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March 3, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:02:59
Episode 1671 Scott Adams: Talking About Ukraine, Kanye, And Why Movies Are All Bad

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Ye fictional decapitation of Pete Davidson Bloomberg article, John Eastman emails A layer of wokeness required in all movies Battle of the Russia narratives Trent Telenko's tire inflation observation Drone usage in the Ukraine war ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the peak experience of your entire life.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and everybody's talking about it.
Now, just before I signed on here on YouTube, I was talking to my subscribers on the Locals platform, and I was about to give them a tip for persuasion.
So I'd like to share it with all of you, since we're all here at the same time.
And the tip is this. One of the most powerful things you could ever say to somebody when you need their help solving a problem and something that you really, really, really need that other person to help you with.
And it goes like this.
I don't think there's any solution to this problem, but I thought I'd run it by you.
Watch how hard somebody will work to solve that problem.
It's almost diabolical.
It's so persuasive.
If you say to somebody, hey, can you help me solve a problem?
What's their first reaction?
Well, I do have other things to do.
There are competing interests.
And I don't know if I'm going to get any payoff from solving your problem.
It's not immediately obvious to me.
You know, of course, many people will just help you if you ask.
So we live in a world where there are lots of helpful people.
But if you've got that one where you know it's going to be a tough sell, you're not necessarily going to get this person's cooperation, tell them the problem can't be solved and that the problem lies strictly within their domain.
Yeah, this is an unsolvable problem, but I thought I'd run it by you anyway.
See if you had any ideas.
That person will work to their death to prove that they can solve an unsolvable problem right in front of you.
So that's your tip for the day.
How would you like to take this experience up a notch?
Yeah, you would.
And all you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of what kind?
Yeah, any kind.
Fellow, with your favorite liquid, I like coffee, and join me now...
For the unparalleled pleasure, it's the dopamine hit of the day.
It's the thing that will make all of you, when you're done, say, thank you.
It goes like this.
Now, don't you feel grateful for sharing that experience all around the world as one?
It was almost like we were a Mycelial network.
Did I say that right?
Mycenium network?
All right, how many of you are nerdly enough to know what that reference is?
Nerds? Super nerds?
What reference is that?
That's right, it's the new Star Trek discovery.
Well, in the news, I saw a clip...
Joel Pollack tweeted this, I saw it in his feed, that Jen Psaki said in 2019, so remember, this is before she was spokesperson for Biden, and she was on Jake Tapper's show, and responding to some questions, she said, quote, there have been a number of moments where even those of us who have affection for Biden think, quote, what on earth is happening right now?
Now, there may be some context missing there.
There often is.
But it makes you wonder if everybody can see it.
However, if I'm being fair, it could also mean that he's just a quirky old guy and that you don't always know what he's thinking when he's talking.
I mean, it could be just that. So it did sound...
It did sound frighteningly as if people were completely aware that he wasn't 100% there.
That is a valid interpretation of this story.
But she might have also been generously saying he's just a quirky old guy.
We don't know what he's thinking.
Have you seen the story about Kanye, who I call Yeh?
Because I'm current.
A lot of you are behind the times, and you still call him Kanye West.
So, so old.
Not me. I call him Ye, because I keep up with things.
So he's got this...
I guess he's dropping an album, and one of the video clips from one of the songs features a claymation...
Animation of, I think, Kanye kidnapping, burying alive, and then decapitating Pete Davidson, who, as you know, has been dating Ye's ex, Kim Kardashian.
Now, there is a great outrage, an outrage, an uproar, an uproar, I say, because such violence, such violence.
Now, of course, this brought Kathy Griffin into the news.
Because Kanye is not the first person who got in trouble for decapitating a famous person in some kind of a fictional content.
So, I don't know how many of you remember, but I might be one of the few people that you saw defending Kathy Griffin with her decapitated Trump head.
How many of you remember that?
And the only reason I'm bringing it up It's because I like to demonstrate consistency in those few cases where maybe I haven't.
And so my consistency is, it's art.
You know, you just can't judge art by any normal standard.
Art is supposed to offend somebody.
It's supposed to make somebody uncomfortable.
I mean, not every time, right?
That's optional. But an important part of art is its offense, right?
That's always been maybe the best part of it, is that maybe it doesn't offend you, but you're pretty sure somebody's getting offended by that art.
I've often said that good writing has to give the reader the impression that somebody could get in trouble.
You know what I mean? It's like if you see a really funny person talking about, let's say, their family life, Don't you think, how does your spouse take that when you go home?
How does your family react to those jokes?
Or are you going to get cancelled for that?
Have you gone too far?
So sometimes the danger is the artists themselves, but other times the joke is on the audience.
Norm MacDonald was famous for that.
Norm would make the audience uncomfortable, and that was the act.
