Episode 1163 Scott Adams: Who Won the Debate and Why, Bobulinski Bombshell, Fake News Galore
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Content:
Tony Bobulinski confirms Hunter email
MSM/Democrat collusion for political benefit
Disappearing the biggest story of the year...successfully
Balancing need to be SAFE...and have an ECONOMY
Big modern economies are driven by cheap energy
Understanding influence and evidence thereof
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Hey everybody!
Come on in. Come on in.
I know you were up late last night watching the debates, and you're wondering, what do I think about them?
Well, some of you already saw my comments on Twitter, but I'm going to add quite a bit to that, because today will be One of the best coffees with Scott Adams of all time.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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Go. Oh yeah.
That's good. Alright, well, the big news of the day turned out to be invisible.
My mind is so blown by what's happening right in front of us in terms of the mainstream media manipulating and brainwashing the public.
I've never seen it done so ham-handedly and so obviously and not trying to hide it.
And it's totally working, which is just killing me.
Because you don't want something that devious to work when it's obvious what they're doing.
Let me give you some context.
So, Hunter Biden's old business partner, Bob Alinsky, gave a press conference.
To talk about his direct knowledge that the Biden family worked to secure payments from China, a Chinese company in particular, that did not seem in any way related to anything except access to the US government.
Now, why would it be that somebody would want access to the US government?
Is it because they're just big fans?
Is that why?
They're just fans. They love the government.
No, no.
That's not why people like access to governments.
People want to influence governments.
So even though Joe Biden was not in office during some of it, but apparently he was in office during some other parts of it, the Ukrainian parts of it, the emails have been That were on the Hunter Biden laptop have been verified, essentially, by the business partner to say they're true.
And he added some detail that indeed the emails do refer to Hunter Biden holding the 10% payment that was intended for his father.
And then the father is asked about it.
And what does he say? He said, we've already shown our tax returns.
Now, if you only watched CNN and New York Times and you heard that, you'd say, oh, okay, well, he's already given us his financial records.
I guess if there were anything there, we would know, and nobody's noticed anything with his financial records, so no problem.
No, that's not the story.
The story is very specifically...
That the Joe Biden payments were intended by design not to show up on Joe Biden's tax returns.
How do you do that?
Exactly what the email said.
That Hunter Biden would be holding his father's 10%.
So it would show up as Hunter Biden's money, and sometime down the line, Hunter would figure out how to benefit his family.
But that would be a separate transaction.
So how is this not The biggest story in the world.
When we find out that the guy who's leading in the polls, allegedly, to be president, has accepted gigantic payments from a Chinese company that is, of course, associated with the government, and he's the most bribable politician in the history of bribable politicians.
Is that a story?
Anything? Yeah, it's money laundering, if nothing else, as somebody said.
Now, it might not be illegal.
It's still money laundering in the general sense of the word, even if it's technically legal.
They may have found a way to be legal.
But every bit of it looks like the biggest crime or something that's unethical, at least, that you've ever seen.
And only Fox News covered it.
So CNN just didn't cover it.
MSNBC? Let's just not show our customers or our audience.
Now, five years ago, that wouldn't have worked, right?
You can't just say, it's the biggest story in the world.
But watch this.
The people who consume the news on the left, they're never going to see it.
If anybody told you that five years ago, you would just laugh.
And you would say, no, no, the news business is so porous and overlapping.
Everybody sees everything, right?
Nope. Nope.
Not even close to that.
Everybody sees just their own news sources.
So if those news sources on the left collude, which is what they did, they colluded, and really it's sort of Gosh, I wonder if the government could sue them for monopoly behavior.
Is there any kind of collusion law that's being broken?
If a number of major news outlets clearly conspire with each other to hide from the public an important story, specifically for the point of getting their own candidate elected, is that a crime?
Can anybody tell me if there's any crime hiding in that?
Somebody's saying RICO. I don't know about that.
But is there not some kind of law that says that competitors can't agree with each other to work against the public?
Maybe this doesn't fit into that category quite, but doesn't it feel like it should be illegal?
Doesn't it feel as if you're in the news business And you collude either by directly contacting or you just know what the other is going to do.
And you collude with them to keep the public in the dark for political gain?
No law is broken by that?
Possibly. I mean, I can't think of a law that's broken by that.
Now, I'm seeing in the comments somebody saying it might be an antitrust problem, but I don't know.
Antitrust is probably defined...
So specifically that you couldn't get any kind of a conviction from it.
But anyway, the fact that this happened is absolutely mind-bendingly, jaw-droppingly spectacular.
We're going to talk a little bit more about it.
But watching this play out right in front of you, where there's no question of what's happening, you're watching it.
You just watched the mainstream media disappear the biggest story of the year.
Successfully. Successfully.
That's the weird part.
It's not weird that they tried.
It's not weird that they tried to downplay it.
But they actually succeeded.
If you did a poll today, and you said, was there any news about Hunter Biden yesterday?
I think 60% of America would say, I didn't hear anything.
That actually happened.
I mean, I don't even know what to say about it.
I just want to keep babbling about it because it's so spectacular, so mind-blowing, and so describes everything about the human condition and about our systems.
It's just all in that one story right there.
All right, so let's talk about the debate.
I got an unusual number of Retweets on one of my tweets after the debate because I said that it was a solid debate and Trump won.
And I found out this morning that Trump had retweeted me along with a number of other people who said he won.
So a lot of Trump supporters said he won, of course.
And then you switch over to CNN. And CNN is all about how Biden won and that the polls show that he won overwhelmingly.
And I think to myself, really?
Because I would have expected the polls to be a little closer based on party affiliation.
Really? There's some poll that said 75% of viewers thought that Trump lost?
You click over to Fox News.
75% of people say Trump won.
I'm like, okay. It's literally opposite news.
