Episode 1416 Scott Adams: Freshly Brewed Coffee and Delicious Content. Mmm-mm.
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The man, the legend...John McAfee
The components of CRT...aren't CRT?
Britney Spears conservatorship horror
Shocking opinion polls about to be released
Conflicting military opinions on CRT?
CNN's "insurrection" propaganda collapsing
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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You made it to the right place, and you're on time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And I think you have to count that as an accomplishment, because think of all the, well, billions of people who couldn't get this right.
There are billions of people who are not here right now, and that's a mistake on their part, but you got it right.
And all you need to make this a special, special day, more special than ever before, Here's a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank of Chelsea, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind, and fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and watch it happen right now.
Go! Ah, does Scott know what's happened?
What? Did something happen?
Tell me. Did something just happen?
Have they broken the news? Well, if there is, I'm sure you'll tell me.
Well, here's some good news.
I was just testing on the Locals platform for you subscribers.
I was testing the new live streaming function.
It's still in beta, so not everybody can use it yet.
It's not turned on for everybody.
But the initial test this morning was really good.
So I don't know exactly how I'm going to weave it into my process, but I'll be using it a lot.
So live stream is coming soon to the locals platform.
Pretty exciting. I just saw before I got here a study that came out It's a published study, but I don't know what quality it is, that once again seems to indicate that giving sick COVID people vitamin D makes a huge difference.
I feel as if we're just going to get more and more confirmation of that.
It just feels as if the vitamin D connection is not quite as understood as it needs to be.
And for what it's worth, that was probably the first thing that I advised you to do at the beginning of the pandemic.
Now, other smart people said it too, doctors and whatnot.
But if you followed my advice and you got a lot of sun and maybe took some supplements, maybe your vitamin D was better than other people.
And I'll bet it made a difference in your life.
So Axios is reporting that we might see in the future hybrid weddings where some people are attending by Zoom and other people are attending in person.
I think this is definitely going to be a thing, because you can invite far more people, and you can just say, yeah, you're on Zoom.
Now, one of the concepts that is very useful for predicting the future is that if you have a product that works pretty well, But you anticipate that that product will keep improving until it works really well.
It's not just a better version of the product.
And Zoom would be a good example of this.
Early versions of what Zoom was or Zoom became were kind of clunky.
And it didn't work, and the sound wasn't matched up with the video, and the video would cut off.
So the bad version of video conferencing wasn't really very sticky, because it was such a bad experience.
But at this point, a Zoom meeting, more often than not, goes off perfectly, and everything is, you know, good picture, good sound, and it just works better than in person, in many cases.
So at this point, I think the Zoom video conferencing world, there's nothing that's going to stop it.
It's just going to be gigantic, because we finally reached the point where the internet is fast enough, your 4G on your phone, 5G pretty soon, is fast enough, and it changes everything as soon as you're ready, technologically.
Yeah, we'll talk about McAfee in a minute.
So, here's a question for you.
If you'd like to get economists arguing with you, say anything about economics.
There's no group that disagrees more than economists.
And so I tweeted this morning, it was a little bit, just to see what would happen.
I said, maybe it's lucky we have shortages of workers and raw materials, which is a pretty big problem all over.
At the moment, because it keeps the economy from overheating.
And then I said, inflation is going to be a problem either way.
So it's not a big thought, and I put in direct terms, inflation is going to be a problem either way.
But what did people say to me?
Damn it, Scott, you're forgetting inflation.
No, I'm not forgetting it.
It's the main point.
It's going to be the same either way.
But probably if we were...
I mean, there's going to be a problem either way.
We don't know which way is worse. But yes, I understand that inflation has more to do with money supply than demand.
But the effect on the consumer is that prices were going to go up.
So either the economy is functioning at full speed...
And that creates a demand that's greater than supply, and then prices go up.
Or, it's like now, where you can't get materials, so if you get any materials, you're going to pay more for them.
Wood, for example. But in both cases, you're going to pay more for stuff.
And I'm wondering if it worked out well that we have shortages.
To keep things from growing too quickly and sort of spread the growth over two years instead of one.
It might work out for us.
It might be one of those unexpected benefits that you wouldn't have asked for, but you got.
All right, let's talk about John McAfee.