And if you were part of the audience that wasn't uncomfortable, it would be hilarious to you that he'd made the other part of the audience uncomfortable.
Chappelle would be another example of that, yeah.
So as soon as you say, I don't like this art because it's offensive, well, I'm not sure that that makes sense.
You can not like art because art is subjective.
And you could say, you know, that doesn't really fit with the way I think and my sensibilities.
That would be fair. But just the fact that it's offensive, that's art.
Now, okay, somebody says it's lazy art, and I'm going to refute that directly.
Okay. First of all, do you think that a clip of Kanye, or maybe it was just somebody, I don't know, I think it was supposed to be him, decapitating Pete Davidson, do you think that that approximates how Kanye, who presumably wrote it, do you think that approximates his internal thoughts or his feelings?
Don't you think that he had violent thoughts about Pete Davidson in reality, like actual violent thoughts?
Probably. Have you ever put yourself in his head?
Imagine being Kanye and you have to watch image after image and story after story about the woman who probably you still love, mother of your children, with this guy.
Now, I don't have anything against Pete Davidson.
He's pretty entertaining.
But imagine how you'd feel if you were Kanye.
Now, if you could imagine for one moment how Kanye actually feels in real life about that whole situation, and then you see the claymation, would you say to yourself, I think that captured it.
I think he captured the feeling.
And is there anybody in the world who's had like similar feelings that they also have suppressed and hopefully didn't decapitate anybody?
Probably. This is probably hitting home with a lot of people who are mad about somebody in their past, right?
Now, sure, decapitation is the extreme, and I don't think anybody would take it as recommending violence.
I mean, that would be a ridiculous interpretation.
But I would also like to point out that one of the things that makes Kanye Kanye is that he's always an artist, right?
So this is my interpretation of him, right?
So just my personal subjective interpretation.
There are some artists who you imagine to yourself that the moment they walk off stage, they're a different person.
Now, I don't know that this is true, but you take somebody like Drake.
I don't know anything about him, so this would just be my impression as an ignorant observer.
He gives the impression...
That he probably performs on stage, but is maybe very different in his personal life, which is not an insult.
That would be perfectly reasonable.
In fact, probably, you know, the majority.
Probably most people are different in their real life than their acting life.
But there's something about Kanye that makes me think he's Kanye all the time.
In other words, he's never not an artist, right?
He's probably always provoking somebody.
I'll bet he never walks into a room without somebody getting uncomfortable about something.
It's always art.
He doesn't know how to turn it off.
His art is exploding into fashion and design and Donda doing all these creative things.
He's looking at building new homes.
He's making music. He's producing other people's music.
He's just making art all the time.
Now another person I would put in that same category would be Snoop Dogg.
Right? Do you imagine that Snoop is a completely different person when he's not on camera?
I have a feeling he's probably pretty similar.
Like you feel like you're getting the real guy.
And like Snoop, very much like Kanye, is art all the time.
I don't think he turns it off.
That's just who he is.
So I'm pro-Kanye on this, of course, not promoting any violence whatsoever.
Bloomberg is flailingly taking a run at Trump again with this new story, and might I preface this story by saying, the walls are closing in.
The walls are closing in on Trump.
Oh, they got him now.
Wait till you hear how they got him now.
And may I also note that it's worse than Watergate.
Worse than Watergate. My God, it's worse than Watergate.
And the story goes like this.
It's Bloomberg Politics tweeted this.
And there's a story they're talking about.
It says, Donald Trump's advisor, one advisor, John Eastman's emails, may have evidence of at least three crimes the former president and his associates committed, the House January 6th Committee says.
Now, let's parse that sentence.
At least three crimes.
You hear that and you say, wow, if there are at least three crimes, if even two of them are not proven, there's still a crime.
So, am I right?
If there's at least three crimes here, I'm pretty sure that at least one of them's got to be real.
Walls are closing in.
They're closing in.
So, yeah.
But let's read this sentence a little more closely.
It says the emails may have evidence, may have evidence.
Well, haven't you seen the emails?
Why would you say that the emails may have evidence if the story allegedly has seen the emails and knows the contents?
If they don't know the contents...
Should they say that it may have evidence of a crime?
That would seem like that's gone too far.
But if they have seen the emails, why would they say there may be evidence of a crime?
Wouldn't they say, that's evidence of a crime?
It's not proven, but it's evidence.
It's right here. We're looking right at it.
Here's the law. Here's the email.
Look at the email. Look at the law.
It's evidence of a crime.
If there were evidence of a crime, that's kind of how I would write the story.
But suppose there were no evidence of a crime whatsoever.
What could you say that was technically true?
There may be evidence of a crime.
Maybe somebody else can see it.
We don't actually see it.
But, you know, we could be wrong.
There might be some evidence of a crime in here.
We're looking at it and we don't really see it.
Can't really list it.
Couldn't really tell you what it is.
