Episode 1146 Scott Adams: Trump Escapes From Walter Reed Hospital and Tells us to Not Fear Coronavirus. How's That Working Out?
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Biden townhall, many lies...including "fine people" HOAX
Moral character magical thinking
President Trump's post-hospital video
25th Amendment while medicated?
It's not the President's job to always tell the truth
How I'd frame the President's leadership
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Well, I'm happy to announce that the air quality where I live in California is now moderate.
Moderate. That's right.
I could walk outside for short periods.
Yeah. Yeah.
For a little while the weather teased us and for a few days I could actually go outside.
I could leave my house safely.
Not so much today.
But I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
So, how's everybody feeling about the country?
How are you feeling about politics?
How are you feeling about your personal situation?
How about that coronavirus?
How are you feeling about that?
What about those polls?
What about all the drama?
How are you feeling about all this?
Does it feel as though...
Everything's going wrong and it seems almost helpless and hopeless.
Well, that, my friends, is the third act.
Yeah, you are right in the middle of the third act.
The way it's supposed to look is like there's no way out.
If it looks to you like, oh my goodness, there are lots of ways this could go, but none of them look especially good, you're in the third act.
How will it turn out? Well, we don't know yet, do we?
That's what makes it the third act.
If you could see exactly how this will be resolved in a good way, it wouldn't be the third act.
It's the unknown that makes it special.
And let's talk about all of those things.
But I will tell you that I remain optimistic.
That's not to say that people won't die from the coronavirus and that will be tragic.
That's not to say that there won't be more violence in the streets.
I'm sure there will be. And it's not to say that we won't have all kinds of surprises and shocks and punches in the stomach.
But you know what?
We're ready. We're ready for all of that.
We are so ready, this country and indeed the world, We will get through this.
And we will get through it better.
We'll be smarter.
We'll be stronger.
Those of us who make it through.
Which will be most of us.
One of the most fun stories that's happening is the Conway family.
So Kellyanne Conway has taken time off from her professional life to be with the family.
And of course you know her husband George Conway is the president's One of his biggest critics.
I guess he stepped back from being a critic for a while, too.
And they've got a 15-year-old daughter, Claudia, who is absolutely hilarious.
I feel bad for Kellyanne and for George.
They have to deal with a teenage daughter.
But there's something about the whole story that's so completely human and relatable.
That is just sort of perfect.
If you haven't seen the latest video that 15-year-old Claudia posted that her mother did not appreciate, you have to check it out.
You have to hear Kellyanne swearing at her and then finding out that she's being recorded.
Next thing you know, it's posted on social media.
I would just say I have good feelings About both daughter and mother, and I have some empathy for George as well, just that they're going through it.
None of it's terribly important.
It doesn't affect you.
It doesn't affect me.
And I suppose it's a little bit embarrassing for them.
But wouldn't you watch that reality show?
If the Conways turned their situation into a reality TV show, I'd watch.
I know I'd watch.
So anyway, I'm just wishing them well.
So Joe Biden had his little town hall last night.
And how many lies do you think he told at his town hall?
A lot. You know, Joel Pollack put them together and published them.
So it was all his biggest hits, all of his normal lies.
But he is still...
In big events, he's still telling the Charlottesville fine people lie.
Now just think about that.
Think about the fact that for two years, it has been massively debunked.
I mean, probably the debunking has been published more times than just about anything else in the last two years.
And still, the news silos are so tight That that message doesn't penetrate the left.
I would say, if I had to guess, I would say 90% of the people who watch CNN primarily have no idea that anybody even has tried to debunk the Charlottesville find people hoax.
They wouldn't even be aware that there's another point of view.
And it's not even a point of view.
It's just a fact check.
It didn't happen. Read the transcript, it's obvious it didn't happen.
So his primary, really the thing that he bases his entire campaign on, objectively, easy to confirm, didn't happen.
Just never happened.
It's literally just something he made up, while other people made it up as well.
But here's the amazing thing.
If you ask people what's the main reason that they don't like President Trump, the number one reason Would be they'd say he doesn't tell the truth.
That would be it. That would be the number one reason.
And the guy running against him can tell a whopper of a lie, like the biggest lie of the last 10 years, and can completely get away with it.
Now, it's just sort of amazing that we're at a point where there's just no importance to facts.
The fact that this didn't happen It has nothing to do with the fact that it will change the election.
It doesn't matter. Yeah, he always tells his bulging vein story.
Let me tell you how I would love to see the third act get resolved.
I'd like to see Trump, and by the way, I don't think this will happen, so this is not a prediction, and it's also not one of those annoying recommendations for what the president should say.
Do you read these article opinion pieces where Where people will presume to say, here's what the president should say.
He should issue a statement that says this, and then they'll write it as if it's in his voice.
All of that stuff just is so cringy to me.
And I'll tell you why.
None of the people who would like to put words into Trump's mouth could have done what he did, which is become president by saying the things he said Instead of the things they think he should have said.
