Episode 1653 Scott Adams: Breaking Bombshell Report From Durham About Hillary Clinton, Russia, More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The really sketchy Ukraine situation
A Hillary Clinton insurrection?
CNN, MSNBC...no coverage of Durham findings?
Carl? Carl? Where's Carl Bernstein?
Andreas Backhaus brilliant thread on pandemic opinions
President Trump's charisma in person
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So, is there anything in the news today that got you excited about coffee with Scott Adams?
Yes, there are some stories of great interest today.
We'll get into that.
It's a big day for so many different reasons.
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Yes, I understand from people who know things that today is a thing called the Super Bowl.
Super Bowl.
Have you all heard of that?
Some kind of a football event that happens once a year?
It's the sort of thing I used to care about, but for some reason watching television just doesn't seem to make any sense anymore.
Has anybody had that same experience?
That over the course of the pandemic you lost your, let's say, television habit?
How many of you had a habit of just, oh, I'll turn on TV, see what's on?
That's completely gone.
Because for a long time it was nothing but repeats.
So you had to stream, and then you got used to streaming services.
Yeah. Lost it years ago.
Well, here is my prediction about the Super Bowl.
I, of course, have been making Super Bowl predictions for many years.
Probably for 20 years in a row, the press would ask me once a year for my Super Bowl prediction.
They would often put together semi-famous people's Super Bowl predictions to make a story out of it.
And I started making my predictions based on whose mascot could beat the other mascot.
So far... Not a bad way to predict.
So it seems that we have the Bengals, which would be Tigers, playing against the Rams, which would be the food that Tigers eat.
Am I wrong about that?
Am I wrong that one of the mascots is literally the food of the other mascot?
I'm not wrong about that, right?
A Ram is literally food for the other team.
So... I'm no betting expert, but I'm going to go with the technique that's gotten me where I am.
I'm going to predict that the Tigers will eat the Rams.
How about that? I'm not wrong.
I suppose they both have quarterbacks and stuff like that.
I should know all those things before I make a prediction, but I don't.
Well, the trucker rebellion showing no signs of cracking.
And indeed, Canada's veterans are starting to stream in to join the truckers.
So now you have veterans and you've got your truckers.
It's a very testosterone-y kind of a divide, isn't it?
Have I ever told you my theory that we get everything wrong about...
What team people are on?
And that maybe there's just a testosterone thing?
And people who have high testosterone end up on the same team?
And people who don't end up hating that team?
Well, there's something about this Canadian protest that is strikingly, strikingly testosterone-y.
It's very male-y.
Obviously, there are tons of women supporting the thing.
And there are lots of women truck drivers, of course, and female veterans, of course, of course, of course.
But if you look at the images, it looks like a fairly male-centric situation.
I don't know if that's important.
Is that important in any way?
Because it makes you wonder, who's more effective protesting?
What would be a more effective protest?
An equal number of, let's say, moms...
Or the truckers and the veterans who tend to be mostly male?
Who would get the job done?
I don't know. Yeah, kids are hard to beat.
But if it were moms versus truckers?
I'm not sure. I think I'd bet on the moms.
So Biden and Putin talked.
And this leads us to the question, what the hell is going on over there?
Do you get the sense that we don't have any idea what's happening with Ukraine?
Meaning that the real story is probably three layers below the actual story?
Right? Let me give you a hypothesis.
This entire thing is really about Hillary versus Putin.
All of it.
Like everything. Everything that involves Russia poking us or us poking Russia is all about Russia.
I believe there's a hypothesis that when Hillary was in the State Department, she was trying to organize a coup against Putin.
Can anybody give me a fact check on that?
Did that really happen? Is it alleged or is it a known thing?
I'm seeing people say yes, but I don't know what's a conspiracy theory and what's real anymore.
And... Don't you think that Putin would have to respond to that?
And maybe if he did any election shenanigans, as alleged, maybe that could have been it.
But it's looking a lot like some kind of a personal thing between Hillary and Putin.
And by personal, I mean only one of them will be there in the end.
I mean, I think he's trying to take her out as quickly as she's trying to take him out, directly or indirectly.
Now here's the other filter on this.
So one filter is it's a personal vendetta between two people.
And they have enough weight that they can make two countries fight.
