Episode 1298 Scott Adams: LeBron Does His Homework, Congress Stays Worthless, Fake News Stays Ridiculous, Biden Decomposes
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Bill Gates "leaving his lane"
CNN's "fact" that's a fake news assumption
Biden's newest gaffe and Harris prep for the job
Bill Maher's segment on cancel culture
Rand Paul's questioning of Rachel Levine
Who was Q, nobody is searching for Q?
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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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Well, I don't want to get your hopes up or anything, but probably the best one I've ever done.
Probably. We'll see.
But how to make it better?
Well, let me tell you.
What you need is a copper mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask or vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I think you know I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes really everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And watch this. People all around the world syncing up.
Go! Could you feel that?
Could you feel it?
Yeah. That was people all over the world doing the same thing at the same time.
You are now connected.
Oh, yeah. Well, I promised you that I would, in addition to informing you, that I would make you smarter every time you watch my live stream.
In other words, I'll tell you something that maybe you hadn't heard before that would be useful.
Or... Maybe you reinforce something that you already knew, but it helps to have it reinforced.
And let me start with this.
Dana Perino has a new book called Everything Will Be Okay, The Life Lessons for Young Women.
I got an advanced copy.
And I guess it goes on sale in early March.
So you can pre-order it now.
And here's what I want to give you for your lesson for the day.
Have I told you that writing is really important to start out right?
And this book, Dana's book, I haven't read the whole book, but I wanted to call out one of the best openings of a book I've ever seen.
So I've told you many times, if you followed my writing advice, that you should write and rewrite the opening of your book, the first few sentences, You should just rewrite that a hundred times.
No matter how many times you rewrite it, you could probably make it a little better.
And you want to get people hooked and interested and curious and also get the whole idea of the book in the first paragraph.
That's a lot of work to put into a paragraph, right?
If you can get all of that done in one paragraph, You probably have a good book.
Let me read the opening from Dana's book to see how to do this right.
Introduction. I got a call from a young woman in Washington, D.C. seeking some advice.
She had a problem at work and was quite upset.
Her office supervisor wanted her to do something that she was very uncomfortable with, make a public statement under her own name using language and a tone to That she thought was disrespectful and unproductive.
And then I guess she said on the phone, oh, then Dana advised her, then don't say it.
Absolutely do not do it, I said.
Quote, I don't think I can refuse, she said.
She was afraid she'd be fired if she didn't comply, that she didn't have the gravitas to decline.
Quote, I'm not Dana Perino, she said.
And then Dana Perino responded, quote, well, how do you think I became Dana Perino?
How do you think I became Dana Perino?
That's one of the best openings of a book that you'll ever see.
That, by the way, that advice is worth the price of the book.
Just that advice.
And you got it in the first paragraph.
And let me add to that.
One of the pieces of advice I give more than just about any other piece of advice is that when people get in some kind of a negotiation, usually somebody wants a job, or they're trying to get a deal, or in this case, somebody's negotiating with their boss, potentially.
In all of those cases, people who are low-ranking imagine that they don't have any leverage, and that's an illusion.
It's a complete illusion.
You have lots of leverage if you're an employee, even if you have a boss.
Because your boss doesn't want to hire a new employee.
Your boss really, really, really doesn't want to have to get rid of you and find a new employee.
That's like one of the worst things a boss has to do.
It's just hard. Everything gets wrecked if you have to go find a new employee.
So if you're good at your job...
You have all kinds of leverage with your boss.
All kinds of leverage.
But nobody in their, let's say in their 20s, just to pick a time range, nobody in their 20s knows that.
They don't know that yet.
You don't really know that until you become the boss.
Once you become a boss, then you realize how much leverage your employees have.
Because you really need them, right?
You don't have an option where the employees...
Don't exist or don't do good work and you're still a star.
So you always have more leverage than you think.
That is some of the best advice you'll ever hear.
Alright, now this assumes that you do good work, right?
If you're bad at your job, you don't have any leverage.
It's only if you're good at your job.
The best news of the day?
Lady Gaga got her dogs back.
I gotta admit, I didn't see that coming.
Kind of thought those dogs were not going to have a happy ending.
Because I thought that once it became obvious they were Lady Gaga's dogs, somebody would have to get rid of them.
But maybe they were dog lovers, oddly enough.
Obviously they're not human lovers since they shot one.
But they may have just said, oh crap, we can't kill these dogs, we can't keep them.
There's no way you can really sell them.
You know, not get away with it.
So... Maybe we have a good outcome.
And let me tell you, if there were some kind of Academy Award or, let's say, National Medal of Honor or Nobel Peace Prize for the best dog walker, Lady Gaga, she got a good dog walker.
I'll tell you, if you're looking for a dog walker, Best one I've ever heard of.
