Episode 1663 Scott Adams: Putin's Brain, Russian Public Opinion, Long Haul TDS and More Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Greta Thunberg caused Ukraine war
2 year old Hunter Biden, Ukraine investigation
President Trump compliments President Putin
Russian public opinions
Bye bye free speech
Russian sanctions impact
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And welcome to the best thing that ever happened to anybody who's ever been born anywhere.
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You know, he wears the hoodie. Or the black shirt.
Yeah. The trick...
If you can convince people that you have a look, all of your problems are solved, if you know what I mean.
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You don't want to convince people that your look is an Elton John, you know, over-the-top, needs props and all that stuff.
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If you're going to do a uniform and a look and a brand, go for basic.
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Okay? Now, I hope that wherever you were, you did something that was as perfectly suited to your cultural background as I did.
Somebody dabbed.
That's exactly right.
Well, Rasmussen...
Has a poll asking, should the Democratic Party be more like Biden or more like Harris?
What do you think?
Democrats said the Democratic Party should be more like Biden, 36%, but only 11% thought Harris.
And so, how's the progressive wing of the Democratic Party looking?
Not so good.
Not so good. You want to hear some more bad news for...
The progressive part.
I was asked a question on the Locals platform just before I went live on YouTube.
They get a little extra over on Locals.
It's a subscription service.
And I was asked, what has the worst recent murder rate?
We're going to compare two regions.
I'm going to ask you this question, and it's a serious question.
It's not a rhetorical question.
I actually don't know the answer to it.
And the question is, has the death rate and the murder rate, let's say, has it been worse in the last few months in Chicago or in the occupied separatist regions of Ukraine?
Which has been the more deadly place?
Now, it kind of doesn't matter what the answer is.
It kind of doesn't matter what the answer is.
It's the fact that we can even ask that question.
And it's not a joke.
I actually don't know the answer to that question.
I don't know. Maybe there'll be a crossover point.
But if I had to bet, I think I'd put my money on Chicago.
Because, you know, I assume there's shelling and there's chicanery and there's, you know, false flags and all kinds of stuff happening in the separatist regions.
But I bet they didn't kill as many people as a weekend in Chicago does.
Am I right? I don't know if I'm right.
But you seem to think I am, and that's good enough.
You know, we live in a subjective reality, and while I strive to be correct and right about everything, I will settle for you agreeing with me, because it feels the same, on my end anyway.
So thank you for that. Speaking of wokeness...
It's a story that the media is talking about this story, which is that Newsweek and LA Times are both recently warning Democrats that they'd better get over the wokeness because they're looking at this one anecdote here, I guess, the situation where in San Francisco the Democrats voted out some school board members for being too woke and not being useful enough.
And... The striking part about it is that they were overwhelmingly voted out.
The wokesters were just driven out by even Democrats, because it's a Democrat city.
So that seems like a pretty big story.
But are things getting better or worse for the wokest of the woke?
Well, shall I continue?
It's turning out to be a really bad year to be woke.
Am I right? Yes.
Part of it is because Trump is less in the news.
Because there's not a natural enemy that's just really salient at the moment.
So if you just let the wokeness exist on its own, it just looks like toxic bile.
It's like an acid eating itself.
But if Trump were in the news every day, Then the wokeness would have something to play off of, you know, some kind of a productive contrast.
But when you take the contrast away, it just has to be looked at on its own.
Nobody likes it.
Well, that's an exaggeration.
It's not so popular.
And that brings us to Greta Thunberg.
And I tweeted yesterday that Greta Thunberg caused this mess.
And by this mess, I mean Ukraine.
Now, do you all see the connection?
Because I'm not joking.
Greta Thunberg, she sort of caused the Ukraine war.
Does everybody see it?
I can explain it if...
Okay. I got a few no's there, so let me explain it.
So it goes like this.
If we didn't have Greta...
Climate change wouldn't be as potent a topic as it is.
That's a presumption on my part, right?
So that part's speculative. But I think most of you would agree with that, that she's turbocharged the topic.
She's added a lot. Most people would agree with that.
Now, if climate change did not have such a, let's say, persuasive quality to it, How would Trump's policy about energy look compared to Biden's?
Biden didn't really have a choice, did he?
You know, if you're a Democrat, don't you have to go full Tunberg?
Or at least move in that direction.
He didn't go full Tunberg by any means.
But he had to be pushed in that direction, right?
So, one of the things that Trump would have done that we know for sure, that Biden did not do, Is promote domestic energy production in the United States.
