Episode 1422 Scott Adams: Science Versus Fart Analogies - Who do You Trust More?
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
135,000 Mayor vote miscount in NYC
Racial composition of jury invalidates verdict?
Jake Tapper, Don Lemon on their sad ratings
Gwen Berry's Olympics confusion
Odd Trump organization tax issues
NSA statement on Tucker Carlson
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And while many of you have been saying, Scott, can you improve the quality of your live stream?
And I've always said the same thing.
Yes, I can improve it.
At the risk of fucking it up every time.
Like this. As soon as I added a second stream with a second audio setup and a few more buttons, I guaranteed that 25% of my live streams would be a technical failure.
Just with just one little extra element of complexity, which is remembering to put on two microphones instead of one.
Probably a 25% failure rate if you do it yourself.
I suppose if I hired an engineer, I could do better.
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Anyway, I think I was going to talk about the news today.
So the New York City Board of Elections had a little issue.
They were trying to elect a new mayor, at least the first phase of that.
And one of the candidates, I think it was Eric Adams, noticed that there seemed to be more than 100,000 votes that seemed to sort of appeared out of nowhere.
Once he noticed, I don't know if other people noticed, but the reporting is that he noticed the candidate.
And when he pointed it out, sometime later they looked into it and found out that 135,000 pre-election votes, in other words, votes that were not for this election, they were a pre-election, were being counted because they were not properly purged from the system.
What? What?
Are you telling me That the only reason over 135,000 votes were not mistakenly counting is the only reason because one of the candidates noticed there was something wrong?
Was that the only reason they counted them again?
Because what if he hadn't noticed?
Let me ask you this.
The election is pretty close.
I would imagine that, say, 25,000 votes would be enough to change a result.
It feels about in that range, right?
We're talking just hypothetically here.
What if the difference had been 25,000 votes and nobody noticed?
What if nobody noticed?
How easily could nobody have noticed 25,000 votes?
It would have completely changed the election.
Now, as some smart pundits noted, this is going to have a bad effect On people's trust in the election system.
To say the least, to say the least, the difference is 16,000, somebody's telling me.
Were you talking about the national election, the 16,000?
Or the local election?
I'm not sure what your reference was.
But how chilling is this?
Now here's my point.
If the problem you're looking for is in physical ballots, I figure you could probably find that with an audit.
Thanks, Dennis Domenis.
Anyway, you could actually fill in the rest about this story, because everything that you thought about the national election...
It just brings it all back.
And you're like, wait a minute.
Are you telling me that we were this close to having a completely incorrect election and it's only because somebody caught it?
That's the only reason that it didn't go the other way.
How easy would it have been not to catch that?
And then my other question is, how many other things potentially could have gone wrong on the digital side of things that you wouldn't catch.
Right? What if a digital system, and I'm not alleging that anything like this happened, because as you know, no court in the land has proven that there is a widespread election fraud.
So therefore it didn't happen.
That's called Democrat logic.
Let me try that again. No court Has ruled that there was widespread election fraud.
Therefore, logically, and according to science, it didn't happen.
Now, a lot of you are saying to yourself, wait a minute, that's not logical.
That's not logical at all.
Don't give me your old, stale, classic logic.
The new logic is, if you didn't look for it, and therefore you didn't find it, it doesn't exist.
It's Democrat logic.
It's 2021 logic, and you've got to catch up.
If you're lost in the past with your old classic logic where things have to connect and make sense and be sensible to other people who are observing, well, we don't live in that world anymore, so let it go.
Just let it go. Well, as I tweeted provocatively, it is not my job to convince you to get vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Because I'm not a doctor.
So that's between you and your doctor and your conscience and all those things.
So can we first agree I'm not trying to persuade you to get vaccinated or not?
That's not the point of what I say next.
But wouldn't you like as much knowledge as possible?
Wouldn't you like to have all the information that you possibly could to make your own decision?
I think you would, for those of you who have not decided yet.
And so I'm just going to add a little bit of information, and this might not apply to you.
This is a personal experience.
My personal experience, now being fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccination, which we've learned is also protective against the Delta variant, the one that we worry about the most.
So I've got protections against the variant.
I've got apparently permanent protection.
They say we won't need a booster if you have the Moderna or the Pfizer, I think.
So I won't need a booster.
Permanent protection against that and all the variants.
Personally, I haven't experienced any side effects that I can identify.
Doesn't mean I'll never have one, right?
I suppose there's some non-zero chance that somewhere down the line I have a complication.
So you have to make your own decisions about the risk.