75% according to one say he lost, 75% according to the other said he won.
Now, of course, nobody's claiming that these flash polls are any scientific anything, but the fact that either network would even bother showing them is just propaganda.
It works both ways.
It's not just the left.
But yeah, the instant polls after the fact are just propaganda polls.
Here's why I say Trump won.
And the thing that I'm not counting is any fact-checking.
So I'm not even saying this mattered in the least if somebody lied and then they were fact-checked.
Because both candidates were telling some whoppers according to the other side.
So it was sort of a tie when it comes to who was telling the truth, because neither of them looked truthful to the other side, which are the people you're trying to convince at that point.
So on the facts, I would say it was a tie.
On the policies, I would say I think everybody left not really knowing what the policies were.
Because it wasn't really the kind of event...
Where you would get much in the way of details, and you didn't.
So we don't know anything more about policies than we did going into it, so I don't think policies had much to do with it, except for the fracking thing might make a dent.
But here's what I think is the biggest impact.
Trump presented himself as a controlled, not angry, not bully, not interrupting kind of a guy.
And what that does is it sends the following signal.
Oh wait, he can turn it on and he can turn it off.
If you don't think that was the biggest takeaway from last night, you're wrong.
Because a week from now, or however many days we're going to be voting, people aren't going to remember any of those details.
None of the details. But what they might remember is sort of how it made them feel, and they might remember a vibe.
What do you remember from the debate before last night?
Let's say the real debate, not the town halls.
What do you remember from it?
Do you remember any policies?
Nope. I don't.
Do you remember the good point one of them made?
Nope. I don't.
Now, if you really dig into your memory, you could come up with something.
But what's at the top of your head?
Because that's the stuff that's going to matter.
You're not going to do a deep analysis when you vote.
Unfortunately, we don't vote that way.
It's sort of how you feel, what's at the top of your head, what's at the front of your mind.
So when you think of that first contentious debate, you mostly feel about what you remember about it is that Trump was doing a lot of interrupting and bullying, wouldn't you say?
And, you know, Biden was giving it back pretty well, but you probably remember it as mostly a Trump-dominating performance.
But maybe you don't like the dominating part if you're not a fan.
And even if you are a fan, you might say, well, maybe that was a little bit too much of dominating for the situation.
But I was just reading an analysis, I think I retweeted it this morning, in which smart people were saying, you know, that interrupting thing that Trump was doing in the prior debate, it probably works.
And it probably works because he registers as the dominant character on the stage.
Whoever does the most interrupting and talking over looks dominant.
But apparently it matters how you interrupt.
If you interrupt to change the subject, said this one analysis, that makes you look weak.
Why'd you have to change the subject?
Looks like you're weak there, right?
So that kind of interrupting seemed to be negative.
But if you interrupt to fact check and, you know, basically claim that the other person is lying, there is some thought that that actually just makes you look dominant and it looks like the other person might be lying, and maybe that works for your favor.
So there was some thought that the president's obnoxious, some would call it, others might call it just dominant, performance in that prior debate was maybe good.
You know, in a very non-rational way, We may have just processed it as one of them was more dominant, and you don't know how much that affects you.
It's a lot, because that gets right to your basic biology.
You know, you want the dominant animal to be ahead of the herd.
So this time he decided to turn that off.
Did that cost him?
Because if the interrupting looked a-dominant and it helped, doesn't it hurt him if he turns it off?
Well, here's what I say.
It might have hurt him if Biden had been doing it, and he was the only one, interrupting, and then Trump is being polite.
That would look weak.
But Biden is not an interrupter, unless he's in an interrupting contest like the other debate was.
And so Biden could be trusted to be a follower.
See where I'm going here?
Biden is a follower.
When Trump was doing the interrupting in the prior debate, Biden followed him and had to match him and tried to interrupt himself.
When Trump led by not interrupting, what did Biden do?
He didn't interrupt.
So in both cases, you watched Trump, the leader, on the stage of two people.
Once he led Biden to interrupt, and once he led Biden not to interrupt.
And you watched it.
You watched Trump Control Biden in real time on this stage.
Now, you can say to yourself, yeah, but that's not really what's going on.
It was just, you know, Biden reacting to the situation as anybody would.
Yeah, but I'll tell you what it looked like and what it felt like, what it feels like, is that Trump determines what's going to happen and Biden follows him.
Now, you probably never processed that the way I described it.
I'll bet almost none of you thought of it in those terms.
But think of it now.
Do you think that on your subconscious sort of animal level, did you pick up that in both cases Trump determined what happened on the stage?
It wasn't Biden. Biden was almost irrelevant to what happened.
It was only Trump, and then Biden followed.
So that has a little bit of effect, right?
Even if you're not thinking of it consciously, you feel that because you're wired to recognize dominance.
It's your most basic wiring because you need to know who's dominant and who's not in any given situation.
So that was good.
And then the other thing, as I mentioned, is that when people are worried about Trump, And they've got the TDS bad.
They feel as though he's this uncontrolled, uncontrollable, irrational, angry, just sort of a monster, and he needs to be controlled.
And then you watch him last night, and he clearly just made a decision that he wasn't going to be the guy he was in the prior debate, and then he wasn't.
Did it look like it was hard?
No. No, it looked like he effortlessly switched frames and just became the person he needed to be for this debate.
And if you're watching that, does he look as scary today as he looked two weeks ago?
Nope. No.
President Trump took the scare away from his personality.
That's what he did.
Now, did anybody talk about that?
Does anybody say, Hey, I used to be afraid, but now I'm less afraid.
No. These are completely below-the-conscious level types of impressions that you get.
Oh, there's a guy who can be as calm as he needs to be if it's a good strategy.
Now, of course, we see this when he deals with dictators and all the people who don't understand how things work.