At what point do we say, all right, can we accept that it's not a coincidence?
That he says things we wouldn't say, does things we wouldn't do, but it made him president.
So shouldn't you at least question your own judgment and say, all right, all right, maybe I'm not so smart.
Maybe I actually can't tell what is the right thing to do.
Maybe it's just the thing I would like to hear, but it wouldn't necessarily work politically.
You can't doubt the president's instincts at this point, his instincts to connect with the people as opposed to the pundits.
So here's one of the things that bugs me like crazy.
Is that there's a lot of magical thinking going on when people criticize the president.
And the magical thinking goes like this, that our other presidents were of good moral character, and this one is not, and therefore that's a problem.
When you say that that captures pretty much the entire Democrat problem with President Trump, he's got a flawed moral character, they would say, and therefore, Having a president with a flawed moral character is going to get you a bad outcome.
Right? That's their argument.
But here's the problem.
Remind me which of our presidents had good moral fiber.
You got your presidents that you think had good moral fiber, but you don't know as much about them as perhaps I do.
I do know some things that are just not public.
What about Nixon?
What about Bill Clinton?
What about Obama?
Everything he did was honest, never told a lie, never did anything a little fishy.
What about Obama possibly being behind overthrowing the next administration and spying on the Trump campaign?
These are pretty big moral failings.
Pretty big. What about the founders?
Literally, slave owners.
Great moral character?
Not by today's standards.
I'm not even sure it was by the standards of their own time it wasn't even great moral character necessarily.
Don't know how they thought of it, but I don't think everybody thought it was great moral character.
So I would say that it's magical thinking to imagine that the better your moral character, according to outside observers, The better your result as a president.
I would say that there's absolutely no correlation in evidence at all.
And yet, it's the number one thing that the president's critics obsess on and their alternative doesn't provide it.
Biden provides nothing of the sort If what you want is to get the president with good moral character.
He just doesn't offer that.
Not even close. He's not even in the general zip code of good moral character.
Is he a nice guy?
Apparently. I guess people like him.
In person, he's not very abrasive.
That counts a lot. We live in a world where people appreciate that.
But does he lie?
Like crazy. Does he have some potential Ukraine issues?
Yeah. Was he maybe a little too involved with Obama in spying on the Trump campaign?
Probably. Has he ever told gigantic lies that are the type that would tear the country apart?
Yes. The fine people hoax.
So it's a deep magical thinking that Biden has good moral quality or that you need it.
That it's somehow important.
It's a variable that matters.
You may have noticed that...
Oh, here's something interesting.
In 2016, I was sort of a novelty as a pundit on politics, because I wasn't known for talking about this stuff.
And I got invited on a lot of left-leaning platforms.
Now, some of it was because I was promoting a book, so it's easier to get invited to places if you have a book.
But I was invited on Morning Joe, I've been on CNN several times in the past.
Sam Harris had me on too.
I'm not sure what you would call him politically, but he had me on.
I was on Bill Maher's show, Real Time.
How many of those shows, left-leaning platforms, have invited me on this time?
Now, keep in mind that the reason they invited me on is that I was a weird, I was an oddity.
And I was saying that Trump would win the election.
So that made me like a weird, crazy guy, right?
Because I was predicting the unpredictable.
But it turns out I was right.
Not only was I right, but I turned out to be right about some other big stuff, including Kamala Harris getting as close as she has to the top of the ticket.
And you would think, That if you started out unusual and you showed that you were right, you would be invited to all of those places that had you on before.
Because I would say that they did fine in terms of clicks and they did fine in terms of audience.
I don't think they lost any audience by having me on.
Probably gained a little.
So what do you make of the fact that I am completely shut out from the entire left silo?
It means they're afraid of me.
Now, it could be because I'm not interesting.
That's the other possibility.
But compare these two explanations for why I'm shut out of that whole world.
One is that I suddenly became less interesting, even though all of my traffic is higher than it's ever been before.
So if you were to look at every objective measure of whether I'm interesting, it's through the roof.
All of my numbers are way up compared to what they were.
The other alternative is that I'm dangerous.
In other words, I have a point of view which would penetrate the silo.
I think that they know which people they can bring over and will be discounted by their audience.
There are lots of strong voices that if you bring them over, they're going to say stuff that are pro-Trump, but they won't land.
They just won't penetrate that audience.
But if you get somebody who can penetrate the audience, they get blackballed.
Look at Steve Cortez.
Steve Cortez used to be on contract for CNN. But I think it was when he debunked the fine people hoax, it was probably the last time they invited him on, even though he was still on contract.
And then I guess the contract probably ran out.
Anybody who can break through, they immediately get them out of there because that's going to ruin the whole deal.
Now, how about the polls?
Do you believe the polls that are coming out that are showing Trump is way, way behind and falling even deeper behind?
Well, you probably saw the stories that the Democrats are being oversampled in these polls.
So it looks like there's a big change, but maybe there's not.
However, however, What if there is?
