Episode 1270 Scott Adams: AOC, The Big Lie, Fake News Alert, How to Distinguish a Coup from a Selfie Opportunity
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
AOC promotes The Big Lie
Biden undecided: Was Myanmar military takeover, a coup?
Forgive Cuomo's bad pandemic decisions
Congress continues fumbling emergency relief bill
FOX FAKE NEWS...Biden and executive orders
Masks: An intentional government compliance plot?
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Probably one of the best holidays of the whole year.
Yeah, Groundhog Day.
A lot of people like their Christmas.
They like their Fourth of July, but I'm kind of a Groundhog Day kind of a guy all the way.
And you know it's Groundhog Day because, once again, They're trying to impeach President Trump, as they do every year at this time.
It's Groundhog Day.
I stole that joke from Joel Pollack on Twitter.
I've been laughing all morning about how our government has somehow become like Groundhog Day.
And I'm thinking, if you were to describe a government...
That was not doing its job, and you were trying to pick the right movie?
Well, you might go with the idiocracy, but Groundhog Day would be a good one.
And if you'd like to enjoy this Groundhog Day to its maximum potential, and I know you do, what do you need besides a groundhog?
I mean, you're going to need at least one groundhog.
But you also need a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or sine, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Not with a groundhog.
No, they don't belong in a cup or mug or glass.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Hip.
Go! I think we got the simultaneity right.
Sometimes I'll be off half a beat, but no, this time I nailed it.
Nailed it! Alright, what else is going on?
According to Rasmussen poll, two-thirds of voters, roughly, say that insiders manipulate the stock market.
What? Two-thirds of citizens...
I guess it doesn't matter if you lean left or lean right.
The number's about the same.
Two-thirds of the citizens think the stock market is rigged.
Or at least that it's being manipulated by insiders.
And here's the funny part.
Who are the one-third?
Who are the one-third of this public who don't think insiders are manipulating the stock market?
Who are these people who believe the stock market is fair?
Andy Ngo. You know Andy Ngo, spelled G-N-O. You've seen lots of his videos of Antifa.
And he's got a new book coming out that Antifa and his haters would like to cancel.
So here's Andy Ngo reporting on very important stuff of great national interest, the Antifa government.
Situation. I think he was driven out of the country.
Threatened. And now he's got a book.
His book is called Unmasked.
You can find... Just Google Unmasked.
And Andy Ngo. And this is me buying his book.
Boop. Placing my order.
On Amazon. Done.
Done. Whenever there's a book that somebody's trying to ban or a person or a product, I'm just going to automatically buy it.
So that's going to be my new habit.
I'm not going to look at the description of the product.
If it's something, you know, in the consumer level of expense, I'm just going to buy it.
It's just going to be automatic.
And I think Andy's book was already number 54 on Amazon's bestseller list.
Do you know how hard it is to be number 54 on Amazon's bestseller list?
It's pretty hard. It's pretty hard.
But let's see if we can get them to number one.
He's number one in all of the important political categories, but let's see if we can get him number one on all of Amazon.
And maybe in the future, there will be people who say to themselves, hey, maybe we should boycott this product or this book.
And the moment they say it, that should make the person who made that book or product rich.
You should get rich as a result of people trying to cancel you.
I can't make it happen myself, but I can buy their products, and if you do as well.
Let's see if we can push Andy up to number one.
On principle alone.
Freedom! Yeah, Goya beans.
I also bought the Goya Mexican food products that I don't think I ever ate.
I think I put it in the cupboard.
But the moment I heard that he was going to get cancelled, the CEO of Goya Foods, I said, well, I'm going to get me some of that.
I went directly to the store and bought a bunch of his products.
So that's my new habit.
If you like freedom, maybe it could be your habit too.
AOC is making news, as she is so good at doing.
She did a live stream, I think it was on Instagram, and she talked about her experience during the Capitol assault, and that she was afraid for her life.
And she said, I guess the first time in public, she said that she was a survivor of sexual abuse.
Now, I say this often, much to your chagrin.
The same standard that I used for Trump, I apply to AOC. That's fair, right?
Same standard. And the standard is, you might like or not like his or her policies, but if we could just look at their technique, their persuasion technique, how they communicate, oh my god, they're good.
And AOC is, you know, she wouldn't want to hear this, but she is sort of the female Trump.
Probably the last thing she'd want to hear.
But in terms of technique, it's just A+. Just consistently A+. Just for technique.
You don't have to like her policies, right?
Separate decision. But this doing a live stream, which is exactly the right way to do it, Combining her story of her personal trauma with surviving sexual abuse, you could argue that doesn't belong in the story about the capital assault, but she made it belong.
She made it fit.
And technique-wise, it's just really good.
Like, you could put yourself in the scene, you could feel it, You've probably connected it to something you've experienced before.
If you're a woman, chances are you've had some ugly sexual situation in your past.
Most do, unfortunately.
So technique-wise, it was freaking good.
All right? Got to say that.
It was good. Technique-wise.
But that's not the only thing to consider.
She is perpetuating what I call the big lie.
Now, the big lie is that the election was known to be transparent and free of fraud.
That's not true.