The ones who don't understand how things work say, wait a minute, why is he being nice to dictators?
That doesn't make sense.
And the reason is that he can be whatever mode he needs to be to make something work.
So being nice to leaders of other countries, even if they're adversaries, is a very functional, practical thing to do, so long as...
When you actually create policies, that you're not making them friendly policies, and the president does exactly that.
Friendly to the leaders?
Tough on policies.
If you were going to draw down on paper and say, all right, let's design, design from scratch, a perfect leader, what would be the qualities?
Number one, would always be friendly to every leader, because that's good for us.
But our policies would still be independent of that.
And if they have to be tough, they're just tough.
That's how you would draw down on paper.
And that's what he gives you.
And the people who don't understand anything about how the world works say, well, that's inconsistent.
Yeah, it's inconsistent.
By design.
Because that's exactly the way you want it.
Anyway. I think that Trump won simply by being normal and simply demonstrating that it can be done And that his personas are a matter of strategy, not mental defect.
That's important! Because a lot of Democrats are under the impression that he just can't handle it.
He's just this crazy, chaotic guy who's going to spout anything at any time, and it's just hate and racism and all that.
And what you saw last night was a counter-argument to that from the first moment to the last moment.
In fact, and I love this, by the way, one of these little things that Trump does that are magic.
So he's got an African-American woman who's the moderator, and he's been abusing the moderators in general, and her in particular, ahead of the event.
And he was pretty hard on her for being, in his opinion, kind of left biased.
But in the middle of the debate, He drops an aside to compliment her on how well she's doing on the debate.
Now, part of the reason that was so effective is that you were sitting at home thinking the same thing, and he matched you.
Have I ever told you before that one of the most powerful persuasion things you can do is to say out loud what somebody else is thinking, but they haven't said it yet?
It's really powerful.
It's in the top, at least top four Of techniques for persuasion.
Sometimes it's top one.
It's really powerful.
And when I was watching this thing, I was thinking to myself, wow, we got ourselves a good moderator.
This moderator is hitting the dead of the park.
And then the president says, out loud, when you don't expect it, exactly what you're thinking.
Oh yeah, she's really good.
But it had the additional benefit, and he doesn't have to say it out loud.
She's a woman. She's a person of color.
He didn't need to compliment her.
He didn't need to. I mean, you could argue it was part of his strategy or whatever, but he didn't need to.
So it was kind of brilliant to drop that in.
Because maybe Biden would have said it later, and he gets to be first.
And it's the sort of thing where saying it first is the one that matters.
Biden can't really say it after that.
He's not going to get any press for it.
So even though it was this little small thing, it was kind of brilliant.
Because he'd been so hard on her, and then he just wasn't fair, and it had more of an impact because he'd been so hard on her that when she did a good job and he complimented her, you registered that As more powerful.
Because it looked real. First of all, it looked entirely real.
And you were thinking it.
All right. So here's the biggest thing that Trump did wrong.
I would say that he did not have errors of the kind that throw you out of the race or cost you votes.
So I would say Trump did nothing to cost himself a vote.
Agree? He didn't make anything that would look like an error that loses a vote.
Maybe he gained votes, but he definitely didn't lose any votes.
I thought Biden also was solid.
You know, I've been a big critic of Biden, so let me just say that he got through two debates and a town hall, and I'm going to say that I was probably wrong.
Well, no, I'll take the probably away.
I would say that I was wrong...
That he couldn't make it to the finish line.
Now, I think he limped.
I think he limped to the finish line, meaning all the lid days and the time off and staying out of the public.
But he found a way.
He found a way.
And that's not nothing, right?
You know, if I'm being even a little bit objective, kind of impressive at his age that he got as far as he did.
And he managed, I think, to To cover up his weaknesses and looked strong.
It was actually pretty impressive.
I gotta hand it to him.
And unexpected.
So here's what Trump could have done that he didn't do.
And I think the net effect of it is a really, really big money left on the table, which he doesn't do.
Typically, Trump doesn't leave free money laying on the table, but boy, did he do it last night.
So the debate followed this Bobulinski guy, Hunter's ex-business partner, who just completely eviscerated the Bidens, and it should have been the biggest story, but Trump would have known, should have known, and this was his error, Trump should have known that the media didn't cover it except for Fox News.
So when Trump went on stage, this should have been in his head, and I don't think it was.
This is a mistake.
And it goes like this.
He didn't understand that when he referred to it, about the laptop and stuff, he didn't know that the people he wanted to persuade, the people who were on the left or anybody who was still undecided, he didn't know that they don't know anything about that story, because it wasn't covered.
And because he didn't give a summary before he talked about it to say what it was, the CNN viewers who were watching it just said, I don't know what that's all about.
So it should have been a kill shot.
It should have been the end of the mystery about who was going to win.
It should have been over last night.
All President Trump needed to do was what I'm going to do.
And again, I always mock people for saying how the president should word things, because you and I didn't become president, right?
So whatever he's been doing is clearly working, and if you were ever opposed to it, well, you're wrong, because it worked.
So, you know, you always have to have a little humility when you say what Trump should have said or should not have said.
I always keep that in mind.
Because as soon as you think you're smarter than he is, you just have to explain how he became president and you didn't.
You can't avoid that fact.
That said, here's how he could have played it if he had been maybe more aware that most of the public had not seen the story.
I would have started this way.
I would have said, less than an hour ago, Hunter Biden's business partner, Revealed with the text messages, his phones, and his laptop that the emails we've seen from Hunter Biden were authentic, and that he did describe a scheme in which China was paying the Bidens, and that Hunter Biden would hold the money for his father.
It's all in the emails, and now we have a human who verified the emails.
This should be disqualifying for Joe Biden.
Now, on top of this, here are my comments.
So that's the part that was missing.