But it may be in there.
I'll shake a little bit.
So when you see this level of weasel wording, every red flag in the world should come out.
All right? Now, what would be one of the examples of one of these things?
It may be a crime. It may be evidence of a crime.
Apparently, Eastman emailed Pence and asked him to delay the certification of the vote for 10 days so that they could find out if there was some irregularity with the election.
Now, this is being treated as possible evidence of a serious crime because it would be proof that That he had tried to interfere with an official, you know, federal process, and that would be a crime.
So can we agree that there probably is some kind of a crime in which if you're trying to interfere or stop a federal process, part of the election especially, I guess, that that might be a crime?
I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
But that sounds like that could be a crime.
Doesn't it? Wouldn't you think?
I would think it would be a crime to stop an official certification process.
There could be a law that says that.
But now, let's look at what his email said.
And let me be his lawyer at court for a moment.
Let's say this goes to court, which seems ridiculous to me, but let's say it does.
And I think Eastman is a lawyer, but let's say I'll be his lawyer.
I'll be the lawyer to the lawyer.
The prosecution says, here you can see him asking for Pence to delay the certification.
That would be a violation of the law that says you can't interfere with these federal processes.
And then it's my turn to talk.
And I would take the email and I'd say, are we reading the same emails?
Because the email that I'm reading says that John Eastman wants to make sure that no laws were broken.
He says that directly. He says they want to make sure that there's nothing illegal that happened with the election.
This is a man asking for the process to be extra careful that it's done right and that no laws were broken.
This is a completely reasonable request not a demand.
If this had been a demand coming from let's say some authority then you could argue that it was illegal.
This was a request.
When does a request become illegal?
Do you think that a lawyer puts an illegal request in an email?
Am I done? Is there anything I have to say after that?
In your experience of the world, some of you are experienced with the legal process, do you think that a lawyer puts an illegal request in an email?
No. Have you ever met a lawyer?
That's the last thing they do.
There's probably no lawyer.
I mean, I'm sure Avenatti probably didn't.
But aside from somebody like that, you know, the lawyers don't put illegal requests in emails.
That's not a thing.
So to imagine that Eastman would have been aware that what he was saying was illegal is kind of a stretch.
I mean, I guess anything's possible, but it's kind of a stretch.
Somebody says idiot lawyers do.
Well, to me, it seems that this is clear evidence that John Eastman thought he was protecting against crime.
So I go to the jury and I say, look, I don't know what you're reading, but this is a guy trying to make sure a crime didn't happen.
Now, he made a request that was turned down because Pence had different reasoning.
That's the whole story.
He made a request to make sure that the law had not been broken...
The request was denied.
That's it. But the walls are closing in on Trump.
The walls are closing in.
What a world, what a world.
Here's an example of why movies are no longer a product that humans need to consume.
There was a time...
When people like you, perhaps, people like me, would even get in a car and drive to a place where you could watch this thing called a movie.
And for two and a half hours, sometimes three, you would be entertained and delighted.
But something happened.
I don't know exactly what happened.
But I think one of the things that happened is that when movies started requiring a layer of wokeness over all of their content...
I think it became kind of just useless.
It doesn't have any use anymore.
Let me give you an example.
Well, first of all, in my imagination, are pretty much all movies designed to make the viewer uncomfortable for the entire experience?
That's true, right? Save maybe, you know, the last five minutes where everything goes right.
But isn't the whole point of a movie to show somebody's, you know, family is at risk?
Why would you want to sit watching somebody's family at risk?
Or somebody lost their money?
Or somebody can't figure out how to eat?
Or somebody's got, like, you know, a serious disease.
It's terminal. Why would anybody want to consume that content?
But this story just made me laugh.
Now, before I tell you this story, I'll give you the context in case anybody's new to me.
I'm not only pro-LGBTQ, but I'm so pro, there should just be more of it everywhere.
In fact, do you know what you never hear?
I was driving through an LGBTQ neighborhood, and Man, that looked run-down.
And the crime?
Let me tell you about the crime in the LGBTQ community.
No. No.
So I'm very pro-LGBTQ, and I think that it should be expressed fully in all content, etc.
So having said that, that's different from forcing it into every kind of content.
That's what ruins the content.
If you force it in there, Well, you lost the art part.
And apparently there's this movie called The Power of the Dog that I haven't seen, but there's a story about some actor making fun of it.
And here's a description of it.
I forget where I saw this.
All right. It's been praised by many for how it, quote, and listen to this sentence, it's been praised by many for how it thoughtfully deconstructs Toxic notions of masculinity and repressed homosexuality against the backdrop of the American West.
Gay cowboys, basically.
So it's a movie, and as a through theme, I guess, gay cowboys.
Now, Brokeback Mountain was a critical success, and apparently this is another critically acclaimed movie.
But I'm going to ask you this.
