My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
CA Governor Recall election
Elon Musk's 1st question to real AI
BLM, a sham organization?
Governor DeSantis, a populist genius
Should President Trump push vaccinations?
CNN fake news: DOJ Jeffrey Clark
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Excuse me while I put my audio devices on my shirt so that we're ready to go here.
Well, I'm a little beyond the time, so I didn't have time to tweet this show, so we might be a little lightly attended today.
But will that make it any less awesome?
No. No, it won't.
Because all it takes to make a good day great It's the Simultaneous Sip, and all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a glass or a vessel of any kind.
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 go.
Now! Oh, everything's going up now.
And I'm not just talking about Ethereum either, which is also going up.
But let's talk about the news of the day, which I have sent to my other electronic device so that I would have it here for you.
How's the audio?
Oh, I don't care. So I've got a different audio device going on here.
I got rid of the splitter, and I'm just using two microphones.
We'll see if that works. So here's your fake news of the day.
I need to get these little audio stings so that when I have recurring segments, they have a little lead-in, like, fake news of the day!
All right, these are mostly tweets, but they're fake news tweets.
Here's one. It says, from Shannon Watts tweeted today, That Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests gun owners kill people encouraging vaccinations.
Now, is it true that Representative Greene suggested that gun owners kill people who are encouraging vaccinations?
Do you think that happened?
Well, here's what she said.
This is what Representative Green said.
Quote, in the South, we all love our Second Amendment rights, and we're not really big on strangers showing up at our door, are we?
They might not like the welcome they get.
Does that sound exactly like suggesting that they shoo people?
Not liking the welcome they get...
And the fact that people are heavily armed in this country, that's more like a statement of fact, isn't it?
Isn't that just a statement of fact?
We have a lot of guns.
People don't like it when people knock on the door and tell them what to do.
And people might not like the welcome they get.
I don't think that sounds like suggesting that gun orders shoot people who want vaccinations or are trying to encourage vaccinations.
All right, next story.
How would you like to be the recipient of the worst timing of all time?
This should be another recurring segment called Worst Timing of All Time!
Just imagine an announcer saying that.
Well, there's this recall vote coming up for a governor of California.
Let me tell you the context in which my governor...
Is going to be running for recall election.
Okay? Number one, they just required masks back in public places.
Very unpopular.
Very unpopular.
So I can't go to my gym now because I'd have to wear a mask in the gym.
And I'm not going to do that.
So I just can't go to the gym under those conditions.
But I can always go outside and exercise, right?
Right? So maybe my governor has ruined my gym, but there's always outdoors.
Not really.
You can't go outdoors in California right now, because as of this week, the air quality is unhealthy because of the wildfires, which the governor has yet again failed to control.
So I can't go to the gym, and I can't go outdoors.
So that's not so good.
At the same time, my electricity is not even dependable.
I live in the United States of America in one of the biggest populated technologically advanced states of all time.
And I can't be sure that I will have either electricity or water.
I don't have water or electricity security in California.
That's a real thing.
In a high-end neighborhood.
I can't be sure I'll have water or electricity.
And I can't go outdoors.
Now, is that not the worst timing of all time?
This poor bastard is going to run for governor at a time when every Californian is just fed up.
I mean, I don't even know how many of these problems are actually his fault.
You know, it's always hard to know, is it really the leadership's fault, or is it just some stuff that's going to happen?
But I'll tell you, if this doesn't cause Larry Elder to become governor, what the hell can?
Can you think of anything else?
That would get somebody else elected?
I mean, if this doesn't do it...
Seriously, if this doesn't do it, can it get us a new governor?
What the hell could?
Is there anything that could?
Because how could it possibly be a worse situation than this?
It's just mind-boggling that the timing is so bad.
So what's going to happen if Larry Elder loses in a close election?
Let's say the recall is successful so that it goes to the who won.
Who's going to believe it?
Because apparently California just instituted mail-in voting because of, guess why?
That's right, the pandemic.
That's right. So do you think anybody's going to trust the vote in California?
Well, do you think any Republican in California will trust the outcome if Larry Elder doesn't win...
Under these conditions.
I don't know how you could.