If the president had laid out what we had seen on Fox News but nowhere else within an hour, just within the last hour, all of the CNN people would have watched that and said, what?
What's this about?
Hunter's business partner?
I don't know anything about that.
And at the very least, and here would have been the kill shot.
Are you ready? If the president had said, I know your news source doesn't show you this, Google this last name, Bob Alinsky, and then spell it so people can Google it.
If the president had told the public, you know, not at Joe Biden, not at the moderator, but looked at the camera and said, do me a favor, your news sources are not serving you right.
Google this word, And find out what just happened an hour ago that your news sources won't tell you about.
And you'll see why they won't tell you about it.
That's the end of the election.
Right? Now again, I have to end with some humility, so I'll bookend it.
I'm not the President of the United States, so if I knew more than Trump does about how to communicate to the public, well, maybe I would be, right?
So, can't say he makes mistakes until you see that the results are not good.
He has good instincts about this stuff.
The other thing that he did accidentally wrong, it seems like a small thing, but maybe it isn't, He referred to Biden as being referred to in those emails I mentioned as the big man.
But the actual phrase was the big guy.
And it might matter, because somebody might have tried to Google that and say, what is this about the big man?
You wouldn't find anything.
But if he had correctly said big guy, and again, it seems like such a small difference, right?
But it's a difference between can it be Googled and not, and I wonder if that matters to the extent that there are lots of people watching.
Somebody probably tried to Google Big Man if they even thought it was connected to a story, and I'm not even sure they did.
So, all right, what else we got going?
Joe Biden's tax plan, his proposed tax plan, according to him last night, Would turn the Proud Boys into what he calls the Poor Boys.
Now, he didn't connect those two thoughts.
He just called the Proud Boys accidentally the Poor Boys.
But I think it's funny that his tax plan would make them poorer.
Not according to him, but according to critics of his plan.
The Democrats like to say that Trump has no plan.
Have you noticed that? That's like the big thing.
Why is it that the Democrats say Trump has no plan for, let's say, coronavirus or for his second term?
Why do they say he has no plan?
It's because their news sources don't say enough about what he's doing.
So the Democrats could just say he has no plan, and the Democratic base will never see news that contradicts that.
So they will actually go away thinking, oh, well, Biden has a plan.
And Trump doesn't have a plan.
Is that the truth?
Because every time I hear that, I say to myself, I know his plan.
And he didn't talk to me personally.
I'm just reading the news.
And to me, as just a news consumer, I know all of Trump's plans.
Why don't you? What is it about what you're doing?
Oh, you're watching CNN. You're reading the New York Times.
And so you don't know what his plan is.
And secondly, sometimes a plan is better expressed as a system.
And I think that's what Trump does.
And people who can't tell the difference between a goal, which sometimes could be okay, but it's not optimal, compared to a system, which is almost always the right choice.
For example, what is Trump's goal for the economy?
Well, I don't know.
He doesn't really express it as a goal.
He expresses it as a number of systems, which if you look at them, you'd say, oh yeah, that's pretty smart.
Here's a system. Get rid of unnecessary regulations.
Right? It doesn't have a specific goal, as in we're going to get rid of 14,700 regulations.
No, that would be a goal.
He simply has a system that as you discover unnecessary regulations, you get rid of them.
Right? How about taxes?
Does he have a goal for taxes?
Well, he likes lower taxes.
That's his system.
Keep your taxes low.
Any chance you get wherever you can, lower them a little bit more.
It's kind of a system that pays off.
How about negotiating trade deals and pushing harder to get better trade deals?
That's not specifically a goal, because you're not saying we will get this deal with this country.
You're saying everywhere we can push, we'll push.
That's a system.
Everywhere that we can ask for more and maybe we can get it, we'll ask for more.
That's a system. So, and then if you look at the coronavirus, the president says we're going to use the military to roll out the vaccines.
Isn't that a plan?
How's that not a plan?
Does the president recommend that people wear masks under situations where they can't social distance?
Yes. Is that a plan?
Or is that just a good recommendation that everybody hears no matter what?
It's just what we're doing.
How about opening up the economy wisely and carefully?
That's what the president wants to do.
Is anybody who doesn't know that?
Are you telling me there's some Democrats who don't understand that the president wants to show some balance?
Yeah, we want to be safe, But part of being safe is having a functioning economy, so he's a little more biased toward opening up.
Does anybody not understand that?
Why can he say there's no plan when that's so obviously what he plans to do and is promoting every single day?
It's baffling.
Now, letting the states make local decisions and letting private companies develop their vaccines, you know, with government help, but mostly they're taking the lead, That's a plan, but I would describe it as a system in which you let the private industry really step up, and then you just support them with money and whatever else they need, removing obstacles as well.
So it is, again, mind-boggling to watch the Democrats claim that Trump doesn't have plans when they are so obvious that But they're more like systems.
They happen to be a better version of a plan.
If you had a choice of a plan versus a system, take the system every time.
And that's what Trump offers you.
But the consumers of news are not sophisticated to know that distinction.
We finally figured out what malarkey is.
All this time, didn't you wonder what malarkey is?
And the way Biden used it last night...
Is that all of these stories about Hunter's laptop and the emails and the deals with China, that that's all malarkey.
So apparently if there's a story that gets covered accurately by some news outlets but is completely ignored by the Biden-friendly news outlets, the description of the news not covering the news is called malarkey.
So malarkey...
Anytime, it's only covered by conservative news.
All right. Amazingly, and if you didn't do this last night, it is just so entertaining, I turned on CNN immediately after the debates.
Because you know what Fox News is going to say, right?
I don't really have to watch Fox News to know what they're going to say.
They're going to say Trump did well.
And sure enough, they did.
On CNN, I turned on Jake Tapper, who, you know, I don't want to do mind reading, but he looked like he was in pain, like some kind of psychic pain last night.