Is there a lot of demand for gay cowboy movies?
Is there? Like, who are they making the movies for?
And again, I want to be very clear.
Anybody who wants to make a gay cowboy movie, anybody who wants to watch it, I'm all for that.
Like, very for it.
I think everybody should get exactly the entertainment that fits their needs and preferences.
Why not? But...
Doesn't this look like they're just forcing too many variables together?
It's like, I like woke things, and I like westerns.
Why don't we kind of combine these two things?
Now, most art is combining things that exist, right?
So there's nothing wrong with combining things that people haven't combined before.
That's what great art often is.
But I feel like...
There was some disconnect between It just feels like that people are making movies to make a point as opposed to entertain the public in the same way that they used to.
But maybe you can't get 100 people to watch the same movie anymore, so you have to...
It could be that narrow casting is exactly the way to go because there's so much streaming that you can make a movie for exactly the audience that likes gay cowboy movies.
And get like every one of them to watch it, plus every one of everybody else to watch it just to find out what everybody's talking about.
So it might be actually kind of brilliant.
So I'll argue against myself there, just so you've heard both sides.
I've often told you that if you want to predict events in the world, look at insurance.
Because once insurance companies get involved, they tell you what's going to be possible and what isn't.
Because they'll price some things out of the market.
And... So, apparently, that's going to be a big factor with these Russian sanctions.
Because when people look at the sanctions that are being put on Russia right now, the natural way to look at that is to say, okay, what is the exact sanction, and who would that exactly affect?
And then if you're smart, you say, uh-oh, these sanctions actually leave out a lot of the energy part of the economy of Russia, which is the main part of their economy.
So what's the point of leaving out the main part?
Well, here's where the insurance variable comes in.
If you're a company that was involved in any kind of business that involved that big energy part of Russia's business, even if you're not part of the sanctions, do you want to take a risk of getting in business with them, even though it's still legal, and then have something change, as in...
You know, Russia goes out of business or Russia gets more sanctions and suddenly the business you're in gets sanctioned.
So the problem is that the insurance business does those calculations for each of the individual businesses.
So the individual businesses don't have to make individual decisions.
They just look at their insurance rate and they say, uh-oh, if I want to work with this company, my insurance rate just made it prohibitive.
So if you watch the insurance, you'll know what's happening.
And one of the things that's happening is, reportedly, Wall Street Journal says, that people are looking at their risk-reward, looking at the insurance as that reflects it, and saying, even though the sanctions don't really involve my company yet, it could easily involve my company soon.
So I'm just going to get the hell out of there.
So... I would say, as of today, the evidence is that what you thought about those sanctions, however weak you thought they were, you're probably wrong.
They're probably devastating.
And it's because of the second-order effect, where people just say, well, the blast zone hasn't reached me, but it could.
So I'm going to get further away from Russia.
Well, here's the battle of the narratives.
So, narrative one, this is Russia's narrative, or Putin's narrative, is that Putin is denazifying Ukraine.
He's rescuing Ukraine from the shelling from the Ukrainians, and especially the Ukrainian Nazis, as he would say it.
Now... I believe there is truth to the statement that Iranians...
I'm sorry, not Iranians.
I just did a Biden. Ukrainians.
Where is Kamala Harris to mouth the correct word when I need her?
Ukrainians. But it is true that weren't the disputed territories in Ukraine, they were being shelled, right?
Wasn't Ukraine shelling?
Some people, and don't they have some Nazis in their ranks?
So that's not untrue, is it?
It's not the whole story, but, you know, it's true.
It's a little too true.
Let's just say it that way.
So that's the Russian narrative, is that Putin is denazifying Ukraine.
The American narrative, which you are being asked to believe, is that Putin is an unstable, Hitler-like dictator.
He's losing it, and he just has this need to conquer neighboring countries, probably for some ego or psychological reason about national importance and Russia's greatness, something like that.
So that's two different narratives.
Then I see a lot of independent people who are not buying into either of those narratives say that the real problem here is that the West, and the NATO countries especially, tried to turn Ukraine into a security threat for Russia...
Russia has been warning us, Putin specifically, has been warning for 15 years that if you make Ukraine and Georgia NATO, that some bad, bad stuff's going to happen.
And it turns out that a lot of the smartest foreign policy people for decades have been saying exactly the same thing.
Saying, essentially, the rest of the world needs to understand that Russia sees Ukraine as part of Russia, basically, and that if you made that NATO, that's different.
That's different than anybody else going NATO. That is a whole different ballgame, and if you do that, you're going to start World War III. Did you know that the smartest foreign policy people have been saying exactly this for decades?
Decades. It's been commonly known by the smartest people that if we did exactly this, this is exactly what would happen.
And then it did. Interesting context, isn't it?
So that would be the independent narrative that the West basically provoked it.