This guy gave his life, or he risked his life, he got shot, protecting dogs.
Can you do better than that?
Can you do better than that?
No. Now, I probably would have given him the dogs right away.
Okay, not my dog.
If it had been my dog, I would have probably risked my life.
But if you're a dog walker, it's pretty good performance.
Let's talk about LeBron.
He's my favorite big dumb guy.
And somebody will turn that into something racial, right?
You can be dumb of any ethnicity, can't you?
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I've seen big, dumb guys of every ethnic group.
So, keep it in context.
Another athlete, a major soccer star, is Latin Ibramovich, criticized LeBron for being political.
LeBron responded by saying that he does his homework.
So he's not just a big, dumb athlete.
He does his homework.
He digs in.
And after doing his homework, he had concluded, at least in the past, that he believes the fine people hoax really happened.
Glad he did his homework, he couldn't even tell that the biggest hoax in the country never happened.
So that's what he got when he did his homework.
I also wonder, what exactly is LeBron's take on Generation 4 nuclear power?
Does he see that as a key variable in the climate change topic?
He probably doesn't know what it is.
And if you don't know what Generation 4 nuclear is, do you know much about climate change and what to do about it and what the options are and what energy is really green and what is really dangerous?
Probably not. So how much research is LeBron doing?
Before you say, Scott, you're just dunking on an athlete and you're telling him to basically stay in his lane.
And don't you, Scott, tell us all the time that that's the worst advice ever?
Telling people to stay in their lane?
Because that's what this soccer star told LeBron.
You know, stick to sports.
You've seen me criticize that, right?
A lot of times.
Well, let me tell you when people should leave their lane and when they should not.
It's just a general rule.
You know, there could be some exceptions.
But as a general rule, if you're in the top 1% of people who are brilliant and effective, leave your lane.
Leave your lane.
Because Elon Musk had never sent a rocket to Mars...
But I feel like he can figure it out, because he's in the top 1%.
Elon Musk had never built an electric car, but he figured it out, because he's in the top 1%.
Bill Gates had never started a major company, but he's in the top 1% of intelligence and capability, so he figured it out.
If you're not in the top 1%, Well, then it gets a little bit more of a gray area, doesn't it?
I don't think everybody should change their lane, right?
Not everybody should change their lane.
But I'll give you another example.
I think it was Mark Dice was tweeting about how Bill Gates is making medical, I wouldn't say recommendations, but he's making a lot of Statements in the medical field that you'd sort of expect a virologist or a doctor to be making, right? And so the criticism is, hey Bill Gates, you know, you're good with software and running companies, but why don't you leave the medical stuff to the medical people?
Is that good advice?
Nope, it's not.
Now, I see people believe the conspiracy theories about Bill Gates being evil and he's going to put a chip in you and all that.
It's all ridiculous, by the way.
It's all ridiculous. But it's a different topic.
The question is, if you saw Bill Gates disagreeing with some doctors on the question of the pandemic, who should you trust?
Would you trust Bill Gates, his opinion on the pandemic, Or a doctor.
Now let's say that the doctor is a GP, general practitioner, very skilled at doctoring.
Maybe not a virologist, but a doctor.
Bill Gates is not a doctor.
Let's say they had different opinions.
Who would you trust?
The doctor, to have a medical opinion, or Bill Gates, not a doctor, who would you trust?
If you trust the doctor, it's a sucker's play.
I would trust Bill Gates every fucking time.
If you're making this mistake, then you don't understand what it means to be in the top 1%.
I say this not as an insult to anybody watching this.
Not as an insult.
Your dog doesn't understand how you turn on the lights.
Would you agree? Your dog knows the lights often come on when you enter in the room, but doesn't quite understand that it's something you do with the light switch, or maybe you talk to your digital assistant or something.
The dog just knows the lights come on.
A dog cannot understand a human with an IQ of, let's say, 100, average.
A dog has no idea why that person makes those decisions, but would you say...
That a person with average intelligence, a human, would make better decisions than, say, a dog.
Not about dog things, but about human things.
And the answer is yes.
Not only would you guarantee that a person with an IQ of 100 would nail it better than a dog at making decisions for humans, but you know the dog doesn't get it.
The dog wouldn't know that the human is that much smarter.
But the human knows for sure that the dog is that much dumber.
It's not a two-way awareness.
It's a one-way awareness.
The smart person knows, the dog doesn't.
Now take that to humans.
Let's say you're pretty smart.
You've got an IQ of 120, 130.
Pretty good IQ. You are not in the same range as Bill Gates.
You're not even close.
You're not even close.
You're as close to Bill Gates in intelligence If you have like a 120, 130, you're not that far off from the dog to a person who has normal intelligence.