Do you remember when George Bush Jr.
was thinking about going to war in Iraq?
And people said, wait a minute, that looks kind of personal.
Because Saddam Hussein allegedly tried to assassinate his father.
Do you think that anybody would get tough with somebody who allegedly tried to kill their father?
Probably. It probably makes a difference.
I mean, we're all humans, right?
You're supposed to not put that in your judgment if you're president, but seriously.
If somebody tries to kill a family member, and they have a specific kind of method to do it, I think you would go pretty hard on them.
And so I don't think you can rule out personal vendettas from any of this.
Now, here's the other filter.
Who makes money if Putin attacks Ukraine?
Who makes money?
Well, I would say arms dealers, right?
Because that would cause a new flurry of purchases by NATO and anybody who cared.
So is it a coincidence that as Afghanistan winds down...
Ukraine winds up.
So one filter on this is that all of the news is fake and all of our international dealings are fake.
And they're all orchestrated by arms dealers who have enough clout to control the news and have enough clout to cause a war because it's good for business.
Who else could financially benefit?
Because remember, following the money is a pretty good way to figure stuff out.
Who else could financially benefit?
Well, I feel as if this would be good for American energy companies.
Am I right? Wouldn't American energy companies do better if Russia is degraded as an energy competitor?
Now, of course, we have a distance problem.
I don't know exactly how that plays into the economics, except that it's more expensive, obviously.
So it seems to me that the United States...
I need a fact check on this.
If the United States doesn't get involved militarily, which is likely, and if Russia spends a ton of their money trying to invade and occupy, it's really expensive...
And that causes the United States and Biden to be able to say, OK, your pipeline deal, the Nord Stream 2, is dead.
And by the way, we'll be picking up the slack by selling our own natural gas and whatnot to Germany.
I guess we need tankers to do that.
Now, Russia would presumably, if they get sort of shut out by the West, because if Putin invades, he becomes Hitler, right?
Am I right? From the perspective of the Europeans, and the Germans in particular, if Putin invades a country with an army, he becomes Hitler.
You don't shake that off.
And I don't believe that Germany could ever do business with him at that point.
And it wouldn't matter what the economics were.
Am I wrong? I think that once Putin becomes Hitler, like actually, literally acts like him in the, not just the analogy way, but actually doing Hitler stuff, invading a country.
Yeah, I think it's tougher for him to sell stuff.
So, what would happen if Putin then said, as I've seen some analysts say, well, he'll just take his business to China.
Because China has an insatiable demand for oil.
Do you think that Putin wants to have one major customer?
And it be China?
What would be the worst possible thing for a producer of energy?
The worst possible thing is to have one big customer who's even bigger than you are.
It's a problem. You don't want one country to be able to turn off your economy if they want.
Now, it would hurt their own economy, of course.
But... Yeah, you know, I don't think...
It seems to me that Putin would not want too much Chinese control over Russia, you know, directly or indirectly.
So that's the problem.
So it seems to me that at least one possibility here is that Biden is literally tricking Putin into attacking, meaning he's talking tough, but the talking tough is only because he wants the consequences.
In other words, Biden might have calculated, or the administration, might have calculated that getting rid of this corrupt regime could solve a lot of problems.
You know, right now we have a Ukraine problem and a Russia problem, wouldn't you say?
And they're two separate problems.
One is, why do we keep having Ukrainian issues with American politics?
Why? So as long as Ukraine exists as an independent, corrupt country, it's going to look like everybody's money laundering place they go to do bad stuff, right?
So from the Democrat perspective, it just looks like a giant money laundering country.
And if it gets sucked up by Russia, then don't we just have one problem?
So now we have two problems.
Ukraine keeps creating domestic problems in the United States.
And then Russia is always, you know, a big competitor.
But if Russia eats Ukraine, we're down to one problem.
Just Russia, right?
Because you just have one entity to deal with and the rest is just a puppet.
Now, of course, I'm oversimplifying everything, right?
I don't think that this story is about one of these interpretations.
Do you? I don't think one frame or one interpretation gets anywhere near explaining what's going on.
I think the best explanation is a whole bunch of competing interests that all have their own little story, and then the little stories somehow sum up to something that nobody can quite understand, because there are too many people with their individual stories.