Now, the West's argument would be any independent country can get to decide who it makes a deal with.
So yes, yes, in some kind of perfect world, Ukraine and any other independent nation could decide who they ally with.
But not in the real world.
In the real world, this is Ukraine and Russia.
That's the end of the story.
Ukraine, Russia. Not like any other analogy.
As soon as you say, well, Ukraine and Russia is a little like, nope, nope, you're completely wrong already.
The moment you make an analogy about Ukraine and Russia to anything else, you're already wrong.
And your thinking is gone.
Although the Cuba analogy is pretty good.
Having said that, the Cuba analogy is pretty good.
Then there's Scott's narrative.
Scott being me.
Nice to meet you. Here's my narrative.
That the CIA has too many Russia experts.
And the Russia experts got to do stuff.
And if the only thing that they did was tell you, you know, Russia looks good.
I don't see a problem over there.
They're acting pretty well.
I think we can just ignore them for a while.
That's not what you do if you're a Russia expert.
If you're a Russia expert, you find problems.
Because that's your job. You're going to find all kinds of suspicious stuff Russia's doing.
And by the way, they probably are doing lots of suspicious stuff.
But the thing you focus on the most is what becomes real in this world.
Do you think that the news that we talk about every day is the important news?
No. Sometimes it is.
But it's the stuff we're talking about.
We're not talking about it because it's important.
It's important because we're talking about it.
You get that, right? Works both ways.
Sometimes we're talking about it because it's important.
A big earthquake, for example.
But lots of times, the news has told us what to talk about, and our talking about it is what makes it important.
So I think that if you put too many Russia experts in the CIA, which we do know they are kind of heavy with Russia experts, that they're going to find problems and ways to bug Russia...
And eventually you're going to end up with exactly this problem.
So that's my take.
My take is that we had a system which guaranteed this outcome.
The goal might have been, I don't know, more freedom and democracies and defending ourselves from Russia.
Like, those might have been the goals.
But if the system was to hire too many Russian experts in the CIA, you're just always going to get this.
All right.
So which of those narratives is winning?
Well, the longer the actual battling goes on, the more the narratives matter because, you know, the real battle there is for the, you know, I guess the mental real estate.
You know, when this is done, let's think about this.
If this is done, let's say Putin actually destroys Ukraine but conquers it.
Can he survive that?
I mean, maybe.
But it would be pretty dicey.
I can't imagine that Russia would survive that, at least as a functioning modern society.
I don't know that they would. Scott is finally waking up.
So it seems to me that Putin can't really just destroy Ukraine.
He doesn't have that option, because I don't think he would survive it.
But he also can't leave.
He's kind of trapped. So somebody's going to have to figure out a way out, and I don't think anybody's figured that out yet.
All right. I'd like to give you an example of sarcasm misuse.
If you would like to use sarcasm, let me tell you the correct way to do it.
It should have something to do with something that somebody else said or thought.
If your sarcasm is something you just made up, it doesn't really land.
It should actually be directed at something that somebody else said or thought.
Otherwise, it looks kind of random.
I'll give you an example.
Chris Buskirk, who is the editor and publisher of AM Greatness, Responded to a tweet in which I mentioned that the Russian invaders might be running out of food and gas fairly soon, specifically the 40-mile caravan that stalled.
And here was Chris's attempt at sarcasm.
LOL. Try getting some news from legitimate sources, not regime propaganda.
When was the last time you were right about something and didn't just repeat what you heard on MSNBC? Do you honestly think tanks need gas and armies need food is a hot take?
Now, that's not how you do sarcasm.
First of all, he has no idea who I even am.
Apparently, This is his first exposure to me.
Because if he thinks I'm repeating MSNBC talking points, he has not spent a lot of time consuming my content, has he?
So problem number one, doesn't even know who he's talking to.
Number two, here's how he frames my argument.
Do you honestly think tanks need gas and armies need food is a hot take?
No. No, I don't think that's a hot take, nor did I say that.
So the sarcasm, if it's about an imaginary person saying imaginary things, well, it doesn't land.
It doesn't land. Here's what I think.
I think, of course, they thought about resupply, but I don't think they're getting it right.
I think it's hard.
That's all. Is anybody disagreeing with the basic statement that resupplying a 40-mile caravan in the middle of a war in enemy territory where you have a well-armed and dedicated ferocious army fighting back?
Does anybody think it's easy to resupply them?
I'm just saying that that might be a little harder than maybe they thought.
But there's some interesting things we're learning about this, what's happening now.
Number one, Jillian Turner reported that there's some European official who thinks he knows that the Chinese government actually asked Putin to delay the invasion until after the Olympics.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that China actually got Russia to delay until after the Olympics?
It looks exactly like that.
Doesn't it? I'm going to say 90% yes.
90% yes.
Because it just looks too much exactly like it.
I don't know that this European official has any inside information.
