Episode 1194 Scott Adams: Disinformation, Election Persuasion and What Will Happen to my Printer Today. With Extra Profanity
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The buzzsaw waiting for Biden if he takes office
Are Republicans as bad as Democrats as people?
Do NOT trust the experts
Teacher Anti-Child Unions
Disinformation caution on election fraud
A big signal from the Supreme Court?
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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You know, every morning when I am in your company, I feel good.
True story. You know, this is the only thing I've ever done that is job-like.
That doesn't feel anything like work.
Because this stuff that I do, I literally do it for fun.
And I look forward to it every morning.
So I hope some of you enjoy it.
And you might enjoy it more with a cup or mug or a glass of tank or gels or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Any kind, really.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now, once again, For an unbroken string of unparalleled goodness.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens right now.
Go. Well, let's talk about my printer.
If you've been joining me on these live streams lately, you know I've had a little trouble with it.
A little bit of trouble with it.
But here's an interesting update.
It turns out that when you complain about your HP printer in public, eventually the word of that complaint will reach the HP executive escalation team.
So I get a phone call.
I'm driving yesterday. I get a phone call in my car, and it's Hewlett-Packard saying, We hear you're having problems with your printer.
So the escalation team, if you're not familiar with big corporation processes, it's very common for a big corporation to have a small group who does exactly this.
They look for prominent complaints The kind of complaints that would get into the public and cause a public relations problem.
And they looked to stamp out those prominent complaints with a special team.
It's actually very smart.
When I worked for Pacific Bell, we had the same thing.
We had a rapid response team for the big complaints that could get out of hand.
So HP contacts me and offers to Set me up with a tech support to solve my problem.
So we arranged a call and the tech support guy calls and walked me through a fairly, it was pretty complicated to sign on and solve it.
But the first part of the solution goes like this.
Tech support says, go to this web page, type in this URL, and then, you know, click these buttons.
And I'm just doing what I'm told, right?
So I go to my computer and I go to the web page and I feel like It's going to be something like download this driver or something like that.
But just before I click, I realize that the thing I'm going to click on is going to turn over control of my computer to the stranger on the phone.
And I'm like...
And my finger just jumps back when I realize what I'm about to click.
I do believe that it was HP. So I don't really...
I don't really disbelieve...
That HP was on the phone and indeed they solved the problem and then followed up.
So I'm sure it was HP. But as a general rule, if you let a stranger on the telephone get control of your computer, don't do that.
Better than that, pick your computer up and throw it out your window And then, you know, destroy it with a hammer and buy a new one.
But don't give strangers control of your computer.
Just don't do that.
I realize I just made a lot of people's tech support problems much harder, but don't do that.
So I didn't need to do that.
You know, he just talked me through what I needed to do, changed the drivers, and it works fine.
Look at this. Paper.
Paper. So instead of throwing my printer off of the balcony, as I was going to do, let me give a shout out to HP, who every once in a while you see a big corporation do something exactly right.
That's what they did. It was exactly right.
The way they handled it could not have been more perfect.
So, my compliments. To HP. Alright, here's a fun thing that might be ahead.
Assuming Biden takes office, as many people believe, now, I don't think that's guaranteed, but let's just work with me here.
If Biden takes office, he's going to be walking into a buzzsaw That I don't think he sees coming, and it looks like this.
Trump was able to get the Republican Party to rally around him eventually.
I don't know that Democrats are going to be able to pull that off, you know, the left and the right.
I think that now that they think they won, they're going to turn their attentions on each other and, you know, and start chewing on each other.
So Biden will have only, let's say, half or two-thirds of the Democratic Party.
The other third will be trying to kill him.
He won't have Republicans, obviously.
Fox News, Breitbart, they're unlikely to be, you know, pro-Biden.
So he's going to have that whole part of the media against him, a third or so of his own team against him.
And then here's the fun part.
How does CNN stay in business?
If all they do is puff pieces on Biden.
It made sense to do them when they did them, because they were trying to manage a result to get him elected.
But what happens if the dog chases the car and then catches it?
If the dog catches the car, it doesn't know what the fuck to do with it.
I promised you extra profanity.
There's more coming. And so CNN is going to have a tough choice.
If all they do is, well, Biden's awesome again.
Look at that energy.
Look at him go. He seems more coherent than ever, really.
How many people are going to watch that?
Nobody. Nobody's going to watch it.
And it's not as fun to look at, oh, Mitch McConnell, block this or that.
Those are boring stories, right?
You need a Trump to get some energy into your We're good to go.
Protector, if you will.
Somebody with deep pockets.
So I think the most likely thing that would happen is CNN will turn on Biden.
Because they'd have to.
They need to get ratings.
So Biden is going to have the left media against him, the right media against him, and a third of his own base against him.
I don't think any president would ever come into office with more potential firepower aimed at him.
It's going to be brutal.
Or it could be. I mean, I suppose you could say that CNN so doesn't care about profits that they would rather, you know, just be nice to him because he's on their team.
Maybe. But I feel like profits are pretty important.
I feel as though the profit motive will cause CNN to turn on him.
And if you believe that AI already runs the world, it's guaranteed.