But the only thing I want to add to it is that I feel great.
That's it. Psychologically, I feel great.
When I go outside fully vaccinated, it's not that I was so much worried about catching it.
It's just that it's not on my mind anymore.
I can go anywhere.
I walk like a god.
You know, in a minor way.
When I go into a store and I see unvaccinated young people with their masks on, I just think, you poor bastard.
You poor bastard.
I just walk in like a god.
I'm all vaccinated, not worried about anything.
Laws don't apply to me.
It's great. Now, Here's the counterpoint.
As soon as I tweeted this, somebody else tweeted a very different experience.
So somebody else got vaccinated, and their psychological experience of being vaccinated is that they were bullied by a government, basically.
How would you like to feel that you have been bullied by a government into getting a shot?
A medical procedure, for God's sakes.
A medical procedure that you maybe didn't want on your own.
How would that feel? Pretty bad, right?
Pretty bad.
If you felt like you were forced to have a medical procedure that you didn't think was good.
Abe, I'm reading your comment.
I'll see if I can work that in later.
So take that as you will.
People who have my kind of, let's say, maybe I'm an optimist, And maybe I'm not as worried about the government clamping down on my rights as some of you are.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but different personalities have different priorities.
And I would say if you're closer to my personality, where you're sort of an optimist about things, you might feel the way I feel, which is great.
I mean, really, psychologically, it's a big, big deal just walking outside and feeling vaccinated.
It's great. But be warned, if you're closer to that other personality where your bigger concern is that the government is bullying you into a medical procedure, which they are, that's literally true, the government is literally bullying you into a medical procedure.
If that's the thing that's going to bother you the most, well, just incorporate that in your decision.
So I'm not going to try to convince you one way or another, as I say.
I'll just say add that to your fact pile.
I saw a long Twitter thread yesterday in which someone was questioning whether I really meant it when I talk all the time about not having goals for everything, but rather having systems that get you to a good place that may be different than whatever specific goal you had.
And it was a long thread proving, or at least making the case, that clearly I don't mean that.
That what I really mean is you always have a goal, it's just that you also need a system.
No. Let me be as clear as possible.
I do not mean that you need to have a goal.
Sometimes, yeah.
Let's say if you join a bowling tournament.
Is your goal that your team will win the tournament?
Of course. Of course.
So there are plenty of cases that are just straightforward where there's a goal and why wouldn't you try to get it?
If you're an author and you write a book, Is it your goal to have a successful, best-selling book?
Of course! Of course!
Because you've entered a game where there's one way to win.
That's it. Once you're in the game, of course you have a goal.
But I'm talking about all the times when you want to generally prepare yourself for a good thing, but you don't know what the good thing will be.
That's where the system works.
Let me give you specific examples.
When I started cartooning, It was not my goal to be a syndicated cartoonist.
It was my goal...
Well, let me stop that language.
It was my system to get up every morning and practice drawing.
That was it. That was the end of the system.
Now, of course, there was the assumption that...
There was a bird on my security camera.
Damn bird. Of course it was my intention that if I could get good at drawing and making cartoons, that I could sell them somewhere.
But I didn't have a specific objective of where to sell them, etc.
I just thought, I'll be as good as I can, I'll get as good as I can, and then I will sell them wherever I can.
Now where that led me, eventually, was to become a syndicated cartoonist, and here I am.
Let me give you another example.
When I started blogging, I was not blogging to make money, because it didn't make any money.
I mean, really, a little bit of ad revenue or something, but basically no money.
But I blogged almost every day.
That was the system.
I was becoming good at something by just doing it a lot in public.
So that's the system.
Be good at something in public, and it will attract offers.
Sure enough, Because of that blogging, I got book deals, and that blogging was not about cartooning per se, and it allowed me to shift my entire career focus into more of the life advice, the how to fail almost everything book, the win bigly book, and then loser think, more about how to live your life, etc.
A complete career transformation that I did not plan.
I simply had a system blogging every day and doing it in public so people could see me work and then attracting offers.
That's what happened. When I started live streaming, some of you know the story, the very first live stream was just me thinking, hey, there's this new feature on Twitter that's now defunct called Periscope.
And I just held up my phone, and it was during the first election period for Trump, and I just turned it on because I wanted to learn about a new thing.
That's it. I just wanted to learn about a new thing because it looked like it was going to be a growing, more important industry, the live streaming.
And I said to myself, I would like to learn about it.
Get a little wet, find out about it, and just add it to my talent stack.
I was not trying to do this.
It turns out that this has been amazingly successful in terms of influence and the type of people who watch it.