You have no idea how his brain works, how effective it is, the things he can do with his brain, that you just can't.
And by the way, I put myself in that category of somebody who's substantially less intelligent than Bill Gates.
When Bill Gates looks into a topic...
I would go with him.
Now, what you don't see is Bill Gates necessarily saying something different than the top virologists.
That's different, right?
The top virologists, like in the world, are probably also in the top 1%, and they also know their topic.
But on top of that...
So I would listen to those, and I think Bill Gates does as well.
But if you were comparing Bill Gates to your family doctor, and they had different opinions, I would take Bill Gates every time over your family general practitioner, if they were different.
Now, I don't know if there's any case that they ever would be different.
I'm just saying that you can't judge LeBron leaving his lane...
With Bill Gates leaving his lane, they are not even a little bit similar.
So that's the next thing that you learned today.
Leaving your lane is good for the people who can do it, and most people can't.
Let me give you another example.
Some years ago, The CEO of Intel, who was Andy Grove, I think he's passed.
But Andy Grove wrote a very long article.
I think it was for Forbes or Fortune or something.
It was one of those magazines.
And what he did was he had prostate cancer.
Now, Andy Grove was an engineer.
Would you trust an engineer to give you advice on prostate cancer?
Well, your first impression should be no, right?
Why would you trust an engineer to give you medical advice?
But the reason it was a major article that really made an impact, I think, in the country is that Andy Grove did what the doctors couldn't do.
He looked at all the research, and then he put it in context, and then he explained it to the public so anybody who was in the same situation, had prostate cancer, could see all of their surgical and other options In the clearest possible way, for the first time.
For the first time.
Why did Andy Grove have to write an article about prostate cancer?
Because there wasn't anybody who could tell him.
There were no doctors who knew what Andy Grove knew when he was done doing the research.
None of them. They probably knew what they knew more than he did, but they didn't see the whole field.
He did. And when he wrote it, doctors said, all right, that's a real service.
That's a real service.
Because even we're not seeing it in that detail.
So, would you trust Andy Grove to make a medical recommendation?
In that case?
In that specific case?
Yes. Yes.
I would trust him over the doctors.
I would listen to both, of course, but...
Don't count out the top one percenters.
They're just not like other people.
All right. Amazon's announcing it will no longer sell books that are, quote, that have a material we deem inappropriate or offensive.
So, how long before one of my books is deemed inappropriate or offensive?
Take my book that's behind my head here, Winn Bigley.
Winn Bigley is Paints a positive picture of ex-president Trump's performance, his skills.
What happens if history decides that Trump is such a bad character that you can't have a book saying he did anything good?
Because imagine if somebody wrote a book that said, you know, Hitler certainly had his bad qualities, but what about his good qualities?
Nobody could write that book.
And if they did, would Amazon carry it?
Would Amazon carry a book that said Hitler had some good points?
Probably not, right? It would be easily categorized as offensive or inappropriate.
But is it possible that my book, which is perfectly acceptable in the time it was published, could Trump's reputation reach a point where they say, you know, I don't even think we can have a book on the shelf.
They said he had any good qualities.
Could it? I don't know.
Let me tell you what I think is happening to me.
And again, you can only speculate about these things because it's sort of opaque.
It does appear to me that at just about the time of the election and after it, that the social media companies put the clamp down on me pretty hard.
Now, I can't I can't distinguish how much is maybe people leaving my universe because they came for the Trump stuff and there's not as much of it anymore.
And how much of it is some kind of weird algorithm or shadow banning, I can't sort it out.
But I will tell you that on, let's say, YouTube, which had been pretty much allowing all of my content to be monetized, They've gotten to the point where pretty much all of it was monetized, which is different than earlier in the year.
But right after the election or so, they reversed it, and I watched the monetization just plunge.
It plunged enough that I'm not sure it's worth doing, right?
So, I mean, at the moment it is.
But if they keep the clamps on...
And the way that looks is that my live streams, this in particular, in fact, this is probably demonetized right now.
Unless my brother. Well, never mind.
We'll get to that later.
But chances are that this is demonetized right now.
At least the YouTube feed, not the Periscope feed.
And they demonetize automatically.
Is that something that you do to somebody who, after review, gets approved almost every time?
And even the ones that are not approved don't violate any rule.
I have violated zero rules of YouTube, as far as I know.
I'm not aware of anything.
Now, I do use some language.
But I also note that this is not for children.
So YouTube has a box you check.
So do you think that I get demonetized because my language is bad?
I don't think so. There's plenty of bad language on podcasts.
Do you think I get demonetized because I say things like I'm going to say right now?
I'm guessing this might be why.
Here's a report on CNN's fake news today.
This is a direct quote from CNN's webpage.