Now, I'm not saying that there will be any fraud, because once again there will be no evidence of fraud that has been determined by any court.
Now, you can sort of predict that.
But who's going to trust it?
It's just going to look suspicious as hell.
And by the way, I'm not telling you that I think it will be a fraudulent election.
I have no reason to believe that, no evidence per se.
But who's going to believe it anyway?
This is one of those things where even without evidence, people are going to say, well, I don't even need evidence for this.
If Larry Elder doesn't win this, how the hell?
Anyway, but there could be some oddities about how the vote is distributed across people and stuff, so we could be surprised.
Anything could happen. Here's one of my favorite quotes of all time, courtesy of Elon Musk, who's It was one of the best tweeters and interview quotes of all time.
But I think this one's the best.
This might be the best of all time, at least from Elon Musk so far.
So apparently Lex Friedman was...
Friedman? Friedman?
I don't know how to pronounce his name, so I apologize for that.
So Lex once asked Elon, what would be the first question that Musk would ask the world's first general artificial intelligence system?
So the moment you have your first real AI, what's your first question that you ask him?
And Musk replied that the first question he would ask a real AI was, quote, what's outside the simulation?
Talk about the most perfect answer to a question of all time.
What's outside the simulation?
I love that.
Anyway. Here's a segment that if I had segments branded, I would call it Two Things We Know.
Two Things We Know.
Alright? And this will be my segment where I tell you two things we know that are opposites.
Here's something that all the smart people told me.
Yeah, Scott, you might get some electric cars.
Sure, you got your Teslas and whatnot.
You'll get some electric cars.
But if there's one thing I can tell you for sure, Scott, and don't be a dope, because I know you're all an optimist and stuff, but let me tell you for sure.
One thing we're not going to get?
Because the physics just can't work.
We're never going to get electric airplanes.
No electric jets, no electric aircraft.
So that's one thing we know for sure.
The technology will never allow us to have electric aircraft.
Here's the other thing we know.
DHL has placed an order for 12 electric airplanes.
Those are the two things we know.
It will never have them.
And DHL just put it in order for 12 of them, based on current technology.
So the company building them says, no, we don't need to invent anything.
We have all the technology.
It just takes us a couple years to build them.
They're already bought.
Well, the payload is apparently economically sufficient, or else DHL wouldn't be buying them.
Two things we know.
It's impossible, and it's already happening.
Here's one of my favorite Twitter moments.
And it was based on my tweet from yesterday.
I said yesterday that on my live stream yesterday that I was going to admit I was wrong about the pandemic.
Now, that's not the important part.
But this encouraged a comment from Ben Schlesman on my Twitter account or Twitter feed.
He said, I bet you'd get much further in life if you cared less about what other people think about you.
How do you like that advice?
First of all, do you think I should take that advice?
Should I take Ben's advice?
I bet you'd get much further in life, because this is me specifically, if you care less about what other people think about you.
Good advice? What do you think?
Pretty good advice? Okay, here's what Twitter user Ebsalas said about Ben's advice that I'd get further in life if I didn't care about what others think about you.
He said, yes, a person who makes money based on how people think of him should stop caring about what people think of him.
Totally a winning move.
That's what you call a conversation ender.
After this tweet, things got really quiet.
There was nothing else left to say.
We're done here.
Moving on. Just take your ball and go home.
There's nothing else to say.
Well, this is similar to the advice, be yourself, which I always mock as the world's worst advice.
Be yourself.
That is the worst advice ever given.
Of all time. To be yourself.
Because if you were to be yourself, nobody would want to be around you.
They would not.
Because you'd be quite a bad person.
Here's what maybe would be better advice.
Thank you. It's already in the comments.
You've heard me say this before.
Be a better version of yourself.
How about try to stop being whatever the hell that you were doing before...
Because it probably wasn't what you want to be.
It's probably not the person you want to be, whatever you've been doing before.
So how about be a better person than that?
How about trying to elevate yourself a little bit?
Don't be yourself.
Try to make yourself something better than that.
For God's sakes.
So, yes, never try to be yourself.
Always try to be a better version of yourself.
And what do you think about the idea that you shouldn't care about what people think of you?