By the way, if I told you who watched this live stream, you wouldn't friggin' believe it.
I hear it from people individually, so people will privately tell me that they watch it on a regular basis, but it's some really influential people.
I know you're watching right now, influential people.
So none of that was planned.
But of course you always have a general sense that if things went well, wouldn't you like it to get bigger?
I mean, but is that a goal?
You know, everything is better if you get more of it, and it's a good thing.
So that's basically...
That's basically a goal.
Do more. So I would like to push back on the idea that the systems versus goals thing is really just a word trick and you really do have goals.
No. I am completely serious about having a system without a goal.
For example, I have a diet system to keep my diet on track and I have a fitness system to keep my fitness on track.
What is my goal?
I don't have one. Right?
I don't have a weight goal.
I don't have a, you know, size of muscle goal.
I don't have a goal.
Just sort of generally would be better, I guess.
Healthier. Maybe more aesthetically pleasing if my body, you know, has better muscles or whatever.
But no goal.
Right? Just health.
All right. I'm old enough to remember this.
I don't know if you are, but do you remember when science was respected?
It was a while ago, if you're old enough to remember this.
I think it was last year?
2020? Back when we still thought that science was a pretty good deal and very credible.
And if scientists told us something was true, well, it's probably true.
Probably true. This morning I read a tweet.
That said, masks don't work any better than underwear can stop a fart.
And I saw that and I said to myself, you know, I remember a time when science was more respected than fart analogies.
Maybe last year?
But in 2021, it is literally true That science is not respected more than fart analogies.
Because the number of people who read the tweet about the fart analogy probably believed it at about the same rate as we believe anything science tells us in 2021.
Just think about the fact that it is literally as credible a tweet about farting through your underpants.
I'm not even exaggerating.
The tweet about farting through your underpants is as credible, not as true, but as believed by the public as science.
None of that is hyperbole.
It really isn't.
And if you think it's hyperbole, you're missing the point.
It's actually that's how bad it is.
That we don't trust science more than a fart analogy.
That's where we are.
So congratulations.
Here's a really provocative story.
So a federal judge in Manhattan tossed out an indictment Against a Bronx shooting suspect because why do you think this judge, federal judge, tossed down an indictment about a shooting suspect?
Well, it turns out that the grand jury pool wasn't diverse enough.
That's right. An indictment has been overturned because the judge ruled that the jury wasn't diverse enough.
Okay? Now, you see a problem here?
If you look ahead a little bit, like what's the logical place that this goes to?
I'm not saying it's a slippery slope.
I'm just saying that this opened a pretty big can of worms.
Let's say you had been convicted of a crime in the past.
See where I'm going? Let's say you've been convicted of a crime.
Now, you've got a little precedent going for you, right?
Now, I'm not sure if this quite qualifies as precedent, because it's not...
I guess I'd have to be more of a lawyer to know if the word precedent could be applied to a judge throwing out an indictment.
I'm not sure that qualifies.
Can somebody here tell me? But at the very least, it's giving cover...
For somebody someday to say, my conviction needs to be overturned because the jury did not represent the community I was in.
How often do you think that happens?
That the jury does not match the racial structure of the situation the person was in?
A lot? Because how much off would it have to be?
Suppose it was 40% off From the racial composition of your community.
Is that a jury of your peers?
How close to a peer group do you need to have for it to be a legitimate jury of your peers?
Because now there's a federal judge who says if you haven't hit a certain standard that I guess is subjective about diversity, that your indictment will be thrown out.
It works both ways.
If you got convicted and your jury did not look quite exactly like the situation in your town, can't you appeal?
Don't you have a case?
See the problem?
The moment you throw anything out because of the racial composition of the jury alone, without regard to the facts of the matter, just the racial composition, as soon as you allow that that's a thing, It's got to be a thing everywhere.
You can't just pick your spot.
That's either important or it's not important.
And the legal system needs to decide.
This is a big fucking problem.
I don't know if this judge quite realized what kind of implications this might have.
And I also don't know if this counts as precedent.
So if there's somebody here who actually has some legal knowledge, that would be very helpful.
And I don't know if precedent always means the same thing.
Maybe there's weak precedent and strong precedent.
All right. Well, I'll wait to see if there's an answer to that in the comments.
All right. How about this?
Lindsey Graham, talking about Iran, played the Hitler card.
And here's what he says.
He said on TV the other day, or yesterday, The Iranians are playing President Biden like a fiddle.
The Ayatollah is a religious Nazi.
Hitler wanted a master race.
The Ayatollah wants a master religion.