Facts first, colon, the election was not rigged.
Joe Biden was the legitimate winner.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance.
And CNN is reporting this as a fact.
Well, there are actually two separate claims in this fact.
One is that there is no evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance.
Well, I don't know that's true, but I know that no court has ruled that there is widespread fraud or malfeasance.
So you could argue that this one is true-ish, meaning that they left out the fact that the court has not found any evidence, as opposed to people alleging there's evidence.
So I would say this is misleading.
But what about the first sentence?
The election was not rigged.
That's reported as a fact.
That's fake news.
That's not a fact.
That's an assumption.
They reported a fact that's really just an assumption.
Now, do I have any evidence, personally, either court-sanctioned or even just something that I've seen, that I would say is proof that there's some kind of widespread fraud in that election?
The answer is no. No, I have not.
Now, should I be demonetized for saying what is obviously objectively true?
That there is no...
I don't have any evidence that is direct evidence of widespread fraud.
Lots of allegations.
Lots of statistical things that make my eyebrow go up.
I'd certainly like to know more about it.
And I have a general feeling that any system will be corrupted eventually.
So, you know, I have suspicions.
But I have no evidence of fraud.
None. Zero.
Should I be demonetized for saying what I just said?
That I personally am aware of no fraud in the election?
I will be.
Probably. Probably already demonetized while I'm talking.
Is anything I'm saying dangerous or offensive or inappropriate?
Not even close. So here's my main point about CNN. When they say the election was not rigged, That is simply not a fact.
Nor is it a fact that we know it was rigged.
Neither of those are facts.
Anybody pretending that those are facts can't tell the difference between a reasonable assumption and something you know.
Is it a reasonable assumption that the election was not rigged?
It's reasonable. It's reasonable.
I think reasonable people might disagree.
But it's not crazy.
But it's an assumption. You can't prove something didn't happen when you didn't look for it.
Alright. So, if I say something that is objectively and obviously true, that you can't know something doesn't exist in the context of you didn't look for it, is there anybody who disagrees with either of those two statements?
That we didn't look for it, except in those few cases that courts Around the edges, there's some things that got looked at.
But we didn't look at the whole system, for sure.
And if you didn't look, can you be sure?
Now, if that's true that not looking allows you to reach certainty, I'd like to hear that argument.
That'd be a good argument.
It could be that we have, in fact, checked enough places that statistically you could be pretty darn sure nothing happened.
That's possible. But I haven't heard that argument.
I'd like to. Because if it's true, I'd certainly like to know it.
All right. So I believe I'm being squeezed and I'm getting lots of reports of people having to re-follow me on Twitter.
By the way, in the comments, if you've ever had to re-follow me on Twitter or you can't find my tweets, say so in the comments.
And for those of you who believe I might be exaggerating, Watch what happens.
It'll take about a minute for the comments to catch up.
Here they come. Look at all the people who had to re-follow me that know they never unfollowed me in the first place.
When you see the number of them, you kind of can't think it's a coincidence.
It doesn't look like a bug.
Somebody says, you are not exaggerating.
Just look at the comments. These are people who follow me enough to watch my live streams regularly, so they're not casual followers.
Just look at all the people who are saying this.
Do you believe it's a coincidence that this many people who just happen to be on this live stream...
Look at all the yeses.
Now, I'm seeing more of them on Periscope than I am on YouTube.
For the YouTube people...
I could just read the comments from Periscope.
It's like, yes, yes, re-follow.
There are no's, of course, but a lot of yeses.
Do you think that's a bug?
I don't. Do you think they're all wrong, and they just had some perceptual problem where somebody did it twice in one week?
Do you think they accidentally unfollowed me twice that week?
No. No, that didn't happen.
For a while I used to think it was a coincidence.
But it is now somewhat obvious that both YouTube and Twitter are squeezing me.
Probably politically.
My guess is that it's politically motivated, but how would I know?
So the odds of this getting monetized by YouTube are probably zero.
I don't think they could handle this.
All right, so Biden has a new gaffe.
He went to Texas, and in the middle of his opening remarks, he said, and I quote, what am I doing here?
I'm going to lose track here.
Because he literally forgot what he was doing while he was talking.
Now we add to that the following clues.
We know that his vice president is talking to foreign leaders, something that even Biden didn't do at this level.
So there's something going on in which Harris is clearly being groomed for the top job, because the talking to foreign leaders would be the main thing you'd want to do to get ready.
And then we also heard the reports that the nuclear football, the Democrats don't necessarily want that in one decision.
They might want to get more control on that.
So you say to yourself, wait a minute, don't these all have that same quality?
It's obvious now that Biden is being managed out of the job for obvious cognitive problems.
But I will give you this one caution.