What we do know is that no widespread fraud was recognized by any court.
That's also true, right?
That's true. There's no court that recognized any widespread fraud in the election.
So we can say that unambiguously because no matter what did or did not happen in the election, it's just a fact that no court ruled or acknowledged any widespread fraud.
Now, it's worth saying that the court is not the right tool for that.
It is also true that there is no toaster that solved world peace.
Do you know why? Well, toasters don't do that.
That's not one of the things a toaster does.
A toaster is pretty good at making toast.
Except for mine. I don't only make toast on one side, but that's just my problem.
So it doesn't mean anything that the courts have not found any widespread fraud, but it's still a fact.
It's not a meaningful fact because it's the wrong place to look for fraud.
But that's all we have, so they used that.
So the big lie is that the election was definitely, definitely, and we know it, and we've confirmed it, fair and free.
And the second part of that big lie is that there was something called a coup or insurrection that happened at the Capitol, which, as far as I can tell, did not happen.
I'm watching the same news that everybody else is watching, and I didn't see it, but she reports it as if it's true.
Now, here's what I find is most interesting.
What would have happened, and there's nobody who wants this to happen, but what would have happened if the rioters, the people that are being called the insurrectionists, what if they had found AOC that night?
What if AOC had actually been, let's say, surrounded by the insurrectionists?
Well, her opinion...
And I don't have any proof that she's wrong, is that she would have been in great danger, physical danger.
And I can't rule that out.
I mean, if you have a big, unwieldy crowd, and some of them have clubs and whatnot, you can't rule out that she would have been in big trouble.
So it makes sense that she would have seen it that way and treated it that way, and I wouldn't want her to have treated it any other way.
But I think there's a blind spot here.
And again, safety first, so she should definitely have tried to get to safety, period.
But I don't think AOC understands her own power.
I don't think she understands her power.
And maybe that's good, because if she ever understood it, she'd probably use it more.
But here's what I think.
I think if AOC had simply walked into the middle of the crowd, she would have been perfectly safe.
That's what I think.
And I think that the crowd would have respected her, and they would have stopped.
They wouldn't have stopped everything they're doing, but they would have stopped and listened.
And I think if anybody in that crowd had tried to mess with her, like physically, I think other people in the crowd would have taken them out instantly.
That's what I think. I don't think this crowd was going to let a woman get hurt right in front of them.
Certainly not as the agent of that trouble.
That is a complete misreading of the crowd, I believe.
Now, was Mike Pence in any danger?
He might have been, because they were calling for him by name, because he was on their team and wasn't doing what they wanted.
Now, what would the crowd do if they saw somebody who's known to be on the other team and playing for the other team?
I think they would have said, oh, you're okay.
You're doing exactly what the other team does.
If the situation were reversed, we would probably be you.
They were mad at Mike Pence for not doing what they imagined he could or should do.
I don't know if he could have done it.
But I don't think this was about Democrats.
I don't think that anybody who entered that building wanted to do anything bad.
I won't say anybody, because it was a big crowd.
You only need one person who has a crazy idea for trouble to happen.
So, like I said, for sure they should have treated it like a deadly risk.
For sure, she had a reason to be scared.
I can definitely see how that would connect to any past experiences of trauma.
And so I think she played it honestly, and I think that she's effective, as she often is.
But she definitely underestimates her personal power.
I think she could have walked into the middle of that crowd, and they would have stopped.
And they would have listened.
And they would have protected her.
Now, I wouldn't take the chance, so it would be stupid to try to test this theory.
I just think she has way more power than she knows.
And maybe that's good.
All right. But she's part of the big lie that there was something called a coup or an insurrection, and that...
And that's what was actually going on.
Meanwhile, because the simulation loves us, this big simulation we're in with its code reuse and its weird coincidences and its irony that it serves up so frequently.
Well, it's serving up some irony over in Myanmar that Fox News calls Burma.
I still don't know why.
I don't know why the news calls it two different countries.
I'm sure there's a reason.
But the CNN is reporting that the Biden administration, they can't decide if they want to call the armed military takeover of the civilian government in Myanmar as a coup or not.
Let me say that again because you'll think you missed something in the sentence.
No, you didn't miss anything in the sentence.
Here it is again.
The Biden administration can't decide if Whether the armed military takeover of the civilian government in Myanmar is a coup or not.
But one thing they're pretty sure about is that when that guy with the Viking hat and his selfie army went into the capital, well, that's a coup.
That's a coup. And the way that you can tell a coup from a whatever thing is happening in Myanmar that doesn't have a name...
The way you can tell is whether there's a Viking hat.
If there's a Viking hat involved, well, that's a coup.
But if it's an armed military entering the capital and taking control of the government, that's more of a, we don't know what that is, really.
Does it have a name?
Should we give everything a name?
Not everything needs a label, does it?
Why can't we just speak of it as the events that happened?
So that's the Biden administration.
Selfie army in Viking hat, totally a coup.
And let me tell you, I'm not a military expert, but when you do a coup, you also have to hold the government.
It's not enough that you've captured an empty room.
Oh, that's a good start. Once you've captured an empty room, well, slippery slope.