All right. Here's a question for you, and I genuinely don't know the answer to this, so it's not rhetorical.
Are Republicans as bad as Democrats?
As people?
Because I get a biased view of it because most of my trolls would identify as being left-leaning, And people on the right are generally nicer to me because they tend to agree with my messages, etc.
So what I don't know is, all things being equal, if I were not identified with a side, would Republicans be as bad to me, just personally, as human beings, as the left is?
Because I don't feel like that would be the case, but it might be, right?
Could I have the blind spot?
Do I have a blind spot that just makes me biased in favor of right-leaning people?
Because I'll tell you my impression, which is not based on science or data.
So I could be completely wrong about this, and I'm aware that I could be completely wrong, but I'll tell you how I feel.
I feel as if I often agree politically, philosophically, with a lot of the things that people on the left say.
For example, You know, I think we ought to have something closer to free college somehow.
I don't know how to get there. We should have something closer to better health care for everybody.
I don't know how to get there either, math-wise.
So I don't disagree with a lot of things that they want.
But it feels like conservatives and Republicans are nicer people.
Am I wrong about that?
Just nicer people.
So I would rather be hanging out with conservatives who disagree with me politically than I would hanging out with leftists who agree with me politically.
They just seem unpleasant.
And I can't tell if that's just a weird bias I have or if it's actually a thing.
I mean, I don't know. It could be a thing.
So I just put that out there.
I hope you're not being as bad as them.
Let me give you some examples.
So I did a tweet, and I'll talk to you about it later, in which I got 10,000 retweets.
So getting 10,000 retweets is a lot, right, for the size of my account, would show massive agreement with what I tweeted.
20,000 likes, right?
So this is the tweet, and by the way, there's nothing in it that's controversial, really.
And somebody comments, obviously somebody on the left, Dilberguy is trying so hard to be relevant.
And I'm thinking to myself, if you tweet on the topic of the day, which is the election controversy, and you get 10,000 retweets and 20,000 likes, and you're doing a popular live stream, And somebody tweets, Dilbert guy is trying so hard to be relevant.
What does relevant look like to you?
And let me back up a little bit.
Who is it who's not trying to be relevant?
Is there anybody who wakes up in the morning and says, you know, I think today I will achieve my goal of being irrelevant to the world?
Shouldn't you all be trying to be relevant, even if you're failing?
Wouldn't it be an honorable thing to be attempting to be relevant, even if it didn't work?
Right? Now, I would argue that, objectively, you can look at the data, and you would say that it is working, in the sense that lots of people are paying attention, as demonstrated by retweets and likes.
They're actually acting on it.
You know, they're clicking something. So, it's like this critic...
Obviously, I don't take any of the trolls too seriously.
I'm more interested in the mindset and understanding what's going on here.
What is this critic trying to accomplish?
It feels like it's just evil.
There's no point to it.
It's just being evil.
Because it's a comment that's only directed to make me feel bad.
It didn't. Obviously, I'm a professional, so some little tweet isn't going to make me feel bad.
But it makes me curious.
Like, what the hell is wrong with you that you would feel that this was a good use of your time?
All right, here's another one.
So I did a long tweet thread about the brainwashing techniques that Democrats are using.
I would say there's nothing in that tweet thread that is even really provocative It's pretty much a routine analysis of word choice and how those word choices are persuasive or not.
It's not even really political.
It's just about persuasion and word choice.
And somebody tweets at the Denver Post, which is one of my client newspapers.
They tweet at the Denver Post with my thread and say, can we talk about the Dilbert guy?
Meaning that They would like to get me kicked out of the Denver newspaper because I did a tweet that has no provocative content in it.
He just doesn't like it.
That's it. He doesn't like the tweet, so he wants me to lose my job.
I didn't say anything that was even accused of being offensive to anybody.
I was not accused of being inaccurate about anything.
So I'm not being accused of being wrong or offensive or dangerous or anything.
He just didn't like my opinion.
And he thinks I should lose my job over that.
That's where we're at.
Now, are Republicans like that?
I don't think so, but I could be wrong.
All right. So today, like every other day, there's something that happens to me every single day.
And it goes like this.
Hey Scott, here's a very credible study that says wearing masks doesn't work.
Doesn't work at all.
Followed by somebody else.
Hey Scott, here's a study, and lots of them, that proved that masks work.
Definitely. Every day.
Every fucking day, somebody sends me a study that says masks work, and one that says masks don't work.
And they all look credible to me.
What the hell do I know?
You know, half of studies get debunked eventually.
But I can't tell.
So, I tell you, the concept of trusting the experts Is the stupidest fucking thing in the public right now.
Don't fucking trust experts.
Why? Is it because they're wrong?
No. It's because you don't know.
You can't judge which expert is right, let's say on the mask question, because they're experts on both sides.
You can't judge which of those experts are right.
With what? Your secret fucking powers?
You don't have any...
None of your five senses have evolved to tell which expert, having opposite opinions, With opposite complex studies that you can't look into, even if you wanted to, you can't fucking tell which expert is right.
Listen to the experts is the dumbest fucking thing in the whole fucking world.
Do you know what else is as dumb as that?
We should not impugn the trust in our institutions.
You're hearing that a lot, right?