Remember I introduced a word, apophenia, A-P-O-P-H-E-N-I-A, apophenia.
It's the phenomenon where people see patterns where there are no patterns.
words.
Similar to confirmation bias, but a little bit different.
And is that a real pattern or a fake one?
So here are the three things.
Tell me if it's a real pattern or a fake one.
Number one, Biden makes lots of verbal gaffes.
He thinks he has a cognitive problem.
Number two, Harris is talking to foreign leaders as if she's getting ready for the job, the top job.
And there's some concern, even from Democrats, about who has control of the nuclear football.
Put those three things together.
Proof that Biden is being managed out of the top job.
No. Yeah, we want to believe that.
And if I had to bet on it, I would bet yes, but not necessarily because of these three pieces of evidence.
The nuclear football thing could be just a general concern.
Could be. Harris talking to foreign leaders seems a little bit more on the nose.
In the right way. I sometimes use that as an indication of something that's not true.
But in this case, that's exactly what you'd be doing.
And I don't see another reason for it, do you?
What would be the other reason Harris would be talking to foreign leaders?
So I would subtract out the nuclear football question, because it might be part of the pattern, but it might not be.
And the Biden gaffe, what am I doing here?
You could argue that he's just always been that way.
It's no different. But the part about Harris talking to the foreign leaders, I don't have a second explanation for that.
I mean, you could argue she's getting ready to run after four years, but it feels a little early.
So... Anyway, be mindful that it could be a fake pattern, but I would also bet on it being real.
So I would join you in betting it's real, but you can't be 100% sure.
The funniest thing about the news today is how much of it is about Bill Maher.
You're used to seeing the news talk about whatever Bill Maher said on his show on Friday night each week.
And, you know, I'm not surprised that, you know, something he said made the news.
It's very, very normal.
But I felt like he made a lot of news.
Like he made a lot of news.
Like we don't have anything else to talk about.
But as part of this trend of people who maybe leaned left, I'm not sure what you would...
How you would classify Bill Maher progressive, I guess.
And they're eating each other.
So he came out strongly against cancel culture, which is why Bill Maher is a voice you should listen to.
Because there aren't that many people who can come out against their own team, as it were.
And he does regularly, when it makes sense.
So, even when you don't agree with Bill Maher, and I don't agree with him on a number of topics, but you have to admit, he is capable intellectually of seeing an issue on either side without being blinded by it.
I do think TDS had him a little bit blinded, but that was a special case.
So, He also is saying that Trump is the presumptive nominee for 2024.
And he's warning people, don't imagine this won't happen, because it's almost positive it's going to happen.
Remember, if there are a number of other candidates who are running, let's say Trump has a primary challenger, which of course he would, it depends how many there are.
If it's ten challengers again, he's definitely going to get nominated because it will distribute the popularity.
He'll still have 30% or whatever, so he'd easily get it.
But what if he only ran against one person who was a pretty good candidate?
Well, then it may be a little close call.
But who would be that one candidate?
Name one candidate...
Who, if it were one-on-one against Trump for the primary, not for the job, but for the primary, what Republican would stand a chance?
There's no one-on-one matchup that would even be close, would there?
Somebody's saying Pompeo, but he would be identified as sort of Trump's guy.
Yeah, I mean, I'm seeing all the usual names, Matt Gaetz, Haley, etc., I don't think Matt Gaetz is going to primary Trump.
Do you? I don't think so.
Andrew Yang would not run as a Republican.
Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz, I'm not sure he had his best week.
He's still... Still fighting off the Cancun stuff.
He made a joke about it at CPAC. I'm not sure that joke landed, but I like that he's treating it as a joke.
Taking full responsibility, but then also minimizing it because it isn't that important.
So those are the two things that you would look for for somebody handling it correctly.
So the mistake is the mistake.
But he handled it correctly by coming back, completely saying this was a mistake.
No ambiguity.
It was just a mistake. I like that.
He didn't shade it.
Just a mistake.
And then he minimized it, which I think in this case you should minimize it.
All right. Here's my question.
What does Bill Maher think about Biden's mental capacity?
So now we've watched Biden operate for a while.
What does Bill Maher think of that?
Because remember, the ordinary team player Democrats are just not going to mention that.
But Bill Maher can, because he's not a hypnotized team player.
If he sees it, he's going to call it out.
I don't know how much longer he can go Without sort of making this a featured point that Biden's capacity is diminished.
The other thing that seems...
And I've been predicting this, but it's funny to watch it come true.
How many times Biden will be forced to follow some kind of a Trump policy that he had already been criticizing?
So we're seeing it with kids in cages, right?
Technically, Biden is not doing as much as Trump did in terms of putting kids in cages, and that they're not cages per se.