Completely wrong.
You should care mostly about what people think about you.
You would go much further in life if you cared deeply about what people think about you.
Well, actually, let me modify that a bit.
It's not the caring about what they think about you.
It's the managing to it.
So let me make that distinction.
It would be better if you didn't care, because then it wouldn't bother you.
But as long as you kept managing to it as your main requirement of how to organize your life, your entire happiness...
Is going to be based on what other people think of you.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
That's just a fact.
Your happiness depends on what other people think of you.
Because other people have to be your mates.
Other people have to be your lovers.
They have to be your friends. They have to be the co-workers that want to work with you.
They've got to be the people who want to invest with you.
They've got to be the people you see every day.
The other parents. The other peers.
You need...
To find a way to get some of them to like you, otherwise your life's going to suck.
So you should be obsessed with getting people to like you.
Now don't be stupid about it.
Don't be stupid about it.
You know, if you look great, generally, but you've got this one little thing about yourself you don't like, oh, my ear, whatever, I've got a weird ear.
Don't obsess about that, because there's nothing you can do about it.
So you don't want to spend too much time worrying about things you can't do anything about it.
Oh, people make fun of me because I'm bald.
What the fuck am I going to do about it, right?
Can't do anything about it.
So I don't spend really any time thinking about that.
But if somebody said to me, hey, you know, I think I might respect you more or like you more or be more attracted to you if you were fit...
Well, I can do something about that.
I can become more fit.
So, well, toupee, I suppose, yes.
But you know what I'm talking about.
So you should work hard on the things that will make you a better version of yourself and make people like you.
It's the main function of being alive, is making other people like you.
So don't ever take advice about, well, I don't care what people think.
But again, you should manage to what people think, but you should not...
Don't let it chew you up on the inside, but you should definitely manage to it.
All right, here's more evidence of why Black Lives Matter is a sham organization.
Great point, just to be clear.
We'd all like to make sure that Black Lives Matter, so everybody wants that to be true.
All good people want that to be true.
I say. But when you look at what they're actually doing, it doesn't kind of line up with their stated mission, does it?
So, for example, the Washington Post is reporting...
In a tweet they said, despite a push since 2015 for police body cameras and the periodic emergence of surveillance footage or bystander cell phone video, more than 80% of fatal police shootings still were not filmed, according to the database.
What? What?
80% of fatal shootings...
Are not filmed either by a bystander, which makes sense, but there's no body cam on police who might get into shooting situations, which is really any police, I guess.
So let me ask you this.
Suppose Black Lives Matter had said, you know, one of the things we can do, one of the things that's controllable, is that we could work with a bipartisan group to make sure that there's enough funding.
To get body cams.
And that whatever...
If there's any resistance to it, we can push through it.
Do you think that Black Lives Matter would have met failure or success if they had said, look, there's a lot of stuff we disagree on, but hey, Republicans, let us work on this one thing that we can agree on, that the body cams make a difference.
Right? At the very least...
It's going to reduce the number of cops who flagrantly do something bad, especially if there are other cops with other body cams.
So isn't this the easiest thing you could do?
And the one thing that you could get bipartisan support?
Is there any reason that both Black Lives Matter and Republicans, because you figure Democrats would be on board, I'm looking at your comments.
I don't think I'm missing any kind of functional, practical reason why this isn't happening, right?
This has to be intentional, doesn't it?
Well, intentional in the sense of it goes to competence or it goes to intention.
Because if Black Lives Matter wanted to solve this problem...
Remember early on when Kaepernick was doing his kneeling, and I said, publicly and many times, I said, well, what do we do about it?
You've got a problem. I recognize it as a problem, too.
And I even talked to Hawk Newsome about it.
It was one of the things I talked to him.
I said, well, look, if one of the things we could do that you wouldn't get much pushback from is get more body cams, why don't you let me help you?
You know, I'll help persuade.
Maybe on my audience, which sort of leans right, I'll help persuade them that if we had funding for body cams, that that would be at least one thing that everybody could agree on.
You just need more funding, so you could probably get that.
Did you ever see that?
Did you ever see any national move to get body cams everywhere?
And really, after all this trouble, still 80% of shootings are not filmed.