The story is that he committed suicide in a Spanish jail on the same day, apparently, that extradition was approved to move him back to the United States.
Now here's the backstory, if you don't know it already.
McAfee, of course, made his money by the McAfee antivirus stuff, but he's not associated with that anymore.
He sold it a long time ago.
But he's been a fugitive from the law in the most entertaining way possible.
Not too long ago, a year or two ago, I tried to interview him.
And I made contact.
That wasn't hard. We followed each other on Twitter.
Still do, if he's alive.
We'll talk about that.
But I couldn't get it done because he required only one way that he could communicate because he needed to keep his communication private.
So there was one way he could do it that was encrypted that I couldn't do because of my setup.
So I never got to interview him.
And I always felt bad about that because I deeply wanted to.
No matter what his faults are, and I'm pretty sure the list of his faults is pretty long, I'm not going to forgive or explain any of his faults away.
That's for him to do. Or his legacy.
But, my God, he was interesting.
He was so interesting.
Cat Timph had a A tweet that was just great today.
And she mentioned meeting McAfee very briefly and spent, you know, 15 minutes talking to him or something like that, and then concluded that everyone else in the world was boring after that.
I totally get that.
McAfee was unable to be boring.
So, apparently he had been warning that people were trying to kill him and make it look like a suicide.
Of course, we're all reminded of Epstein.
You know, different situation, different accusations, of course.
But with Epstein, you think, wait, everybody knew he was going to die in prison, and then it happened.
So definitely they killed him.
Could be. But was McAfee trying to make his situation remind you of Epstein's suicide, intentionally, so that if he died by his own hand...
You would think there was something nefarious that happened.
And it would make his legend go on and maybe even get in trouble, some people that he would like to get in trouble, whether they went to jail or not.
So I can't get past the fact that he was a practical joker.
And it would have been a great practical joke if he was planning to end his own life to make it look like an Epstein situation.
I don't know what your sense of humor is like, but I consider that funny.
I'm sorry. Very inconvenient for people who are left behind, and tragedy for his loved ones especially, if he's actually dead.
And I thought, oh my god, talk about orchestrating a big send-off for yourself from jail.
Pretty impressive.
But... Yeah, I see your comments.
First thing I thought to myself was the following, and I'll bet you had this thought too.
If there was one person in the entire planet who would have the capability and the inclination to do it, to fake his own death as part of a scheme to bribe his way out of jail, with, let's say, Bitcoin as the bribing mechanism, would be the obvious one.
Who would be more suited to that than John McAfee?
Nobody. Nobody.
Everything about his recent years that we know about suggests that if anybody could fake their death while bribing their way out of prison, it would be him.
Do you think he didn't think of it?
No. Don't even think that.
Of course he thought of it.
That doesn't mean he did it.
But there's a 100% chance that at some point John McAfee said to himself, you know, if I could get enough Bitcoin to the right people in this prison, I'll bet they would pretend I had killed myself.
Now, some would suggest that maybe Epstein did that, and he's not really dead either.
He was just taken out in a body bag with a, I don't know, breathing tube in there or something, and he's living a good life somewhere.
Maybe. But here's what I wonder.
Are we going to see a photograph of John McAfee's whatever it was that killed him, allegedly?
Are we going to see that?
And if we did, would that convince you?
Because photographs can be faked.
All you have to do is put some ketchup on you and lay on the ground and put a little makeup around your neck if it was something like that.
Suppose the story comes out that it was a drug overdose.
He somehow got enough lethal drugs.
It would just be a guy laying on the ground.
How hard would it be to fake a picture of a person laying on the ground with their eyes closed?
Pretty easy. How hard would it be to find somebody in a prison you could bribe who had the ability to get you out?
Probably pretty easy, right?
Seems like it would be pretty easy.
I don't know how many people you'd have to bribe or how much it would cost, but he had the money and he had the wherewithal.
So as long as he could talk to somebody on the outside, all he'd have to do is say, look, I found somebody on the inside, I memorized their key, go send them some money and prove that you can do it, and then I'll make a deal with them for the larger amount.
How hard would that be?
He could do that.
So here's my take on this.
I don't know what it would take to convince me that he's dead.
I'd have to see maybe live video of his DNA being tested on his alleged corpse or something.
But it's going to take a lot to convince me he's really dead, given who he was and his abilities.