Of course the arms dealers are involved.
Of course they are. Of course there are secrets in Ukraine that probably somebody's interested in hiding or something.
Of course there are, you know, probably some personal feelings between the Clintons and Putin.
Of course there are historical Russian, let's say, part of the psychology that they should have control over the neighbouring countries.
Of course. So all of those things are in there, but I don't know which are the big variables.
Maybe some are bigger than others.
Here's the mystery that I think is the most interesting part of this.
So the president of Ukraine, Mr.
Zelensky, has said that if Western powers had any firm evidence of an impending invasion, he had yet to see it.
Now, how do you explain that?
How do you explain that the person most at risk is saying, I don't know, settle down.
I haven't seen any evidence of an invasion.
Here's what is missing, the dog barking.
This bark you should be hearing all the time, but you're not.
We've heard that 100,000 troops are amassed on the border.
But don't you think we could tell the difference between an invasion force and something that's not an invasion force?
Let's say a bluff.
Don't you think we could tell?
Because here's my assumption.
A real invasion force would be prohibitively expensive unless you were actually going to invade.
So there's an assumption that might be wrong, but that's my operating assumption.
That an actual invasion force would be so expensive to have it just sitting there idling next to the border that you just wouldn't do it if you could bluff instead.
If your intention was to bluff, you wouldn't put a real force there.
You'd put something that's in the direction of a real force.
Something that would be scary enough, but not that expensive.
And maybe something that doesn't show all of your capabilities, too.
Because you don't want to give away any secrets.
So where is all the discussion about the nature and composition of their forces?
And whether this is a legitimate invasion force, or would they have to quickly supplement it?
And how quickly could they do that?
Maybe it's only a difference of, you know, a week...
Between what they have and what they need for a full invasion.
Might not take that long.
But we should be talking about that, right?
Should we not be seeing a story every day in every platform that says, oh, it looks like they brought in the XYZ tanks or whatever.
That means it's on.
We should be seeing that.
We're not. Which suggests...
That maybe Ukraine hasn't seen it either.
And maybe Mr.
Zelensky is telling the actual literal truth that he's seen no evidence of an invasion, impending invasion.
Do you think that all of our news entities would lie to us so badly and tell us a story that, let's say, the Biden administration and other entities maybe wanted us to believe that war is imminent?
Could all of the platforms be essentially in on it?
Or fooled, I guess.
They could be fooled or they could be in on it.
Either one, we wouldn't know the difference.
But there is something really, really sketchy about this whole situation.
And until I hear an explanation of why Ukraine itself isn't worried, and apparently some of the other European countries are just business as usual, In Ukraine itself, the cities are like, you know, maybe we should prep or something.
I feel like we should get some canned goods, but let's go party.
So if Ukraine isn't worried, it's almost as if they know it's a bluff.
All right. I see smart people saying that the attack is just obviously going to happen, or we're either going to give them control or they're going to attack, but that Putin is definitely going to get Ukraine.
How many of you think that's true?
Based on what you know as of today, how many of you think that they're going to take Ukraine?
I think on locals I may have influenced you too much.
I worry that I may have influenced you too much.
Interesting though, I'm saying mostly no's.
So most of you don't think an invasion is coming.
But you do know that the press is trying to make you think there's one, right?
How many of you are thinking it's a wag the dog situation?
That there's something going on here that's so amazingly sketchy that you just can't believe anything you hear?
I think that's where we're at.
We don't believe anything.
Well, I don't think there's any risk of America and Russia going to war with each other over this.
Yeah, it really feels...
If I had to put my money down, I think that Biden knows he's in a win-win situation and Putin's in a lose-lose.
So here's Biden's win-win.
He either prevents Putin from coming in, which makes him look strong, Or Putin comes in and then Biden says, aha, you fell for my trap, effectively.
He wouldn't say that out loud.
But then he would just shut down Russia as a viable energy competitor.
So it just looks like business to me.
I mean, it looks exactly like just a business strategy.
So that's my guess.
So my guess is we do have all the lingering historical personal animosity and stuff.
So that makes it a fertile situation.
But to me, this looks like business.
How many would buy into the interpretation that this is just a business move?
Whatever happens, it's all business.
Meaning the energy industry, the arms industry, etc.
