's true that the person changes the presidency.
It's true that Trump has changed the presidency.
Everybody who inhabits the office changes the presidency a little bit.
But, far more than that, the office changes the person.
And it's my belief, and I'm quite firm in this belief, that unless you have somebody who's literally crazy, by the time they become president, they are so indoctrinated in being A good president and making sure the country does well, that they can't do anything else.
Now some will do a better job, some will be a worse job, but they all care by the time they get to the presidency.
Even if they didn't on day one, they become indistinguishable from the country.
Once you're the president, it's not like you have a good day but the country has a bad day.
That can't happen.
It can't happen when you're the president.
If the country does well, you had a good day.
If the country did poorly, you had a bad day.
And I don't care who you are, Trump, Obama, Clinton, Reagan, it doesn't matter.
If the country does well, you had a good day, period.
If the country doesn't, you didn't have a good day.
And there's no way that changes, and there's no way that you should be dumb enough to think that Obama can read Trump's mind and see in there there's a lack of seriousness.
Because that would be just batshit crazy.
It doesn't matter who it is, Trump or anybody else.
They're serious by the time they're in that job.
There's no option. You don't have the option of just playing at that job.
Maybe you could find ways to enjoy yourself, but he's not playing.
It's serious business.
Here's some other faint praise he said about Biden.
This is Obama. Quote, He made me a better president.
He will make it a better country.
Now, how do you interpret he made me a better president?
Wasn't that Obama bragging about himself?
If the best compliment you could give another person is that they made you better, that's a little bit more about you, isn't it?
Yeah, I think Obama was bragging how he got better.
Because of Biden? I don't know.
Exactly how? What was it that Biden did that made Him a better president.
I don't know. It's unstated.
And then he says, he was my brother in the White House.
What's that mean? Are we supposed to like him as our president because he was your brother in the White House?
It's all these nonsense kind of words that if you didn't put any critical thinking to it, you'd say, oh, this makes sense.
I love Biden because he was like Obama's brother in the White House.
It doesn't mean anything.
There's no meaning.
Alright. What else did he say that was...
But he never did.
This is Obama talking about Trump.
For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work.
So this is the phrase here, the work.
He has no interest in putting in the work.
No interest in finding common ground.
Based on what? How can you tell somebody has no interest in using the awesome power...
Oh, it's just bullshit. So I would say that Obama's speech was weak.
Now part of that is that if you watch Trump for four years, Trump brings the entertainment, he brings the energy, he brings the provocation, he brings the whole package to a speech.
And we used to think Obama was really good at this.
But now I watch it, and even though other people are saying he nailed it and this was a powerful speech, I didn't see any of that.
It felt empty and listless and...
And completely bereft of energy.
I saw it as a pillow fight against a knife attack, really.
On another topic, I think we need an executive order to allow parents to always have a telestream, a live video, into classrooms.
Because, as you know, the teachers' unions are destroying America.
And by the way, if you don't know how they're doing it, the teachers' unions have tons of money Because there are lots of teachers.
As long as there are lots of teachers and they all pay dues, you're going to have a lot of money.
So the nature of who they represent, just because there are a lot of them, guarantees that they'll have a lot of money from the dues, and then they can use that money politically.
So part of what the teachers' unions do is, you know, they get the teachers' good You know, good representation.
And they do that very well, because the teachers have really good representation.
It's a strong union. But part of the reason that they do that, or that they can do it, is that they're buying politicians.
They can fund a campaign at the local level and pretty much get whoever they want elected, which is Democrats, because they have so much money.
And then once elected, they basically own that politician because the politician needs continued support or they can't get re-elected.
So the teachers' unions are rich enough that they can control local politics, which allows them to control basically way too much.
And also, they can control so much politically.
Seriously, how is there still a leaf blower outside my window?
I'm going to lose it in a minute here.
I mean, I'm just going to lose it.
You can't blow that many leaves in a ten-foot square area.
It's just not possible.
Alright, enough of that.
I don't even know what I was talking about.
I'm so angry now. About the classrooms and the teachers' unions.
So that's how the teachers' unions do what they're doing, which is destroying the lives of families and perpetuating systemic racism because they're so powerful that they can get rid of their own competition.
They can even make it impossible to have a charter school or a private school because they control the politicians and the politicians control whether there's competition for schools.
It's the worst system you could ever imagine.
Do you know who designed that system?
And who's in favor of that?
Democrats. Because as I've told you, their empathy is excellent.
Excellent empathy.