So I want to mourn him.
Because I had, you know, brief contact with him on Twitter, so it just feels a little more personal.
But, yeah, it does smell a little weird.
Yeah, even if it's video, it could be faked, you're right.
All right. So apparently what's happening with this whole critical race theory debate...
Is that when people on the right say, hey, you're teaching critical race theory, the people on the left say, no, we're not.
We're totally not.
But you are.
We've seen it. We've looked at the lessons.
We've talked to the people who went through it.
You're totally teaching critical race theory.
No, we're not. Nope.
Nothing like that. And I guess this is my interpretation at the moment, is that the reason that they're saying that It's that they're not teaching something that's branded that way.
They're teaching the components of it under different names, just saying, well, we're learning this, and yeah, we do teach this, and this component or this philosophy or this history is being taught, but it's not critical race theory.
No, no, no, no.
It's something else.
That would be like a baseball player saying, no, I'm not playing baseball.
Are you kidding me?
No, I'm getting up to bat, but batting is not baseball, right?
I mean, that's batting.
There's no game there. It's just batting.
Are you fielding?
Oh, yeah, I'm fielding. Yeah, I'm playing defense.
I'm fielding. But fielding is not baseball.
Having a catch with your friends?
That's not baseball. But are you doing it in the context of the game?
Oh yeah, I'm doing it in the context of the game.
I'm playing a position and playing defense.
But that's not baseball.
That's just playing defense.
But you also bat.
Yeah, of course I bat.
There's nothing wrong with batting.
Nothing wrong with playing defense.
But what I'm not doing is playing baseball.
Do you show up wearing a baseball team uniform at the beginning of the game Bat in rotation with the other people, all nine of them, and go onto the field after you have three outs?
Well, yeah, I do that stuff, individually.
But I don't think you can call that playing baseball, because batting is not baseball.
It's just batting. So it looks like that's the defense, that they're going to teach the toxic parts, but they'll just call it something else.
And, you know, we see the same thing with voter suppression, right?
Voter suppression is not voter suppression.
It's, well, we just made this change, and we have reasons, and this change, and we have reasons.
So one person's protecting the vote is another person's voter suppression.
And who's right?
I'm going to say neither.
On the question of whether the Republicans are trying to do voter suppression, or are they just trying to make the election secure so you know that real people voted, which is it?
Nah, it's a little of both.
If you're taking a strong side on that question, you're probably just a team player.
Yeah, you're just a team player.
Clearly, unambiguously, Anybody who wants to change the voting system wants to change it so it favors their team.
There's never going to be an exception to that.
Nobody's going to push through or promote legislation that's bad for their side, even if they say it's good for the country.
It's just not going to happen.
So don't believe anybody who says there's no intent for voter suppression, because of course there is.
Of course there is. But also don't believe anybody who says the only reason is voter suppression, because it also matters that you know who's voting.
That's real. That's important.
So it's a little of both on that one.
Are you following the Britney Spears conservatorship story that is way scary and certainly challenges us to maybe better understand what it means to be able to Have a conservatorship over somebody.
How crazy or irresponsible do you need to be before you lose the right to control your own body?
Apparently Britney Spears is not allowed to remove her birth control.
She has an IUD or something.
And she's not allowed to do that.
She can't make that decision herself.
The conservatorship decides that.
Have you ever heard anything as scary as that?
That would be like sterilizing people because you thought they were mentally incompetent, which used to happen.
Now, what about the fact that she couldn't decide on the color of her own kitchen cabinets?
Somebody else got to decide that.
She didn't have the power to decide the paint color in her own house.
Now, was she going to pick a paint color that was really a bad idea?
Maybe. Maybe. We all make bad decisions, but it's really kind of a question of who gets to decide, isn't it?
And apparently she was forced to work.
I don't know how you force somebody to work, but apparently that's the allegation.
And, you know, I have mixed feelings.
One is, I'm pretty sure she needs some kind of help.
She'd probably say that herself.
It looks like she does need a little help.
And that she has some emotional or mental issues that are important.
But you know who else has mental and emotional issues?
Everybody. Do you know anybody who doesn't have mental and emotional issues?
I don't. I don't know anybody.
So just the fact that she has, allegedly, mental and emotional problems, do you take her rights away?
Because that would just be everyone.