So I think at this point you'd have to say that Black Lives Matter is a fake organization.
And if you want more evidence of it, there's been no change in police shootings since Ferguson or anything else.
It's basically the same pace.
And yet there are no Black Lives Matter protests under the Biden administration.
Let me say that again.
Black Lives Matter basically went quiet, or at least maybe it's just not being reported on, which is almost the same thing, under the Biden administration.
What's that tell you? What's it tell you that they went quiet at the same time the problem was exactly the same and no progress had been made, and yet they went quiet?
It tells you That Democrats can turn them on and off with a switch.
Yeah, it tells you it's a fake organization.
At least in terms of what activates them.
I'm not saying that the people on the streets are not sincere.
They probably are.
I mean, almost certainly, most of them are.
But in terms of the organization and what motivates them, what organizes them, what gets them in the street, I think we can say for sure now...
Well, you know, I suppose you could argue nothing is 100% sure, but maybe, I don't know, 95% certainty, based on what we know, that it wasn't ever a real organization.
It was just something that somebody was turning on and off when they needed it.
So, another segment that needs an introduction is Ron DeSantis News, because he's the only one doing anything interesting that's not named Trump.
And he continues to be a populist genius.
And I really am wondering who is advising Ron DeSantis.
Because whoever is advising him, I assume he has advisors.
If it turns out that all of his populist decisions lately are just completely his own thinking, well then he's pretty amazing.
But I don't believe it, right?
I just assume that there's somebody advising him.
And in this case, somebody really good is advising him.
Because he's not missing a note.
Here's his latest. He's not missing a note in terms of Republican populism.
He just hits every note.
Florida's Board of Education on Friday...
Unanimously approved an emergency rule that will allow parents to obtain vouchers to move their children to another school if they perceive any type of COVID harassment against their children as related to masks or testing mandates.
This is from the Tampa Bay Times.
So, now that's the Board of Education, but DeSantis backs that.
So, once again...
Like, what is going on there?
Because he is just killing it in terms of hitting just the right populist Republican note time after time.
And he does it without the provocation.
Now, it could be that, and I've often argued this, that Trump's provocations are a feature, not a flaw.
Without that, he wouldn't have been president.
Without being president, he wouldn't have made any impact.
It was a feature. It just...
Grates people when it happens, but it's a feature.
He does it intentionally.
It gets a result just like he wants.
So I'd call that a feature.
But DeSantis seems to be getting pretty far without doing the provocation part, and it makes you wonder if that's enough.
Would it be enough?
Suppose you had a choice of, let's say, a boring but very capable DeSantis, Versus an exciting, but maybe far riskier, Trump.
Which one do you want?
Now, I know which one I want for entertainment, right?
For entertainment, I'm going to want Trump every time.
It's not even close, right?
So in terms of, you know, that, that's easy.
But what about if you just want a good government without the drama of DeSantis looks like a strong choice.
And it's going to be really interesting to see if Trump goes ahead and runs, because I'm sure Trump would be the nominee if he runs.
All right. I asked yesterday this question, whether the number of excess deaths because of COVID lines up with the number of people that we say are dying from COVID. So what would happen if the excess deaths, or the total number of deaths, was about the same as prior years at the same time we're being told we're in a pandemic?
Like, that wouldn't make sense, right?
So what do you think happens on the Internet, let's say on Twitter, if you ask the public, do the excess deaths match the number of reported COVID deaths?
You've been around a while.
What do you think happened?
And I'll give you a hint.
Many people provided very official-looking charts and data to answer the question.
So there were many charts that looked really official and much data.
So what's true?
Is it true that they do match up?
That the excess deaths and the COVID deaths look about the same and therefore we don't have to worry too much about whether it was a pandemic because the excess deaths prove it was a pandemic and they kind of match the COVID deaths.
Do you think anybody gave me data and charts to support that point of view?
Yes. Yes, they did.
So there was data, very official, with sources showing that Indeed, excess deaths does roughly match the COVID numbers, so it's not perfect, but nothing to worry about.
Because nothing's perfect when you count it, but they're in the same range, so nothing to worry about.
That was one of the things that happened.