Because Biden wants to be more green and save the world and be more Greta Thunberg.
And Trump was more...
I think this climate change thing was a Chinese hoax to slow down our economy...
Let's pump oil and gas as much as we can, build some pipelines, and be independent and build up our economy.
And by the way, when you substitute natural gas for coal, it reduces your emissions.
So Trump, who was criticized for saying that climate change was a Chinese hoax, I think we're all sure Even the Democrats would say this is true.
He would have kept domestic energy production high, which means that prices for energy would have been lower, which means that your inflation would be lower under Trump in that one way.
Putin would have far less money to be adventurous, and he would basically have less power.
Because if Europe needed to get a different source of gas for a while, it might cost more.
But if you took some of the inflation out of it, the more wouldn't be as much as it would be now.
So you've got a situation in which energy is sort of the most important product because there's not enough of it, which makes Putin the most important person.
Because he's got an army and he's got energy.
He's got the two things that matter the most today.
So, quite reasonably, you could say that the connection between Greta Thunberg and her influence, which was very effective, definitely put pressure on Democrats.
The Democrats definitely reduced energy production.
The reduction in energy production definitely increased the cost of energy, which definitely increased the profits for Russia, which definitely increased their strategic power, which definitely increased their confidence, which almost certainly was a major factor in getting exactly where we are now.
Who disagrees with that analysis?
Now, I'm not going to say it's the only variable, right?
Maybe Putin would have done what Putin was going to do.
But you can see the connection, can't you?
It does seem like it's maybe 20% of the story.
I mean, that's pretty big.
Yeah, I'd say it's 20% of the story.
I mean, climate change itself, not just Greta.
So, you know, there's no analysis that's the whole story, right?
Everything's got lots of facets.
So I don't think the woke side of the world is looking so good.
Now here's another interesting angle on Ukraine.
Jonathan Turley, who's always a great read, has an article today.
He's talking about...
And I wasn't...
I'm not sure how aware of this I was.
How many of you were aware of this story?
That for over two years...
There's been an investigation, I guess it was a stated investigation, into Hunter Biden and his tax and financial issues, specifically related to his foreign dealings.
Now, were you aware that there's a two-year investigation ongoing about Hunter Biden's activities and his foreign dealings, which presumably is either all Ukraine or mostly Ukraine is what they're concerned about.
And part of that is they seem to be indicating that Hunter Biden had a lot more cash, or that seems to be where the evidence is pointing, that he seemed to have a lot more cash than his reported income would suggest.
Now, I'm going to use the same standard that I would use for Trump or anything else, right?
Try to be fair about it.
Hunter Biden is not charged with anything.
No court has found Hunter Biden guilty of anything.
I hate to say it, but unfortunately that's the standard.
If you're going to be like a decent citizen...
You have to accept the standard.
The standard is more important than the person.
So as painful as it is to say that he hasn't been convicted of anything, that does matter.
Unfortunately, it matters.
And I wouldn't want to change that.
But at the same time, they have been investigating for two years and probably not for nothing.
I mean, there must be at least some smoke.
It doesn't mean they'll ever find any fire.
But Here's the question which must be asked.
Do you think that Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, do you think he has information about the Biden family that we haven't heard yet?
What are the odds?
I mean, just think what the odds would be.
So if we know that Hunter was mucking around in Ukrainian business, that much seems true.
But we have not seen anything directly illegal about that.
Only that it seems deeply sketchy and questionable and unethical.
But not technically illegal as far as we know.
So do you think that maybe Ukraine has something on the Biden family at the same time that Biden is trying to manage this situation that's the most important thing going on at the moment?
Now, let me do something that I hate to do because of its ordinariness.
But damn it, sometimes you have to do the ordinary.
And this is so uncreative that it actually hurts me to do it, but sometimes you've got to do it.
Imagine if this were Don Jr.
I hate it. I hate it.
I hate doing this. I hate doing this.
Because it's so uncreative.
Like, how many times have we done that?
I mean, Don Jr. does it all the time, right?
In his tweets, he goes, imagine if this were me.
And it's, unfortunately, it is exactly the right thing.
It's the right thought.
Can you even imagine...
Just hold this thought for a moment.
Imagine a world in which Trump were president, and we had this problem with Ukraine and Russia, which maybe we wouldn't even have, but let's say we do...
And imagine that this story had been Don Jr.
doing business in Ukraine and that there were questions about it and a current, ongoing investigation about it.