What if it turns out there is a big change in Trump's support?
Let's say it dropped. It just dropped a lot because of the hospital stay, the coronavirus situation.
What if it dropped?
Do you think that would be real? I do.
I think it would be real.
But not real in the way that normally polls are real.
Normally, polls are real in the sense that they might predict the future.
I think these might be real, as in there might be a real drop-off, people being unhappy about the way the president handled his own infection and others.
If they're unhappy about that, I think people vote in the polls.
In other words, they show their displeasure by expressing it to a pollster, but when it comes to Election Day and they've got a pick, Oh, okay, now I'm not just expressing my displeasure.
Now it's real. So I think that people who might end up voting for the president could be expressing their displeasure about whatever's happening this week by giving him a bad poll result and say, yeah, I'm just going to vote for Biden or I'm not going to vote or I'm going to vote for Kanye or something.
I don't feel as if When people turn against the president on a specific issue, it feels more like they're trying to guide him.
Because you know he looks at the polls, right?
We all know that he would be absolutely influenced by any strong poll movement.
We know that. So I think people are not just telling you what they want.
I think they're trying to influence the president.
And if you see a big move based on a single topic, it might be people just sending him a message.
You know what I mean? And that might not reflect the final vote.
So let us go over what he did right or wrong.
And it's an interesting one this time.
And I guess I'll save my summary for whether I think it's mostly right or mostly wrong.
But here's what he said.
So the president, as you know, left Walter Reed earlier than most people would think he should.
All right. So the first thing you need to know The President obviously wanted to manage the situation so he would look a little bit superhuman.
Did he accomplish that?
I think so.
I think so. I think he accomplished making it look like his stamina, his power, his health, his vitality was more than a match for the coronavirus.
So, would it have been medically advisable to stay a little bit longer?
Perhaps. I'm no doctor.
What do I know? Maybe.
But was it a good move on the president's part to be aggressive on getting out there?
I'm going to say probably yes.
I think the net of that is slightly positive, if not more than slightly.
I think that people need to see their leaders acting strong, even when we know they're acting.
And that's important.
When I see the president You know, acting like he's all healthy.
And you probably saw there's some video of him breathing hard when he got back to the White House, climbed some stairs.
He was noticeably struggling to breathe.
And you could tell that he was trying to not look like he was struggling to breathe.
In other words, it was obvious to anybody that he was putting on an act to look healthier than he might have actually been.
Are you bothered by that?
Are you bothered by knowing He's putting on an act.
Probably not. You're probably not bothered by that.
Because that's part of the job. Part of the job of a leader is to look like a leader.
Are you bothered by the fact that he wears a suit and tie when he's in the Oval Office?
Well, you shouldn't be. He's putting on an act, right?
He's not naturally born in a suit and tie.
He's acting like a president by dressing like one.
When he's in the Oval Office.
So he's a big phony, right?
Because he wears a suit in the Oval Office?
No. No, we accept that a president needs to put on a show.
It's a show. You might not want to call it a show, but it's a show.
And it's important that he does the show right.
It's part of being a good leader.
So I would say that his instinct to show strength is correct.
You get a lot of pushback from it, but I think that was a correct instinct.
He didn't get everything right, though, so it's not going to be all compliments, in case you're wondering.
Here are some things he said in the video.
He said, don't let it dominate you, meaning coronavirus.
Don't be afraid of it.
You're going to beat it.
And he said he feels better than he did 20 years ago.
And don't let it take over your lives.
And then he said, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but he says, as your leader, I had to do that.
I led, and then I know there's a risk.
So he was saying that he had to be a leader and basically do the same thing that he was asking of the public, which is to go about your business and take a chance.
Jake Tapper interpreted that as he insanely is saying that he intentionally got the virus to be a good leader.
Is that exactly what he said?
Is that a fair characterization?
Did the president say he intentionally got the virus because it would make him a better leader?
No. No.
That's not exactly what happened.
But will people see it that way or hear it that way?
They might. They might.
So let's look at his specific statements about don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it, etc.
Here's the problem.
If you thought he was going to come out of the hospital with humility, as in, wow, now that I've had the coronavirus, I'm a changed person, well, you probably haven't met Trump.
There wasn't much chance he was going to come out of the hospital a changed person.
I forget which pundit it was.
I was listening to who was just laughing at the notion that he would come out as a different person.
Because it is sort of funny when you think about it.
He's not really going to be a different person.
And we should assume that beating coronavirus will make him more Trump and not less Trump.
All right. So how do you feel about the fact that he's telling people not to be afraid of it, etc.?
Well, I'm not sure he's nailing the messaging.
So I would not give him an A-plus on the messaging there.
I do think that people could take it the wrong way as if he's not taking it seriously enough.
So I think that he may have exacerbated the, you know, the number of people who say he's not taking it seriously will have even more to yell about than they had before.
So that part's not good.
But here's the part that's imponderable and really, here's the part that matters.
Is the president matching the public?