And one of the things he and the others said is that the things that Trump was referring to didn't make sense to the audience.
In other words, the Biden laptop stuff, people didn't really know what that was about.
But amazingly, so Jake Tapper is sort of criticizing the president for using language that you would only see, I think he referred to on Sean Hannity's show, the sort of insider language that doesn't make sense to the general public.
You'd have to watch these right-leaning outlets to even know what he was talking about.
That's a little bit true, and that's the complaint I had as well, except when it comes from CNN, it sounds different.
Because CNN is the one who is keeping their own audience in the dark.
So yes, it is true that Trump made references to things that the audience would not have understood.
But why?
It's because of CNN. CNN is the reason the audience doesn't understand what Trump is saying.
It's not exactly, completely Trump's fault.
If Trump talks about the news, the headline news, the most important news in the news, and the audience of CNN doesn't know what he's talking about, that's a little bit on CNN, don't you think?
And the fact that they could put that on Trump was kind of ballsy.
Jake Tapper referred to it as disgusting and said that the stories about the laptop stuff and the emails is a Breitbart land.
He called it an example of like Breitbart, as if just saying that word is all you need to know.
Now, I would love to see this comparison.
If it were possible to have actual fact-checking, I don't know if anybody can do real fact-checking, But if it were possible, and you were to do Breitbart versus CNN, and somehow you could find somebody in the world who would be an objective fact-checker, do you think Breitbart would be less than CNN? I don't see that.
Because I read Breitbart quite a bit, and I watch CNN quite a bit, and CNN is nonstop lies.
I don't see that on Breitbart.
Do you? I mean, I don't know if I'm reading the wrong articles or something.
Am I reading the wrong articles?
Because I don't see Breitbart just making up news.
And I don't see them just ignoring major stories.
But I see it on CNN. Alright.
The other thing that CNN does is that they conflate every part of the Rudy Giuliani Laptop, Hunter Biden stuff.
They conflate it as if it's all one big ball of thing.
So if there's any part of it that doesn't look completely legitimate, then they can just throw out the whole thing.
Now, in some cases, that makes perfect sense.
You know, if there's somebody telling you a story and you can find out that one part of it is not true, that does tell you less credibility for the rest of it.
But what about the Rudy Giuliani stuff?
What we have here is stuff that has been verified, let's say at least by Bobolinsky, by having a witness who says, yes, that email is real, and it means exactly what you think it is.
So there's some part of it that's pretty well documented.
But then there are other parts of it, such as there are some alleged photos on the laptop, and I'm going to follow CNN's lead this much, Which is, those don't seem as relevant, and they don't seem as confirmed as the emails do.
That doesn't mean they're not true.
It's just it's a different class of credibility.
So CNN would take that stuff, which has low credibility.
Could be true. We just don't have a way to verify it, and it's kind of sketchy stuff.
And they act as if that's all it was.
But there's a real big difference between there were some sketchy photos on it.
Who knows if the photos are real or they were put there later.
Who knows? But the emails, that's a whole different level of credibility.
So that's their trick.
Just throw that in there. So here's the sequence that I see.
Trump says, here's my coronavirus plan.
And then the media says, Trump has no coronavirus plan.
Even though he just told you what it was.
And then Biden says, here's my coronavirus plan.
And then Trump says, you just described my plan.
And we're already implementing that plan.
And then the media says, Trump has no coronavirus plan.
They can just make reality disappear right in front of your eyes.
They just have to act like it's not true in the media And even if you're positive it's not true, or positive they're leaving something out, over time they can wear you down.
They will make their reality your reality.
The big story that the conservatives want to take away from the event was that Joe Biden is inconsistent on fracking.
He seems to be against it, but then he's not against it, but he's sort of against it, or against it in a little way, or he's not against it fully now, but he wants to phase it down.
So his messaging on that is all over the map.
Even CNN fact-checked him on that.
Keep that in mind.
CNN just brutally fact-checked Biden on the fracking stuff, and they said, too, that's not what he's been saying.
You know, he has been saying he's anti-fracking.
Here's the video of him saying it.
So I didn't really...
I didn't know if CNN would do that.
And I have to think that that one's going to make a dent.
The primary reason that would matter and others would not is that CNN fact-checked it.
And if you cared about fracking, and you should...
Let me give you an economic lesson.
You ready? There are a few things about economics that you can say are just always true.
You know, there's a lot of stuff that, well, it depends on the specific situation.
But there are other things that are just kind of always true.
That the economy of a country seems to be directly related To their ability to create cheap energy.
So the availability of inexpensive or economical energy is the single biggest factor for whether a country does well.
Now, countries that don't have their own energy situation can do well in special cases.
They might have some, you know, advantage going on.
But generally speaking, if you want to make a generalization, big modern economies Pretty much driven by energy.
Now, Trump knew this.
He knew this. So Trump said, the best thing I can do for this country is to make sure our energy situation is good, And especially if our gas energy is good, that will actually lower CO2, because gas would be replacing more polluting methods.
Coal, for example. So the United States has actually done well with CO2. At the same time, it became independent energy producer, which allows us to pursue peace in the Middle East because we just have less of a fighting interest over there.
It allows us to pull our soldiers home.
So Trump's understanding of the importance of energy to an economy, and therefore to its foreign policy, is perfect.
He has a perfect understanding of the importance of the energy industry to make everything else work.
And Biden doesn't.
So that's a pretty big difference in their economic Pretty big.
So that one could hurt him. Biden said something that was just a real head shaker.
They were talking about increasing the minimum wage to $15, and Biden said that that would help small businesses that were struggling because of the coronavirus.
To which I said, does Biden not understand that the small business is paying the wage?
They don't receive the wage.
It's the employee who receives the wage that is paid by the small business.
So if the small business is forced to pay more while their revenue is the same, that should be bad.