Can you even imagine?
I mean, seriously.
My head is going to explode imagining the difference between how the media would be talking about that and how they're just not talking about Hunter Biden at all.
It doesn't even exist.
Somebody said impeachment here on YouTube in the comments.
Maybe. Maybe.
Would you trust, and let's be honest, would you trust Trump's judgment if Don Jr.
might have some hidden secrets that would come out if you acted a different way?
No, even I wouldn't, right?
Like, I've been pretty supportive of Trump on a number of issues.
Not on everything, but a lot of stuff.
But I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
And by the way, I think Don Jr.
is awesome. I like him. I like Trump.
But if you just put those two people I like...
In that situation, I wouldn't like that.
Oh, no. No, I would back out immediately.
I'd be like, okay, I'm out.
These two people can't be involved in the same situation.
This is too much of a conflict of interest.
We're not even talking about conflict of interest, are we?
Have you even heard the phrase, conflict of interest?
Can you imagine that you would never hear that phrase if this were Don Jr.
and Trump? Right?
I mean, it's just mind-boggling, the difference.
All right. Let's talk about some other stuff.
In theory, we should be seeing some massive cognitive dissonance by the people who were most supportive of Biden...
And least supportive of Trump over the past five years.
Now, because we're living in different realities, if there are any Democrats watching this right now, you may be saying to yourself, I don't know what you're talking about.
Scott, I don't know what you're talking about.
And you don't. And I can't fix that.
I'm sorry. So to those of you who don't fall into that category, I guess I'm just talking to you today.
It's kind of obvious at this point, like super obvious, that on a whole range of issues, not all of them, not all of them, but on a whole range of issues, Trump was clearly the superior president at this point.
It's just obvious. You know, there was certainly a point where you could have said, well, let's see what Biden can do.
I think it was entirely possible that Biden could have come up with some southern border solution that was kind and generous and yet good enough for the United States.
Maybe. I don't know. Give him a chance.
Didn't happen. Maybe.
Maybe Biden could come up with some productive way to deal with Russia and China.
I don't know. Didn't happen. So, you know, maybe Biden could do something better for the energy.
No, it didn't happen.
So, at this point, wouldn't you expect, and just talking to my own audience here, I know you lean a particular way, but don't you think there should be some prominent Democrats just sort of going crazy now?
Because they can see what they did.
They caused this problem by insisting on a brain-dead president.
Well, here's an example, maybe.
Stephen King had this tweet.
I swear to God, this happened today.
No, yesterday, I guess. So it's fresh.
He tweets, so Stephen King, the novelist, he writes, Mr.
Putin has made a serious miscalculation.
He forgot he's no longer dealing with Trump.
What? Is he watching the same reality that I'm watching?
Because I don't think that Russia did much when Trump was in charge.
So to me, it looks like cognitive dissonance.
Somebody else called it out on...
Dale called it out on Twitter.
But Rahim Kassam had a reply to it.
He goes, congrats, you're the dumbest MF-er in America.
It's funny. It's only funny because that was my exact thought.
When I read it, it was like, wow, you might be the dumbest MF-er in America.
Then I read Rahim's comment, congrats, you're the dumbest MF-er.
Now, this does suggest that there might be a medical problem that is under-recognized.
And I would call it long-haul TDS. Long haul TDS. Yeah, long haul TDS. The original TDS would give you some insanity and anxiety, fear.
So you don't want to catch a bad case of TDS, which, by the way, can be transmitted by personal contact.
If you stand...
And six feet isn't enough for TDS. For COVID, six feet's pretty good for social distancing.
But for TDS, you've actually got to be outside of the listening distance.
So you want to be...
Well, you want to keep your distance of, say, a quarter mile from other people.
To reduce the transmission of TDS. Because if you get closer than a quarter mile, they can still shout.
You can hear them.
That's a little too close.
Because it gets transmitted by talking and ideas.
So there was a bad case of TDS going through the country for a few years.
But now that's mostly subsided.
Now it's a more endemic situation.
We've learned to live with it.
Sort of a baseline problem like the flu.
And... But we still have to be concerned about long-haul.
Are there any long-haul symptoms?
And I think this cognitive dissonance is sort of the myocarditis of TDS. That it does seem that having once had TDS, you are more likely to have cognitive dissonance, even a year later.
Speaking of Trump, he's getting some attention by calling Putin, his moves, genius and very savvy for the way that he...
The way that he reframed the separatist regions and then moved in to protect them.