Now, the president is definitely not matching the messaging that the experts would want to use, most of the experts.
They would not want him to say what he's saying.
Most of the pundits, you know, the people who really pay attention to the news, most of them would also say, I don't like the way he did that, he's underplaying it, etc.
But if you added together all of the experts and all of the pundits, it would be this little sliver.
Of the total population.
Tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of the population.
Do they matter?
Well, they matter in terms of influencing other people's opinions.
But what about the public in general?
Is the public in general, and let's say Republicans in particular, are they closer to Trump's point of view?
Or are they closer to the pundits' point of view?
I don't know exactly.
But my sense of it is, my instinct is, that the public is right there with him.
Do you get that sense?
Now, because it's the public, that never means all of the public, right?
There's always that big solid block of Democrats will hate him no matter what he does, so they'll be against him no matter what.
But in general, wouldn't you say that Republicans are more pro take the risk, get back to work, And might even appreciate the fact that he modeled that behavior.
I've got a feeling that there are far more people who are a little bit silent who are on his side about being a little more aggressive and going back to work and opening things up.
I just don't know you're seeing that point of view.
And here's why you don't see that point of view.
Because in order to be honest about it, you would have to say the following.
This would be an honest opinion, and it's why you don't see it.
It's just too honest, and it would go like this.
I think it's more important for young people to live their life and avoid whatever mental health and stunted educational problems they'll have.
I think that's more important And keeping the economy strong is more important.
Those two things, the health of the young, the mental health of everybody, but also opening the economy and keeping that strong is more important than the lives of elderly Americans.
If you can't say that, you can't be honest.
At least in that point of view, you can't be honest.
Now, if there's somebody who says, oh, you've got to just protect...
Protect the old people.
Well, they're being liars because one of the ways you protect them is by keeping the economy strong.
How do old people get paid their Social Security?
How are they protected?
How do they get health care if the economy falls apart?
They don't. Old people would be very vulnerable to a collapsing economy, maybe the most vulnerable.
And if you can't say it as clearly as I can say it, And I'm going to say this, this is actually my actual opinion now, okay?
So this is not an example opinion.
My actual honest opinion, tell me how many people will be willing to say this in public.
It is my honest opinion that we should set as a priority the youth and the economy of the country, and we should place those as higher priority than the lives, the actual life, life and death, of senior citizens.
That's an honest opinion.
Now, you could certainly disagree with that.
But if you're disagreeing, remember, you're disagreeing about extent and maybe timing because everybody understands you need a strong economy or else you're in big trouble.
So we know we need to do both, right?
There's nobody who's so dumb that we only need to look at health or we only need to look at the economy.
We know we're going to be tweaking those variables the whole time.
But I'm just going to say a straight out.
How in the world do we ever get back to work until you can say what I can say?
Now, I have FU money, so I can say things in public that other people can't.
But I'm just going to say a straight out.
I value youth, their lives, and the economy, which supports us all, including senior citizens.
I value those higher than I value the life The actual lives, because people are going to die in big numbers, of senior citizens.
Now, I've got a little bit of credibility saying that because I am a senior citizen, right?
So I'm 63 and I've got asthma.
So I'm at risk, very much at risk.
So when I say that I value the lives of the young and the economy over the older people, I'm saying I value them over myself.
And I'm saying it clearly.
I value them over myself.
Indeed, if you gave me a choice and said, here's the deal, tough choice, Scott.
The only way young people are going to do well is if, sorry, but you have to die.
We don't have a second way to do this.
It's just the only way to do it.
Are you up for that?
I wouldn't like it.
I wouldn't be very happy about that choice.
But I know what I'd choose.
I've had a good run and I would make that choice.
So, and I think most people would actually, especially, you know, if you're over 80, I think if you did a poll of people over 80 and you said, here's the deal, you've got a 15% chance of going a little bit earlier and it might not be pleasant, but you know, any way you die isn't going to be fun.
So what do you do?
I think 80-year-olds would be on the same page.
So my take on Trump is that the pundits will rip him apart, the experts will rip him apart, and they'll all do that thing where they don't have to talk about trade-offs.
They'll just talk about health, as if the economy isn't even part of the question.
So I feel like the president's in better shape than the pundits realize, because I think he's just way closer to the public on this.
That's my take. So here are the things which he perhaps did not do in a spectacular way.
So these have some trade-offs.
So just so I'm being fair, because I know the biggest criticism I get, which is completely inaccurate, is that I only say good things about Trump.
So if you're one of those people who thinks I only say good things about Trump, stay tuned.
You'll like this part. All right, so here's some things that are not so good.
Certainly by downplaying the virus, even though there's a reason for it, and I understand the reason, it could cause people to wear fewer masks, and maybe that makes a difference.
Do I know that masks make a difference?
I do not. But I also don't know that they don't make a difference.
So given so many experts Being pretty sure that they do make a difference, the risk management suggests that you should go ahead and wear them, because they might.
And it's such high stakes, you should do it if it might work.