And he says they're trying to drive us out of Syria and Iraq so they can dominate blah blah blah, the Shia Crescent.
And they're trying to build a nuclear weapon to hold the world hostage and one day destroy the state of Israel.
Now, here's the thing.
You either have to totally rebuke Lindsey Graham for saying that Iran is like a Hitler situation.
So you either have to rebuke it or you have to get a lot tougher with Iran.
Don't you? And who can rebuke it?
Like, who can make the case that that analogy is just way outside the realm?
You know, I'm, of course...
Like many of you, I'm a big critic of Hitler analogies.
Because rarely does a Hitler analogy work, right?
It's usually just such a gross exaggeration that it's just crazy.
But in this particular case, is a Hitler analogy too far off?
Well, I don't know that the Iranians have a history of executing people for their religion or ethnicity.
So I don't know if that quite fits, because there are not many of them, but I believe there are Jews living in Iran who haven't been executed or imprisoned.
It must be pretty uncomfortable, but at least it exists.
So what do you think?
What do you think of the analogy? They do want to force people to be their religion.
That seems true, except they haven't forced the Jewish people who live in Iran.
They haven't forced them to convert.
So I think the bigger crime is if you're ever a Muslim and you try to get out of it, then you're in big trouble.
But they don't seem to be forcing people into it, at least not directly.
Maybe indirectly there's enough bullying that it's going to happen.
Well, here's the point.
You either have to rebuke Lindsey Graham and say, that's too far, or you've got to treat it like it's an actual Hitler problem, and we would have to be a lot tougher on them.
So I think we're going to see Biden become Trump on Iran.
One way or another, he's going to have to get tougher.
I think that's just built into the system.
It's going to happen. Well, President Trump had a good time knocking CNN for their failed ratings.
Their ratings, of course, have collapsed exactly because Trump is not in the news.
Now, the CNN people have tried to put on a good face and say, as Don Lemon did, oh, I'm actually happy that my ratings have collapsed because it means that there's no Trump in the world to get us all worked up and do bad things.
And so Don Lemon says he would much rather be a failed person on TV and have his career turned to dust than to have a President Trump who is a ruin in the country, according to him.
I'm not sure I find that totally sincere.
But I'd like to point out a few things about this story.
you.
So apparently Jake Tapper became part of the story because he tweeted back at the president.
And reportedly, Jake Tapper has lost 75% of his audience since January.
And here's what Jake Tapper said about the president mocking their ratings.
He said, quote, If I had incited and inspired a deadly insurrection and attempt to undo American democracy, I might not be out there bragging about how many viewers it had on any channel.
But maybe that's just me.
I'm a different breed of cat, Tapper wrote.
Well, here's the thing. Even Fox News and their coverage of this, they referred to Jake Tapper.
So this is...
Just listen to the source.
This is Fox News.
On their website, they say, that Jake Tapper is widely considered the most professional journalist on CNN. So Jake's the most professional journalist on CNN. So, is that true? Because I've often said that everyone on CNN is a version of Jake Tapper.
Have you ever heard me say that?
If you look at Fox News, every personality is pretty distinct.
There's not really a second-handity, right?
There's nobody like Gottfeld.
Tucker, completely his own person.
Laura Engram, you know, all of them are just unique personalities.
But on CNN, it looks like everybody's a version of Jake Tapper.
You've got, you know, gay Jake Tapper, gay black Jake Tapper, female Jake Tapper, but they're all like a Jake Tapper-ish.
But apparently, at least Fox News is saying that Jake Tapper is the most professional journalist on CNN. Well, Jake Tapper just mentioned a deadly insurrection that never happened.
So President Trump...
Accused CNN of, you know, or just mocked them for their low ratings.
And the most professional journalist on CNN responded with fake news.
Literally fake news.
An insurrection. Now, as I've said before, everybody is a version of Jake Tapper.
What would Jeffrey Toobin be?
What version of Jake Tapper would Jeffrey Toobin be?
Well, I call him Jake Fapper.
Jake Fapper. I'll just let that sit with you for a moment.
Jake Fapper.
You're welcome. Yes, that was my best joke of the day.
CNN averaged 654,000 views during the second quarter.
654,000 viewers.
That's the size of my Twitter feed.
So every tweet I send out has at least the potential.
You know, the algorithm decides who sees it.
But every tweet I send out has the same potential audience size as CNN. So is CNN important anymore?
Now, of course, Their television viewing audience is probably trivial compared to their online presence and their website.
So really, we shouldn't count their TV viewage.