They have some other name that makes them sound not like cages, but they're walled units, etc.
But they will soon be overwhelmed, and Biden will end up probably doing something pretty close to what Trump had to do.
Because you sort of have to.
What about Biden bombing Syria?
Sounded very Trump-like, didn't it?
A lot of Democrats said, hey, we didn't vote for you so you could be bombing Syria.
How about Biden's response to the Khashoggi killing?
So now the official report comes out.
In which the United States is blaming MBS, the head of Saudi Arabia, for directly ordering the Khashoggi killing.
Now what would Trump have done if Trump had been in charge and this report came out?
What Biden did was he issued the report.
I think Trump would have done that too, because it would be an official report.
Somebody would issue it, so that would happen the same.
And then Biden decided not to punish the person that they called responsible.
So MBS will not be sanctioned, won't be disallowed in the country.
Nothing. And Biden says the reason is that we need him.
We need him.
Just as a practical matter, we need his support.
What would Trump have done?
Exactly the same frickin' thing.
Trump was playing it exactly the same way.
He was letting people sort of know it was MBS, but he was treading lightly so he could get other things done, such as the Abraham Accords and basically anything else.
You need their help. So Biden basically took a Trump policy on the Khashoggi thing, Trump policy on bombing Syria.
Yeah, I mean, and he will be forced into a Trump policy on the border, at least in terms of the kids in cages part.
So watching this come together is interesting, and watching the Democrats watch it with horror when they thought something different could happen.
Now, I think Biden's also pro-nuclear, right?
So when are the progressives going to have to deal with the fact that they elected a pro-nuclear guy?
Now, he should be pro-nuclear, as was Trump.
Right? Biden and Trump?
Not that different, except for tone.
All right. Rand Paul is being accused.
So here's some more fake news reports.
Some fake news from CNN. So they're...
They're reporting that critics are blaming Rand Paul for being, quote, bigoted and deeply offensive in a transphobic attack when he questioned Dr.
Rachel Levine because she would be the first transgender cabinet person if she gets through the nomination.
And he was asking about puberty suppression drugs for minors.
Now, if you watched it, Did you see anybody say anything bigoted or deeply offensive?
Did you see Rand Paul say anything that was anti-transgender?
No. Nothing.
Not a single thing.
And yet it's reported by CNN, and instead of saying they say it, they say critics are saying it's bigoted and deeply offensive.
Is that fair?
Is it fair to look at something that didn't happen and then say the critics say it happened and just report what the critics say without putting in the part where none of it happened?
Right? None of it happened.
But they still report that the critics say it happened.
I think you need to add the part about none of it happened if you're a real news organization.
Here's what he did do.
He questioned who makes the decision.
That's it. He questioned whether children should make the decision and or their parents, like who should make the decision.
The most basic question we ask about everything in society, who gets to decide?
Who gets to decide has nothing to do with the base question of what you do.
He didn't even deal with that.
It wasn't even the topic.
It was a how to decide topic, given that there are long-term consequences.
Now, this is as fake as fake news can get, CNN. So that's two cases of fake news there.
And, of course, in conservative media, to be just as fake, did you see the hashtag about the, I guess the House passed the, what do you call it, the stimulus bill?
That's 1.9 trillion dollars.
And it's being reported, the Republicans are saying that only 9% of that is actually going to the primary purpose of fighting the pandemic.
Have you seen that yet?
Only 9% of this money goes to fighting the pandemic.
It's just bullshit.
Fake news. That's not even close to being real, that 9% thing.
Anybody who says that it's 9%, you should just write them off as being an honest broker.
It's just a lie.
Now what they're doing, to make this lie sound like a little bit technically true, is they add the part like medical.
But most of the bill is about paying people directly, you know, backstopping businesses and all that stuff.
So most of it is economic.
And the pandemic requires an economic response.
The whole 9% thing is just a lie.
Now, at the same time, is it true that it's filled with pork and progressive wish lists?
Yes. Yes, that can be true.
So it can be true that it has too much pork, while it's not true that only 9% of it is what you wanted, right?
They can both be true.
So, I don't have an opinion about whether the bill is good or bad, because I don't know if anybody can tell.
But I don't know if it'll get passed either.
I don't know if Kamala Harris will approve the minimum wage part, or that gets stripped out.
So there's a lot of unknowns. We don't know how this will go.
All right. But don't believe the fake news about the 9% part.
That's just political talking points.
Apparently, 83 million people in the United States had COVID by the end of 2020.
Does that sound right to you?
If somebody had asked you how many people in the United States out of our 370 million, how many people do we have in the country now?
I don't know the exact number.
But it's well over 300 million.
And 83 million have already had the virus by the end of 2020.
Does that sound right?