That might be dicey.
But I don't think there's any doubt about it.
I mean, the timing would be too weirdly coincidental.
Here's a question I've been wondering about.
I've been reading that we know almost nothing about Putin because Putin's inner circle is impossible to penetrate.
That as good as our intelligence is, we can't really get inside Putin's enclosed circle.
But somehow, despite not being able to get into Putin's inner circle, our intelligence knew exactly what Russia was going to do and when.
What's going on here? How is it that we knew exactly what Putin was going to do and when, so much so that...
And I'm going to give the Biden administration a lot of credit for this.
A lot of credit.
This is full-throated credit.
There's not going to be any but, you know, but Trump could have done it better or anything like that.
This is just full credit.
The way they laid out Russia's plan...
About the false flags and what they were going to do was brilliant.
It was brilliant. And to a large degree, it's why the world is uniting.
Because it was so transparent, and the United States made it so extra transparent, that it really framed the thing...
Basically, the United States framed the situation first.
And whoever frames it first has a huge advantage.
And... That was brilliant.
The way the Biden administration handled that part of it leading up to the war was just brilliant.
There's no qualifier on that.
That was just plain brilliant.
But how'd they do it?
Do you think that we have maybe better intelligence on the inside than Putin knows?
Or it could be AI. You're right.
AI could have done it. If AI didn't do it, you could imagine that it could do it just by recognizing assets and the movement of assets.
So, yes. It could be that it was just the movement of assets.
It could be that Russia is so predictable that this is exactly the way they attacked Finland.
So if you were to look at 1939-1940, Stalin attacking Finland...
They're using the same playbook.
So it could be that our intelligence people were just smart enough to know that you don't have to have any intelligence on it.
You just look what they always do, and then you say, well, they always do this, and they always do it in this order, so we'll just tell you in advance what they're going to do, and then they did it.
Because they always do it, and they always do it in that order.
And part of it is always the, we're definitely not attacking you, we're saving you.
So they always do the, no, we're not conquering you.
No, we're liberating you.
We're saving you. We're saving you from yourselves.
And then they'll do the false flag attacks.
So, yeah, it happened just the way they said.
So, there are some more interesting things that came out of this, and really interesting, actually.
So how would you like to be in a 40-mile military convoy that's stalled in enemy territory?
And apparently the heavy equipment can't really get off the paved road because the mud and stuff is such that they won't get out of it.
So you have to be in a three-wide column for miles and miles.
You know, some of it is spread out, but a lot of it is concentrated.
You can't go forward, you can't go backwards, and you can't go sideways.
And you probably can't get food, and you probably are having trouble getting gas.
And that's not your biggest problem.
I think... I saw a tweet by an expert, and I tweeted it if you want to see the details in my Twitter feed.
And there's a gentleman...
Called Trent Telenko, whose job in the U.S. Army had been similar to what there must be in the Russian Army, somebody in charge of maintenance for the big equipment.
And here's a little detail that is really interesting.
I don't know how much this explains, but it could explain all of it.
And he saw a picture, Trent did, of one of the wheels coming off one of the German vehicles and stuck in the mud.
And he describes how big vehicles like this have a tire inflation system so that the tires of this big equipment can be inflated and deflated as they go.
So they don't have to get out and put air in them.
They can inflate and deflate for the type of terrain they're on.
Now, I imagine it would be harder inflation for...
You know, the road and maybe lighter inflation if they're in something where they need some traction.
Just guessing. I don't know. But the problem is if you don't exercise the tires and that system, it gets brittle.
And by exercise, I mean if you don't have actual use for the vehicles, you have to make sure that you inflate the tires and deflate them on a regular basis.
Trent was looking at just one picture, but one picture of a Russian vehicle with that maintenance problem and recognized it as a poor maintenance problem.
In other words, it looked like that vehicle had not been what they call exercised, meaning had not been inflated and deflated to keep the tires in the right direction.
Non-brittle state, I guess.
Likewise, he mentioned that if you park the vehicles where the sun can reach the tires, that it damages the tires.
And again, makes them too brittle.
So you have to rotate how you're parking the vehicles, and you have to exercise them.
And the suggestion is that the Russian army was not competent enough It's possible that that 40 miles of convoy has enough bad, poorly maintained stuff that it really can't go anywhere.
It may never be able to go forward.
It may never be able to go back.
It may never be able to go sideways, because that's where the mud is.
It may already be captive.
In related news, Turkey has delivered what they call a batch of new drones to Ukraine.
Ukraine says they're already using these new drones, the batch, we don't know how many is in the batch, the batch, to attack columns or convoys.
I guess they call it one of those.
Now, I don't know if that includes the 40-mile column, because isn't it weird that there's a lack of reporting about that being attacked?
Here's what I think.
I think our intelligence has determined that they trapped themselves, and they could just leave them there.