Do you think that people also gave me credible-looking graphs and charts to show me that nothing like that had happened, and that in fact there were no extra deaths?
Yes. Yes, that happened.
So I have credible-looking charts and data that say two opposite things, that those numbers match, and one that says, no, they're not even close.
Was that a surprise?
No. Was not a surprise.
So what do you do? It all looks about the same to people like me, right?
Because I'm not going to dig into every study.
I wouldn't have the skill to unpack it anyway.
So what do you do?
Well, I'll tell you one thing I do.
I go to people who are better at looking at this stuff than I am.
So I looked at Andres Backhaus' quote.
I always recommend him as probably the best person who's evaluating studies that I've seen so far.
And he basically says excess deaths and confirmed COVID deaths are pretty closely aligned over 2020.
And he goes on to point out that excess deaths are even higher, though.
Oh, looks like my Locals platform just quit on me.
So if you don't mind, I'm going to see if I can call that back up while we're doing that.
The live stream on Locals is still in beta.
Not everybody has that. So let's see if I can call that back up without too much trouble.
Oops. Oh, actually, it looks like it'll just continue where it left off if this works.
That would be exciting.
Boom! I'm back.
So it looked like...
My browser quit, but as soon as I got back in the browser, the stream was still live, so we're good.
So we're back on both platforms.
All right, so I asked Andres, and he said that not only were the excess deaths similar to the COVID account, but there were more excess deaths.
At least worldwide, I know this is true, there are more people dying of COVID than they count because they die at home.
Nobody bothers to test them.
They just bury them, basically. So certainly worldwide, there are more excess deaths than there are COVID counts because of the way they count them.
So do you think that we can conclude that the pandemic happened and is happening And that lots and lots of people extra are dying way more than normal seasonal flu.
What do you say? Which one do you believe?
Do you believe Andres Backhaus, who is way more talented than you and I are at looking at data?
Let me just say that.
That's the thing I'm sure of.
The thing I'm sure of is that Andres is better at looking at the stuff than you are.
And better than I am, by far.
That doesn't mean he's right, right?
So you don't just take somebody's word for it because they're good at it.
You don't take their word for it because they showed their sources.
And you don't take their word for it because they made a good argument or whatever.
We don't live in a world where that's good enough anymore.
But it's the best I have.
If I had to bet all of my net worth on something, I'd probably put it all on Andres' opinion in this case.
All right, so I think that the case of whether the pandemic is real in terms of the number of deaths is made.
I would say that the case is made, that it's a real pandemic.
The numbers show it clearly.
The excess deaths make sense compared to the COVID count.
I think the COVID count could be off by 20% easily, but that doesn't change anything.
All right. Let's talk about persuasion.
Persuasion. Lindsey Graham says he told Trump to urge supporters to get COVID vaccines because Lindsey had the vaccine, but he also got infected, and it looks like he's on the mend, so good for him.
And... He told Trump to urge supporters to get vaccinated.
Now, I feel like Trump has urged people to get vaccinated.
He didn't program.
And he did get vaccinated himself.
But it's sort of a Republican thing not to tell people what to do medically, right?
It goes a little too far into the Republican philosophy and politics.
It takes too much of a bite out of it to tell people what to do if you're the government.
So Trump has been, let's say, populist correct, as he almost always is.
He has his finger on the pulse.
And I think for political reasons, Trump is playing it right.
For purely political reasons, letting people make their own decisions, but telling you what he did and making the vaccines available and everything, that was exactly the right note, politically.
To get elected, especially in the primaries, it was the best thing to do.
But, is it the best thing to do for the country?
Is it the best thing to do For the health of the country?
Well, it depends what you think about vaccinations.
But it does seem...
It's interesting that Lindsey Graham, you know, a top Republican, would be telling another top Republican to be more aggressive in the medical recommendations.
It's an interesting difference here.
Now, let me ask you this.
If Trump went all in recommending vaccinations, would it make a difference?
Would it make a difference? Now, I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, just because it'll be funny to see your answers.
How many of you who are resisting vaccination would change your mind because Trump suggested it?
Would anybody get vaccinated because Trump told them to?
Because you could really love Trump a lot, and know he's not a doctor.