We should count their website stuff as well, to be fair.
All right, I'm loving watching that story between the fight between Fox News and them.
Let's talk about Gwen Berry.
So Gwen Berry is the hammer thrower who was in the Olympics and she didn't want to face the flag or acknowledge the national anthem.
But she's defending herself now and she said, quote, I never said that I hated the country.
I never said that.
All I said was, I respect my people enough, my people, I guess that would be black Americans, I'm guessing that's the context, That I respect my people enough to not stand for or acknowledge something that disrespects them.
I love my people, point blank, period.
So I'm not sure that anybody explained to Gwen Berry what she's doing at the Olympics.
I don't think the Olympics are designed for the athletes, are they?
When the Olympics were designed, did people say, let's do this giant worldwide thing for this tiny group of athletes?
Because that's what it's for.
We really want to spend billions of dollars and make a global event so that we can benefit a few elite athletes who can throw a hammer really far, for example, and can ski and shoot.
Anybody? Were the Olympics designed for the athletes?
I feel like no.
The Olympics were designed for world cohesion, you know, for the benefit of the audience, for the benefit of the countries involved and their status.
But it wasn't for the athletes.
Of course, we want the athletes to be treated well because we're good people.
But they're really not the point of the Olympics.
If you want to do something for the athlete, maybe join a professional team.
But if you want to do something for your country, well, maybe the Olympics would be a good way to do that.
So I'm not sure Gwen understands that the Olympics are not about Gwen.
But more importantly, did she not understand that when she stood on that podium and the National Anthem of America was played, does she miss the point that that National Anthem was respecting her?
It was her accomplishment as an American that was being respected by that song.
It's not a question of even really her respecting the song.
That song was playing respecting her.
And what she did for the country, etc.
So I don't think she understands what the song is for, doesn't understand what the Olympics are for, and chose the most useless skill you could ever develop, which is throwing a hammer.
This is a woman who doesn't understand anything about anything.
I can't imagine a worse representative of the country.
So while I certainly would...
Would accept whatever her freedom of speech is.
And I don't condemn her at all for expressing her freedom of speech anywhere she wants to.
But I don't think she understands what she's in.
It's not like she understands her situation and then made a different decision than you and I would.
It's like she didn't even understand what the situation was.
So when I look at what she did, I can't even understand it as a strategy that's good for her, that's good for black Americans.
Do you know what would be the best thing for black Americans?
To see a black champion standing on a podium while the national anthem is played to effectively honor the athlete.
I can't think of anything that would be better for black Americans than seeing black Americans succeed against all odds and everything else.
Looks like that would be a good thing.
Alright, let's talk about Trump's legal problems.
It doesn't matter, at least in terms of the 2024 election, it won't matter if Trump is personally convicted of anything.
Because 25% of the public will believe he did those crimes because they hear about them so much.
If CNN and MSNBC just keep reporting about all the things that Trump may or may not have a legal problem with, 25% of the public will believe it happened, even if none of it really ever happens, just all the talk about it.
So in terms of the news, they get everything they want politically.
By talking about it forever, whether it ever turns into anything.
How many people still believe that there was Russian collusion by the Trump administration?
Probably 25% of the country, right?
You can get 25% of the country to believe anything.
And that would be enough to keep Trump out of office, I would think, if he ran again.
So here are some of the things that are being reported on CNN. One is that there's reports or rumors that there were large cash payments to employees of the Trump Organization that were not properly accounted for tax-wise.
Have you seen that evidence?
It's just something appearing on CNN. Do you believe that there were large cash payments made by an actual organization And that they didn't account for the tax effects?
I don't know that I even believe that.
I would need to see a lot more evidence that that happened.
It's one thing to say that there were perks that weren't handled right, which is actually a fairly normal kind of a thing that happens with corporations.
But to say that there were large cash payments just to avoid taxes, I'm going to need to see some evidence of that.
So this is the perfect kind of thing to just put it out there until the public believes it's true.
And then I'll bet we'll never see a charge on that.
So my prediction is you will never see an indictment or a charge based on large cash payments.
I'm going to call bullshit on that one.
Alright? So that's my prediction for you.
We'll see if that turns out. Now, usually the problem of not paying enough taxes on employee benefits would be a civil case and not a criminal case.
But maybe this is all to squeeze the CFO into giving up something on Trump, I suppose.
Now, I also have this question about what would be the point of the Trump organization giving benefits tax-free?
Work with me on this, and I need an accountant or maybe a tax professional to help me.
If you're the Trump organization, or any organization, and you want to compensate your employees more by giving them some kind of a benefit, let's say it's a car, or paying the rent on their work apartment or something like that.