Everybody makes bad decisions and you can tell when they're making them.
People make bad decisions and the rest of us look at it and say, well that's a bad decision.
Clearly a bad decision.
But you don't get to make other people's decisions.
And as was pointed out by others, she earned like a gazillion dollars in the last several years by performing.
That's a pretty high level of functioning, if you can do that, even with help.
So I'm firmly on the side that says, free Britney Spears, and if she's going to make bad decisions, maybe that's going to happen.
And I wouldn't say it's a bad idea for somebody to have a little extra control over big spending decisions.
That probably would help her, too, as long as they're reasonable.
She could spend as much as she wants of her own money, I suppose, if she had good reasons and it didn't look crazy.
I don't think her conservatorship would stop that.
So I hope that things work out, but it's chilling and you wouldn't want any of that to happen to you or anybody in your family, I don't think.
So there's a story on CNN that there might be some kind of an infrastructure compromise deal with the Republicans and the Democrats.
And here's how they...
Here's how they reported on Biden's complete lack of showing up.
So Biden basically did nothing, but it looks like there might be at least a potential deal.
And so CNN reported it this way, that Biden's patience paid off.
What? That's the best way to say somebody did nothing and it might work out okay?
His patience paid off.
They're literally complimenting him for not doing anything.
He just waited. He didn't do anything.
And he got complimented for it.
Well, that was a pretty good strategic decision to do nothing there.
Because your doing nothing turned out to be perfect.
It was exactly what the situation called for.
A lot of people would have made the mistake, as being a leader of the country, they might have tried some leadership.
Big mistake. Big mistake.
Joe Biden knows better. You don't need leadership in a situation like this.
You just need this strategic doing nothing.
So thanks to Biden's strategic genius of doing nothing, the reporting says they might have an infrastructure deal that he could sign.
Do you believe that?
I don't. I don't feel like we're in a situation...
The Congress I'm talking about.
I don't think we have a situation where they can get any deal signed with a big compromise.
Because they were so far apart, both sides would have to accept something pretty ugly.
From their perspective. So I'm going to say I don't believe this reporting.
So I don't think that we're close to having an infrastructure deal because I don't think that compromise is a real thing.
I think it's fake news.
But I hope I'm wrong.
I've told you before that an understanding of economics allows you to predict the future.
Here's a good example of that.
Amazon is dropping its requirement that their employees get tested for weed.
Now, if you knew economics, could you have predicted that Amazon would drop its requirements that you be tested and have no weed in you?
Yes. Because we can see that especially companies like Amazon are having trouble hiring.
And as long as there's difficulty in hiring, They're going to have to figure out how to get enough people.
And one of the obvious ways is to drop a requirement that wasn't really helping much, if at all.
Probably was more bad than good.
So if you understood economics, you would know that it was pretty much guaranteed that employers would start to drop that requirement.
Because you couldn't compete with companies that had dropped it.
Because they could get employees and you just couldn't.
So that was predictable.
The timing of it was not, but it was predictable it happened.
Here's a prediction for you.
Air travel apparently is surging.
A lot of pent-up demand, people who didn't take their vacations and weddings and whatnot.
And so we're seeing a lot of demand.
But you would not be surprised that business travel is way down.
So despite the fact that business travel is such a big component of travel, travel is up, even though business is down.
That's how big the demand is.
But you want to hear a prediction?
Now, don't make any financial decisions because of anything I tell you, right?
So this is not financial advice.
It's a prediction. And it's one of the predictions that allows you to test my theory, That an understanding of economics allows you to predict the future, right?
So don't buy stock based on this.
Don't invest based on it.
But let's track the prediction.
It goes like this. More people are working at home, right?
So so far we all agree.
I think it's permanent.
At some level, way more people will be working at home every day and not commuting.
What will that do...
To your desire to travel.
Imagine if, before, you would leave your house, you would drive a distance, you would go to a new place, maybe you'd go out to lunch at that new place around your workplace, you'd drive home and you'd get back to your home.
So you'd be spending time in a home, spending time five days a week or more at a other location with lots of travel in between.
Now take that all away.
Every day you wake up in your bedroom, You walk down to your kitchen table and you put your laptop down and that's all you see all day.
You're just home.
How much does that person want to travel for vacation?
A lot. A lot.