I don't feel like 83 million people got infected, but that would be about 25% of the public.
Do you think 25% of the public already had COVID? It doesn't sound right, does it?
I'm not saying it's not right.
But this is one of those cases where the statistics and the observation aren't matching.
And I always teach you that that's the first thing you should look for.
I'm not saying that the statistic is wrong, but you at least have to figure out why the observation doesn't match.
Right? Because if it were one in four, I feel like things would look real different.
Don't you? Right?
So if it were 83 million and 1% of them died, it would be, what, 800,000?
I don't know. Maybe.
We have 500,000 dead, so maybe that's not too far off.
But the good news is we've got 8% of the population vaccinated, so add 25 to 8.
We're maybe a third of the way to some kind of herd immunity with the two causes put together, the vaccinations plus the already infected.
And we've got a new vaccine coming.
Here's an interesting hypothesis.
I love conspiracy theories.
That doesn't mean I think they're true.
But they're always fun, which is how they become popular, right?
It's a fun conspiracy theory.
But you know the story about China used anal swabs to test for COVID in U.S. diplomats.
Now, of course, this is a big controversy because it was considered humiliating that China basically shoved something up the ass of our diplomats.
But as Twitter user whose name is Hillary for prison, HRC number four prison, Made this interesting observation.
And I don't know if I want to believe this or not, but I love a good conspiracy theory.
Are you ready? And Hillary for prison says, the gut is the foundation of health.
China just data-mined these diplomats.
They now know any health conditions and medications they're taking.
This is a security breach, and all these diplomats should be called home.
That's not bad. Now, I don't know if that's true, but it feels true, doesn't it?
If China could get a hold of the waste of our diplomats, couldn't they tell what their medical conditions are and what drugs they're taking?
And if they knew what drugs they were taking and what their medical conditions were, would that give them some leverage in some way over those diplomats?
I feel like it might.
This is an interesting hypothesis that you should, just out of caution, they should call all the diplomats home.
But then does China win?
Because we want those diplomats.
They're there for a reason, right?
They're not randomly picked.
They're good for that job.
So I don't know what kind of credibility to put on this speculation, but I'm not ruling it out.
It feels like the sort of thing that can happen.
All right. Let's see what else we've talked about here.
Here's another dog that's not barking.
As CPAC, apparently there are a number of breakouts or events centered around the allegation which no courts have made.
Proven that there was election fraud.
Now, that's not the interesting part.
The interesting part is, as far as you know, as far as you know, is our government working on fixing the election process, at least the credibility of it, so that we'll feel confident in it for next time?
I don't feel like that's happening, is it?
So why are you even talking about...
I don't know that. My digital assistant started talking to me.
That's spooky. All I know is if your government doesn't have a plan floating around for fixing it, and maybe there's an argument between the Democrats and the Republicans, but they all want to fix it, nothing like that's happening.
I don't think I want to listen to anybody in the political sphere talking about any election allegations for 2020 Unless they're personally working on the fix.
If you're not working on fixing it, I don't care about what happened in the past.
I don't care. I don't care if you think there was fraud in the past.
If you're not fixing it, and again, when I say fix it, I mean the transparency of it.
That's not an allegation of fraud.
It's an allegation of insufficient transparency.
I feel like we should just stop listening to everybody who is a politician, Who's not working on fixing it for next time?
I just don't care about what happened last time.
That's over. Right?
Biden's the president. You don't have to like it.
It's just done. It's time to move on.
Here's another question.
All this talk about the capital assault and was it a resurrection?
Was it a coup? And how QAnon was a big part of this?
And Q, Q, Q. So the biggest national story, right?
Biggest story. Where's the part Where we talk about who Q really was, especially toward the end.
There's some suggestion that Q started with some group of people, but may have evolved into a different group of people.
How do we have a capital assault in which everybody thinks Q had some role in it, and we don't know who Q is?
And it's not even a question in the news?
Where's the headline that says, still looking for a Q? Where's the headline that says, we found Q, and he's a Republican, or he's a Democrat, or he's American, or not American, or there's several of them?
Yeah, well, some of you are getting ahead of me.
What would be any explanation you could think of in which the biggest story isn't even in the news?
What would be a bigger story than who is the actual identity of Q? Seriously, what would be a bigger story than that?
I mean, coronavirus, yes.
But the Q thing was our biggest story for months, and nobody even asked, who is Q? Now let me ask you a second question.
Do you believe that in our world of universal digital surveillance, do you think that our intelligence agencies in the United States do not know who Q was?
Do you think the CIA doesn't know who Q was?
Is that even possible?
Because of course they were interested.
Of course they're interested.
Nobody doubts that, right?
Nobody doubts that the CIA, or maybe it's the FBI, I don't know, whichever entities get involved with this sort of stuff, nobody would doubt that they'd be interested, right?