Next thing you know, you're going to capture all the rooms.
You'll have every room in the United States.
If we let them have that one empty room, they're going to own the government.
I mean, what can we do?
You've got a nuclear option.
You've got a very large military and police force, but I don't know how they're going to have any hope of dislodging...
Unarmed people from an empty room.
I mean, how would you even begin?
So, yes, we know that the Viking hat guy was a legitimate coup with a really good chance of controlling the country that they had conquered with their hat and their selfies.
So that's the big lie.
Anyway, I would like to go from that which you all agreed with, at least my audience, to something that you all hate.
It's why you watch me.
Come on. You know when I do this, you hate it when I disagree with you.
But it's also why you watch, right?
You're looking for the part where I disagree, because that's the only thing, that's the only interesting part, right?
Me just agreeing with you isn't any fun.
You can get that anywhere.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I said loudly and often the following.
We should not hold our leaders accountable for the mistakes they are about to make with all good intention.
Do you remember me saying that?
I said it a lot. I tried to make a really big point of it.
That before our leaders even started making decisions, we should forgive them in advance.
Because nobody knew the right thing to do.
Nobody knew.
And I applied this standard to Trump, you know, that nobody knew what to do, so if he did something wrong, well, who knew?
But I also apply it to Governor Cuomo in New York.
This is the part you might not like.
Governor Cuomo is blamed, and of course the top guy or top person needs to take the responsibility because the buck has to stop somewhere, right?
So the nursing home deaths are unambiguously Cuomo's fault, if you want to use that word.
It's his responsibility to take care of his people.
There was something that happened that was clearly the wrong set of decisions.
People died.
Cuomo was in charge.
That's on his record.
So let's agree it was a mistake.
So I'm not going to argue that, right?
Clearly it was a mistake.
But how exactly did that mistake happen?
Was there a conversation in which somebody went to the governor and said, Governor, as it stands now, we would be putting these people back in rest homes.
It's the worst thing you could possibly do, and it will probably kill all the other people in the rest home.
Should we go ahead and do that?
And then the governor, in this hypothetical, said, huh, put them back in the rest homes, the very worst place to put them.
It'll kill a bunch of other people.
Yeah, let's do that.
How did you imagine this happened?
Like, when you play it in your mind of how we got to that horrible situation of putting infected people back in rest homes, or old people facilities, whatever they're called, how did it happen?
Now, I wasn't there, but I'm going to make an educated guess based on being the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and I know big organizations.
It probably happened something like this.
There was a process in place.
According to Governor Cuomo, the federal government process was that those people would go back to where they came from, and they would do the best job they could to keep them separated from other people.
Now, did you know in advance, did you know that if you did that, the infection would definitely spread to the rest of the people?
Or did you think to yourself, well, I mean, it's a professional facility, they're clearly not going to put them in the same place with any kind of cross-pollination with other people.
So if you were in that situation, would it have even occurred to you, necessarily, to even ask the right question?
If nobody brought it up to you and said, hey, this is a special virus, I don't think you could keep the infected people in one room and hope that it's not going to get to the other rooms, you know, through the AC or something.
And people here are saying, yes, I knew.
I knew that. I would not have made that mistake.
And I believe you. I believe that some number of you would not have made that mistake.
But remember, this was a bureaucracy.
And there was probably a lot of back and forth with underlings trying to decide what works and what doesn't.
Do you think that at some point the old folks' homes said, yeah, we can handle this?
I don't know. Do you think there were any people at those facilities who said, absolutely not, I realize this is the law, but let me tell you, we're not letting these infected people anywhere near our property, period.
That's it. They're just not coming on our property.
Did they say that?
Or did the old folks' homes say, we can make this work?
You know, if you just give us the PPE and some extra funding, we can make it work.
I don't know that Cuomo was ever part of any of those conversations.
I suspect that by the time he got the information, it sounded more like they think they can work it out.
It's our best option.
We don't want to put them in hospitals either, because even putting them in hospitals is dangerous because of the rest of the hospital.
So it's not going to be more or less dangerous no matter where we put them.
We'll just try to handle it right.
By the time he heard it, If he heard it at all, I don't even know if he was part of the conversation.
But do you think he heard it as, if we put them there, people will die?
Yes or no? This is where I say, this is where you have to understand the fog of war that was happening.
Yet you can't judge Cuomo by today's standard.
Today we know it was the biggest mistake anybody made.
That's obvious. Today.
And many of you are saying, oh boy, if I had been there, if I had been there, I wouldn't have made that mistake.
And you're probably right. For many of you, I'll bet if you had been in charge and you had known about this risk, I'll bet you would have played it right, many of you.
But it's a real messy world and we ask our leaders to make decisions on our behalf that we know aren't going to be right every time.
So if you've got somebody who cares about your well-being, and I think Cuomo does care about your well-being, I don't believe that any of our leaders are the type who literally don't care.
Like, Trump cared about people getting better.
The Democrats care.
The Republicans care. Everybody cares, right?
So you've got somebody who cares.
You've got somebody who is doing his level best.
I think Cuomo put in the time, he put in the effort, He had all the right intentions.
He's smart enough.