If blah, blah, blah, Trump does this or that, it will cause people to lose trust in the election process.
Good! Fucking good!
We should lose all trust in our institutions.
How about the news?
Should you trust the news?
No! Don't fucking trust the news!
Ever! Don't ever fucking trust the news!
Don't trust the elections.
Don't trust the fucking news.
Don't trust Congress. Don't trust any elected official.
Don't trust any institution.
Don't trust your fucking teachers' unions.
Don't fucking trust anyone.
That's your healthy situation.
Instead of trust, build a good system.
Put transparency into your system.
Do you know why I trust Trump more than, let's say, his critics do?
Because the presidency is probably the most transparent job in the whole world.
Well, that's an exaggeration, but it's a super transparent job.
If he did a lot of the things he would be accused of, the odds of detection are close to 100%.
It's the most transparent job ever.
Take the election.
Should we trust the election next time?
No! Don't fucking trust the next election.
Don't even trust it a little bit.
If your election professionals have not added a whole bunch of transparency that isn't there now, don't fucking trust it.
Don't trust this one.
Don't trust the next one.
Now, will this lack of trust destroy civilization?
Will it destroy the country?
No. No.
Because there's a thing we have in this country, in America, and I can't speak for other countries.
It might be, you know, maybe it's just true for a lot of countries.
But there is a thing we have here, in America, that other people don't have.
And that thing is super, super strong.
We're Americans. That's it.
That's it. We're Americans.
We're not going to break our fucking country.
We're just not going to do it.
We don't want to.
We don't want to break America.
So we won't.
But we will break our fucking institutions.
We will break any fucking thing we have to to keep the country together.
Alright? We don't fucking care about our institutions.
Nothing. We do care about America.
We will protect it.
We don't care about our fucking institutions.
Don't care about them.
All right.
Let's talk about the teachers' unions.
I believe that, like Antifa, Antifa did a very clever thing, persuasion-wise.
Antifa created a name for themselves called anti-fascist.
And then when people said to them, as they obviously would, hey, aren't you acting like Fascists?
And then Antifa and then their pats in the news say, oh, you fool.
You fools.
We're acting like fascists?
Have you even seen the name of our organization?
Anti. Anti.
Fascist. So if you're against us, and we're anti-fascist, logically, You would be a fascist.
And because people are fucking idiots, that actually works.
There are actually people who think, oh, that makes sense.
We're anti-fascists.
If you're anti-anti-fascist, oh, negative, negative.
I guess you're a fascist.
Now, that kind of persuasion shouldn't work But we observe that it does, right?
Because persuasion is about the irrational process.
It's not about anything that's rational.
So I suggest, given that the teachers' unions are the poison that is destroying civilization, I don't think that's too strong.
Is that too strong?
To say that the teachers' unions are the poison destroying civilization.
I feel like that's not even hyperbole.
They're the cause of, or at least the perpetuation of systemic racism, because if every black kid had a quality education, do you think there would be as much differences in outcomes?
There wouldn't be as much.
I mean, I don't know if there would be differences, but it wouldn't be as much.
So the teachers' unions are by far the most...
Evil, pernicious part of life.
But I think they should not be called teachers' unions.
And here's why. Teachers are still good.
When I talk about teachers' unions, I'm not talking about teachers.
There may be some overlap.
But I'm not talking about the person who just dedicates their life to teaching children and making their lives better.
The teachers are fine.
Mostly. You know, they're not all great, but I'm not talking about the teachers.
I'm talking about the unions, who are now keeping kids out of school in some places, despite science, apparently.
And this is a crushing blow to those children, but the teachers' unions persist.
So here's the name I would give them.
Because teachers sounds good, and unions sounds good.
Right? Just as words.
As independent words.
We generally like unions, right?
I don't think the country would be nearly as well off if unions had never existed.
But, like everything, you can have too much of a good thing.
You know, not everything is as good as everything else.
So, rather than having a name, teachers, which is good, and unions, which is generally good, how about calling them the anti-child union?
The anti-children union, or anti-child union.
I can't decide if child or children is better.
But I think I'm going to call them the hashtag anti-child union because that feels closer to what's happening, right?
The whole point of the teachers union is to benefit the teachers.
The whole point of school is to benefit the children.
Are you with me? School is to benefit children.
Teachers' unions are, by design, the intention of them is to benefit teachers.
Are those the same? No, they're not.
They're not. And if what's good for the children happens to be, and let's say in this coronavirus situation that might be the case, bad for the teachers, it creates a situation where the teachers have to be anti-child.
Because that's their job.
Their job is to be pro-teacher.
And if they feel that the best way to do that is also being anti-child, well, they will be.
That's their mission, to be a pro-teacher.
All right. How about this?
One of the things that Trump gets a lot of heat for is hiring sketchy people like Paul Manafort, etc.
I don't need to go through the list.
But that takes some attention away from the fact that some of his hires are really spectacular.
For example, I think Pompeo is doing a great job.
In my opinion. I think Jared Kushner gets a lot of heat from conservatives.
But didn't Jared Kushner do a great job in the Middle East?
Right? I mean, I think maybe a fantastic job.
And I would say that given all the heat that...