So I think the move toward more people working from home...
Guarantees that, first of all, they'll save a bunch of money in commuting.
So they'll have a little extra money.
But I think that they're just going to have to travel.
So if I had to predict, I don't know what will happen with business travel, probably stay low.
But overall, I would say that the people who work for business, the employees, it's going to be through the roof.
And it's going to stay that way.
Because you just can't spend that much time in one environment.
You have to change your environment.
And that's going to be big.
Oh, by the way, I just rejoined my gym.
So yesterday I went and the mask mandate is off and checked things out.
Looks like they're back to operation.
Not many people there yet.
But I rejoined my gym, which is gigantic.
Just a gigantic improvement in life.
Gigantic. All right.
Rasmussen has a few polls here.
I think you'll see them in a few hours.
But listen to this.
So here are some really kind of shocking stuff.
49% of likely US voters say last year's protests against the police hurt public safety.
So basically half of the country thinks that the protests that were trying to improve public safety By having people not killed by police, defund the police, etc., half of the country said it made things worse.
Only 22% said it made things better for public safety, and 21% said it didn't make much difference.
When you hear people like me Complain about Black Lives Matter and about the protests, your immediate instinct is, oh, he doesn't want good things for black people, I suppose, right?
Because if you're pro-Black Lives Matter, you think it's a good idea.
And if somebody's against it, you'd say, well, you must be opposed to black people mattering or opposed to any kind of improvement in black America.
That could not be further from the truth, because how does that help me?
I'm only helped by a strong economy where everybody's doing well.
That's what helps me.
I'm way better off if black America is thriving, because they'll buy things I produce.
You know, just in a million ways, we're all better.
But what about strategy?
I'll say this a million times.
It was obvious from the start that the Black Lives Movement, the way they did it, was great at getting attention.
And certainly great at getting some grievance-related things, but overall it was a terrible strategy because it was just so bad for the brand, if you will, and it wasn't strategic at all.
Strategic would have been, for example, going after teachers' unions, you know, joining forces with the Republicans who also wanted teachers' unions to have less power, getting more school choice, you could get all the funding you wanted in the world.
And you would fix the biggest problem in the world, which is the schools aren't educating people.
So think about that.
Think about strategy versus the BLM protests.
All right. 49% of voters, likely voters, have a favorable impression of Black Lives Matter.
Including 27% who have a very favorable opinion.
Remember I told you that you could get about a quarter of the public in any poll to have a ridiculous response?
Just always!
It's about a quarter of the public just as whack on any question.
And here, 27% of the public have a very favorable opinion of Black Lives Matter, the movement.
Now, I feel like it has more to do with how people interpret the question.
Because if you interpreted the question as the concept, well, yeah, the concept is great.
You know, everybody battering.
I would say they could do better.
That's a low bar to say you batter.
It should be thrive. But that's a minor quibble.
So maybe the way people are answering this is they like the concept as opposed to the actual organization and how it implements stuff.
Alright, here's another one.
Also for Rasmussen.
The opinions of Black Lives Matter have turned more negative since June 2020.
Alright, so think back one year ago.
62% of voters had a favorable view of the movement.
That's pretty dominant.
62%. And now it's down to half.
A little less than half.
That's a big change in one year.
So Black Lives Matter is failing in their primary job of influencing the public.
That's the whole point, right?
The whole point of Black Lives Matter is to influence the public to a certain set of outcomes, and their influence has dropped dramatically in the last year.
So they are unambiguously failing.
Now, will their unambiguous failure, as shown in these statistics, will that cause their total collapse?
Because things either move forward or backwards.
There's a good general rule of understanding things.
Nothing stays the same that's important.
Things are either moving forward and improving, or they're getting worse.
And Black Lives Matter over the last movement, or an organization, let's say, over the past year has gotten substantially worse.
Yeah, there was problems with one of the leaders buying some homes.
I didn't have a problem with that, but she was criticized for that.
And it looks like the momentum is really toward collapse.
So we'll see. Alright, here's another one from Rasmussen.
Do most members of Congress care what their constituents think?
What do you think people said to that?
Do most members of Congress care what their constituents think?
62% of likely voters...
And about the same amount of moderates, who are the ones I look at the most, 61% of moderates say no, that Congress doesn't care about the voters.