So I think downplaying the virus has a downside.
It has an upside as well, if we get back to work and we're not afraid, but definitely has a downside.
He did go out again and say that the Coronavirus, he was comparing it to regular flu again.
Is it good for the president to compare coronavirus to regular flu?
It is terrible.
It is terrible.
Probably one of the worst things you could do.
Because it's the one thing that guarantees all of the experts and all of the pundits will climb on top of you, and there's just no reason for it.
He doesn't need to compare it to the regular flu to make his case that we should still go back to work.
You just don't need that comparison and it works against his credibility.
Now the other thing, if you haven't heard this before, the numbers of deaths from the regular flu are complete bullshit as far as I can tell.
Have you ever met or heard of or know of Anyone who ever died of the regular flu?
Maybe some of you do.
I don't. I've been around for decades and I've never heard of anybody dying of a regular flu.
If it were anywhere near 50,000 deaths a year, you would know somebody.
I mean, 50,000 deaths a year would be about the number of automobile accidents.
Right? It's somewhere in that range, automobile accidents.
Do you know anybody personally who died in an automobile accident?
Yeah, you do. You do.
You probably know several people who have died in automobile accidents.
How about guns, gun deaths?
There's somewhere in the neighborhood of automobile accidents.
It's somewhere in the low tens of thousands a year, right?
Do you know anybody who ever got killed by a gun?
Yeah, you do. Probably.
I know one, two, three.
I know several people were killed by guns.
But I don't know anybody who died from the flu, the regular flu.
And I tweeted this morning an article, maybe you've seen before, in which a doctor explains that we don't count regular flu deaths.
Let me say that again.
We don't count them.
So when somebody says there were 50,000 flu deaths, Where's that number come from?
Well, not from counting.
I don't know where it comes from, but it doesn't come from anybody counting anything.
Apparently, they get lumped in with pneumonia deaths and it's some kind of an estimate based on excess deaths or something.
But there doesn't seem to be backing for that.
And in fact, the real number of flu deaths might be 10% of what's reported.
All right. So, every time the president compares coronavirus to seasonal flu, he looks uninformed.
Even though his point about don't be so afraid, go back to work, that might still be the right thing to do, leadership-wise.
I just wouldn't use this comparison, because it's just asking for trouble.
What about him driving around and putting his Secret Service At risk by having them in the car with him as he drove around to wave to supporters.
On the plus side, I think it was valuable.
Because it does show that the leader is alive.
He's still making decisions.
He can still be mobile if he has to be.
But he did put the Secret Service at a little bit of risk.
Probably not a lot.
A little bit. But how do you feel about it?
You don't feel good about it, do you?
I would say that would be a mistake.
I would say there was something to gain and he gained it, which is he showed the world he's alive.
But there was also something to lose because it looked a little selfish.
So I think that was a net negative.
It wasn't a complete negative because there was something gained and it was real and it's what he wanted to gain.
But I'm going to judge that one a slight negative.
All right. Then what about the question of going home too soon?
Or is it too soon?
I would say that's a slight negative, again, because people are going to criticize them for going home too soon.
They might criticize them for exposing more people by going back too soon.
But we assume that they'll have at least good measures to keep them socially distanced.
But that part is also a trade-off.
I would say that going home too soon He could have waited another day.
Could have waited another two days.
Would have been fine, I think.
But making it look like he's Superman and going home soon, probably a little more benefit than cost.
So I'm going to say again, there was a known benefit he was going for.
I think he got it. It makes him look sort of like he's strong and vital.
But there's a cost, because it looked like it might have been a little bad judgment to go back I'd say slight positive there, but not a lot.
What about all of his tweets in all caps the day, I think it was the day he went back, and he started in the morning with all the tweets in all caps?
Not good. Not good.
If you add up the all caps tweeting, and the fact that he said he feels better than he did 20 years ago, That sort of strongly suggests that the steroid type drug that he's on might have an influence on his personality.
Now, I told you from my experience on prednisone that it completely changes your personality.
You become very aggressive and you think you can conquer the world and you do feel 20 years younger.
Indeed, you might remember I explained it exactly in the same terms.
I said that on prednisone, you actually just feel like a young person.
It just completely turns you into a...
In my case, I felt 25.
I could do any exercise.
I could run all day without getting sore.
I could do anything. It was like a super drug.
Now, I worry.
That when you take somebody with Trump's personality and you put them on a super drug that makes you feel stronger and more confident and more aggressive than you would have felt normally, that's not a good situation.
And I would go so far as to say I'm not a doctor, so obviously this would be a doctor decision, not a Scott watching from thousands of miles away decision, but I would like an answer on whether he should be 25th Amendmented and Pence should be in charge while he's on that drug.
So let me say that again, because you're not going to like it.
So I want to make sure that when I say something you don't like, I say it really clearly.
He's showing some indications, the all caps tweeting being a real tell, with the 20 years younger, with the going home a little early, Being a little aggressive on that stuff.