As the company, you want to include all of that on your taxes.
Because... It will reduce your taxes.
If you were to give an employee a benefit, sort of off the book somehow, you don't get the tax benefit.
Now, you could argue the Trump Corporation wasn't paying a lot of taxes, because they had so many legal write-offs, that it wouldn't matter if they included that expense or not.
But I don't think so.
I think it does matter, doesn't it?
So I need a tax opinion on this.
Is there any way that the Trump organization itself would be better off by not recording an expense?
Because that's something you do for the benefit of the employee.
That's not for the benefit of the corporation.
And why would they do that?
Why would they do that?
They would want all of their costs to be recorded because that's how they reduce their taxes.
If they're being accused of trying to cheat on taxes, why would they do it that way?
Now, you do have a tax differential.
Let's say that the individual would be taxed at the maximum because an individual doesn't have as many tax write-offs.
So maybe, you know, maybe it made sense because, let's say, the Trump Organization wasn't going to pay any taxes for a long time because of write-offs, but maybe the employee would have.
So if you kept it off the books, do you come out ahead?
I need a little bit more clarity On what the charge even is.
Because I don't see a way that the Trump Organization comes out ahead.
And it's the organization that's being accused, not individuals, right?
So the Trump Organization, the entity, is being accused of doing something that's good for somebody else, an employee, and bad for the entity itself.
What the hell kind of crime is that?
Or is there something I'm missing?
Am I making some major analytical assumption that's not true?
I don't know what I'm missing here.
So at the very least, we need some clarity.
The other things that are being rumored is that there's something about the Trump Organization put different values on some of their properties for the purposes of taxes than they did for the purpose of getting loans or paying property taxes or something.
Now, why would that take so long to investigate?
Let me ask you this.
The simple question of whether their assets had been inflated for one purpose and minimized for another, that's just documents, right?
You don't think that the prosecutors have seen all the documents they need to see?
You don't think that they had time to send out maybe an independent evaluator to say, no, this building is worth more or less.
How in any possibility does it take this long to know if somebody inflated an asset?
Now, I suppose if they wanted to find every asset for every year and really dig into every single thing that could have been inflated, maybe?
Maybe. But by now we would have a specific example, I would think.
This building was, you know, this problem.
There were other little problems, but boy, this building, they really inflated this cost on this building.
I'm feeling that every day that goes by that we don't see a conclusion to this inflated property value thing.
I don't think it's real. So here's my prediction.
There will be no indictment...
On asset inflation or valuing.
So that's my prediction.
There won't be an indictment on that.
Now, if I'm wrong about the indictment, I'm going to back that up and say there won't be a conviction.
But I'll go a little bit more aggressive and say there won't even be an indictment.
Because it just doesn't feel real enough at this point.
Then there's also the question of the, quote, Hush money paid to silence allegations of an affair.
My understanding is that that would just be a fine, right?
If you didn't account for something that arguably did have a valid Did Dershowitz say this?
That as long as you have a valid campaign reason for doing something, it's fine.
But maybe there was a tax implication of it.
But this is just such small ball.
Nobody's going to jail for the Stormy Daniels stuff.
At most, I guess it's a fine.
That's it. Because apparently a lot of people have violated campaign finance stuff.
I think Obama did.
It was just a fine. So...
The way this is reported is so fraudulent.
All right. The Tucker Carlson story gets more interesting.
The NSA, he blamed the NSA for spying on him because he says there's a whistleblower that says exactly that and that his digital communications had been penetrated by the NSA and that there was an intention to take his program off the air.
Now, as CNN cleverly points out, And I don't know if you knew this.
It turns out that nobody else on Fox News is reporting this story.
Now, CNN, I criticize you often, but...
You do have a good point on this one.
Apparently the rest of Fox News is not buying into the story.
Because otherwise it would be the top story, right?
So the news part of Fox News is not buying this.
Think about that.
On one hand, it's really a good sign.
Because one of the things I always compliment Fox News on is this much clearer distinction between what's news and what's opinion.
Perfect example. The news people have made one decision.
An opinion person, at least one of them, Tucker, has a very different view.
And they put them both on.
Apparently both opinions are on there.
One by its absence and one by its inclusion.
That's actually a really good sign for an organization that has opinion and news that sometimes they don't even agree.
That's not terrible.
Now, It would be terrible if the news people know it's not true.
But I don't think they can know that.
I think they can maybe just say, we need a little bit more before we report on this.
But you'd think that they would at least report that their opinion person is talking about it.