Yeah, and some of you are saying it's obvious, right?
Some say it's dementia.
Yeah. To me, it looks like business.
And if it's business, I don't know that you start firing bullets.
Not if you're smart, because that's rarely good for business.
All right. That is the story of that Russia story.
But are there more Russia stories?
No. Yes.
Because there are only two things we care about today.
What about Joe Rogan?
And what about Russia?
Dear God, let there never be a Joe Rogan slash Russia story.
Please, please, Democrats, do not start another phony rumor about Joe Rogan being a Russian asset.
Because I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet.
I'm pretty sure I've been accused of being a Russian asset.
Is there anybody else here who's been accused of being a Russian asset?
I've been accused in public.
Yeah, everyone on Fox, I guess.
So, have you heard about the big news today?
So, there's a story about the...
The Durham investigation discovered that the Hillary Clinton campaign had been paying some lawyers to invent...
I'm going to say invent, even though that's not exactly in evidence, but it looks like it.
It looks like that is the case.
To go find a way to tie Trump to Russia...
And the lawyers worked with a tech company that had access to some, not only White House data, but some data on some servers in Trump Tower.
I don't know how the same entity had access to both of them.
So that part of the story I don't quite understand.
But apparently they found some complete bogus data That made it seem as if Trump had been making some secret contacts with Russia or a Russian bank that was connected to the Kremlin.
And apparently the evidence that they used is completely bogus.
It's just something that you would see in a database.
It's been there since 2014, since well before Trump.
So whatever the data actually means, there's no evidence that has anything to do with Trump and Russia.
But... At least one lawyer, I think, lied about it to the Durham folks, and he's in trouble.
And it looks like the campaign was definitely involved in something that looks like an insurrection.
Because not only did they do this activity before the election, they did it after Trump was in office.
They were still spying on him through this method.
They were spying on his communication traffic, even through the point where he was in office.
Now, keep in mind, this wasn't an FBI investigation, right?
This was some lawyers who had some access to some technology guys who had some access to some data.
This is about the most illegal thing you've ever heard of.
You know we've been five years of hearing that everything's worse than Watergate?
As Joel Pollack pointed out when the story broke, this is actually the first one that's literally worse than Watergate.
It's bigger. And it happened not only during an election cycle, but it happened after the president was sitting in office.
Yeah, and part of the story, as Jack Posobiec has pointed out on Twitter, is that Jake Sullivan...
Who you all know from the current administration, was deeply involved in all this.
And Mark Goliath was part of it, and that law firm.
Basically, everything that was your worst imagination of what was happening seems to be coming true.
Now, I'm going to say something that might get me in trouble here, so I want to be really careful.
This is a joke.
The next thing that comes out of my mouth is a joke.
As far as you know.
Just a joke.
At the current rate, we're two weeks away from finding that Pizzagate was totally real.
Just a joke. Just...
I swear. I swear, it's just a joke.
No! No! No!
Please don't censor me!
No! Just kidding.
Barely. So here are the interesting parts of this story besides everything.
How many times does Tucker Carlson have to be right in the most unusual prediction I've heard in years, which is that everything that the Democrats accuse you of doing is exactly what they're doing.
Like right now. Now, Tucker has been saying that for several years, and every time I heard it, I would just harumph to myself in private, like, that's just some kind of weird pattern recognition thing that just feels like it, but there's nothing to it, right?
There's nothing that causes that to be true.
But there is absolutely something that causes that to be true, as I think about it more.
And it's the fact that if they accuse you first of the thing they're doing, they can do that thing, and then when they get caught, which is happening right now, the Durham investigation catching the Hillary Clinton connection to this insurrection, you could call it. So once they get caught...
Because they've created such an imposing narrative that it's Trump who is doing the bad stuff, you can't see it.
You become cognitively blind to one of the biggest crimes ever.
And if you look at how CNN is covering it...
Have you checked CNN's homepage today?
Biggest story in a long time.
It's not there.
I don't mean that it's...
A small little piece in the bottom right.
I mean, it's not there.
It's not there.
So I went over to MSNBC, because at the very least, we should have a story about how Fox News has a fake news story.
Because you know they love those, right?
Whenever they think Fox is getting something wrong, they'll do the story about...