I think there might be a point where that column becomes hostages.
Because you can see that the Russian army is looking to siege or starve Kiev, and you can see that the Russian armies have cut off supply lines of the Ukrainian army in the south.
So you have sort of a starvation standoff here.
I believe that the Ukrainians could destroy the entire column.
40 miles of Russian military.
I think they could destroy it all now.
Because I think they're trapped.
I don't think they can go anywhere.
And obviously, if the drones are operating, have you heard of any drones being shot down?
I mean, maybe. But apparently they have enough drones in the sky.
Now, how many is a batch?
How many is a batch of drones?
And how many would you need?
Because I think Ukraine had 20, some said 10, drones.
But now they have a new batch.
What is the theoretical number of drones it would take to guarantee that Russia couldn't conquer and hold Ukraine?
There is a number.
How close are we? And that number could be 20.
Because if the Russians can't get off the paved road with their heavy equipment, I think 20 drones could actually hold the whole country if they can't shoot them down.
Now, if the first thing the drones do is take out the anti-aircraft, which I imagine is possible, right?
Can't they take that out first?
If you take the anti-aircraft first...
You just take your time with the rest of it.
And I would think that even if you lost five of your 20 drones, you could pretty much take out the entire column.
Now imagine, if you will, that the armed citizens know where this 40-mile column is and that they may already, in towns and locations all around there, already getting closer to it.
How many citizens with AKs on both sides of a convoy would it take to take out professionals?
I mean, maybe you can't do it.
Maybe the professionals just have too much firepower.
But I think...
Yeah, I think that the convoy is going to have some trouble.
And it may be in so much trouble that Ukraine could actually trade the life of the convoy for some other accommodations.
This is insane.
You know, I don't think I've ever said anything that somebody didn't think was insane.
At least nothing in public.
Almost anything that I say in public.
Any prediction. Somebody says, this is absolutely crazy.
I mean, you've lost it now.
Every time. It doesn't matter the topic.
It doesn't matter what I say. Every single time.
Now, could I be wrong?
Yes. Let me say as clearly as possible.
Because somebody's going to say, Scott, you said Ukraine was going to win, and then Russia won.
No. No.
I'm not saying Ukraine is going to win.
I think that's completely unpredictable.
I am saying, and have said from the beginning, that Russia doesn't know how hard the fight will be, and largely because of modern weaponry.
Would you say that my initial contrarian opinion, that Russia would run into surprisingly good modern weaponry and get bogged down, would you say that was accurate?
I mean, it was more accurate than all the experts who said it would take 48 hours.
Can you compare my non-military expertise to the military experts and tell me how I'm doing so far?
So far, so far, the military experts said it should have been over in 48 hours.
I said, no, it's going to be way harder because of modern equipment.
And Russia maybe has never faced this modern equipment.
Have they ever faced modern drones?
Where did Russia ever go up against modern drones?
Where did they ever go up against this many stingers and anti-tank weapons?
Nowhere, right? Am I correct?
Am I correct that no Russian army has ever faced these weapons?
I think I'm right.
Except in small amounts, right?
Well, in Syria they would have small amounts, but nothing that would make a difference.
So I ask you again.
I want you to give me a direct answer.
I said that the Russian army would be surprised by the effectiveness of modern weapons.
The experts said in 48 hours they would own Kiev.
Who was right? All the military experts or me?
Say it directly. Who was right?
It's funny how many of you are avoiding that question.
Somebody says the experts.
Some are saying me.
Right? Now, again, do the experts have a problem?
Is there something about experts that makes them so often wrong?
What is that?
I mean, I'm not saying the experts are always wrong.
That would be ridiculous. The experts are usually right.
It's just in these weird little fog of war situations, they just seem to fall apart completely.
You know, whether it's the fog of war or the pandemic or the fog of war of Ukraine, I think the experts just completely fall apart under that scenario.
Now, I'm not saying that I could always beat the experts.
I'm just saying that I did this time.
I mean, I would judge my own performance on that prediction as the only person in the world who said it and the only person who was right.
Is that too far? I literally saw no other person say what I said, that the modern weapons would surprise the Russians.
Now I've got another question for you.
Is operating a drone something that's so easy, like driving a car, that once you teach somebody to do it, well, they're all about as good as any other drone operator?
What do you think? Or do you think that there are some drone operators who are like really, really good, like really, really good, and others barely can keep the thing in the air?
Because that would be more common, right?
You would expect there to be a pretty big range of how good somebody could be.
Second question. If you accept that there's probably a big range in talent of drone operators, what are the odds that Ukraine had one of the good ones, who was actually in the Ukrainian military, and had that training, and that there were enough of those trained experts to operate all the new drones because they'd never had this many drones?
Do you think Ukraine had way more drone operators than they had drones?
Would that make sense?
Do you think that they would have three drones and 25 operators?