This was a giant mistake, despite all of that.
Giant mistake. But how do you treat him for this giant mistake?
I'm going to treat him the way I started out.
By saying, we know there are going to be mistakes this big.
We knew that. We just didn't know the details.
But we knew there were going to be some big leadership mistakes.
It was just baked into the situation.
So my take is this.
You could reasonably assume that Cuomo's political career is over because of it, and I don't know that that would be wrong because, again, the person in charge takes the responsibility, no matter what they knew or didn't know.
That's just how the system has to work.
So there's probably a penalty, but personally I'm not going to hold it against them.
In the same way that I'm not going to hold any mistakes that Trump made against him or any other leader, because I think there was too much uncertainty, and I think that they all had the best interests of the public in mind.
So that will be my charity for the day.
I'd give Cuomo a break, but I wouldn't ask you to.
I'm just giving you my opinion.
If you want to treat him harshly for that, I think you could make a good argument for that.
All right, McConnell is slamming new congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene for her, quote, conspiracy theories that she believes being a cancer on the GOP. McConnell didn't mention her by name, but everybody knew who he was talking about.
Now, if you've looked at some of the things that she's believed...
You can't possibly support that, can you?
Just because she's on your team if you're a Republican?
I mean, seriously?
Have you looked at the things that she has believed and said in public?
She does not belong in government.
I mean, she really, really doesn't belong in the government.
So I'm hoping Republicans can fix that because they're just shooting themselves in the head with that as any kind of a leadership role in their party.
And of course, because the CNN and the Democrats, etc., they love this kind of a story because it makes all Republicans look crazy.
So she's going to get a lot of attention.
If Republicans don't get rid of her, you know, you do it at your own peril.
I mean, she was a big mistake.
All right. So Congress continues to be amazingly incompetent with this relief bill.
How many years do you have to wait for an emergency relief bill?
I feel like every member of Congress should be fired.
For this alone.
I mean, you should just vote against every incumbent.
Because they're not all bad, of course.
There are elected officials who are doing the right thing or trying to do the right thing.
But as a group, they're a complete failure.
It's just embarrassing to be in a country where they can't figure out this emergency relief stuff.
It's not that hard.
It really isn't.
This is not abortion.
It's not deciding to go to war.
This is not that hard on the list of things that Congress has to deal with.
If they can't do this in a timely fashion, even if all they decided was to, hey, let's give half of it and see how it goes and be ready to give the other half quickly if things go well, something like that, that would be reasonable.
But the way it's being handled now, just pure stupidity.
And under these conditions, if the Democrats want to go ahead and just push it through with their rule shenanigans, which they have the option, I'd say go ahead.
I would rather do something wrong than do nothing.
And I don't think, in the case of this relief stuff, I don't think it's ever going to be wrong to go big.
Democrats want to go big.
I think going big is the right economic decision in this case.
How often do I agree with Democrats on economic decisions?
Maybe never. Maybe it's never happened.
But I'm agreeing with them now.
The big number is the right number.
That's it. The Republicans have a good point.
About money that hasn't been spent yet.
Let's spend that first.
They have a good point about maybe some of the money is going to people who don't need money.
They didn't lose their job in the first place.
That's a good point. But where are the Democrats saying, oh, you make a good point about let's not send money to this group?
Or are they saying, we'd love to not send money to people who didn't lose their job, but we don't know how to identify them in time, in some fair way, so it's just better to put the money out there and get things stimulated.
I'm not even hearing the argument, are you?
Have you turned on the news and you've heard You've heard the Democrats say, oh, this is why we want this size check, and then talk to a Republican who says, oh, well, but why don't you only give it to the people who need it instead of giving it to people you know don't need it, because you know they don't need it.
And what does the Democrats say to that?
Do they say we'd love to do that and only give it to people who need it, but we don't know how?
There's not a mechanism to identify them in a fair way.
I'd like to hear that argument.
The news business is so corrupt at this point that you don't even know the argument.
What side am I supposed to be on?
I don't know. I mean, I default to the big number until somebody gives me an argument.
If there's no argument presented, which is not to say there isn't an argument, but is not presented to the public...
I'm going to use the information I have.
And the information I have is that the bigger number is usually the smart one in an emergency situation, right?
So the news business, complete failure on this topic, and others as well.
There's some fake news, mostly on Fox News and their right-leaning organs.
Remember I told you that whoever has the president at the time, whether Republican or Democrat, the news organization that opposes that form of president will be the one who does most of the fake news.
Now, that may not be true this time, but that's what I predicted.
So you should see more fake news coming out of the right-leaning publications compared to what you saw under Trump.
Here's an example.
So you've probably heard this as news, but it's fake news.
Biden once said that using executive orders to govern is like being a dictator.
How many of you think that happened?
How many of you believe the news that Biden said while campaigning that Trump's use of executive orders would make him like a dictator?
And then the second part of the news is that Biden is breaking records for executive orders.
How many think that actually happened?
I'm looking at your comments, yes, I saw the clip.
So somebody said, I saw the tape.
I do. I saw the video.
You saw it with your own eyes, right?
What do people say when I point out to them that the fine people hoax is a hoax?