Our entire system is based on Congress caring about the voters.
If you don't have that, what the hell is your system?
And 62% of likely voters Presumably people are paying attention because they're likely voters, right?
They're paying attention more than non-likely voters.
And they think that Congress doesn't even care what they think.
The most basic element of our system, that your representatives are representing you, almost two-thirds of the public doesn't think that's even happening.
That is pretty shocking.
It gets worse.
You ready? Again, this is from Rasmussen.
Here's the next question.
What matters more to the average member of Congress?
What voters think or what the media thinks?
How do you think that went, of likely voters?
29% think the voters are the most important thing to members of Congress.
59% of likely voters said that the media and the media's opinion What do you think?
Do you think Congress cares more about the media's impression of them or the voters?
Which one gets them re-elected?
The media. The media is who gets them re-elected.
So of course they care more about that.
If the media likes them, they're also going to convince the voters eventually.
But if you had a choice, you could only have one or the other, and you could affect the public, but you didn't have much effect on the media, what's going to happen in the long run?
Well, in the long run, if you don't have the media on your side, you're going to lose support.
But if you've got the media on your side, but not the public, Eventually, the public's going to be on your side, too, because the media just assigns opinions to them until they're on your side.
So does it make sense that Congress would care more about what the media says?
Completely. It completely makes sense.
If you're looking at a self-interest, if you're looking at it as an economics question, with or without the money, it's still sort of an economics question.
Yeah, it's completely rational behavior that they don't care about voters, unfortunately.
So, speaking of this critical race theory, did you see the clip of Matt Gaetz quizzing the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Austin, and then separately General Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
And when Matt Gaetz asked Secretary Austin about critical race theory being taught in the military, Secretary Austin said, he had a really good answer for this, by the way, he said, we don't teach it.
And we don't embrace it.
That's a good answer.
If you're looking to somebody who's just good at answering a tough question, this is the way to answer a question.
Say it's not being taught, and it isn't being embraced, and we care about behaviors, not your thoughts.
And I thought, that is like the best military answer I've ever heard.
But is it true?
Do you believe it? No.
No, we don't believe it.
We do believe that the elements of critical race theory are almost certainly being taught in the military.
I would need a fact check on that, but Matt Gaetz seemed to have had enough anecdotal reports to suggest something like that's happening under a different name.
So after the Secretary...
Of defense said, no, it's not being taught.
We don't embrace it. General Milley got to speak and said, it's really important, and he embraces it.
Not in those words.
So, I want you to watch the clip and see if you came away with the same interpretation.
Because I'm feeling like...
Here's what it felt like, which is slightly different from what happened.
But what it felt like...
Is that the Secretary of Defense said, no, we're not doing it, and that General Milley said, yeah, it's important, and we're sort of doing it in our own way.
I don't think they can both be right, right?
So maybe those guys need to work that out.
Maybe they need to talk.
They should have a coffee after that.
Figure out whether they love it or don't.
Alright, here's my favorite story of the day.
And I've got a few more minutes.
Favorite story of the day.
What happens if you've got a friend who believes in an end of the world, let's say a cult, and your friend gives away all their possessions because they believe that the world will be destroyed on Tuesday.
And then Tuesday comes.
And it's not destroyed.
It's awkward, isn't it?
It's awkward to have a worldview that gets destroyed instead of the world being destroyed.
And I was anticipating this with CNN, who has been claiming that the insurrection, they call it, at the Capitol on January 6th was genuinely an attempt to overthrow the government.
They've been calling it an insurrection and saying that the intention of it, of the people who attended, was to overthrow the government.
Now, what problem do you see for CNN? They've been reporting non-stop it was an insurrection.
But you've got hundreds of people who've been arrested, and you've got a law called sedition, in which, if in fact it had been an insurrection, and if, when law enforcement looked into the details of each of these people's participation, if they were to find That their intention, or even their preparation, had been to overthrow the government.
Wouldn't you expect some charges that said sedition?
So now CNN is already backpedaling today, and they're trying to explain to you why there totally was sedition going on, but the Justice Department, which is also Democrats, at least the top guy,
are not planning to charge anybody with the crime The CNN has told you, clearly, clearly occurred, hundreds of people right in front of you, right on video, with all the evidence in the world.