Take all the heat that Ivanka has gotten.
You know, who's gotten more heat than Ivanka?
But four years are going by.
How would you say she did?
Pretty darn great, wouldn't you say?
Lots of accomplishments in terms of human trafficking, a whole bunch of stuff.
Has she caused any problems?
Nope. I would say that Ivanka has been 100% positive.
Everything she did that I know of looks like it worked out well.
And it was nothing but good for the administration, good for the country.
Those are good hires. But the one I wanted to talk about is Kayleigh McEnany.
That's probably the best hire he's ever made.
What do you think about that?
I mean, I don't know how well any cabinet member is doing.
It's not like I have any visibility on that.
But Kayleigh McEnany is probably just about the best I've ever seen in that job.
And there have been good people in those jobs.
I'm not I'm not knocking anybody else who did the job, because there have been great people in those jobs fairly consistently over history.
But I think she's the best.
I'm seeing in the comments a lot of agreement there.
So yesterday, I guess CNN's Caitlin Collins was shouting out questions to the nature of, when will President Trump concede?
And McEnany is walking off and she just goes, I don't call on activists.
I don't call on activists.
Kind of perfect.
All right, here's some fun.
You could recall that during the Trump first term, I often talked about how the Democrats were using what I called laundry list persuasion.
I talk about it in my book, Loser Think, and maybe in Win Bigly, I can't remember.
But laundry list persuasion works really well because people will say to themselves, well, I'm not sure I believe everything on the list, but there's so much on the list, there must be some truth to the general claim.
So the way the Democrats used it, they'd say, Trump is a racist, And here's my laundry list of all the reasons.
But if you looked at the reasons, they all just sort of fall apart.
So there's no reason on the list that actually can stand up to any scrutiny.
But because it's a list, you think to yourself, well, I don't know much about everything on the list.
I can tell a few of them don't look too real, but hey, it's a whole list.
There must be something to it.
It's a list! Now, I've told you that the way to debunk that...
Is to not try to go through the entire list because you just can't do it.
But you can say, tell me the strongest thing on the list and I'll just debunk that one.
And if you agree with my debunk, then you can see that if I've debunked the strongest reason on the list, what does that say about the weak ones?
So that's the setup for the laundry list.
So what the...
What's happening with the Trump administration right now, as they're challenging the election, they're using laundry list persuasion against the election.
And it's working.
Now, the thing about laundry list persuasion is it's really...
Let's just say it's not the most honest thing you could do.
But it works.
And in the political process, if something's not quite exactly honest, but it works...
It's going to happen. So watching the Trump administration use laundry list accusations about the election is pretty fun.
But there's a catch.
Let me ask you viewers.
In your opinion, having heard lots of different examples of alleged election impropriety, Which one of those is number one on your list for being not only likely true, but big enough to make a difference?
So I want to see in the comments, what do you think is the one thing on the list that really stands out?
Okay. So, I think I've seen enough to know that you believe that the software mischief is the big story, and if you were to present a list, you'd probably have lots of things on your list, but you'd put that at the top, right?
Well, there's a problem...
The software story sort of seems to be hanging on this Venezuelan whistleblower, right?
Would you be nearly as convinced with the Venezuelan, with the software story, would you be convinced of that as much without that whistleblower?
Because I don't think you would, right?
You kind of need a witness for something like that.
And now you have this witness who says he was in the room, he saw it personally in the Venezuela situation, so therefore, blah, blah, blah, right?
Here's the problem. Have you ever heard of a thing called disinformation?
Well, you're going to hear about it now.
In big foreign, not foreign, but let's say international relations and interactions, there's a thing called disinformation, in which one country would intentionally create a story that's not true and present it to the public of another country so that they could deal with the fake thing and it would cause some damage to their society one way or the other.
Do you think that in an American election, especially this one, do you think that there was any party involved, be they foreign or be they Democrats?
Could be domestic or foreign.
Was there anybody who had an interest in disinformation?
Yes. You'd all agree with that, right?
They had an interest in doing it.
China has an interest in weakening the United States.
Whether they did it or not is a separate question.
Do Democrats have an interest in disinformation if it could help them get elected?
Of course, yes.
So we know we have the motive, and it's massive and it's everywhere.
Anybody who had the ability to inject disinformation, there's a pretty high chance they tried it.
Now what would it look like if they did it?
Let's say you were professional.
You're not just a troll.
Trolls are putting disinformation into the system all the time.
But when trolls do it, it's not necessarily going to reach a high level of notice, right?
Because people know, ah, it came from a troll.
But suppose it comes from what look like credible sources or institutions.
What then? Well, then it looks kind of believable.
Doesn't mean it's true.
But it's going to be more credible if it comes from a good source.
So what would it look like if, let's say, Democrats had hired the best disinformation professionals in the world, and their primary mission was to make it look as though the Trump team's claims were illegitimate?
What would you do?
How would you do it?
Given that the Trump team is using laundry list persuasion, and given that if you can debunk the strongest thing on the list, you've kind of debunked the whole list.
Not completely, but it's the best you can do.
What would you do? What would be your strongest play?
Your strongest play would be to create a number one issue that isn't real.
And that would look like a Venezuelan whistleblower.