Or that they would look into it.
Do you think they couldn't find out?
Do you think that somebody could hide and just say, I'm Q, they'll never find me, I'll use my clever workarounds so they can't even track me?
Really? Because that alone would be a story.
If there were somebody who was regularly publishing and our intelligence agencies couldn't figure out who it was, that would be a story.
So here are the things that we know.
It's not a story anywhere.
It would be highly important to know the answer to it.
Our intelligence agencies clearly know who it is.
Clearly. They have not told us who it is.
Why? Why?
Would our intelligence agencies not want us to know...
Who is behind this, you know, at least part of the variable behind this capital assault that we're all so concerned about?
You don't think they'd want us to know who it was?
Of course they would.
And we should know, for example, that there might be, you know, they're talking to him or maybe some law was broken and there's a possible arrest.
I don't know. Suppose it's...
Yeah. The only reasonable assumption is that it is our intelligence agencies who are behind Q. Now, I probably get kicked off of all social media for even saying that, right?
This would be a good edge test, isn't it?
I think I just went too far.
So I probably am cancelable now.
So let me state it in a way that there's no inaccuracy.
I'm not saying that that's the case.
I have no information to directly suggest...
That intelligence agencies were behind Q at the end.
I don't know about the beginning. But it does explain everything we're seeing, and I don't have a second explanation for why it's not even in the news.
Do you? It's just speculation.
But ask yourself that question.
If you don't know the answer to that question, how much do you understand about what's going on?
And when I say, what's going on, I mean behind the curtain.
That is really, really obviously missing in the conversation, isn't it?
And until I brought it up, did you notice?
Until you heard me say it today, were you ever thinking to yourself, hey, who is that Q person?
Why don't we know they yet?
Probably not, because the media tells you what to think about, and they didn't tell you to think about that.
The media tells you what to think about.
And that's their job, right?
And they simply didn't tell you to think about it, so you didn't.
That's how well they can hide stuff.
They, meaning whoever is behind the curtain, And what entity would be able to get to both conservative news and left-leaning news?
What entity could force both left and right-leaning news to be silent on one of the biggest topics in the country?
Well, I can't think of anybody except an intelligence agency.
Can you imagine anybody else going to Fox News?
Let's just take Fox News, or you can do CNN. It doesn't matter.
Can you imagine any other entity going to them and saying, hey, you know, why don't you just don't cover this Q stuff?
If CNN wanted to figure out who Q was, or even make a story about how we can't figure it out, don't you think CNN wants to report who Q is?
Now, you could make an argument, oh, maybe Fox News doesn't want to report it because it'd make, I don't know, make conservatives angry or something.
Maybe not be good for their customers.
So you could make an argument that maybe the right-leaning entities just sort of want to ignore it because it would make things worse for their supporters.
Maybe. I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying you could imagine that.
But what would CNN's reason be?
Why would CNN not report it?
Because obviously this would be somebody associated with the right, and they would like the right to be deeply embarrassed.
It's just so obviously missing.
It has to be...
Well, I won't say it has to be.
I can see no other explanation, which doesn't mean there isn't one.
It just means that my imagination taps out at a certain point.
Everybody's imagination taps out at a certain point.
You just can't imagine anything beyond that point.
Thank you, TJ. You were way too nice, and I appreciate that.
All right. Somebody says, welcome to the party, pal.
You've been there for a while, huh?
All right. That's what I had to say today.
Now, I'm going to try to keep my...
Keep my promise that each of these live streams will tell you something you didn't know or reinforce something that maybe is better to be reinforced.
So I hope I did that today, and I will talk to you.
Oh, before I go...
I just tweeted and it's pinned to my profile.
It's an updated list of all the micro lessons on a whole bunch of things.
It's getting pretty long right now.
That you can learn within the local subscription world where you can follow me and be part of my community.
It's a subscription site.
But the intention of that is that you will learn a whole bunch of skills to add to your skill stack.
And I will teach you each of these skills really briefly.
So it'll be the shortest, most useful lessons that you can immediately add to your talent stack.
And that is what I'm trying to do over in Locals, and I will talk to you later.
Somebody said, I agreed, but the speculation is built from an overblown narrative.
I don't know which one you're talking about.
Oops, your comments are fast.
Nano lessons, please.
How will all the cancel culture end?
I think it's like everything else.
It'll look like it's too much for a while and then it will normalize.
The reason that cancel culture exists is that we do not have a leader who has the right skill to make it go away.
Bill Maher is doing a good job arguing against it, but I don't know that he has the weight to make it go away.
Yes, the Q thing was used to claim that Trump supporters were Nazis, which makes me suspect that there's some dirty tricks going on there.