Now, Fox News is wrong about a story.
So at least they would be killing the story if it were fake.
But it's the Durham report, so they're not going to say it's fake.
It's pretty tough to say that's fake.
So what do they do?
Both MSNBC and CNN so far, as of just before I came on here, they're actually ignoring the story.
And they can get away with this.
Because the Democrats will never look anywhere else.
And if they did, they wouldn't believe what they saw.
So the mainstream media is able, thanks to this always blaming the other side of whatever you're doing, it creates this great cognitive distortion that you can't even see it when the other side does it, when the Democrats do it.
It's just invisible. And then the news doesn't cover it, and they can actually make it disappear.
They're disappearing on a gigantic story, successfully.
Absolutely successfully.
It's mind-boggling.
I was hoping that CNN would get their crack team to talk about this, what I think could be called legitimately a Hillary Clinton insurrection against the government.
And I was hoping that they could...
Get Jeffrey Toobin to handle the insurrection.
Because he's pretty good at handling insurrections.
So what does CNN talk about when the biggest news in the world, or the country, I guess, is something that they don't want to talk about?
Well, here's an example. A big opinion piece...
And I'm not even going to tell you the name of the author because it's just an idiot and you don't need to know.
This is the dumbest thing I've seen in a long time.
This article said that Joe Rogan using the N-word, which I remind you, his use of the N-word, although there was multiple uses, was talking about the use of the N-word.
That's always left out of the story.
If you say somebody used the N-word multiple times, don't you assume they used it in the worst possible way?
You do, right? But if I told you, well, he never used it in the way of insulting somebody, only used it in talking about it.
Whole different story. Completely different.
But to CNN, they can get some action out of this story.
They say, Joe Rogan using the N-word without being cancelled basically said it destroys the fabric of the civilization that's holding things together.
So this writer believes that the prohibition in which white people can't use the N-word is such an important part Of the fabric of holding our civilization together, that when Joe Rogan got away without being cancelled, it was similar to the January 6th insurrection, in which both of them are tearing apart the fabric of the country.
That's actually on CNN's page today, but not the biggest news in the country.
Now, did you think CNN could get worse?
I guess so. Now, I'll tell you what's going to be interesting.
Don't you assume that CNN, at least the hosts and the news people, they're not all the same, right?
Wouldn't you agree? There must be a variety of opinions there.
I don't think Jake Tapper can go through today without mentioning this story.
What do you think? Jake and I have had our differences...
But I do respect him in a lot of ways.
And I don't think, no matter what his management is telling him, I don't think he can not mention the story.
So I'm going to put that little prediction out there.
It's entirely possible that you're not going to hear anything from Don Lemon.
But I think Jake is going to talk about it.
I think he will. So I have confidence that he will handle this as a professional no matter what's happening in the air.
So maybe I'm wrong.
If you want to take the other side of that bat, go ahead.
But I'm going to bet on him mentioning it today.
How many of you think I'm wrong?
Many of you think I'm wrong.
Good. I like it when you think I'm wrong.
Now, here's a question that I actually wonder.
Did CNN have a meeting today in which they legitimately talked about how to not cover the news?
Because I think that probably happened.
Like, actually, literally, I think the most trusted name in news, CNN as they like to call themselves, I'll bet, I mean, I don't know, I have no way to prove it, but I'll bet you they had an actual meeting, probably phone-related, Zoom or something, but I'll bet they had an actual meeting to talk about how not to talk about the news.
That's a news organization.
I'm not making that up.
I mean, I'm speculating, so I guess I am making it up.
But I'm pretty sure something like that had to happen.
Wow. So you got that going on.
And then the CNN is also trying to talk up, as are the trolls on Twitter.
By the way, did you notice how quiet the trolls got?
You know the professional paid trolls that have been jumping on us lately?
Did you notice that on this story, all they have is that Trump mishandled some documents by taking some home that were, by the way, I assume, already digitally copied.
Am I wrong? Do you think that there's any document that goes into the White House...
That doesn't get digitally copied before it's handed to the president?
I don't think the president sees it before it's digitally copied, right?
Don't you assume? Because I guess Trump had a habit of ripping up things after he was done with them.
So of course, of course it was digitally copied.
So they're making this big story about how it's illegal.