Right? You could love Trump a lot and think he might be wrong on this particular question.
You could love Trump like crazy and still make your own medical decisions.
You're not going to let the government make your personal medical decision, are you?
So I asked a real question as to whether Trump's influence would have any importance.
Now, all of you who say no...
You don't know how influence works.
Because remember early on when Trump was first running for office and his approval was like in the teens, like 15% or something?
And I was telling you that he was so persuasive that he was going to talk you into making him your president, and then he did.
Because his persuasive powers are just insane.
They're just insane. Never seen anything better.
But it takes a while to work, and it doesn't work on every person.
And eventually he took over the Republican Party with his persuasion.
So do you think that if he went full balls to the wall to persuade his supporters, who were already sort of primed to be on his side, to get the vaccination, do you think he couldn't do it?
Now, separate from the question of whether he should, because I think that's a real question, should the government tell you to make medical decisions a certain way, But could he?
Does he have the power to convince you even when you saw all of you said, no, he could not convince me?
Because when you said he would not convince you, you were talking logically.
You said to yourself, logically, I know everything that I know.
He has no new information.
Logically, I would not change my mind because he would not be introducing any new information.
Logically. But that's not how it works.
It doesn't work like that.
The way it works is persuasion is an irrational process, and if he changed your mind, you would think you did it yourself.
That's how it works. You would say, yeah, yeah, Trump was saying I should get the vaccination, and yes, I did go from anti-vax to vax, but not because of Trump.
I just thought it through, and I had that new data.
And then my neighbor did something, and that anecdote really moved me.
And now, yeah, sure, now I'm on the same side as Trump about the vaccinations, and yeah, I got one.
But not because he talked me into it.
That didn't happen. I just looked at the facts.
Because I'm a rational person who does their own research.
That's what it would look like.
It would look like you made your own decision.
Let me give you my opinion.
If Trump went balls to the wall to convince you to get vaccinated, a lot of people would get vaccinated.
Now, I don't think he'll do that, and I also don't know that I would recommend it.
Because, again, do you want your government telling you what to do with your personal medical risks?
Maybe not, right?
It would be a reasonable approach to say, no, I don't need Trump telling me what to do medically.
That just feels wrong.
But could he do it?
Does he have the skill? Yes.
Let me say it again as unambiguously as he can.
Does Trump have the skill...
To persuade, I don't know, 10 million extra people to get vaccinated?
Yes. Yes, he does.
He has that skill, if he chooses to use it.
There is a new, let's say, what would you call this, a new reframing of the attack on Trump for the January 6th events, and I guess an attack on Republicans indirectly.
And Eli Honig, he's one of CNN's attack dogs, one of the people they pay to go after Trump on a daily basis.
And they figured out how to make the fake coup look like a real one.
Finally. They worked and they worked.
And they tried to make it look like the people with the selfies and the no major weapons, but, you know, clubs and bear spray and stuff.
They started with the ridiculous belief that that was an actual coup attempt.
Now, what it was was violent and terrible and tragic and shouldn't have happened and can't be supported in any way.
But it wasn't a coup attempt.
I mean, we've been through this.
I don't have to go over that. But...
I think CNN has been mocked sufficiently for trying to sell that as a coup attempt because it was just absurd.
I mean, it's ridiculous, and that claim can't stand if anybody is there at the same time to talk against it.
It just looks ridiculous.
So they had to strengthen up their claim somehow.
That Trump was staging a coup to keep the pressure on Trump.
And here's the new information.
So apparently there was this guy, Jeffrey Clark, who worked in the Trump administration at the time.
He was the attorney general for the Civil Division.
And who reportedly...
Now, what does reportedly mean?
Very low credibility.
When you hear that somebody reportedly did something, your brain should say, reportedly?
Do you have that on video?
Did the person who did it confess?
Are there other people who are reporting it?
Or is it one anonymous source?
Is it an anonymous source?
So what is the credibility of any of this low?
The credibility of this whole story that I'm about to give you is low.
Because of the nature of it.
But apparently this Jeffrey Clark reportedly, reportedly, Had secretly expressed his support for the bogus stolen election theory directly to Trump himself.