If you were a disinformation professional, like really, really good at it, you'd say to yourself, if we can embarrass the Trump team with this one obviously bullshit claim about a Venezuelan whistleblower, and we can get people to think that that was the main claim, we can debunk the whole fucking thing.
And then you look at that claim and you say to yourself, uh, it looks exactly like disinformation.
And it's in exactly the right place for disinformation.
Now, do I know for sure that somebody injected disinformation into it and it's that in particular?
No. No, I do not.
But I will tell you, it looks exactly like it.
I will tell you that I'm not the one person who noticed.
Let me give you an assignment.
Probably most of you could find at least somebody who's involved or has been involved in, let's say, intelligence services.
Find somebody in your environment, might be a friend of a friend or something, who actually understands the disinformation Tell them what I just told you.
That there's at least a possibility that somebody wanted to ruin the laundry list persuasion of the Trump legal team, and that they might have done it by injecting this obviously bullshit story about the Venezuelan whistleblower.
Just ask them.
And then say, is the cartoonist crazy, or is this a thing?
And then get back to me.
Because it's a thing.
And the odds that it happened in this election, whether it's this specific case or just some other disinformation, the odds that it happened are kind of 100%.
Really, kind of 100%.
We don't know what disinformation necessarily.
That's a different... But did it exist?
Yes. Yes, it exists.
And probably came from Democrats more likely than foreign, but that's just a feeling.
All right. What would the Trump legal team do if they suspected this was the case?
Because I've heard people say, is Sidney Powell lying Or does she have the goods?
Is she just making this story up?
Because we're waiting for the proof.
Here's what I think is happening.
This is pure speculation.
I think that Sidney Powell and the legal team does not believe the whistleblower.
Just a guess. I haven't asked them that question.
I don't know. My guess is that they don't believe it.
But it is nonetheless true that it has been presented to them in a credible-ish package.
Their job is to make the president's case as well as they can, And so it would have been maybe irresponsible if they had not included it in the case.
Because it exists.
The claim is made by somebody who might have been in the room.
So you sort of have to at least put it out there.
Which is different from whether they believe it themselves.
My suspicion is that they at least have a deepest skepticism.
Probably just a deep skepticism.
But they still have to put it out there.
Remember, the lawyers are working for a client.
If the client says, well, you know, we don't know, but put it out there, see what happens.
Now, that's different from saying that the software was unmolested.
I still think there's a 100% chance the voting software gets compromised sooner or later.
I don't know if it's happened yet, but you can guarantee it will happen.
There's no way to stop it, really.
Eventually. Without transparency.
Actually, transparency would be the one way to stop it.
If you made the code available somehow to everybody, I suppose you could stop it.
There might be some way to technologically do that.
Yeah, somebody says, release the damn source code.
Suppose they did. Would you believe it was the real source code?
And would you believe that they don't have...
Patches and upgrades that can alter the actions of the source code.
I think even auditing the source code wouldn't necessarily get you there.
I'd do it, but I don't think it would necessarily be conclusive.
All right. So my tweet that I mentioned that got all those retweets, I'm going to run through it again quickly because it's my laundry list, if you will.
Of persuasion techniques that the Democrats are using.
I've mentioned these before, so I'll just do them quickly.
They use refuses to concede.
That makes you think past the sale.
As though Trump should concede.
We haven't accepted that.
But if they say, why won't he concede?
They're making you think past the sale.
That's persuasion. They're calling a simple recount an audit to fool you into thinking they really checked for fraud, but a recount doesn't even do that.
They're saying no evidence when in fact there's tons of evidence in the forms of affidavits.
They just look you in the eye and say there's no evidence.
There's no proof, because that ends up happening in court or in a scientific context, but evidence, all kinds of evidence.
So that's just persuasion.
They say it would be obvious if there was massive fraud, But of course, Republicans think it is obvious.
How the hell did Biden get that many more votes than Obama?
It looks kind of obvious to a lot of people, even if it didn't happen.
It looks obvious. And then lawsuits being tossed out of court.
But of course, the past does not predict the future.
The fact that somebody else lost a lawsuit doesn't mean the next lawsuit is bad.
That doesn't make any sense.
The fact that other people lost other lawsuits?
What does that tell you about the next one?
It shouldn't tell you anything, but people feel they see a pattern there.
Then there's the character assassination by bad analogy, which is what you see when there's no real argument.
It turns it into Trump's legal challenges or McCarthyism or racism or dictatorism or something.
And then, of course, what the media leaves out when they can put anybody on camera that says there's no fraud or we have discovered no fraud, what they leave out is the person saying that didn't look for it.
Of course, there's no evidence of something you didn't look for.
And on that point, the two Michigan lawmakers who went to visit Trump, people got pretty concerned because they said, hey, is he going to talk them into not certifying the election in their state?
And they said, and I want to find the exact quote because the exact quote matters.
I do have that exact quote, and you'll be happy that you waited because it'll make you so happy.
I guess I hid it pretty well.
Well, the exact quote, which apparently I didn't print, was that the lawmakers said They had not yet seen any evidence of fraud in the election.
Did you catch the keyword there?
The keyword was yet.
Who puts yet in a sentence like that?