I don't want to get into the details.
I don't want to get all economical here.
But does Biden not understand that wages are paid by companies to employees?
Or was that a senior moment?
And certainly if you gave Biden a quiz and said, do you understand that wages are paid to the employees, he would get it right.
But he said it completely wrong last night.
Which makes me wonder if that was just sort of a senior moment and he was confused.
It looked like confusion, and not in a good way.
I didn't see anybody pick that up.
I heard people note that he had said it wrong and it didn't make sense, but I haven't seen anybody go to the next level to say, was that a senior moment?
What did we witness there?
Now, Trump, on the other hand, he has, by analogy, there's a similar thing he does, where he says that China has been paying the United States because he raised tariffs on imports.
Now, the people who understand economics say this every time.
It doesn't matter if you're pro or anti-Trump.
The people who understand economics say, uh, that's not what's happening.
That's not what a tariff is.
A tariff is not paid by the company that's selling us the goods.
The tariff is paid by the consumer.
The tariff is paid by the Americans who buy the product.
There's a tax on top of the product, and that goes to the United States government.
So a tariff is our own citizens paying our own government.
And then the president takes that money, Because that becomes a little windfall for the government that wasn't there before.
And he pays some or all of that to the farmers, for example, so that they have some cushion against the fact that the Chinese are targeting them.
Now, does Trump not know what a tariff is?
He does.
If you privately gave him a quiz and said, President Trump, The way you talk about this doesn't exactly match what the economists would say is going on here.
Do you not understand that a tariff is just Americans paying Americans?
It has nothing to do with the Chinese?
I believe he would say, of course I know that.
But it's complicated.
And it's complicated to describe to the public.
I think he's just oversimplifying it to the point where it's just not even true.
But it's easier to sell it that way.
Is it directionally correct?
This is what I always say about the president.
He is inaccurate often, but he is directionally correct pretty much every time.
Yeah, pretty much. And this is a case where it is directionally accurate.
And here's why, but it's hard to explain.
If China can no longer sell these goods because the price has been jacked up because the tariffs have been added on top, Then Americans will buy less from China and they will look for other sources.
We hope that they look for American sources.
So the real benefit is that Americans can sell more things to Americans because they don't have to compete with the Chinese goods because the Chinese goods just got a little extra cost added to them called the tariff.
And the president did that.
So is it a good idea to have tariffs and is it a good idea to have a trade war?
And the answer is yes.
It's good for America to have tariffs if what you're doing is making Chinese goods less valuable.
It's good for America to have a trade war if what you're doing is showing that the other country isn't going to push you around and you're even willing to tax yourself, which is what a tariff is kind of, you're even willing to tax yourself to say F you to that other country.
That's how much we're not going to do a trade deal with you We'll even tax ourselves not to do a trade deal with you.
So if you want a trade deal, you're going to have to step it up.
You're going to have to offer us something you've never offered before, or we don't care.
We don't need a trade deal.
We will tax ourselves with tariffs before we'll buy your stuff.
So it's a negotiating thing, and I think it can work in the long run.
All right. So...
So if you look at Biden's confusion about the minimum wage, that's not directionally correct.
That's directionally opposite.
But you look at Trump's claims about tariffs, technically completely incorrect, but directionally, it's good for the United States.
That's the point.
He does it because it's good for the United States.
Not in every way, and not immediately.
But he does it because it should have a payoff.
Alright. I was looking at some other media and how they're treating this laptop stuff, the Hunter Biden stuff.
The Huffington Post a few days ago said that the emails are not confirmed.
So you shouldn't pay attention to them because the emails on that laptop are not confirmed.
To which I say, how hard would it be to confirm them?
Don't they just have to ask whoever received it or whoever sent it?
Is this real? And the fact that the Bidens have not denied the emails, that really tells you they're real.
There is some report that the metadata and the PDF files on the Biden emails don't match, that they're the wrong dates.
Have you heard that news?
Because just as the...
The left doesn't hear everything from the right.
Certainly it's true that there's some things on the left that is never heard by the right.
I've never heard this before.
I saw it this morning.
And I thought, what?
The metadata on the emails are the wrong dates?
Have you heard that?
I think I need a fact check on that one.
Especially since the emails have been confirmed by the business partner.
All right. And then they like to say that...
That in the Ukraine situation, the Burisma thing, the reporting is that a Republican inquiry, and it's important that it was the Republicans who did this, found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
In other words, there was no evidence that Biden ever tried to influence American policy in favor of Burisma or Ukraine or anything.
But I don't think that understands...
How influence works.
Influence doesn't necessarily mean something you can see with your eyes if you're observing.
Influence is sort of things that happen at the meeting that you weren't in, how much somebody pushes on something, what kind of words they use to push against something.
This whole idea that Biden would have potentially just taken money from Burisma and then Pushed for a law that was only good for Burisma.
It doesn't really work that way.
It's not that on the nose.
It's more like if there's something that's in the gray area, it's a little bit more likely to bend their direction.
That's sort of the influence that anybody's trying to buy.
So if you don't find any direct evidence of that influence, that doesn't mean there's no influence.
That just means they're doing it the smart way.
So there's no smoking gun.
Trump claimed that he was the least racist person in the building.
Now, of course, the fact-checkers are going crazy on that.
Wait a minute. I don't know that he's the least racist person in the building.
But I like it as an over-claim because it makes you argue about, you know, who is he comparing it to and all this.
And it makes you focus on his statement.
So this is the thing he does all the time and does so well.
He'll say something that you're sure sounds wrong, but it's because he wants you to focus on that thing.
And the message is, if he says he's the least racist person and that he's been best for blacks since maybe Abraham Lincoln, that doesn't need to be true.
It only needs to be provocative enough that you can't look away.