And it might be. I mean, it might actually be illegal.
But in terms of the size of the crime, is it...
The biggest crime in the world that Trump would want to keep his Kim Jong-un love letters when the digital copies were part of the record anyway.
So I can't defend Trump on this, and I don't know why...
Or even if he was involved in the decision to keep him at Mar-a-Lago.
So we don't know enough about it, but I won't defend it.
It just doesn't seem like a big deal.
And then there's a story about him continually flushing documents down the toilet, which he denies.
All right, who do you believe? Do you believe that Trump would rip documents up and walk them into the toilet and flush them?
Or do you think he would rip them up and leave them on his desk or in the trash?
I mean, maybe he was reading in there.
I don't know. I don't know.
You know, the only situation I can imagine is if he had some confidential document and he didn't want to deal with it.
He's like, ah, I just flushed this freaking thing.
Yeah. I don't think that story's real.
You know what it reminds you of?
What's it remind you of?
It's a little too much...
You know, Steele dossier and the prostitute's bed sort of thing.
The prostitute's in the bed.
Yeah, it just sounds fake.
I don't believe the flushing story at all.
I do believe there might have been one document at one time that ended up in the toilet or something like that.
But I don't think it was like some regular thing he did.
Trump made a statement about the breaking news about the Hillary campaign digging up some dirt.
Um... He goes, it's greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate.
Do you know who hasn't been on TV lately?
Carl Bernstein.
Carl is the one they dragged down, CNN did, every time they needed somebody to literally say it's worse than Watergate.
He became the worse than Watergate guy.
Carl, do you think it's worse than Watergate?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Way worse than Watergate.
Now, none of that was actually real, but now we have something that actually is literally, by any objective standard, well documented, because it's coming from Durham, but not only is it well documented to be true, it is literally worse than Watergate, because it included not only the...
Watergate was only during the campaign, right?
It wasn't after the opponent became actual President of the United States.
It's worse. You know, it's bad enough before somebody gets elected, but if you're still doing it after they got elected, oh, that's worse than Watergate.
Fairly... And I don't think that that requires much of a subjective judgment, does it?
Does that even sound like a subjective judgment?
To say that if one crime was stealing some stuff, information really, before an election, that somebody who was spying on you before an election and after would be worse.
Right? I don't feel there's any subjectivity in that at all.
That's almost just math.
So, where's Carl?
Carl, we're calling you.
I think you need to get on there and say it's worse than Watergate.
We should start a GoFundMe to get Carl Bernstein to come on television just to say whether it's worse than Watergate.
He would do it for a certain amount of money.
How much do you think it would cost?
I think you could get Carl Bernstein for half a million.
If you started a GoFundMe, To get him just to say those words about this story, I think you could get him to go for half a million.
What do you think?
Anyway.
There is so much to this story, but we'll hear more about it as the day goes on.
Do you think it's a coincidence that this story dropped at the same day as the Super Bowl?
Now, there's no reason to think that Durham would drop at a politically sensitive time or anything.
But isn't it a weird coincidence that the one day you can guarantee you were thinking about anything but the news, at least in the United States, the one day...
I mean, Christmas would have been better, maybe, but only barely...
Yeah, I don't know if that's a coincidence.
I don't see how it would not be a coincidence because it came from Durham.
If it came as a leak from the Democrats or something, then it wouldn't be.
But I don't know.
Do the Democrats have a way to make a story like this timed to a certain day?
Do they have that capability?
It's a big coincidence. All right, I want to read to you...
A thread by Andres Beckhaus, who you may or may not know from Twitter as being a PhD in economics.
And he's usually my go-to for debunking other people's claims with studies.
Because he's real good at looking at his study and saying, oh, it's lacking these controls, or they missed some logical comparison or something like that.
But he has a fairly brilliant thread...
And here's the filter I'm going to put on this.
If you write like an economist, you end up writing like a comedian.
That's my claim.
If you write like an economist, you also will write like a comedian accidentally.
And here's why that's true.
A good economist and someone who can write in that style will strip out all the noise And very cleanly and clearly and quickly get to the essence of the point.
That's what economists are good at.
Get rid of all the complexity, boil it down.
Okay, it's just about employment.
Something like that. That's exactly the same skill that a humor writer uses.