Caring? First rate.
If you want somebody to just care about something, Call a Democrat.
They are pretty good at that.
I give it to them. But they also have too much power and they've designed a system that doesn't take into account human motivation.
The human motivation of the teachers' union is to protect itself.
Is that a high goal?
No. It's not.
But Republicans would design systems that understand that people have motivations and The incentives, and if you create a teachers union and you give them that much money, they're going to want to stay in power, they're going to want to keep their money, and they're not going to do things that are good for the public, they're going to do things that are good for the teachers and the teachers unions.
It's a bad system.
So one way around that system would be, I don't think you could do this necessarily with an executive order, but who knows what you can do with an executive order these days, and that is Seriously, there's still a leaf blower out there.
It's been over an hour.
For one hour, that leaf blower has been directly below my window.
An hour! How is that even possible?
And if I go outside with the camera to show you, you'll see him right below there blowing leaves for another half hour.
I don't know what's going on there.
I can't even talk about this anymore.
I'm so mad. Yeah, I can't even go on anymore.
I've done enough. We'll talk about this other stuff later, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Oh, hold on.
Did he just stop?
Oh my God, that just happened, didn't it?
The moment I touched my screen to end this periscope, at exactly that moment, the leaf blower stopped.
That really happened.
All right. Well, let me say what I was going to say.
I will go on. I can actually think now.
It is really hard to think when that's going on.
So we should have cameras in the classrooms.
If an executive order could do that, that'd be great.
I doubt it can. But I imagine the schools would have some control over that.
There might be some privacy issues.
But unless the parents can directly see what's happening in the schools, it's not going to change.
So if we could have body cams on police...
Why can't we have a body cam, so to speak, in a classroom?
Not on a teacher, but just in a classroom.
There might be some privacy issues, but if there's something happening in that classroom that you don't want parents to see, isn't that a problem?
I feel like the parents need to have control of that, and that would be a better system.
Now, would you get too many complaining parents?
Probably, but it's a better system than what we have.
Rasmussen is teasing that something happened with the president's approval.
Apparently, overnight, the president's job approval jumped up sharply.
He got way more approval overnight.
Is there anything that's been happening, let's say, the last, I don't know, Day or two days, is there anything happening politically that would make the president's approval go up?
Could it be the Democrat convention?
Because it's sort of the only thing that's happening that isn't just a continuation of things that have been happening.
Kind of feels like that.
All right. In normal years, I would say the fake news is a good term for the fake news, but in an election year, this is just disinformation, wouldn't you say?
It feels to me like the news is just a disinformation operation now.
It's definitely worse than it was even during the...
Well, I don't know if it's worse.
But watching Chris Cuomo trying to spin the Russia collusion as if it sort of, sort of, kind of, in a way actually happened...
But it didn't technically happen, but in a sort of kind of way that you can talk about it, maybe it did happen.
And that the idea that there was some kind of a conspiracy and that Obama was involved is just crazy talk because Obama wasn't involved with the FISA. That was actually a reason that Chris Cuomo gave.
That since Obama wasn't involved with the FISA process, therefore logically he wasn't He didn't know what was going on.
Doesn't make any sense.
Then he complains bitterly that the campaign was not spied on.
What? It wasn't spied on.
It was definitely spied on.
That we don't have to wonder about.
But they use the word spied.
Well, the definition of the word spied may apply to a slightly different situation.
We know that.
We know that the word spied...
It has a more specific meaning.
You're not really answering the question.
If they intentionally surveilled the president's people, which is obviously what happened, that was spying.
You can try to put a different word on it, but that's not going to change anything.
The president also signaled that boycotts are going to work both ways from now on.
And he actually called for a boycott on Goodyear tires.
Now, I don't know if that was a good idea or a bad idea, because it turns out that Goodyear has 60,000 employees.
And if you are any of those 60,000 employees and you just found out that the president targeted your company for destruction, you might not want to vote Republican this time around.
So, I'm not positive.
Going after a company with that many employees, I'm not positive that was a good play.
But here's what I love about it.
And again, there are times when you fall in love with Trump.
You don't just like what he did.
And here's what I do like about this.
The problem of these boycotts, in other words, people being canceled, losing their job for a political opinion, etc., is so big that That the president basically said he would put an American company and a business for doing it.
Think about that.
The president of the United States has identified this problem as big enough that he would put a huge American company right out of business.
He's the jobs president and he would put this damn company right out of business for just that.
Do you hate that?
I don't know if it gets him elected.