And he made this straightforward proposition.
Reportedly, reportedly from a source you've never met, reportedly, he made this straightforward proposition.
Choose me and I'll deploy the department to help you steal the election.
Yeah, I'm sure that he made that straightforward proposition.
If you put me in the job, I'll help you steal the election.
I'm sure those were his exact words.
Or something just like that, right?
That didn't happen.
People, people, this didn't happen.
I should have started off with this as the fake news example.
Obviously this didn't happen.
Now let me tell you what might have happened.
I wasn't there. So I don't know that this happened either.
But I'll tell you what's more plausible.
What's far more plausible is that Jeffrey Clark, like lots of other people, genuinely believed that the election was stolen.
and then offered to be a useful player in looking into it and making sure that things were fixed.
Is that a coup?
Is it a coup when somebody believes genuinely that there was a problem and that they're trying to make sure that the election in the United States was handled correctly?
Do you think that maybe that would be a way to characterize what he did?
A genuine belief that the election was stolen, followed by a sincere offer to help the country get the result that they thought they voted for?
Right? Couldn't you tell this story both ways?
Now, in my version of it, the problem would be if he's wrong.
If he's wrong, that the election was completely accurate, as no court has shown it was inaccurate.
If he was wrong, then a bad outcome would have happened.
But it wouldn't have been bad intentions.
Was it? Is there any reporting that this Jeffrey Clark didn't really believe anything that happened with the election, but he was just going to let Trump steal it anyway?
No! This is like ridiculous fake news.
And so obvious, too.
It's like the most obvious fake news you could ever have.
So I guess the...
And here's how it's being portrayed.
They said we were really close, this is the CNN's framing of it, that we were really close to a proposed coup.
No, wait. We weren't really close to a coup.
We were close to a proposed coup.
So we were never close to a coup.
We were close to deciding to do a coup.
But the only evidence we have is that when Trump was offered this proposition, he turned it down.
Trump turned down the guy who wanted to overthrow the election and instead kept in the guy who said he didn't, Rosen.
So Trump knew that Rosen was going to play it straight and go where the data took him.
And he kept that guy.
That's the opposite of almost a coup.
It's the direct opposite.
And it's right in the story.
You don't even have to wonder if something wasn't reported.
It's right in the story. The story says that Trump turned it down.
Trump himself picked the guy who said, I don't think there's any problem here, but, you know, obviously, if the data is different, he's going to go with the data.
Trump picked that guy.
That's not almost a coup.
That's a president saying, well, we don't want a coup.
That's like opposite of almost a coup.
But they reported this.
Oh, so close. We were so close to a coup when the only thing you were close to is another person who would look into it and try to make what you thought was the right thing happening.
I don't even think Trump went that far.
Anyway... Here's a rerun from the past.
Although it's new news, it feels like a rerun.
So Donald Luskin was tweeting this.
He said, here's another entry in the hydroxychloroquine meta-analysis sweepstakes.
Now the meta-analysis is where they look at existing studies that are not high quality.
So they're looking at studies that are not necessarily randomized controlled because they would be good enough if they existed, but looking at all these low-quality studies and sort of looking at the big picture and seeing if they tell a story.
And one of the things they tested was they gave hydroxychloroquine to Indian health care workers, then tracked them to see if it prevented them from getting infected, and the result was gigantic.
Gigantic effect, according to a meta-analysis of low-quality studies.
Now, there does seem to be some disagreement among smart people of whether a meta-analysis is really even a real thing.
I mean, it's a real analysis.
But how often is it right?
Well, if you've got one or two trials in there that are messing up the average, then it's not going to be right.
So you've got to do it right.
But apparently the assumptions you make when you do something like a meta-analysis will largely determine the outcome.
And so if the outcome of a meta-analysis is determined by the assumptions you make, as opposed to the data, is it really an analysis?
Or is it just you made some assumptions and then that determined the outcome?
I'm not sure that's anything.
If the outcome is based on the assumptions...
You know, and not the data.
And you can make different assumptions reasonably.
Do you have anything?
That's more like having nothing, isn't it, than having something.
But, as Donald Luskin points out, because his background is economist, and this is how economist thinks, the evidence is at least strong enough...