So the lawmakers say, we have not yet seen evidence that the election was fraudulent.
Do you know how the news reported the statement We have not yet seen evidence.
They take the yet out.
Watch the yet be dropped out of the news report.
That yet is sort of an important word because it left their options open.
But the headline in the trending part, if you look at the trending on Twitter, they took the yet out.
Now, let me ask you this.
Would those two lawmakers be in a position as of yesterday to have even potentially seen any evidence of fraud, even if it existed?
No! No!
What's left out of the context is, why would you imagine that those two specific lawmakers would have seen any evidence of fraud?
Did Sidney Powell have a meeting with them and show them what she has?
No. No.
Why would they have evidence of fraud?
So they put in that word, yet, as a little place marker.
It's like, not yet.
And I would agree with them.
They have the same information I do, albeit.
They watch the news. If all you know is what's on the news and what's in social media, you also don't know there's proof of fraud.
You don't know.
You just see claims.
You see claims.
You see debunks of those claims and more claims.
That's all you know. You don't know if there's any fraud.
I don't know. I believe there is because the situation is one.
In which fraud would happen every time.
So, I don't know how much, but of course it exists.
Alright. Have you noticed that there's something weird about this virus that it seems to attack enjoyment?
Is that just a coincidence?
That the only thing you can't do in this pandemic is enjoy yourself?
Because all the things that create enjoyment are exactly all the things you're not supposed to do.
You can still work, right?
But you can still do everything unpleasant.
If it was unpleasant before, you can still do it.
But if it's fun, no fun.
So that's kind of a weird virus.
Coincidence? I don't know.
Maybe it's trying to teach us something.
If you believe in the God model of reality...
Maybe it's a lesson. Maybe you didn't need that fun.
You know, I'll tell you, one of the weird things that's coming out of this is realizing what things didn't matter and what things were just habits.
Is anybody having this experience?
That you're learning something about yourself that you probably couldn't have learned without the pandemic.
For example, learning to appreciate Having toilet paper.
Before the pandemic, did you ever look at your roll of toilet paper there on the little roller on the wall and think to yourself, dear God, thank you.
I never did. I always took my toilet paper for granted, as well as my food and transportation and health care and everything else.
I feel I have a sense of gratitude for everything I have now.
That exceeds anything I could have imagined before.
A little bit like maybe people who went through the depression, the Great Depression.
You know, if you had any parents or grandparents who went through the Great Depression, you notice they don't throw things out.
Like, just in case.
I've got this empty can.
Well, you know, if there's a Great Depression, that might be my My beverage holder in the future.
So I do feel as though there's something weirdly educational about this virus.
So California's instituted a curfew from 10pm to 5am.
I understand the 10pm part.
I don't really understand the 5am part.
Because I don't know, do people have a different lifestyle than I do?
Because I can see being out till 2 in the morning.
I can see that happening.
I can't see being out till 5 in the morning.
I know it's a thing.
But I feel as if you had stopped everything between 10 p.m.
and 3 a.m., you probably would have picked up most of the problems that would have happened between 3 a.m.
and 5 a.m. Because very few people say, you know, It's 3 a.m.
You want to go out and have a drink?
I don't know. I feel as if they could have maybe pulled that back to 3 a.m.
I'm just saying. Harmeet Dillon on Twitter has a solution because apparently there's a rule that says that homeless people are exempt.
So you don't have a curfew if you're homeless.
And Harmeet asks, what if you self-identify as homeless?
Huh? What if you do?
To which I add, it looks like this problem is going to solve itself because if the Biden economy is anything like what we think, well, we'll all be homeless.
So this curfew might not matter.
Don Jr. is reportedly recovering from COVID. If you want to see the worst of humanity, look at the people celebrating Don Jr.
on social media.
Look at the people celebrating, and there's like, some bitch did a happy dance on TikTok to Don Jr.
having a disease. Who does a happy dance to somebody else's disease?
I can't think of anybody I dislike that much.
I mean, really. I mean, I could hate somebody pretty much, and short of being, you know, like a, I don't know, actually Hiller.
I don't think I'd ever celebrate them getting a disease.
That's pretty sick.
I'm pretty sure Don Jr.
will be fine. He looks pretty healthy, so he should get by that just fine.
I want to ask, here's a question.
Have any of you felt jealousy for somebody else who was healthy and got the coronavirus?
Because I feel that a little bit.
And it's not rational because you don't want to get the coronavirus because it could have lasting problems that they say for months.
You don't know what the long-term consequence is.
You don't know if you're the rare person who dies from it.
So logically, I definitely do not want to get the coronavirus.
Logically. But I'm not really a logical creature.
I'm illogical.
And the illogical part of me, the irrational part of me, It's a little bit jealous.
Anytime I see a healthy person get coronavirus, because I assume that they will recover with no problem, and then they have a little bit extra freedom, right?
They're a little less afraid of things.
They don't really need to wear a mask.
They might for social reasons, but don't really need to.
I just wondered, has anybody else had that feeling?
I'm looking at the comments and it looks like literally nobody else had that feeling.
Okay, it's just me.
Good thing I checked.
It's just me. All right.
So we wish the best for Don Jr.