I just don't know if it's wise politically, but you kind of like it, don't you?
You kind of like it, if you don't work for a Goodyear, of course.
That would be pretty bad over there.
But if you see that he's willing to actually bankrupt, and I don't think this will happen, by the way.
I doubt there will be much difference in Goodyear's business.
But he showed a clear willingness to bankrupt a major American company over this.
Are you okay with that?
You kind of are, aren't you?
You kind of are.
Because this cancel culture would destroy the country.
And he just dropped the gauntlet.
And he said, I'll tell you what.
If you want to play this game, it's not going to be one-sided.
You're not going to be the only one playing.
And let me show you by putting on the line an entire American company.
An entire, ha, pun.
I kind of liked it.
Even though I don't know if that helps him get elected, but I kind of like he would bankrupt a major American company over this.
Because that feels like he has your back a little bit, right?
If you've been cancelled, if you're afraid to talk up at work and have an opinion, feels like he's got your back a little bit now, doesn't it?
Yeah, and you're looking at the comments.
People are saying they love it. Now, I don't want anything bad to happen to Goodyear, and I think the details of what they did is a little murky.
I think they were trying to be inclusive and not political.
They just sort of misfired a little bit on the messaging.
So, you know, I don't know that Goodyear is worth boycotting, but I do like the fact that the president was willing to actually execute a major American company over this.
That's how important it was, over this.
He was willing to execute them.
Totally on board with the attitude, but maybe not Goodyear.
Here's a little red pill for you that might get me assassinated.
I said in the long run that all governments will be controlled by their own intelligence services, but that if Trump wins, we can stall that a little bit, because Trump is not.
But you can't hold it off indefinitely.
And here's the thinking.
The intelligence operation of any country We'll eventually have control of the leaders and the country, because that's what they do.
That's their skill set.
And while they might not succeed in any given year, so maybe 1989, maybe nobody was trying to take over the government or get control, but if you wait long enough and you have enough different people who cycle through the intelligence agencies, somebody's going to make a play For controlling the country.
They'll have an argument where it's good for the country or not.
But somebody's going to make a play.
Let's say nine out of ten times they fail.
They only have to succeed once.
And then they own the country.
You could argue that J. Edgar Hoover succeeded that way.
He had enough blackmail, I guess, on different politicians that effectively, if it was an issue that Hoover cared about, he controlled it.
So in effect, Hoover kind of ran the country but only cared about certain things, so it didn't matter so much.
What if they start caring about more stuff?
So in the long run, the only way it can go, because the math is inevitable, if you've got an agency that has the talent to take over a country, that's what they do.
That's what they do. And you give them infinite time to try it.
Well, it didn't happen in the 60s.
Well, it didn't happen in the 70s.
They tried, but it didn't happen in the 80s.
The 90s, took a run at it, didn't work.
It's not going to not work forever.
And also, you wouldn't know if it already worked.
Now, if you're Russia, and you've got Putin as the head of your country, you could say, well, it looks like it worked in that case.
You don't think that his KGB stuff helped him become the leader?
Of course it did. Is it a coincidence that George Bush Sr.
was the head of the CIA and then became president?
Maybe it's a coincidence.
Maybe. So the question you have to ask yourself is, since it's a guarantee, just mathematically, risk management, it's a guarantee that intelligence agencies eventually control every country they're in, has it happened yet?
Has it? You don't know.
And you wouldn't know.
But one of the things you'd look for is that the media, the messaging coming out of the news, would be fake in a certain way.
And it is. So if you look at the news, it looks like it's just coming out of intelligence agencies.
Because now it's just disinformation.
It's no longer this harmless little fake news where they're picking a side and They know who their audience is and all that.
It's way beyond that.
Now the CNNs and the New York Times are directly trying to run the country through the way they cover the news.
Who does that tell you is in charge?
Is it the fake news making their own decisions?
That they've all decided to cover things a certain way?
Maybe. Could be.
Could be that. But it suggests that intelligence services are already controlling at least the news.
So President Trump, I believe, is free of that influence, but that's the thing he has to beat.
So he's fighting the fake news, and the fake news may or may not already be controlled by intelligence agencies.
Now, if you follow, say, Glenn Greenwald and a lot of other people, they will tell you that NBC, and therefore I suppose MSNBC, Are just direct organs of the CIA. And that they basically are just CIA cutouts.
I don't know what a cutout is.
I shouldn't use official words when I don't know what they mean.
But the question is, how many of the other organizations are in the same situation?