A humor writer takes a complicated situation, strips down all the noise, gets down to just the central thing.
So when I read this, even though he writes it in a light style, I just want you to be kind of listening to the content but also keeping this recording in the back of your head of how similar economics writing and humor writing is.
It's just a weird little lesson about simplicity, I guess.
Okay, so here's his thread.
And by the way, of course, I think it's smart because I agree with it.
So anything that agrees with me looks smarter.
Do we agree? I think we do.
All right, so Andre says, in the late stage of the pandemic, the debates and opinions are getting dumber, not smarter, as you may have noticed.
I like that he threw in the as you may have noticed because we probably all think we have.
He goes, more vitriol, more revisionism, more incitement.
The simple reason is economics.
Interesting. Let's see if he can make that case, that the reason we're getting dumber is economics.
He says, COVID appears less dangerous now, so it's less costly now to be wrong.
Okay? You get that?
If you said something in public that caused somebody to do the wrong thing, you could kill them.
But now you really can't.
So now you can be wrong without a risk of actually killing somebody.
So in economics terms, it's cheaper to be wrong.
So, Andreas goes on.
In 2020 and 2021, there was still a fair amount of risk that dismissing facts and scientific views about COVID might turn out to be catastrophic.
I think some of the critics felt this sword of Damocles above their heads.
Now they feel they can just go with whatever they want to.
In economic terms, the thread goes on, the risk-adjusted price of talking nonsense has decreased, while the public is demanding more nonsense now relative to scientific opinion.
As COVID seems manageable, New equilibrium, where more nonsense is traded and spewed than before.
This tendency away from reasoned, somewhat scientifically-based views is in part consequential, as the decision on the end of the pandemic and measures is now more determined by public opinion and sentiment, less by scientific approval.
Whether this will work out, we'll see.
The irony being that science alone has first put society into the position where society can rely less on science now.
Do you get that?
So the claim is that the science was sufficiently successful...
To get us toward the end of the pandemic, that science was so successful we can now ignore it, basically.
And then he says, I guess this could be something to complain about, but it also seems like the eternal, ever-recurring fate of science.
So science is kind of self-cancelling in the sense that when it succeeds, you can start ignoring it again.
It might still get a good deal dumber for a while.
The motivations now are retroactively bending narratives into shape and taking revenge.
So we've gone from trying to keep ourselves alive into bending narratives and seeking revenge, all while enjoying the protective umbrella put up by scientific achievement and medical effort.
Scientific achievement in this context...
Meaning all we've done to, you know, scientifically address the virus.
Now, I think that was just some great writing.
And you'll find that economists typically are better than normal at writing.
If they're good. If they're good at their jobs.
There's a book called Freakonomics that I recommend.
And I think Super Freakonomics, those are real good examples of that.
Mike says, Scott, you're like a son to me.
Well, I'd like to complain about my allowance.
You're just not stepping it up.
Economists like Krugman.
Yeah, I don't say economists are always right.
Because economists are really not that much better at predicting than anybody else is.
Because nobody can predict anything.
But even if you looked at Krugman's writing, if you're being honest, even though you disagree with Krugman on a number of things some of you do, his writing is excellent.
Sorry. I know if you don't like him, you want his writing to be bad, but his writing is excellent.
It really is. Did someone have to turn the hot air on?
So, is winter over where you are?
In my town, it was 77 degrees yesterday, and I'm pretty sure winter's over already.
Oh, it's snowing where you are.
Sorry. Well, that climate change is working its magic on me.
All right, so here's a question to close things out.
How many things was Trump right about?
Now, of course, depending on your politics, you're going to have very, very different opinions.
But he was right about China being the big problem.
I think he was right on border security.
I don't agree with everything he says and does on border security, but compared to what we got with Biden, it looked better.
He was right on North Korea.
I think he was right in the Middle East.
I think he probably could have dealt with Putin better because he doesn't have any kind of a personal history with him.
Tapping the wires, right?
He was right that he had been spied on.
That is correct. Do you know what the one thing...
Now, would you say he was right on climate change?
Saying it was a Chinese hoax...
I think that's an interpretation question.
Because, just my own view, he wouldn't be right if he said the planet is now getting warmer.
I don't think that would be right.