So Trump said that that was really smart and then Trump's critics said, You fool!
You Putin lover!
You ass-kissin' Putin puppet you!
Why are you saying good things about Putin?
You must be a monster like him!
So is that exactly what was going on?
I have two comments about this, maybe more.
Number one, there's one thing that Trump never gets credit for.
His honesty about how he feels.
Now, I will grant you that when he's talking about the outside world and the facts in the world, he can play fast and loose with the facts.
He's a salesperson.
He's unapologetic about that.
He uses hyperbole to persuade.
He's unapologetic about that.
So he is what he is.
And you either like that or you don't.
But I think we all understand it.
But the thing that you miss about Trump is that when he tells you what his opinion is, am I right?
When he tells you what his opinion is, you always believe that, don't you?
You never believe that he's telling you something he doesn't personally believe.
I don't think I've ever once had that feeling.
But when Biden speaks, Biden sounds like a politician, doesn't he?
You don't really think he believes what he even says is his opinion.
The things he says he really cares about, I don't know that he does.
Really. Who knows?
It might be convenient to say he cares about that stuff.
Who knows? But...
So when Trump calls Putin a genius and savvy, it's basically very similar to what I was thinking.
In my private thoughts, I was thinking, damn, that's pretty smart the way he's doing this.
Looks like it's pretty successful, at least in terms of getting stronger control over those separatist regions.
It looked pretty smart. Now, it's evil and manipulative and Hitler-like.
I'm not downplaying any of that, but it's smart.
So that's the first thing that we miss about Trump, is that he looks at something that looks smart, and he says, hey, that looks smart.
He's not approving of it.
He's just saying it looks smart.
That's just his honest opinion.
I don't know. I miss it.
I miss it. I miss that part of it.
I honestly don't miss the conflict.
I feel like I'm a little better off without all of the TDS. The TDS was a...
For me, surviving the TDS was almost as hard as surviving the pandemic, to be honest.
If you're right in the middle of it, I mean, there weren't enough vaccinations to get me through TDS. But, you know, I got through the pandemic.
It was a pain in the ass, but I got through it.
The TDS, I think, is going to last forever.
The TDS will affect my career and my reputation, my Wikipedia page for the rest of time.
All right. But let's talk about Trump strategically, given that he might be a future president.
Who knows? What he says about Putin really does matter, and even as an ex-president, it would matter.
Is it smart or not smart to call Putin a genius and to say that his moves are savvy?
Go. Would you say that Trump is smart Or not smart to call Putin a genius in public?
I think it's smart.
Because if you want to talk to somebody productively later, you call them smart.
I hate to be the one who always has to explain this to the general public.
Apparently, people who watch this live stream, you're all educated about how this works.
But the general public doesn't understand that there was only one person who handled this right, and it was Trump.
He's the only one who handled it right.
Because ultimately, we've got to talk to that guy, Putin.
We've got to talk to him. Who is going to get a better reception?
The one who Trump called smart?
Or the one who's just, you're evil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
I feel that we're all human, right?
Like, even Putin's a human being.
Do you think that Putin is unaffected by Trump calling him smart?
Do you think he's unaffected by that?
I think he's affected by it.
I think it actually works.
And that...
If anybody were to talk to Putin in the future about any of this, I would want it to be Trump.
I would want it to be Trump.
Now, I saw some people commenting about how they were suspicious because Trump and Putin had a private conversation once with an interpreter, I guess.
But since it was not recorded what that conversation was, people are afraid that, oh, that's where all the bad stuff happened.
Maybe that's where all the collusion happened.
We don't know what happened.
There's no way to know anything about that.
But here's what I would guess.
Just speculative. Trump understands that it's always personal.
That's it. Trump understands that it's always personal.
And I'm not sure why other people don't kind of understand that as well as he understands it.
Everything's personal. Here's another thing.
In the book Persuasion by Cialdini, do you know what one of the ways science has shown you can befriend somebody and get them to trust you as a friend?
You tell them a secret.
That's a well-known persuasion trick.
You tell them a secret.
That's what Trump did. Now, we don't know what they talked about privately.
But because we don't know, what is that called?
A secret. Right.
It might have been nothing.
Maybe they didn't talk about anything important at all.
But Trump created a situation where he and Putin are sharing a secret.
You didn't see that coming, did you?
That's about the best technique...
For persuasion, you're ever going to frickin' see in your life.
Say what you will about Trump.
He's not free from criticism, right?
I'm not the one who's going to tell you he's the god king and everything he does is right.