And then just the way he's talking about beating the virus and don't be afraid of it.
If you put them all together, and again, I'm not a doctor.
I'm just a citizen who doesn't want the country to blow up in a nuclear fireball.
That's all. That's where I'm coming from.
I think the question has to be asked.
The question has to be asked if he should be taken off the field Until he's off that drug.
And I'd like to hear his doctor say, no, there's no change in his personality from that drug.
That might be the case.
I'd like to hear the doctor say, no, no, no.
At the levels we gave it to him, you don't even have to worry about side effects.
It's because we gave him so little.
I don't know if that's the case. I'm just saying that if the doctor told me that, I'd say, okay, I'm still seeing these signs, but you're the doctor.
I'd be willing to go with a professional opinion who was close to it.
But without that, without the doctor saying, okay, I hear what you're saying.
I hear what you're saying about his personality change and that would match the side effects that are known with this drug.
So maybe we just give the nuclear codes to Pence for a week.
Just maybe that one thing.
At the very least, I would like to speak directly to whoever is in the nuclear chain of command.
If you get a nuclear command from President Trump this week, maybe get a second opinion.
That's all I'm saying. If the word comes down to launch the nuclear arsenal this week, first thing you should do is call Pence.
The first thing you should do is not launch.
First thing, Call Mike Pence.
Get a second opinion.
That's what I'd do. And I'm completely serious about this, by the way.
And it's based on my own recent experience with prednisone.
It's a different drug, but I think some similarities.
Reporters are mad because I guess the White House put them at risk.
And also, there are reports that the White House, in general, the staff was not taking seriously the social distancing.
Did not take seriously the mask wearing and got exactly the predicted outcome, a bunch of infections.
Which would also have an effect on the reporters.
Do you think the reporters are happy?
The ones that cover the White House?
Not so happy.
Not so happy at all.
Somebody's arguing with me in the comments.
All caps doesn't equal aggression.
No. Any one of those signs, the all caps, the acting strong like a bull, feeling better than 20 years ago, all of those things individually are not alarming.
If you saw any one of them, you'd say, eh, whatever.
It's just the collection of them combined with the fact that he's on a drug that would cause you to act exactly like that.
So the question has to be asked.
Now, here's the other question.
Do you think that a president should always give you the truth?
Do you think that it's the job of the president to always give you the accurate story about anything?
I would argue, no.
It is not the president's job to give you the truth.
And indeed, if a president only ever gave you the truth, you would want to get rid of that president pretty quickly.
Let me give you some examples.
Should the president tell you what all of their options are for military responses?
No, of course not.
You don't want the president telling the adversaries what our military options are or what we're thinking about that or what we know about their military plans.
So when it comes to military stuff, you do want the president to lie to the public because it's important.
What about the economy?
Do you want the president to tell you precisely, exactly the truth about the economy?
Or would you like maybe, let's call it an enhanced version of the truth?
Let's say a little extra on top of the truth.
Which would be better? What would be better is the extra.
Talking about the economy in dry, accurate terms is not good for the economy.
Because as I've told you many times, the economy is a psychology machine.
If you get the psychology right, then people feel optimistic and they have confidence, they invest, they buy, and that's what drives the economy.
So if you don't give the economy confidence, it doesn't operate right.
So should the president give you an exact description of the economy with no hyperbole?
Or should the president be largely true, but give you a little extra?
So that you say to yourself, whoa, that's a little better than I thought it was.
I'd better invest.
Oh, that sounds pretty good.
I think I'll spend a little extra because I think things are going to go well.
The answer is your president should lie to you.
It doesn't matter who the president is.
They should lie to you a little bit.
Maybe a 20% lie would be about right.
You should talk up the economy.
You should say it's better than it is.
You should say it's going in the right direction, even if it's not quite.
The optimism that the president puts on the economy is one of his strongest qualities as a president.
Now, what about coronavirus?
Is coronavirus, because this is health, should the president give you an exact, really accurate, dry, no hyperbole, no exaggeration, nothing left out, any bad news included, should he give you the most accurate news he could give you, About the coronavirus?
Well, a lot of people say yes.
A lot of people say, let us decide.
Let the citizens decide.
We'll decide how afraid we are.
We'll decide what to do with it.
Just be accurate.
Just give us the accurate information.
That's a reasonable opinion, I'd say.
And here's a better reasonable opinion, in my opinion.
That he should talk it up a little bit.
In other words, he should try to, if we know that the goal is to open up because the alternative is worse, so the alternative is staying closed, that's just worse.
We have two bad options.
One is really bad, one is not quite as bad, we hope, opening up, but they both have lots of risks.
Under those conditions, what do you want your leader to tell the country?
If you know that what's good for the country is they take on some risk, what is the best way to treat that?
Probably something pretty close to the way he's doing it, which is he's underplaying the risk because he wants you to go back to work.
Now, is anybody unaware, is there any citizen of the United States who doesn't know they could die from the coronavirus?