At the very least, it's news that Tucker Carlson is making this claim.
That's news. So at least that should be on the news.
So we don't know what's happening with Fox News, but...
There might be some disagreement on that.
Now, here's the funny part.
The NSA made a statement, and they said the following.
And this is how liars deny things, all right?
So I'm going to teach you how to spot a lie.
This is a lie.
What I'm going to read you now is a clear and unambiguous lie, and it's very obvious in the form that they put it.
The way you find the lie is that it's overly specific.
So here the NSA is going to deny a couple of things that are not actually the allegation.
Listen for it. They say, quote, Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency.
It's pretty specific, isn't it?
To say that he's never been a target.
Is that the same as saying we're not looking at his communications?
No. The allegation is...
That they're looking at his communications.
What they denied was that he's an intelligence target.
And we know from experience that that doesn't mean he's not being monitored.
It just means that that label target is not applied to him, but rather could be applied to somebody in his universe which gives them access to his communication.
So when you see the specifics of this denial, what they could have said...
Is we are absolutely not monitoring his communications in any way.
Right? They could have said that if they had said we are not monitoring his communications whatsoever for any reason.
That would be a denial.
But he's not an intelligence target is confirming they're doing it.
That's really a confirmation that they're doing it.
Then he goes on and says the NSA has never had any plans to take his program off the air, which was the other accusation.
Now, did Tucker Carlson say that the NSA as an organization has a formal plan to take him off the air?
Well, he wasn't too specific, but that would be a pretty dumb fucking assumption.
Because the reasonable assumption is that employees who work for the organization have, let's say, democratic-leaning tendencies and that the individual employees, and maybe some other bad actors working with them, are doing this thing.
Did Tucker ever say, I think it's a formal plan of the NSA, the organization's leadership, to take me off the air?
He did not. He did not.
He talked about The purpose of the snooping was to take him off the air.
He didn't say it was an official NSA plan.
So when the NSA says very specifically that they never had any plans, that's probably true.
I'll bet you if you could get access to all their documents, there would be no leadership of the NSA saying it is our plan to take Tucker Carlson off the air.
Then they went on to say, the NSA went on to say that it has a foreign intelligence mission and that it, quote, may not target U.S. citizens without a core order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.
Again, a little too fucking specific.
Right? Because nobody accused them of changing their mission.
They accuse them of sort of, you know, violating the mission.
And yes, and Clapper has already lied on this very topic in a different context.
So what do you do with the fact that the NSA has effectively just confirmed that they're spying on Tucker Carlson, and yet Fox News isn't going to cover it?
What the fuck is going on here?
Seriously. What the fuck is going on?
I don't know what to believe about this story.
But I do know that the NSA didn't deny it, and they confirmed it.
Let me say it as clearly as possible.
This is a confirmation.
This is a confirmation.
It's not slightly suggestive that they did it.
It's a confirmation. You can't confirm anything harder than this.
If they had said, yes, we did it, it would not be a stronger confirmation than this.
This very specific denial that's a liar's denial.
Let me give you another example.
Let's say you accuse your spouse of messaging a lover.
And your spouse says, I don't have a burner phone.
And you say, No, I didn't accuse you of having a burner phone.
I accused you of messaging a lover.
And then your spouse says, I do not have a burner phone.
Stop saying I have a burner phone.
You say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Nothing like that just came out of my mouth.
I'm saying you're messaging using any variety of messaging app on any device.
I'm not really being specific.
I think you're messaging a lover.
I'm not using a burner phone.
That's a confirmation, right?
It's a confirmation.
There's no other way to interpret it.
Somebody says, been there, Scott.
A lot of bad memories. Sorry, I didn't mean to trigger you.
All right. I guess Tucker Carlson also called General Milley a stupid pig for his wokeness comments, etc.
Max Boot got on the air, a Democrat operative.
And he says, what would Republicans have said if AOC or the squad had called a general of the United States military a stupid pig?
What would Republicans say then, huh?
What would they say?
I think they would cheer.
This is the worst argument I've ever seen, Max Boot.
If the squad had said exactly what Tucker said about this general, Which is that he's using wokeness for probably political reasons and weakening the military with his wokeness.
If the squad had called him a stupid pig for chasing wokeness instead of keeping the country safe, do you think Republicans would have said, hey, no, you're going too far?
No! Republicans would have said, well, finally we agree.
Thank you. Yes, he's being a stupid pig.
They wouldn't use those words.
Agreed. That's not so much the way the Republicans typically talk.