But you've got to give him credit for the things that are just so right that nobody's ever going to match it, in my opinion.
I don't think anybody who will match him...
For personal persuasion.
Now, keep in mind, I don't know how many of you have ever been in the room with him, but he does have that thing.
That thing, whatever that thing is, that X factor, that charisma, whatever it is.
I'm sure Putin has it too.
But you put him in a room and he's going to convince you of something.
He is good. Now, by the way, I think Biden's probably pretty good at that, too.
Or he wouldn't be where he is.
So I'm not saying he's bad at it.
But the style difference is striking.
And I think Trump is the one who played it...
who would have played it completely correctly.
You want Putin to think you can work with him, that he can trust you.
What is the biggest thing that...
Well, let's talk about that.
Let's talk about what Russian people think...
About all of this. So the Russian people...
Let's see.
I'm going to skip ahead to that part.
CNN was talking about a poll.
It's hard to get information about the Russian public, but I guess CNN ran some kind of a proprietary poll or personal poll or something or a special poll.
They have some word. Forget what word that is.
It doesn't matter. And here's what they found.
One out of every two Russians, actually 50% of them, said it would be right...
More Russians think it would be wrong than right to use military force to reunite Russia and Ukraine.
So Russians don't want to use military right, military force, to take over Ukraine.
But the Russian public does think that NATO is an offensive force.
What? So Russians believe NATO is an offensive force with plans to destroy Russia.
And the Russians...
But they do think...
That the Ukraine people and the Russian people are one people, which is what Putin says.
So Putin has managed to convince much of Russia that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are all one people.
But the Ukrainians don't believe that.
Not even close. So this is one of those cases where you can see the power of propaganda.
Because I need more of a fact check on this, but I believe that the Russian public has access to the Internet, right?
Now, there are some things that are, you know, regulated and some things that are censored.
But generally speaking, the average Russian can get the Internet, right?
And so, if you imagine the average Ukrainian and the average Russian both have access to the outside world, you can see the power of propaganda.
Because the only thing...
You know, it would be one thing...
Like North Korea, to keep your people completely walled off from other information.
Then you can control their thoughts pretty well.
But if people have access to the alternative opinions, you can see how powerful the propaganda is because they've been turned away from accuracy toward inaccuracy.
So look at the difference between Ukrainian and Russian public opinion about this one question.
Are the Ukrainians and the Russians one people?
Only Putin was the one who was pushing the we're all one people thing.
And he successfully did it through propaganda.
You can see how many or what percentage of the public can be moved by something as pure as propaganda.
It's about half.
It's about half.
You can tell any story if you tell it often enough and you control enough of the media that you can get a monopoly on it.
Now, he doesn't even have a monopoly.
That's my point. If he had a monopoly on information, well, then you'd understand how that many people could be convinced.
But he did that.
This is the scary part.
He did that without a monopoly on information.
He did that just with persuasion.
Just with persuasion.
So I would say that the percentage of the public that you can move with pure propaganda is around half.
And the topic would vary.
So I'm sure there are some topics you can get 80%, sometimes 20%.
But I think you could count on getting half of the public, which is enough to start a war.
If you've got half of the public on your side, you can kind of go to war.
That's about enough.
You know, 55% would be better.
So that answered my question.
I was just asking the other day on livestream here, what's the average Russian know about the whole situation?
The other thing is that there are a whole lot of people in Russia who don't think there's going to be an invasion proper, you know, where Ukraine itself has completely taken over.
There are a lot of people in Russia who don't think that's going to happen.
And there are a lot of people in Ukraine.
Like a big, big chunk of Ukraine doesn't think there's going to be an invasion.
But if you ask the people in the United States, wouldn't we say 90% of us who are paying attention?
What do you think it would be?
What do you think it would be in the United States?
Now, it's different if you ask people who are paying attention to the news versus people who are not.
So I guess it's nonsense to ask the general public.
They're not even paying attention.
Yeah, so I think maybe 10%...
Well, let me ask the question here.
How many people on this live stream do not think Russia will try to take over all of Ukraine?
So tell me if you don't believe he's going to try to take all of Ukraine.
Okay, a lot of people.
Now, how many of you were influenced by me?
Because I'm not too confident in my opinion on this.
Was anybody influenced by me?
Because early on, I said, I don't think he's going to do it.
And I'm sticking with my prediction just because the reasons for the predictions haven't changed.
Although I have to admit, it looks a lot like he's going to attack.