How do they respond?
How do they respond every single time?
They say, Scott, it's not a hoax.
I saw it on video. I saw it myself.
How do people respond when I say that the Trump suggesting people drink bleach was a hoax and didn't happen?
How do people respond? They respond by saying, uh, Scott, I saw it with my own eyes.
I saw the video.
The video doesn't lie.
I saw it. Would you like me to send you the clip of the video that clearly says drinking bleach?
And of course it doesn't exist, right?
But many of you in the comments have seen the video of Biden saying that using executive orders to govern would be like a dictator.
Many of you say you've seen that.
You know it doesn't exist, right?
Now, when I tell you that that video doesn't exist, what's your brain doing right now?
All of you who say you saw it with your own eyes, heard it with your own ears, are thinking, what's going on right now?
Because one thing I can tell you for sure, those of you who saw it with your own eyes and heard it with your own ears, you really did see it with your own eyes and you really did hear it with your own ears.
So why would I be telling you it didn't happen?
What's going on here? Is it a trick?
What do you think I'm up to? Because I gave you two examples where the other side, from you politically, most of you politically, had this problem where they thought they saw things that didn't happen.
And I'm telling you that it might have happened to you.
What's that feel like?
Because you saw that it happened to other people, and they're normal people.
The people who believe they saw Trump say that neo-Nazis are fine people, the people who believe they saw that with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears, Are not crazy.
They're normal people.
Just like you. But those normal people had an experience, a hallucination essentially, of something that didn't happen.
I'm telling you, you the people who said here in the comments, that Biden did say, and you heard it with your own ears, you saw it on the video, probably saw it multiple times, that he said using executive orders is what dictators do.
Is anybody having any question in your mind?
Now, keep in mind that I just gave you two examples where normal people imagine something was on video and they saw it.
That didn't happen. And I'm saying it's happening to you, the people who think they saw Biden say that, right now.
Are you even a little bit...
Doubting your own impression of what you saw or heard?
Let me see in the comments before I finish my point and tell you what really happened and how the illusion is working.
Somebody says, I saw it.
A stretch to say.
People got a little quiet now, right?
Got a little quiet. So this is what I was hoping.
I was hoping that I had built enough credibility with this particular audience over time that if I tell you something is an illusion, even if you're positive it's not, isn't there just part of you that says, wait a minute, this guy's got a pretty good record of calling out illusions.
How would I know if I'm having one?
You realize that the whole point of an illusion is that the person who's in it is the one who can't tell.
The person who's not in it might be able to tell you you're having an illusion, an outsider, if they're not having the illusion themselves.
But you can't tell.
So your level of certainty that Biden said that using executive orders is for dictators, your level of certainty about that should not be an indicator of whether it happened.
It shouldn't be. It's not an indicator.
It's not a hint.
It shouldn't even bias you.
Here's what really happened on the video you thought you saw.
The context was removed.
Just the way the fine people hoax happened.
Just the way the drinking bleach hoax happened.
The context was this.
That there are some things you can do executive orders for.
There are some things which you can't.
And Biden was specifically making the point, just like I did, that there are some things that executive orders are good for.
There are some things that you can't use them for, such as voting on a budget, the specific example they were talking about.
And he said that if you were to use an executive order where legislation is the only way to go, let's say a budget thing, That that would be like being a dictator.
Now, did Trump do that thing that would be like being a dictator?
And the answer is no. Biden was not accusing Trump of being a dictator because the executive orders that Trump used were the same nature of the ones that Biden contemplated even when he was running, said he would do when he got elected, and then executed.
Biden was very carefully distinguishing Between things that can be executive orders, just like Trump did, and things which you can't do by executive order, because the Constitution doesn't give you that power.
And if you were to violate the Constitution by doing an executive order on something that you shouldn't do an executive order on, that would be like being a dictator.
Now, I watched the video from beginning to end, and I saw that just as clear as day.
It could not be more clear.
He said... Executive orders in these cases?
Not in these cases.
And if you overuse your executive order, you'd be a dictator.
So he's not going to do it.
And he didn't. All right?
Now, how many of you still believe your original...
Go watch the video again.
Go watch the video again, and you can see very clearly, once I've primed you for it, right?
If you're not primed for it, and you've been primed for the opposite...
If you had just watched Hannity telling you that Biden says that executive orders are for dictators, if Hannity had just told you that's what happened, and then he showed you that clip, what would you see?
You'd see what Hannity told you you were going to see, because you would be primed to see it that way.
Suppose there had never been a Hannity or anybody else suggesting that Biden said something about executive orders and dictators.
And suppose you had just seen the clip, Just without any priming.
Or, let's say I had primed you and said, what you're going to see is that Biden is talking about things you can and cannot do with executive orders.
Here's the clip. If I had primed you that way, you wouldn't have seen anything.
You just would have seen Biden saying sometimes you can use him, sometimes you can't.
That's it. That was the whole thing.
Now... You got real quiet in the comments.
I'm not seeing a lot of pushbacks, right?
So be aware that if you were, let's say, pro-Trump, that you are now in a world in which your own team will be selling you a lot of fake news.