Nope. There's not one person in the United States, not a single person, who doesn't understand that they personally could die from the coronavirus.
They also know that experts have these recommendations about what to do and what not to do.
People are pretty well informed.
So when the president gives you a little dose of, let's say, 20% extra enhanced, let's say, messaging, Because I don't want to say that it's wrong or it's a lie, because it's not the president's job to give you accuracy.
It's the president's job to lead.
And sometimes the leader needs to paint a picture of where you're heading, and it's a little bit rosier than maybe accuracy would suggest.
If you had a military leader, you need them to say, we're going to win this fight, go into battle.
You don't want them dwelling on the casualties that are coming.
You don't want your general to say, man, there are going to be a lot of people dead in this battle.
Two out of three of you are going to be dead, but go out there and do it anyway.
That's not very motivating.
It's good that people know the risks, but I think they do from the experts, from the pundits, from the news.
And I don't think it's wrong for the president to put the better spin on it.
That's probably the right instinct.
Maureen Dowd said in a tweet, when Trump walked through the doors, Walter Reed had a stellar reputation.
As he walks out 72 hours later, his reputation is in tatters.
There's nothing Trump can't ruin.
Well, there's nothing he doesn't change, that's for sure.
And I have to admit, I would agree with her that Walter Reed was diminished by this experience.
The doctor who came out and lied about giving Trump oxygen.
Now, he didn't technically lie, right?
He weasel worded it so he didn't have to answer the question the first day.
Then later, he kind of admitted that he lied, but he didn't say he lied.
As soon as that happened, as soon as I saw that Dr.
Conley weasel worded it, it's like, has the president received oxygen?
He's not on oxygen now.
Okay, that's not what we asked.
Has the president ever been on oxygen for the coronavirus?
Going forward, he is not going to be on oxygen.
Okay, sounds like you're lying to us.
We'll try it again. Has the president ever in the past been on oxygen?
Well, he's not on oxygen now.
Really? You might say to yourself, okay, somebody got to the doctor and said, okay, doctor, don't mention this initial oxygen because he's not on it now, so it's not that important.
You want to manage what the public thinks.
And somehow they got this poor doctor to lie in public.
I'm not happy about that, right?
But I also think it was his own damn fault.
Did anybody twist the doctor's arm?
To make him lie?
Probably. Probably.
Don't you think there was a little arm twisting going on behind the scenes?
Doctor, whatever you do, don't mention that oxygen that I got on day one.
It'd mean a lot to me.
Now, a doctor doesn't want to get fired, right?
The doctor doesn't want to get fired by the president because handling the president is a big honor.
It's like a feather in your cap.
You don't want to get fired from that.
And you know the president would fire you.
He would. The doctor would fire a president in a heartbeat if he wasn't getting what he wanted.
So was the doctor directly or by implication or even by reputation, since Trump is a firer, was he coerced into lying?
Probably. Probably.
But whose fault is it?
Still the doctor.
Nobody moved his lips.
He had a choice.
And I think that the reputation of Walter Reed definitely took a hit because of that first lie.
After that, you don't believe anything after the first one.
Let's see, what else we got going on here?
Here's a better way that I would frame the president's leadership.
As you saw from the Jake Tapper comment, which was You know, you knew that he was vulnerable to this comment, that the president was vulnerable.
The comment being that the president blundered into getting the coronavirus, and now he's trying to act as though it was part of his leadership to get the virus and show that he could live through it or something.
And of course, that's a very mockable position.
Somebody's saying that the HIPAA laws are why the doctor couldn't answer that question.
That's not good enough.
I know what you're saying, but that's not good enough.
Because the doctor obviously could have gotten permission to say anything he wanted, or he could have said, I'm just not talking about that first day.
He didn't have to lie.
That was a choice. So here's a better framing.
Instead of saying that he got it so that, I don't know, it's part of good leadership, I would say it this way.
That the country values freedom over absolute safety.
Right? The country values freedom over absolute safety.
And that's a really strong frame because you say that and people...
As soon as you hear that, you might want to argue with it and you say, yes, but...
Okay, well, that's just true.
The country values freedom over absolute safety.
And that what the president was doing was modeling exactly that.
The president was experiencing his own freedom, meaning he was a little lax with the masks and social distancing, and that freedom had a price.
He paid the price.
And he's asking other people similarly to value freedom first, That's going to get you your economic success.
It's going to get you some benefits that way.
But value freedom and the economic goodness that comes with it, just know it's not free.
If the president said to the public, we're going to take our freedom back and it's going to be expensive.
How do you feel about that?
Not bad, right?
We're going to take our freedom back From the coronavirus, a little bit at a time.
We're going to be smart about it.
We're going to listen to the experts, but we're going to take our freedom back.
We're going to do it the right way, but we're going to take our freedom back.
And some people are not going to make it.
Some people are not going to make it.
If you say that, some of you won't make it.
We're going to take our freedom back.
Be smart. Be strong.