We know the people, we've talked to them by now, we've got every video, probably have the electronic communications, everything you would need to prove that CNN's reporting was true.
And there was an insurrection, not a protest, but an insurrection to overthrow the country.
Now they've got a problem.
Because the justice system on their team, Democrats, is not going to charge anybody with sedition.
Now here's how CNN describes it, trying to describe it away.
They say, well, there are other charges that have just as high a penalty, like obstruction, blah, blah, blah.
Now one of the claims, or one of the ways that sedition could be A relevant charge is if not only were the protesters trying to overthrow the government, that would be one part of sedition, but also to stop the government from functioning, from doing its rightful job as a government.
So if the intention of the protesters had been simply to stop government from working, That would be the same as an insurrection in terms of how bad it was and whether it's sedition.
But imagine somebody being on trial for trying to stop the proper functioning of the government.
Allow me to be that person.
Scott, why did you go to the Capitol?
Well, I wanted this or that.
I wanted my voice to be heard, and I wanted Pence to do this and not to do that.
And then they say, Aha!
Gotcha! You basically just admitted that you wanted to block the government from functioning, which is sedition.
Gotcha! To which I say, Is that what you heard?
Because what I was telling you is I want the government to work the way it's designed.
I wanted my government to work exactly the way it's supposed to work, because it wasn't.
I wanted it to listen to me, and I wanted it to make sure that the election was the fair and just election that we all expect.
Indeed, Mr.
Prosecutor, I accuse you of obstruction if you're trying to stop me From helping my government work exactly the way it was defined in the Constitution and the people in it doing their job as we expect them and we pay them to do.
No, sir. I was not trying to block the government from doing its job.
I was trying to encourage and force the government to do its job.
That's the opposite of sedition.
Sedition would be somebody who wanted to stop the government.
I wanted to improve it.
Explicitly. I wanted it to be better.
The same form of government, same people.
I did not suggest changing a rule.
I did not suggest changing the system.
I did not suggest specific people don't be in those jobs.
I wanted it to work the way it was designed.
And I observed that it was not.
And so, our system allows that when our system is not working well, we have this freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble, the freedom to protest.
Did it go too far?
I'd have to say yes.
It did go too far, and I disavow any violence that happened.
Absolutely inappropriate.
And, I must say, I've looked at my own actions, and I would recant them, and I would have acted differently.
But, sir, do never, never challenge my intentions.
I didn't want an insurrection.
I wanted to stop one.
Now, you're on the jury, and you just heard me say that.
Do you have any reasonable doubt about whether I was trying to overthrow the government Or simply make the government do exactly what the government was designed to do.
Make sure the election was done correctly.
Right? I don't see anybody could get...
In any world, I can't see anybody being convicted of sedition unless they had some actual planning that we don't know about.
So, CNN is trying to sort of weasel out of their...
Their use of insurrection because the Justice Department is not going to back it.
And they've got to find a way that the Justice Department really agrees with them, sort of.
But they're just going to, well, for pragmatic reasons.
And, you know, did we tell you that the penalty for this other crime is actually about the same?
You know, so it's more of a practical thing.
We're not saying that the Justice Department has completely debunked our fake news for the past year.
No, no, not that.
It's just they were acting in sort of a pragmatic way.
Yeah, we get that.
But clearly, everybody can see it was insurrection.
Sedition. So, there's CNN with their propaganda getting their balls caught in the ball washer, if you know what I mean.
All right. And arguably, Congress was obstructing justice by not listening to the people.
So you can certainly make that argument that it's not I who was obstructing justice, it was you.
That is my live stream for today.
And I'll just give you an update.
I've got some hardware coming.
To try to improve my sound quality.
I'm learning a lot about phantom power and boosting signals and iPads and laptops and stuff.
It turns out what you think would be the simplest thing in the world.
Hey, I've got a good microphone and I've got a laptop.
Why don't I put this microphone into this laptop or into this iPad and then I'll have good sound.
Turns out it's the hardest thing in the world.
And then if you ask 100 people how to do it, they'll give you 100 different suggestions, and you'll be like, uh, I don't know.
All right, yes, High Fidelity Audio is a journey.
That is correct. I've been on this journey for several years now and not found anything better than what I'm doing right now.
But I'm close to it, and I will have something for you in the coming week.