So if you're talking this morning about whether he's better for black people since Abraham Lincoln, or that's a lie, he wins.
If you're even dealing with the topic of whether he's the best president for the black population since Abraham Lincoln, if you're even talking about it, he wins.
So that's not a bad strategy.
And even CNN had an article today In which they admitted, or at least the one opinion person, admitted there's some puzzlement about why so many people do like, so many black people like Trump.
And this is how they wrote from an opinion piece.
It's one of those seemingly hard to explain things.
President Donald Trump holds an allure for some black men despite his history of denigrating black Americans.
Why history?
CNN will just throw that in there.
Despite his history of denigrating black Americans, I believe there are literally zero examples of that.
What? I mean, even the people who make claims about him, I don't think they make that claim, do they?
When has he ever done anything that sounded like denigrating?
I'm seeing in the comments somebody says, Scott, Scott, Scott, Central Park Five?
The Central Park Five, he didn't mention race at all.
Nor did he mention the Central Park Five directly.
He talked about crime in general, and that it would be good to have the death penalty.
So, was that denigrating black people?
No. That was just anti-crime.
If you're saying that black people and crime are the same thing, because Trump did not say that, well then I think you need to check your racism.
Because you're jumping to some conclusion that if somebody's talking about crime, they must be talking about black people.
That's on you.
Because Trump did not mention race, he mentioned crime.
If you leapt to the assumption that that means black, that's on you.
All right. And so they say, and they showed some puzzlement that 50 Cent was pro-Trump, etc.
And I'm not surprised by it at all, really.
Not surprised by it at all.
One of the things that I always remind you is that you can't really know how other people think.
So I can't know how black Americans think no matter how hard I try.
I mean, I could do my best, but you can't really understand how anybody else thinks, same as they can't understand how I think, etc.
But here's something I wonder, so I'll just put it in the form of a question.
If you were black in America, and let's say you were a black man in America, Do you feel like sometimes the system is biased against you?
You do, right?
That's probably a dominant feeling.
At least, again, I'm not inside anybody's head, but that's what's reported, that black men feel that the system is biased against them.
Do you know who else feels that?
Donald Trump. Trump is probably the most attacked person by the system.
That's the same system attacking black people, or it would feel like it.
I feel like if you were black, you would have something that feels like you have in common with Trump, which is that the system is against you, has targeted you.
And I don't think that's a small thing.
Because, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend situation.
Trump is targeted by the same system that black people probably think is targeting them.
That's something. How about the fact that if you're black, you feel like racism isn't something that just pops up now and then, but rather you're marinating it all the time.
So what if you were black and you just thought, okay, I can't really get away from it.
It sort of doesn't matter who's president.
It's just sort of everywhere all the time.
Let's say that's your point of view.
Wouldn't you then vote for the president who could at least get you the most stuff?
If you think it's going to be racism all the time, everywhere, no matter what, and you've got two candidates, one has done a bunch of stuff for black Americans, which the president can list, From Opportunity Zones, the Platinum Plan, prison reform, historically black colleges.
It's a pretty long list now.
It's pretty solid. So if you're black and you say to yourself, I think it's just going to be racism all the time no matter what.
Maybe we can make a little dent in it, but these two presidential candidates don't make any difference.
I might as well take the one who gives me more stuff.
Is that irrational?
If you can't fix that other problem, at least fix the problem you can fix.
Get some stuff. Let's see.
Larry Charles...
My old co-executive producer on the Dilbert TV show years ago, who is famous for a number of things, including being one of the first writers on Seinfeld.
He was the director of the first Borat movie, I believe.
And he's very anti-Trump.
And he tweeted this yesterday, I think.
He said, We will still have to deal with the millions and millions of rabid people who bought into his hate.
They're not going to have a sudden change of heart just because he's gone.
That reckoning is still to come.
To which I say to myself, what?
Who's he talking about?
Are you aware of any conservatives or Trump supporters who are rabid people who bought into his hate?
I'm not aware of any of that.
Are you? Now, of course, there are always crazy people who will pick a reason, they'll pick a religion, or they'll pick a leader, or they'll pick something.
So could there be some crazy, right-leaning person who does a bad thing because of him?
Yeah, I suppose.
But is it some big general problem that just regular Trump voters are filled with hate and that it's somehow worse because of Trump?
I don't see any of that.
Do you? The only people who seem to be filled with hate seem to be the left.
Is that...
Somebody says, are you kidding?
So that's sort of a perfect example of the two movies on one screen.
So there's somebody in the comments who is just blown away.
It's like, are you kidding? It's obvious, I imagine, this person would think.
It's obvious that the right is just filled with hate.
But I spend all of my time with the right.
I don't see any of it.
Like, I've never had a private conversation with anybody on the right, and I've had a lot of them in the last four years.
I've had a lot of private conversations with Trump supporters.
I've never seen anybody who had kind of a hate vibe about them at all.
Not at all. But yet, I get pure hate from the left.
You know, their attitude.
I mean, even the thing I just read from Larry Charles.
That reads a little bit like hate, doesn't it?
I don't know that any...
I can't think of any conservative who would ever write anything like this.
I don't know anybody who would write anything as bad as what Larry wrote...
About other people being bad.
So, you know, I'm aware...
Now, let me give you a little bit of comfort if you're disagreeing.
Somebody says, try being black.
Do you think that Republicans are more anti-black because of Trump?
Really? Because Trump does nothing but brag about what he's done for black America.
Does that make you dislike blacks?
I don't think so. I don't think so.
Do racists exist?
Of course. Are there more of them because of Trump?
I don't think so.
I'm certainly not seeing anything like that.
Now, let's dovetail this story into this next point, which is...
CNN is talking about a white supremacist group, according to them, that's talking about paramilitary training in secret vetting calls.
So the story is that there are these phone calls and these paramilitary groups that are really white supremacists are forming.