I wouldn't bet on me.
Let's put it this way. If I were you, I wouldn't bet on me to be right.
But, just to be consistent, because my reasons for the prediction never changed, I'm going to stick with it.
Now, I'm not going to let my confidence be influenced by the fact that it looks in every possible way exactly like an invasion.
Because bluffing would look exactly the same if you wanted to do a really good job of it.
Bluffing would look the same. What would also look the same is not having decided yet That would look exactly the same.
If the only thing you were doing is pushing for negotiations to get some concessions and just making us think he's going to attack any moment, or even to find out what a response is, because maybe he just is testing public opinion.
Maybe he's just testing the resolve of NATO. But apparently there's a big opinion, and this is a weird one.
A lot of people in Russia think that the United States is trying to trick Russia into attacking Ukraine.
Is there anybody in the United States you've heard besides me say that?
That... I'm not going to say that we're actually literally trying to trick them into attacking Ukraine.
But I've actually tweeted...
That it looks like it.
In other words, what we're observing looks exactly like trying to trick them into attacking Ukraine.
Now, I don't know why we would do that, except that maybe it'd be bad for Russia.
But is it weird that the Russian public actually thinks that?
A lot of them. They think we're trying to trick them into attacking Ukraine.
How in the world is the Russian public Having that opinion and I'm the only one...
Do a fact check.
Have you heard anybody else in America say that it looks like we're trying to trick them into attacking?
Because I didn't even believe my own opinion.
I'm just saying that if you look at the facts, it just looks like it.
I mean, it doesn't seem likely, but it looks like it.
Oh, Cernovich and Posobiec, you've heard that?
That would make sense. Well, I'm not talking about a wag the dog situation.
The wag the dog, I think, that's a more specific situation, isn't it?
All right. Some more interesting factoids here.
Let's get back to this. I saw a good tweet by Eddie Kwan.
He says, if you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the scientists out for lunch.
That one just stops you in your tracks, doesn't it?
If you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the scientists out for lunch.
I don't think I've ever seen anything summarized that well.
Actually, I'll give you one thing.
Once a friend of mine described the comic strip Marmaduke.
Which at that point had been like, I don't know, 50 years of Marmaduke comics.
He summarized the entire life of the comic as a big dog is on something you want.
Now, that was a terribly unfair summary, but it's the only one I've seen that was more succinct than if you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the scientist out for lunch.
You could just be done.
You should have a college course for credit, like full credit.
It's a Harvard class.
And you go into the class and the first day you sit down and they just show you this tweet.
They go, class, if you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the scientist out for lunch.
Class dismissed. Anybody who can remember that tomorrow gets an A in the class.
And there's no coursework.
Because that's all you need to know.
It's all there.
The entire... Classwork of how to understand the media, how to work with it, how to understand science, how to work with it, human motivation.
It's all there in one tweet.
Meanwhile, speaking of the Canadian gulag...
Sure enough, Canada is going hard after the people involved in the protests.
Their accounts are being frozen.
Some of them can't get bail.
Their names are being posted.
The names of people who donated to the truckers are being posted on trees in some neighborhoods so that you can know who to be mad at in Canada.
This is the most chilling thing that I've seen in a long time, and I've seen some chilling things.
So, I don't even know what to say about this.
I mean, it's so bad that, like, words start to escape.
But then you find out that two-thirds of the Canadian public is totally on board with this sort of stuff.
Did you know that? Something like 65% of the Canadian public says they don't like the convoy and they're pretty happy that the government was tough on them.
It's something like that, right?
Two-thirds. So if Canada is getting what it wants by a two-thirds majority, I'm not sure how concerned I should be.
Here's another scary thing.
Homeland Security is looking into battling online misinformation.
And has considered that misinformation could rise to the level of terrorism.
I mean, in effect.
Now, do you believe that?
Do you believe that misinformation, be it intentional or not, I guess the intentional kind would be the worst kind that Homeland Security would care about, but that the misinformation could be like as bad as terrorism?
I would say yes.
I would say yes. You can see the effect in Russia versus Ukraine, that public opinion and misinformation could actually cause a land war in Europe.
It could be a misinformation war.
So, on one hand, I can totally see how Homeland Security thinks information and the control of it is necessary to avoid terrorism.
On the other hand...
There goes your free speech.
Am I right? How in the world can you regulate speech as a tool of terror and expect anybody's going to give you a fair opinion that doesn't have somebody's self-interest in the government involved?
They can't coexist.