That's going to happen.
Here's an example. That's just fake news.
All right. A lot of people online say, on Twitter anyway, That the mask mandates are part of some kind of a secret government plan to train the public to be compliant so that when they have future orders for the public,
the public will be so well trained by this mask mandate and the lockdowns and such that they'll be ready and primed for whatever is the next thing they're asked to do.
That's not a thing.
That is weird conspiracy theory thinking.
Because governments are not that coordinated and not that competent.
They don't see that far in the future.
The least likely thing that's going on is that there's a government plot to train the citizens to be compliant.
Now, you could argue that the effect of it is that the public gets used to anything, and that's a good argument.
That if you get the public used to doing anything, it might have an effect on the next thing that you want them to do.
That's true. But to imagine it's some kind of intentional plan, like a giant government plot to make the public more compliant, that's not happening.
That's Bigfoot talk.
So I would be embarrassed to say that in public if I were you.
That's just crazy talk.
There's no government that's that coordinated and evil and planning on this mental takeover of the people.
That's not happening. There's no room where that's being discussed.
That's just crazy talk.
So yesterday I made some of you mad about...
I was talking about masks and why the risk-reward cost-benefit is that you should wear them.
Even if it turned out later we found out it didn't work, based on what we know today, it would be the smart decision to wear them.
So I was saying that yesterday.
And I was pointing out that if somebody just says masks don't work or they say masks do work, you just ignore those people.
Because nobody knows if they do work and nobody knows if they don't.
You don't know. You could have a hunch.
You could have a reasonable opinion.
But you don't know.
So it's a...
How do you make decisions in the face of the unknown?
Now, in my case, I say, as somebody pointed out on Twitter yesterday, if viruses travel on moisture...
And breathing into your mask makes it moist on the inside.
Well, there must be some virus that's getting stuck to your mask, because the moisture is.
So is that enough to change the nature of the infection curve?
Well, that's still unknown.
But something's happened with those masks, because it is stopping some moisture from getting out.
Now, a lot of you disagreed with me.
And the...
The strongest argument against masks, I feel it's fair to share that with you.
So here's the strongest argument.
You'll see this on Twitter quite a bit, and it goes like this.
Masks don't work! That's the argument.
Now, you might say, is there something missing from the argument, such as...
Reasons and, you know, something like that?
Facts? Anything? To which I say, I believe the argument is that since masks are not proven to work in coronavirus in a randomized controlled study, that that's allowing people to say, masks don't work.
Which is crazy.
Because the only thing we know is that it can't be tested because there's no ethical way to send a bunch of people into a virus zone without masks just to see if they get infected.
So you can't do human tests.
You can't test people in that way.
Well, you can't do it under the condition that you have a strong feeling that the masks are more good than bad.
In that case, it's unethical to test them.
If you didn't know anything, And you didn't suspect one way or the other, then maybe it would be ethical.
So, the only reason I bring this up is because Dr.
Nicole Sapphire, who you recognize as a regular medical professional on Fox News, backed me up on that opinion on Twitter.
So I just want you to know that there's one person that Fox News uses as their go-to professional for medical stuff, Who agrees with me that masks are the right risk-reward decision?
So I only say that so that you've heard somebody associated with Trump and the right, I won't say Trump, but let's say associated with Fox News and is a medical professional and is following this closely, agrees exactly with me.
That doesn't mean either of us are right, but you should know that for context.
When was the last time you knew what was in a piece of legislation or an executive order?
Sometimes an executive order is kind of simple.
When Trump did them, they were kind of simple.
And I guess some of Biden's are simple because they're reversing things.
But we don't have any conversation about what the actual policies are, do we?
When was the last time you turned on the news?
And here was a list of the executive orders that Biden or Trump had signed.
And here's the analysis of why that's good or bad, based on experts.
I feel like the news business isn't even trying to be news.
Because we have a government making all these executive orders and laws.
We don't even know what they are.
It's not even been reported to us except like the headline.
It's a coronavirus bill.
Don't ask any more questions.
It's just a coronavirus bill.
Maybe we should have some kind of facility in this country, since the fake news industry isn't interested, to tell us what the decisions are all about.
And maybe get some opinions about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
That would be nice.
In the news, singer Marilyn Manson is being accused of a variety of abusive things.
I don't know, sexual abuse, some kind of thing like that.
And there are a number of women who have come forward with similar stories.
Now, the most tragic thing about this...
These are women who thought they were getting into a healthy relationship with Marilyn Manson.
By the way, that is not Marilyn Manson's original name.
This is somebody who changed their name to make it more compatible with a known mass murderer, Charles Manson.
The women who got involved with Marilyn Manson Didn't see any red flags that maybe this was an unhealthy situation to get into.
And I think to myself, you didn't see any red flags at all.
There was nothing that Marilyn Manson had perhaps sung or performed.
Nothing about his choice of last name.
Anything about...
The situation was like a little red flag.
Nothing. Looked pretty safe to everybody.
I guess that's the tragedy, that these things can look so safe and yet be so dangerous.
And when I talk about stories like this, I would like to invite the What About the Victims guy?
I don't know who would like to play that role today.