That's pretty scary, isn't it?
That's the sort of thing that Larry might have noted.
Wow, if there's a white supremacy group, That's gathering weapons and organizing?
You're afraid, aren't you?
Well, let's dig in a little bit.
Let's find out more about this white supremacist group.
It's called The Base.
Let me start by saying I am not defending anybody.
I'm not anybody's apologist.
I'm just going to describe, okay?
I can describe without defending.
Are you okay with that? Some things have good things and bad things.
If I describe the good things and the bad things, I'm not defending.
I'm just describing.
And the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, whose job it is to look for hate groups and call them out, has decided that the base is a white supremacist group.
What is it that makes them decide that the base is a white supremacist group?
Is it The mission statement of the group?
Nope. Because the mission statement of the group has nothing to do with race.
They're a militia.
They're a militia whose intention is to be organized in case society falls apart.
Which part of that is racist?
Now, oh, I know what you're saying, Scott, Scott, Scott.
You're so naive.
They're not going to say it directly.
And if anybody asks them, they're going to deny it, right?
But I ask you this.
Who gets to decide who's a white supremacist group?
For example, let's say you start a birdwatching group in your neighborhood.
You get 50 people in your birdwatching group.
Two of them, you learn later, posted some racist things on Facebook.
Is your birdwatching group now actually a white supremacist group?
Because you do have some racists in there, and that's just a fact.
But it's two of them, and they said they're racist stuff with no connection to your birdwatching, and they're not trying to bring the birdwatching into your birdwatch, or the racism into the birdwatching, because your birdwatching group would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not a racist group.
We just want to watch birds.
So if the Southern Poverty Law Center observed that Bird-watching group, how would they label them?
Well, probably exactly the way they labeled this group called the base.
And again, I'm not defending them, I'm just describing.
The base does not call themselves a racist group, and in fact, none of their mission statement involves race at all.
It's just a militia about, you know, being prepared for the worst-case scenario.
But there does seem to be evidence That members of this group, outside of the group, and separately from what the group is doing, are seriously racist.
But are they white supremacists?
Which is a certain flavor.
Well, there's no evidence of that.
But it's sort of a standard now that if somebody is a racist, that they also are called a white supremacist, which is really a different thing.
Equally bad in its own way, but there's a distinction that matters, which is do you think you're better than other races or do you just prefer that you stay away from them?
Because that's different.
The supremacists think that they're better.
I've never met one, nor have I ever seen one.
Because the only racists that I know in 2020 are worried that they're not as good as the other groups, which is why they're worried.
Because they don't feel they can compete.
So the racists are more like white inferiorists than supremacists, because they're literally mostly afraid of losing ground.
They don't think they can compete.
Alright, so the SBLC has called this group a white supremacist group, and I would argue that groups only get to label themselves.
I think groups should label themselves.
And just the fact that they have some bad apples in their group It's no different than Democrats.
Would you say that CNN is a Zoom masturbating group?
We have evidence, right?
Jeffrey Toobin was doing a little Toobin on Zoom, so he was a member of CNN. Could we not conclude then that CNN is a Zoom masturbating organization?
Because that's what the SPLC does.
They say if there's somebody in your group who did something that's, you know, disreputable, then that's the whole group.
So, anyway, watch out for that.
I saw an answer to a question that I was pretty sure was the way I thought it was, which is the question of whether Trump is building the wall or he's doing nothing but improving...
Or replacing wall that already existed.
Now, the Democrats say, oh, he's not building any wall, he's just doing maintenance on existing wall.
Is he? Or is he building new wall?
They can't both be true, right?
Now, what I assumed was true, it turns out, is true.
Which is the existing wall was so inadequate that it wasn't really a wall at all.
It was like some barbed wire and some things you can just move out of the way.
Some barriers. The old or existing wall that was just some barbed wire and an obstacle was essentially no wall.
Because a wall that doesn't stop anybody isn't really a wall.
It's more like just a little friction.
A wall that stops most people, that's a wall.
So I would say that they are building a wall for the first time, because what they had there was some kind of a barrier obstacle that was very un-wall-like.
So I think that I would fact-check the president as correct, saying that it's a new wall, even though there was some kind of barrier there before that wasn't effective.
Somebody says that Biden's drug cocktail was clearly wearing off.
Well, I was looking carefully at Biden's eyes because I feel like you can see his soul in his eyes, so to speak.
And his eyes, when he's doing his debates, do not look the same as his eyes look all the other times.
In other words, he does look like he's on something.
Now, I'm not a doctor.
I shouldn't be saying this in public.
I'm giving you my impression because our impressions of how we felt or what we thought when we watch our politicians, that's valid.
It would be invalid for me to say he's on a drug.
That would be invalid because I'm not a doctor.
It's completely valid for me to say the way he was acting leads me to feel like he's on some kind of medication.
That's valid, because I'm just telling you how I feel, and how we feel about our politicians is part of the story.
So, you know, if I had to reach into my pocket and make a financial bet on whether Biden was, let's say, cranked up for these events, and maybe not cranked up with some meta...
Medical treatment.
The rest of the time, I would bet on it.
I'd bet $1,000 that he takes some kind of medical intervention for the debates that he is not typically on.
Would you? Now, again, I'm not a doctor.
I don't diagnose.
You know, I could certainly be wrong.
Don't take my medical advice.
But that's what it looks like.
It looks like that to me.
All right. And that.
It's everything we need to know for today.
Biden does have this look where he looks like he's lost.
Have you seen it? Every now and then he just has this squinty look and you look in his eyes and it's like there's nothing there.
It's like he's lost the plot for a little bit.
And then he covers it up by acting angry and saying things he's said in the past until he gets back on the trail.
So, yeah, there's something about a look he has that is pretty disconcerting.