You just can't have, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can have government control over information without giving away free speech.
They're just too connected.
I thought Biden was kind of clever in saying that this was a start of an invasion instead of an invasion.
Remember all yesterday there was the argument, is it an invasion or is it not an invasion?
And then Biden comes out and goes, it's the start of an invasion.
And I thought, oh, that's good.
That's actually pretty good.
Because that does actually...
I don't know, it feels like he high-grounded it.
Once he says that, you go, ah, yeah, that's true.
Right? Now...
Because if you thought it was an invasion, he said it's the start of an invasion.
And if you thought it wasn't quite an invasion, you could say, well, yeah, it's just the start.
I thought it was one of the most clever political twists, you know, linguistic tricks I've seen in a long time.
No, I don't think he wrote it.
I mean, I think somebody came up with it.
But, you know, if Trump had said this, I'd think it was clever.
So I'll give Biden this.
Um... So we've got all these sanctions that are going on so far.
Can anybody tell me that they know if these sanctions are powerful or not?
Is it my imagination, or every time we hear about sanctions, isn't there always more to the story?
Like, oh, our sanction is we're going to behead every baby that's born in Russia.
And then you read, but the context is that no babies are actually born in Russia because it's called the Federation of Russian.
There's always some technicality where you think, oh, we got them now.
Ha! Look at those sanctions.
We've got those sanctions now.
And then you turn out that the Nord Stream pipeline is just a delay of certification.
He's not going to be afraid of a delay of certification, because you know what will stop the delay of the certification?
Running out of fuel in the winter.
Yeah. That will pretty much speed up your certification.
You're going to get real flexible with Russia as soon as it gets real cold and you're running out of energy.
So that's like a nothing, right?
Every time you hear that there's a something, somebody in five minutes later is going to say, yeah, but you know, it'd be pretty easy to get around that one.
So I can't even tell as an observer if any of this makes any difference.
So two banks were targeted.
So? Sanctions on Russian sovereign debt.
I don't even know what that means.
Honestly, I don't even know what that means.
I mean, obviously, they'll have trouble refinancing and getting extra debt.
But I don't know the larger ramifications.
Does that mean they just get help somewhere else and it doesn't matter?
You know, was China going to buy up all their debt anyway?
Does it matter? I don't know.
Do you? A ban on purchases of Russian bonds.
I don't know. Was that a big deal?
Nobody else is going to buy them?
How do I judge that? How do they judge it?
Sanctions on Russian elites and their families.
Oh, now we got them.
We got some sanctions on Russian elites.
Of what kind?
Like, what is it that they can't do?
If you've got $10 billion, tell me what you can't do.
Am I right? I mean, travel?
Is there travel restrictions?
Are they not going to let these oligarchs be involved in businesses that we do business with?
Is it even practical to stop?
Would we be shooting ourselves in the foot harder than we're shooting them if we did?
Why is it that we have no idea if these sanctions even matter?
We have no idea.
and the news doesn't know because I don't think there's anybody smart enough to analyze it and give you the story.
There's no region in Ukraine and no age group where a majority of respondents say the Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
That's also from the CNN stuff.
Here's another interesting twist on CNN. Chris Silliza, who's one of their main opinion people, he does a whole piece about how Mitt Romney was right...
When Romney said, as he was running against Obama, he said that Russia was our biggest foe.
And, of course, Obama just slaughtered him in the debate by saying that China was obviously the biggest foe and that Romney's stuck in the past.
Well, now, Salisa is basically saying that Romney was right, that Russia is the bigger problem, and When do you see CNN agreeing with a Republican?
Doesn't that raise a little flag for you?
Is it a coincidence that CNN is telling us that we should focus on Russia as the problem and not China?
That doesn't feel like an independent opinion to me.
I can't read anybody's mind, and I'm not going to allege anything.
I'm just saying that when I read it, it doesn't look like somebody independently said, let me think about this.
With no influence from my corporate masters, let me just say that maybe Russia is the problem and not China.
When CNN has, I believe, more to lose by making China unhappy than Russia.
Because CNN's been anti-Russia, Russia's connected to Trump, Even though it's not forever.
So this feels just more like CNN's wave of propaganda against Russia because you tie them to the Republicans or to Trump.
So how many of you believe that this new study in Nature, so it's been out a few weeks, I guess, and I think I talked about it, that the risk of myocarditis is five times greater if you had COVID... Well, it's five times higher than even the risk of myocarditis from the vaccinations.