It's a rotating role.
But somebody needs to step in and get over on Twitter and say something to me along the lines of, Scott, Scott, what about the victims?
What about the victims?
You monster!
What about the victims?
Now, I know this is hard to believe.
But I actually care about victims.
I know. Hard to believe.
I actually feel bad.
I have empathy for other humans who are suffering in tragedy.
And this will even surprise you more.
If a tragedy happens, I don't want it to happen again.
I know. Surprising, right?
You listen to me and you're thinking, I think that guy likes tragedies.
I think he likes it when bad things happen to people, but no.
No, I actually don't.
And if I had it my way, there would be no extra tragedies.
And if I were magic, I would even go back in time and reverse some of the tragedies that had already happened.
That's the kind of guy I am.
I know it seems like I'm pro-tragedy.
And that's why... It's such a good public service when the What About the Victims guy comes onto Twitter pretty much every day and says, You monster.
What about the victims?
What about the victims, you frickin' monster?
Thank goodness for that person.
Because otherwise you'd be thinking to yourself, Hey, I think Scott, he likes tragedies.
I feel like he wants more of them.
But no. No, I don't.
Surprise. Here's a story that surprised me a little, but maybe shouldn't have.
You all know the story of Ashley Babbitt, who was one of the assaulters on the Capitol.
I'll call it an assault.
And she was the one going through the broken window on the top of a door, and she was shot dead by somebody in law enforcement, Who basically ended that part of the assault by shooting the first person through the door.
There is a decision by investigators.
It's not a final decision, but it's a recommendation by investigators to decline to bring charges.
Now, if you remember my take on this...
I said, from what I can see, that's a clean, unfortunate, but clean shooting.
Meaning that it was absolutely the right decision to take the shot, even with the tragic ending that somebody was killed, who I don't believe should have been killed.
Meaning that in a world that works properly, She'd still be alive.
So it's a mistake in that sense.
But in terms of a defense strategy, in terms of preventing more bloodshed maybe than there might have been, I said from the start it looked like a good shot.
As tragic as it is.
What? I'm getting a message?
What about the victim?
Oh, no, I should clarify.
I actually do feel bad for the victim.
And it's a tragedy.
I know. Surprising.
I actually feel bad for people who are hurt.
You didn't see that coming.
I know. But having said that, and certainly with all respect to the family and friends of the woman who was killed, Ashley Babbitt, wish it hadn't happened, of course.
Deeply wish it hadn't happened.
But the officer who took the shot made the right decision, in my opinion.
Not being a law enforcement professional, I'm open to having that opinion revised by somebody who knows more than I do.
If Dan Bongino disagrees with me this afternoon, I'm going to listen to what he has to say.
But that's my take. I think this was the right decision.
I will, however, put this turd in the punch bowl for you.
I don't think there's the slightest chance that this would be called a justified shooting had she not been white.
Sorry. I don't think we live in a world in which this shooting could have gone unpunished except that the person who got shot was white.
You know that's true, right?
You know that's true.
And the reason is obvious.
Because if it had gone the other way, if it had been a different kind of assault, I think in this particular case, maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much because the assault on the Capitol was such a big issue.
But in general...
In general, the race of the person getting shot probably made a big difference.
Probably made a big difference.
But it was the right decision.
Alright. That is my provocative live stream for today.
How many of you have I made angry?
Let me see in the comments.
Tell me what you think about it when I disagree with you.
Because I know it goes both ways.
One of the most common positive things that people say about my live streams is that they like it when I disagree with them.
because those are the points where the friction and the entertainment happens.
Somebody says, the right decision...
Jesus. Yeah, the right decision to take the shot...
Because the alternative would have been worse.
So when I say it's the right decision, it's not, obviously, nobody wants anybody to get killed, but it was the right decision in terms of reducing the amount of potential bloodshed.
Because if they had gotten through, it could have gotten a lot worse.
Don't know, but the police officer didn't know either and was defending the Capitol and defending our government.
And under those conditions, yeah, that was the right shot.
I only disagree with you about education, somebody says.
I don't know what I say about education that you would disagree about.
Somebody says only when you're anti-Trump.
I've never been anti-Trump.
I've always been the same.
Some things he did that I liked, some things I didn't.
It's the same thing I say about AOC. There's no difference.
Why can't you be...
Why can't you just be for things that are good and against things that are bad?
Why do you have to be for Trump or against Trump?
That doesn't even make sense.
The only thing that really bothers me is when you say the flu doesn't kill people.
What I say is that the regular seasonal flu probably doesn't kill anywhere near the number that they report.
Now, obviously, if you're weak enough, Pretty much anything can kill you, right?
It doesn't take much if you're weak enough.
So I'm not going to say that nobody's ever died from a seasonal flu.
But the numbers that we got from 30,000 to 80,000 people a year dying from the regular flu, I would bet every penny I have that that's exaggerated and a lot.
And I base it on the fact that we don't know anybody who dies from the regular flu.
But as soon as we got that same number of people dying from coronavirus, everybody knew somebody.
At around 50,000-80,000 deaths from coronavirus, we all knew somebody who at least knew somebody who died of it.