Speedy recovery. Breitbart had an article about President Trump's announcement about his drug...
Changes, drug policy changes.
So we've got this most favored nations thing, and rebates and discounts would be pushed directly to consumers instead of to the middle people.
And then there's this one line in the story that just sort of invalidates the whole story.
This was in Breitbart.
I assume this is general knowledge.
Just this little throwaway sentence that says, Although, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it could ultimately cost taxpayers more.
What? Now, I don't think that's untrue, by the way.
I do think that you can't just tell the pharmaceutical company, we're going to pay you less from now on, and that everything's fine.
Because it would be sort of like negotiating with your car dealership.
If you get the car dealership to go down You know, $500 on the price of the car.
They're going to try to get it back with the car mats and the secret spray that protects the undercoating of your car.
So you think you won.
It's like, I got them down $500 on the price of the car.
Ooh, look at me.
I got that $500.
And then you just fucking give it back with the secret undercoating and the, I don't know, Every fucking thing the car dealership does to screw you.
So I've got a feeling that the pharmaceutical companies have lots of game, lots of...
I mean, they have lots of resources.
They're very smart.
They're going to figure out a way to re-screw us, even though these rules look like they would be in the short run for our benefit.
So I would like to be way more optimistic about drug prices coming down, And that it's not hurting us in other ways.
But I don't feel as if it's that simple.
And I don't know what the Congressional Budget Office is thinking about it when they say it could ultimately cost taxpayers more.
But I don't doubt it.
I don't doubt it.
All that said, is it a good idea to do it?
Yes. Yes.
Trump should get maximum credit for this.
Because the old situation wasn't working.
And sometimes you just need to break the old thing.
And sometimes the first thing you do to fix the thing you broke may not be the ultimate thing.
But it had to be broken.
We had to try to put it back together.
This looks like a good first try.
If this doesn't work, at least we'll learn something.
Maybe we'll be smarter.
Maybe we'll find a way to correct it.
You just got to do something sometimes.
And this seems like a very productive way to at least shake the box and see if you can get something going.
All right. I have an idea to end all the window breaking in Portland because apparently every night there's a group of protesters who just walk down different rows of retail businesses and break their windows.
So now it's just like a nightly thing to break all the windows.
And my idea to end it, since apparently law enforcement is not an option, is to hire the protesters to break windows.
Are you with me yet?
Instead of just letting them break windows, we should hire them and pay them a good salary to break windows.
You know why this will work, right?
Because the moment it turns into a job, they're not going to show up.
I'll just leave that laying there for you.
I saw a conversation online today asking if liberals have ruined everything.
Name anything that liberals have not ruined.
And the suggestion was made that at least they haven't ruined movies.
Most liberals are making movies.
To which I said, have you seen movies?
When was the last time you saw a good movie?
Liberals have completely ruined movies.
Recently. I would say in the last few years.
Movies used to be a lot of fun.
I used to like movies.
I can't even remember the last time I watched a movie that was good.
They've completely ruined movies.
Alright. Here's...
Here's something that happened that can be interpreted two different ways.
There's a very positive interpretation, and then there's one that's not so positive.
And the news is that the circuit courts have been reassigned.
Now, I don't know all the ins and outs of the court system, so I might not have a full understanding of this topic, but I'll try to bluff my way through it.
And we're all learning a lot about our government in this process.
So effective immediately, there are four Supreme Court justices assigned to each of four states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, to be in charge of the election fraud claims for those states.
This is my understanding of what's happening.
Now, the four justices chosen is the story, all right?
So here are the Supreme Court justices who might be the deciding people, or at least the most influential people, on whether these four states go to Trump or stay with Biden.
Are you ready? Here are the names of the four justices.
Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.
Do you notice anything that they have in common?
Yeah. They're all super conservative.
So what's that tell you?
Well, one interpretation is, oh, the fix is in.
Trump's going to get his way.
He packed the court with conservatives.
He got all conservatives to be in charge of the most crucial question of whether or not he's going to Well, I would say that the crucial question is whether the election stands or whether it gets kicked to the House of Representatives.
So I feel as if, and again, I need some fact-checking on this because I'm not really...
I can't go too deep on the legal system, so I could be wrong very easily.
Just keep that in mind.
But, you know, your first...
Your first glance at this is, oh my God, Trump's going to win.
Because the Supreme Court just put four conservative justices on the most important questions that if they vote the right way, Trump's president for a second term.
What do you think of that?
Unfortunately, I had the opposite interpretation.
So don't get too happy.
I probably shouldn't have given you that one first.
Okay, now I feel bad.
Okay, I feel bad.
Cats on the roof.
Cats on the roof, guys.
Because I need you to slowly adjust to what you're going to hear next.
Because otherwise it would be a little too shocking.
Because if you got a little too happy, and you're doing like a little happy dance at home, where you're watching this, yes!
It's over. I don't think that's necessarily what we're watching.
Let me give you the other interpretation.
This is my interpretation, too.
So it's not just the other one, it's the one I have.
It goes like this.
The Supreme Court is not just interested in deciding cases.
Cases matter, right?
That's the main bread and butter of what they're doing.
But it's not the only thing they care about.