Do you believe that data? We don't believe any data these days, but it looks like it was a A credible publication for a study.
But of course you should be skeptical about everything.
Now what would happen if this data stands?
Do you think that there will be future data that will overturn this idea?
The idea being that long COVID is bad for your cardiovascular system.
And that...
You'd be better off getting the vaccination according to this, not according to me, because I'm not the authority here, but according to this data.
Do you think that that someday will change?
Do you think that someday the consensus of science will flip?
Do you think in 20 years we'll look back and say, oh, the vaccinations were the real health problem, not the actual COVID, long COVID? I don't know.
I think this is one of those anything-could-happen situations.
I wouldn't be surprised either way.
But suppose it's true that there's a 60% chance of greater cardio problems.
Doesn't that mean that we could have a lot of extra COVID deaths As much as a year or more after the actual COVID, and therefore they would not be attributed to COVID, but there might be more of those deaths than we've even seen so far.
Am I doing the math right?
Let's say a million people died.
Am I doing the math right?
Help me out here with just the top of the envelope.
If a million Americans died of COVID, But compare that to how many people got COVID but then just recovered.
Now, if the group that got COVID and recovered would have a baseline rate of, I don't know, 10% of them maybe dying of cardiovascular problems every year, what's the number?
5%? Maybe 5% of them were going to die anyway.
Of cardiovascular. But, now let's say that the COVID, let's say this study was accurate.
If the COVID gave them a 50 or 60% higher chance of dying, because, given that cardiovascular is, I believe, the number one cause of death in the United States, fact check me, I believe it's number one.
So the number one cause of death, if that got ramped up by another 50%, And it doesn't kick in for a year or more.
Shouldn't we see over time, maybe it takes five years, but shouldn't we see over time more people dying in the future from the pandemic than from the past?
Are my numbers way off?
What do you think? Now, that's a big assumption, right?
The big assumption is that...
Now, also, you'd have to add to that any side effects from the vaccination itself.
Because if you're looking at pandemic deaths, you do have to count everybody who died because of the shutdowns, everybody who died because of the COVID itself, everybody who died because the vaccination was...
Unfortunately, they were one of the ones who had a bad effect.
You'd have to add all of that together.
So I have a feeling that the COVID death is about double what is reported so far, and that we might lose another million people sooner than they had to go.
You could argue that all that changed is it was a little sooner, but that's true for all of us.
All right. Is there anything else happening?
Well, Jack Posobiec tweeted that 65% of Democrats...
I feel like everything's 65% today.
That's weird. 65% of Democrats approve of Trudeau's crackdown on freedom protesters and freezing of bank accounts.
So that's obviously Democrats meaning Americans.
So I wasn't really completely aware of this until at least halfway through the convoy situation.
I didn't realize that so many Democrats were completely in favor of the government's actions there.
Now, I guess I would have thought that if I'd seen how many people wear masks in California after it's not required.
It is really, really amazing...
To see how many people are wearing masks without it being required.
Now, I'm not going to name names, but I actually witnessed yesterday somebody put on a mask, somebody I know, put on a mask in a public place, and I said, oh, masks are not required, and said individual who shall remain nameless said, I know, I prefer it.
Not for health reasons.
Not for health reasons.
Felt more comfortable.
That's a real thing.
That is a real thing.
Now, people have different reasons.
But everything from people think the...
And by the way, there's a name for...
Have you ever heard of the name mask fishing?
I heard this recently.
Have you heard of mask fishing?
So catfishing is when you pretend you're a different person than the picture.
Mask fishing is when you're attractive but only in this little zone here.
And the rest of it is just a hot mess.
So apparently there are a number of people who are pretty happy wearing masks.
It improves their overall attractiveness.
And that's not a joke.
It's not a joke that it improved some people's overall attractiveness and they wanted to keep it.
And other people, I think, were shy.
And I have to admit that I felt that too.
When I walked into a store without a mask, after having been so acclimated to wearing masks, I actually felt a little naked and exposed.
Has anybody had that yet?
Now, it wasn't enough to make me put a mask on, but I felt a little naked and a little bit exposed.
I didn't have any feelings about virus.
It was just a social feeling.
And I can absolutely...
I'm not embarrassed by pretty much anything.
So it wasn't really embarrassment or anything like that.
Anyway, that is everything I think I wanted to say today.
And you have been witness to the best live stream that's ever happened in the history of the world with some of the most fun people, obviously the sexiest, smartest, most flexible and open-minded human beings of all time.