Certainly not proven.
But strong enough that given the low risk of hydroxychloroquine, one of the few drugs that have been around forever and we know its risk profile, that giving it prophylactically would make sense in the context of this meta-analysis.
Do you buy that?
Does it make sense, even though you can't be sure, sure, Given this meta-analysis, that the risk-reward looks good for taking it?
And would I get banned from Google for this, or probably demonetized for saying this?
Now keep in mind, I'm not telling you that hydroxychloroquine works.
In fact, my bet is still that it doesn't.
So if I had to put my actual money on it, I would bet it doesn't.
But... If I had the option of taking it prophylactically, I would.
If I were in a high-risk environment such as healthcare.
Not so much right now, because I can socially isolate pretty well.
But those can both be true, right?
That if I had to bet, I would bet against hydroxychloroquine working.
I'd bet against it, because I don't believe the meta-analyses.
But... If I had the option of taking it, I would take it, because that's where the math goes.
In my opinion, the math says it doesn't work, but the math also says it's worth a shot because the risks are so low.
So that's where I'm at.
So don't block me, YouTube, because I'm still betting that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work.
All right, Jennifer Aniston made a little news by saying that she lost a few people in my weekly routine who have refused or did not disclose whether they had been vaccinated.
So she's making the decision not to hang around with people who are unvaccinated.
Have any of you made the same decision?
Is there anybody here who has made a decision not to spend time around people I see a yes.
Yeah, I don't think that would be too common, but I'm actually thinking about it.
I'm thinking about not being around any adult who's unvaccinated.
Because why should I be?
I don't need to take that risk.
It would be an unnecessary risk.
And I was trying to think if I know any adults who are unvaccinated.
And where I live, I actually...
No, I take that back.
I know one adult... Who's very young.
I know one adult who's unvaccinated.
That's it. Over 65, I think at least 95% of Californians, or my county anyway.
In my county, 95% of us over 65.
I'm not over 65. But those who are vaccinated have at least one vaccination.
Somebody says, what is the risk to you?
Well, there's some risk because I'm vaccinated and I'm a certain age and I have asthma.
So I could still get it.
And I can still get it from a vaccinated person, too.
I think the numbers are less, but we don't quite know.
Oh, and also that you wouldn't want them to get infected, in case you had it and you didn't know, right?
So it wouldn't be so much just being selfish.
It wouldn't be selfish so much it would be maybe helping other people.
But it doesn't look like that's going to be I don't know if this is going to become a thing.
This could easily become a thing, couldn't it?
It would be easy to imagine that the thing that gets people vaccinated in the end is that vaccinated people don't want to hang around with them.
Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's going to be more of this.
Because if I think about it, although I haven't had to worry about it, I feel like I would be hesitant to hang around an unvaccinated person, even though philosophically it's their own risk.
But it's their own risk, but I also am part of it.
So I get to make decisions about how much risk I put other people to and how much I put to myself.
Yeah, this might become a thing.
I can imagine that vaccinated people will not want to...
Here's what else I can imagine.
I can imagine that people have private get-togethers in which they just don't invite unvaccinated people.
People are going to notice. People will do a lot of things for their personal social decisions that they wouldn't do for other reasons.
You'll do things to be part of your friend at work that you might not have done otherwise.
That's a pretty strong incentive.
We're also seeing CNN using what I call the vaccination anecdote persuasion.
Vaccination anecdotal persuasion.
What that is is human interest stories about the tragic case of the person who was an anti-vaccination activist but died while his daughter was getting married of COVID. Now, I made that one up.
That's sort of conflating a few stories.
But you know what the stories look like, right?
So here's another one.
The father of several children.
Can you play your little violin?
This is a real tragic story.
But the way CNN tells it, it's for brainwashing.
So this is a brainwashing story on CNN about the father of several children who's been in a hospital in Bristol since late July and has been recording a video diary of sorts from his room.
And he said, quote, I messed up big time, guys.
He said through an oxygen mask in one video posted to Facebook.
I didn't get the vaccine.
I made a mistake.
I admit it. So that's one example.
So CNN now is...
I think they've given up on data changing people's minds.