But he would be right if he said the Paris Climate Accord...
It was a big old joke and it was just good for China and bad for us.
That part, I think, is proven true.
So depending on how you interpret what he meant by a hoax, if you think the hoax was the science part, That's one thing.
But if you think it was the China part, well, he was right about that.
He said it was a Chinese hoax.
He didn't say it was a science hoax, did he?
If he had said it was a scientific hoax, I'd be like, okay, that's just maybe not what's going on here.
But by saying it's a Chinese hoax, he limited the comment to something about China, which is different from the question of are we getting warmer, right?
So I think that's an interpretation.
But you can interpret that either way.
I think that would be fair. Yeah.
So the only thing that Trump has been wrong about is that the elections were fraudulent.
Because as you know, there's absolutely no court-approved evidence no court has found That the elections were fraudulent.
But it's funny how he was right about everything else.
And you know what's even funnier?
Trump was right about things before he had evidence.
Because he was pretty sure that his campaign was bugged before he knew.
How do you know that?
Have you noticed that, in a lot of cases, Trump guesses right?
He's pretty lucky, isn't he?
Maybe it's not luck.
If you could say one thing about Trump that even his critics would agree with, I think they would say this.
It takes one to know one.
Am I right? In a variety of ways, no matter what realm you're in, it kind of takes one to know one.
I like to use the example of I played tennis, played a lot of tennis.
So if I watch a movie in which somebody is purportedly playing tennis well, well, I can tell that that's not a real tennis player.
But maybe you can't, right?
Because it takes one to know one.
If you play tennis, it's obvious, oh, that's just an actor who's probably never touched a racket before.
Trump is probably the most accomplished bullshitter in the world.
I think Trump knows bullshit.
Is that not fair to say?
If his critics are right, let's say his critics are right about everything, just whatever is the worst view you can make of him, wouldn't that make him exactly the person who could spot bullshit the best?
Because it would be his world.
You know, a con artist can spot a con.
Am I right? Who would spot a con faster than a con artist?
Nobody, because they'd see it right away.
Oh, that pattern. I use that pattern, too.
So I think Trump has lived such a varied and interesting life that he's seen every crime.
I think he's seen every kind of government corruption, up close and personally.
I think he's seen every manner of business corruption, up close and personally.
I think he's seen every just straight crime, just regular criminals doing criminal stuff.
Because remember, Trump is not the guy who only hangs out with the elites, which is one of the reasons people like him.
He seems to have a genuine affection...
For just people.
And so I just think he's maybe more connected to the seedy underbelly of life than most people.
Well, let's say it this way.
He's completely not insulated.
About that. He's completely non-insulated from ordinary people.
You know, he's eating the Taco Bell just like everybody else.
He's hanging with the staff, etc.
Now, I told you that when I visited the White House and I got to chat with him a little while, that that actually is the thing you feel.
When you're talking to him in person, and, you know, this is the first time I've met him in person, and the only time, you immediately feel that he's interested in you.
Now, I bet you didn't see that coming, did you?
If you're a Trump critic, doesn't that just blow your mind?
That I'm sitting in the Oval Office and he had a conspicuous curiosity and a genuine connection and empathy with me.
And I was just a guy in the office.
So obviously everything's in a political context, but you can really see how he would be just maybe more connected to what is ordinary and real than some people might be.
They might be a little more insulated.
All right.
Somebody else is saying that they have a friend who had the same experience with them.
Yeah. Yeah, when you see him in person, he's very real.
You know, he's also completely aware of the difference between what's real and what's a show.
And once you realize how aware he is of what's the show and what's not the show, it just puts you in a whole different frame of mind about what he's about.
All right. I do not have anything else to talk about because I think this was such an interesting day.
Oh, I see you mentioning Trudeau.
Is it my imagination, or have the truckers taken down the Trudeau administration?
Now, not yet, because he's still in power.
But am I over-interpreting this?
Because I'm not really connected to Canadian public opinion.
But I feel as if the truckers have ended his political career.
Am I wrong? The way he handled it was so weak...
And he didn't really explain himself as well as maybe it could have done.
So even if you were on his side, I think you have to say the way he handled it wasn't ideal.
It's close, but he just won a mandate.
Yeah, I feel like the truckers took out his administration.