But still, I don't know anybody who died of regular flu my whole life.
Never heard of it. So you know that number's made up, but it doesn't mean that nobody died of the flu.
Now, to this point, one of the problems that I have in communication quite often is that I speak in absolutes When I believe that people understand it's not an absolute.
And that confuses X percentage of the population, and I'm always amazed when it happens, because people don't have the same, let's say, reading or hearing comprehension.
So let me make a general statement.
When I say things like, nobody dies of the regular seasonal flu, how do you hear that?
Do you hear that as literally not one person dies?
Because you shouldn't.
If I say something that's an absolute of that nature, you should be translating that in your mind to, oh, he means it would be rare, or not many people, or mostly.
That's how your brain should interpret that.
But I think that maybe I, more than other people, Speak in accidental absolutes because I assume that you know it's not an absolute, but people will still call me out and say, it's not an absolute!
To which I say, I didn't even think that was a possibility that you would take it that way.
So I do have that problem communication-wise, that I speak in absolutes more than I should.
Will I take calls again?
Yeah, probably, at some point.
But I would want to use different technology for that.
We should take you seriously, but not literally.
On the absolutes, yes.
That's how you should take me. Be precise in your speech, says Peterson.
Yes, you should.
You should be precise.
Yeah, the absolutes are hyperbole in a sense.
That would be a reasonable thing to say.
Somebody says they die from secondary causes like pneumonia.
Yeah, I suppose that's the way it happens.
And I should say a few people die of it.
Yeah, I think it is lazy.
I think that's a fair statement.
It is lazy to speak in absolutes.
And assume that the audience understands it that way.
That would be fair to say.
And pneumonia is always the fall guy, somebody says.
Poor pneumonia. It gets blamed for everything.
All right. If this is a health issue, then why no one says to get some sun and get a walk and lose some weight?
Well, I said that.
Wasn't I the first person who told you when the pandemic started that you should walk every day and that you should get some sun and get your vitamin D? I hear people say it all the time.
So if you're saying that we're not being told that, the government isn't, you know, they're not all over it, that's for sure.
But they have said that.
I mean, I think Fauci and Birx have probably said vitamin D is good for you, probably more than once.
He said people who die from the flu are listed as dying from something else.
Yeah, for the very old, I'm sure that's true.
But I don't think there are 50-year-olds who are dying from the flu.
Or should I say, very few of them.
See how easily it is for me to get into absolutes.
All right. That is all I've got to say for today.
Somebody says 80,000 people died from the seasonal flu in 2018.
Well, what I'm telling you is they don't count those.
Do you know where the 80,000 comes from?
It's an estimate based on how many people died compared to how many they think usually die.
And then they say, well, that difference must be the flu.
I'm oversimplifying it a little bit, but it's like that.
Nobody counts them.
So nobody counted and got 80,000.
They just looked at a bunch of statistics and said, well, looks like it could have been 80,000.
All right. That's it for now.
I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
Alright, YouTubers. Have anything fascinating to ask me?
Somebody says 55% of COVID deaths have the flu.
I don't know what that means.
Who killed Ashley Babbitt?
It was one of the police officers.
I don't think that matters.
Scott, if Bigfoot to believe China has a 100-year plan...
No, China has a plan for dominating the world.
They say it. A number of Chinese officials have said it in public directly.
So it's definitely not a conspiracy to imagine that China wants to dominate the world.
I would say that's as true as anything could be.
Somebody says, you assume zero cost of wearing masks.
No, I don't. A lot of people have been saying that, but why would I assume something dumb?
Like, why would I assume that?
The people who say, you have not considered the negative impacts of wearing masks, to which I say, everybody's considered that.
There's nobody in the world who hasn't considered that.
Every single person who put on a mask...
Thinks while they're doing it, yeah, man, there's a downside to this.
You know, it's probably got a big downside, too.
Everybody considers that.
So don't imagine I haven't considered the obvious.
It would be one thing to imagine I hadn't considered something that's not obvious.
That would be a reasonable statement.
But when you say somebody hasn't considered the most obvious part of the whole question...
You're not really a serious player.
We all consider all the big stuff.
Maybe some weird thing I don't consider.
That would be worth bringing up.
But don't say I haven't considered the most essential part of the entire conversation.
Alright. I'm just looking at your comments now.
If you're listening to this on audio, it must be painful because you can't see the comments.
How is the education system affecting US politics?
Well, in a dangerous way.
We're letting our least capable citizens train our children, which are our teachers.
I'll just leave that statement there.
Our least capable citizens are training our children how to be good citizens.
Exception would be, of course, my sister.
In case you're listening.
So there again is one of my absolute statements.
It, of course, is not true that every teacher is...
Somehow less good than every other citizen.
So you should recognize that as obvious hyperbole.
But my point is, what makes teachers the moral standard?
They might be very good at teaching the elements of education, but if they're also teaching you how to be a good, moral, ethical citizen, do they take classes in that?
What exactly is their qualification?
To teach your children how to be people as opposed to teaching them how to read, which would be fine.
So when I say they're the least capable, I mean that they don't have any training that I'm aware of on what it takes to be a good citizen.