They have a greater interest in Do you think the Supreme Court See what most of you see,
which is, oh, this is kind of a dangerous situation.
Kind of got a bunch of gas, and we've got a bunch of matches, and it looks like they're getting a little too close to each other.
Don't you believe that the Supreme Court feels the weight of this decision like maybe nothing else they've ever felt?
That the entire system is at risk, not just this case.
Or cases or lawsuits.
Right? Now, if you were the Supreme Court, and that was your greatest interest, to keep the system intact, keep the credibility of the system intact, and you're asked to judge something that, whichever way it goes, it's going to be ugly.
Right? What do you do?
Well, I'll tell you what I'd do.
I would assign the four most conservative justices if, and here's the big part, if I believed Trump would ultimately lose, that's why I would put four conservative judges on it.
To make sure that if Trump loses, The conservative part of the country says, fuck, but I trust it.
See where I'm going?
The Supreme Court needs the conservatives to back down.
The only way it's going to happen is if four super conservative Supreme Court justices say, look at this people, it's time.
It's time.
It's time to back down.
It's time to put Biden in office and deal with it in 2024.
I think the Supreme Court has just sent the country a big fucking signal that Trump's not going to get a second term.
And it has nothing to do with the claims, has nothing to do with the lawsuits, has nothing to do with whether the election was or was not fraudulent.
It has everything to do with keeping the country together.
If they were thinking that way, and of course we have to speculate, right?
We can't read anybody's minds.
But if that's what they're thinking, if that's what they're thinking, it's brilliant.
It's fucking brilliant.
If that's what they're thinking.
We don't know that, but I think they are.
So, what is likely to happen?
In my opinion, the likely outcome is that the Supreme Court will give us a decision because of the way they've set it up with four conservatives.
I think they're going to give us a decision that says, yeah, it looks like some stuff happened.
It looks like some fraud happened, but it wasn't enough.
And we choose to keep the system together And let you work it out in 2024.
Would that be the wrong decision for the benefit of the country?
Would it? I don't think it would.
I prefer Trump to get a second term if the country can stay together under those conditions.
I prefer it. But if the Republicans hold the Senate, And would pretty much have a lock on the House as well in 2022.
And they can keep Biden from raising my taxes to sky-high levels and keep us from becoming a vassal of China.
I think we could wait it out.
And I wouldn't mind seeing an ex-President Trump getting a promotion to being a media mogul.
Because he might even have more power as a media mogul than he would have even as president.
It's possible, given the power of the media.
So, I feel as though we can see the endgame now.
That's what it feels like.
Now, the assumption is, there's a really big assumption here.
The gigantic assumption is that the Supreme Court believes that the case will not be made.
Sufficiently to change the election outcome.
What if it does?
What if the Trump team delivers the goods?
What if they do?
Because here's what the smartest people are telling me.
Doesn't mean it's true.
The people who are the smartest and know the most and are closest to it would tell you something like this.
Maybe the software was manipulated, maybe it wasn't.
Don't hang your hat on that one.
But we can demonstrate that the checking of the signatures was relaxed.
The relaxation of double-checking the signatures almost surely changed the election outcome.
That might be provable, and it might be provable in a way that any reasonable person would say, oh yeah, that changed the outcome.
It won't necessarily change who was in office.
It will just change your mind about who won.
And that's how you get two presidents.
So I'm going to guess right now that the Supreme Court would be in quite a bind if they put four conservative Supreme Court justices on the case, and then the Trump Team makes the case.
And if they make it, I think it's going to be on the signature verification part.
That feels pretty clean.
Clean in terms of a case.
That could be really dangerous.
Because then it would look like the fix is in, right?
Oh, the Supreme Court justices, they're all conservative.
They agreed with Trump.
Well, the fix is in.
Could be a problem. But I don't think it would necessarily be a fatal one.
All right, that's all for now.
And I will talk to you tomorrow.
Alright, Periscope is off.
I just want to look at a few comments from YouTube over here.
Somebody says, follow the law.
You know, I don't think that the Supreme Court does that.
Even conservative judges.
Would you? Somebody says, you caved in, Scott.
What does that mean? What does caving in mean?
Does caving in mean, because what I did was predict.
Is predicting caving in?
How is Boo doing?
Boo's doing great.
Best cat ever.
Won't be a 2024 Slaughter Meter update.
Well, the Slaughter Meter sort of has lost its meaning because we have two potential outcomes instead of just who wins the election.
Because I think this two presidents situation is now real.
And it looks like that's going to be persistent.
Meaning that people will still regard Trump as the legally elected president even if he's out of office.
Somebody says it will be a guerrilla civil war.
No, it won't be.
You know, the thing that you can really, really count on is that nobody wants a civil war.
Nobody wants it.
You would have to have somebody wanting it.
That's the minimum requirement for a civil war.
I don't know anybody who wants it on either side.
Somebody says I do.
No, you don't.
China wants one. I don't even know if they do.
Do you think China would want the United States to destroy itself?
Maybe. Could be.
People are too comfortable to want a civil war.
That's correct. We are too comfortable.
Somebody says, you don't think AOC wants the GOP in jail?
Yeah, I think so. I do think so, but I don't think that that's going to happen outside of the legal system.