And I'm not sure I would call Tucker a Republican, but I'll say leans in that direction.
I don't know what he is technically.
Let's talk about North Korea.
Apparently, Kim Jong-un has fired some people who are in charge of his COVID stuff because they're not getting it done, and North Korea is in big trouble.
They got 25 million people and basically no vaccinations.
Now, let me suggest the following.
Here's another situation in which Trump would have been a better president, clearly.
And let me lay this out for you and you'll see it.
I think it's guaranteed that the United States will reach a point where we have more vaccinations, more supply, than people willing to get vaccinated.
And we're probably about there.
Meaning that the U.S. will be in a position to create or generate lots of vaccinations for other countries and help them out.
Now, how should we do it?
Because there are lots of countries that are going to need lots of vaccinations, and we can't do everybody.
But just imagine.
Imagine a President Trump saying, 25 million people in North Korea.
We're going to vaccinate them all.
Just think about it.
25 million people in North Korea, and as long as Kim Jong-un says yes, we're going to vaccinate them all.
And it might come at the expense of some other countries that could use some vaccinations quite desperately.
You know, some African countries, some other countries that are in desperate straits.
But why would it make sense strategically to vaccinate all North Koreans?
Because it would end any threat we ever have with them forever for the price of 25 million vaccinations.
It would take China's influence over them to a lower level, and it would guarantee that the United States doesn't want to be in a war.
In fact, we'd like you to be healthy.
We don't want North Korea to crumble having nuclear weapons.
We could basically guarantee that North Korea is never a threat to the United States again.
Just by doing them a solid that we're not doing for other people.
And just play favorites.
Just say, look, when it comes down to an emergency, call on us.
Call on us. We'll take care of it.
So I think a President Trump could make that happen.
I don't think a President Biden can make that happen.
And this would have been a permanent change.
This would just be a forever memory.
North Korea would never forget...
If we did this for them.
Now, of course, this requires Kim Jong-un to be fully on with the plan and willing to get closer to the United States in return for this.
But, man, this is a giant opportunity.
I mean, it would be crazy not to take it.
This is free money. Don't I always tell you that Trump always takes the free money that people leave on the table?
This is frickin' free money.
Because we're going to give vaccinations to somebody.
And we're probably going to give them to countries that don't have a strategic value to us at all.
So why not do it right?
So North Korea, if you're listening, and I suspect you might be, we'd like to help you out.
At least some of the citizens would.
Here's an irony I didn't see coming.
That apparently climate change is going to end the agreements to lower carbon.
Are going to destroy China before the United States.
Didn't see that coming.
Apparently China has a massive energy problem right now.
It's not the future. Like right now, they don't have enough energy to even produce what their economy can produce.
They're actually rationing energy.
And the problem is...
That they can't use their messy coal plants as much anymore, and they can't build new ones, because they're committed to being carbon neutral by 2060.
So even though their goal is pretty far down the line, there's no way to get there unless they get really, really tight on energy right away.
At least they think.
Which means that their economy is now constricted by their own energy policy, The energy policy that Trump said was a Chinese hoax, meaning that it was a plan to get us to weaken our economy in a way that they wouldn't have to.
Now, that's true in the sense that they don't have to act as aggressively as we do, but I'll bet we're not going to be running out of energy as fast as they are.
So it looks to me that the hoax, if you will, and that's hyperbolic talking, I don't think it's literally a hoax, but it could be a strategy, a strategy that China wanted to cripple the U.S. economy by having us be too climate change focused, while they are not.
But it turns out that their problem is so much bigger than ours, because of their growth and the number of people, etc.
Their problem is so much bigger...
That even if they act far less aggressively, it's going to kill them.
Because we could be a lot more aggressive, we're a little more flexible, a little more...
Just some advantages we have here, technologically and otherwise, I suppose.
So, didn't see that coming.
It looks like Greta Thunberg is going to take out China.
That's right. Greta will destroy China.
Their economy is in trouble because of this.
All right, um... So, I'm almost sure that those are all the things I wanted to talk about today.
It was a fascinating news day.
And I think the highlight was Jake Fapper.
Alright. Yeah, I think I got it all.
Just a word on the live streaming on the Locals platform.
It turns out I need to upgrade something on my laptop.
Because it wasn't streaming right, but I think it's on my end because it wasn't affecting anybody else.
So I'll get that fixed, and then we'll go back to beta testing the live stream on Locals.
One reason you might want to watch it there is that if you're a subscriber, there won't be any commercials.
And by the way, if you subscribe to YouTube, you don't get any commercials too, so you'd have your choice.