Be brave, but just know we're not all going to make it.
How do you feel about that message?
It works, right?
Because it suddenly puts the entire 200,000 people who died into a different frame.
If what we were trying to do is save every person, that's pretty bad performance.
But we weren't.
There was never a point where we said to ourselves, let's save everybody.
Never said that. There was a point where we were always consciously saying, really every point, we're going to trade freedom for safety and then we're going to tweak it as we go because we don't know if we gave up too much freedom, didn't get enough safety. We're going to have to keep tweaking this thing.
But it's a freedom versus safety.
If you make it economics versus health, You've already lost, right?
The moment you say, all right, the frame is economics, money, you know, money, you capitalist, greedy pigs, you fascist money, economics, versus you're going to let grandma die?
Are you serious?
Grandma's going to die for your fascist, economic, selfish money.
So that's a terrible frame, economics versus health.
Freedom versus risk.
Totally different. We're all designed to understand freedom versus risk.
You make that decision every time you get in the car.
Every time you get in your car, you're not making an economics versus health decision, are you?
You're making a freedom versus risk.
It ends up being similar, but it sounds better that way.
So that's the way I'd go. And that is what I wanted to talk about today.
So I'm going to sign off from Periscope.
You YouTube people, I'll be here for another minute.
So I'll talk to you later.
All right, YouTubers.
It's just us now.
Yes, Franklin said, those who love safety over freedom will have neither.
I'm just going to look at your comments here as we get ready to wind down.
um What's my election prediction?
You know, I would say that the slaughter meter, as I like to call it, had been pinned at 100%.
But we are right in the middle of the third act right now.
So this is the point when the slaughter meter should be the lowest if everything is on plan.
I would say the slaughter meter today is probably at 30%.
Probably 30%.
Now don't panic, because the slaughter meter does not predict the election.
That's not what it's for. It predicts how things are going today.
So every day is different.
Today it could be 200% on the slaughter meter very easily.
Just any event happens.
Keep it in mind. I would say that this should be the lowest point for the slaughter meter and that you should see some big changes.
Now, if the president takes the framing that I suggested of freedom versus risk, he could recover quite quickly.
If he keeps it as economics versus life and death and tries to minimize the life and death part, While maximizing the economic part, it's not as strong.
So we'll see. Yeah, you know, the whole story about the extra documents that Gina Haskell has over at the CIA, and there's some reported, I don't believe it, but there's some reports that Gina Haskell Might be trying to slow walk the release of some documents because she could personally be embarrassed in some way.
Maybe. Maybe.
But I'll tell you one thing.
If Trump does not win re-election, all of the plotters behind the Russia collusion hoax, they'll all go free.
If Trump doesn't win, all of that will just go away.
John Brennan will be...
Completely off the hook.
So there's a lot at stake.
All right.
Just looking at your comments now.
So, Somebody says, if Trump doesn't win, enjoy civil war.
Here's what I think.
I think that there's basically no chance of a civil war.
There's a 100% chance that there'll be violence in the streets if Trump wins.
But it's not going to be the kind of violence that is a whole different standard than what we've seen for the last several months.
I think it'll just be more of that.
And it might be a lot more of that in the beginning, but I don't think it lasts.
I think people will just get used to it.
Somebody says I'm wrong on civil war.
So there's somebody here who wants to take a bet on civil war.
I'll make a bet against civil war.
And here are the factors I look at.
How many people in your neighborhood are in favor of civil war?
In my neighborhood?
I think the number might be zero.
I don't think there's anybody in my neighborhood who wants a civil war.
Probably the total number of people in this country who won a civil war is like 0.001%.
Now, what would keep those people from being enough?
Because it doesn't take many people to topple a country, right, if they do it right.
I would argue that we have a superpower in this country, and it's called gun ownership.
Have you noticed that all of the protests, they're staying within a certain level of violence?
Meaning that it's mostly clubs and umbrellas and pepper spray and bottles of water and stuff.
The reason it doesn't escalate to actual guns is that they're outgunned.
The minute that the protesters went to the next level, where they started shooting at every event, it would get closed down.
So the government would close it down if it became guns.
If the government didn't close it down and it started spreading into the suburbs and there was real gunfire every time, the armed Americans would just snuff them out in about a weekend.
There are so many guns in this country.
I don't know if a civil war could happen unless you actually had something like 30% of the country wanted to do it.
You don't get a civil war.
Let me summarize.
The situation in which you will not have a civil war is if the only people who want it are.0001% of the public and, and the and is important, and we are armed to the teeth in every household.
Because it's armed to the teeth that makes it impossible for the small numbers to become bigger and to take over.
A small number could bully people.
You just bully them if they didn't have guns.
If you could just go to somebody's house, push in their door, and bully them into doing whatever you wanted, you probably could have a pretty big revolution with a very small number of people who are revolutionaries.
But when they're armed, the only way you're going to take over the suburbs is with more power.
And you don't have more power, because the suburbs are just bristling with weapons.