What do you think?
No. Question three.
Is it possible to detect who is operating a drone and from what country and what nationality they are?
Maybe. I mean, that's the actual question.
Can anybody know who's operating a drone?
Somebody says yes.
All right, let's say that we can know who's operating it.
Let's say we can know that.
Do you know who's sitting in the chair?
Do you know what army they work for?
Let's say the best...
I'm just going to give you a speculative possibility.
Let's say the best drone operators in the world...
We're not Ukrainians.
Maybe they were Turkish, because these are Turkish weapons, right?
Maybe the Turks are the best operators of that equipment.
Could the Turks say, you know, this drone operator, he's in our army, but he's going to resign today.
So here it is.
Here's the paper. So our best drone operator, he just resigned, so he's not in our army.
But there are a lot of volunteers signing up to work for Ukraine.
And if this guy decides to volunteer, well, that's on him and that's on Ukraine.
He can still sit in this seat.
We'll let him sit in this chair, but he does not work for us.
And these drones that he's operating, we sold them.
These are not Turkish drones.
Is it possible that NATO is running the drones?
Maybe not on paper.
But do you think that the Ukrainians are running the drones?
Really? I feel like NATO is already in the war.
Could be a problem.
It's impossible to prove, I would guess, because we would just, you know, deny it and that would be the end of it.
But I don't see the Ukrainians being the drone operators, I'm just saying.
All right. Time is the main variable.
We'll see who starves first, the Russian army or the people in Kiev.
And I think that's going to come down to the biggest thing.
And then here's another opinion that I want to run by you.
This is from Deadbeat.
That's his Twitter name, Deadbeat.
He says, imagine these various actions taken to annoy the Russian people, talking about the sanctions, are going to do anything but unify them against the West.
What do you think? Do you think the Russian public will side with Putin because they'll feel attacked by the whole world?
Or do you think that the Russian public will want to get rid of Putin because he's the cause of all their problems?
It could go either way, right?
It's easy to imagine it go either way.
But here's the way I would take it.
I see the sanctions as a communication tool, in addition to being sanctions.
But that the Russian public is probably finding out for the first time what the hell is going on and who their leader is.
So I think people in other countries may have known who Putin was in terms of, you know, him doing something like this.
And may have known what was happening in Ukraine, closer to the truth.
But I don't think the Russian public knew it.
And I think it would be one thing...
So here, I'm going to take a side.
If one country, let's say the United States, had put sanctions on Russia, what would the Russian public's view be?
Probably pro-Putin, because that would feel like one country attacking their country.
But what happens if almost all the countries in the world vote against you and decide to sanction?
What if all the other countries, even poor Switzerland, what if you hear that basically everybody except the worst countries in the world are against you?
Then do you say, wait a minute, the problem is everybody in the world is wrong and Putin is right while you can't eat?
Would that be your thought?
Would you think, oh, everybody in the whole world, they're all wrong, but my leader, he's right, so I'll back him.
I don't think so. I don't think so.
I think when you make it everybody in the world and even China barely has your back...
I think the Russian public catches on.
So I would see the sanctions as a communication tool and a way to frame the situation such that the Russian public is going to know what's happening one way or the other.
Somebody says India, China, and Africa are on Russia's side.
India isn't on Russia's side.
I mean, I don't know, but I don't think so.
The troll activity is just so weak.
Thank you.
So weak. There should be some kind of troll...
I was just reading one of the troll comments on there.
Here are the worst troll comments.
Because one of my cartoon characters is called the pointy-haired boss, and he's dumb.
The dumbest criticism I ever get is, oh, I guess Scott is really the pointy-haired boss.
Well... And I think to myself, did you really think nobody said that after 33 years of me being in business?
Like, you thought that would be a good addition to the conversation.
And now I just saw somebody in the comments say, Scott wrote a book called Loser Think, and he didn't realize that his own thinking was Loser Think!
Seriously. You can't troll better than that?
Soylent Green? The Matrix.
Why don't you just do every NPC bumper sticker frickin' statement in the world?
I could do a micro lesson that had a troll better.
I don't want to do that because somebody used it against me.
He's really cat-burnt.
Soil and green Matrix.
And the other one is an apologist.
If you want to be the lowest level troll, call somebody else an apologist.
Just because they have a different opinion.
That is such a low level of criticism.
Here's the other one that's a low level of criticism.
Should have happened sooner.
As I often say, everything good should have happened sooner.
That's literally saying nothing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and who is surprised?
And who didn't already think that the good thing should have happened sooner?
That's nothing. Yeah, sycophant, yeah.
All those words are just NPC words.
Maybe that's what we should call them instead of trolls.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, this is good.
Here's what we're going to do. I think we should stop calling them trolls because trolls is kind of cool.
People buy troll dolls.
People watch movies that involve trolls attacking hobbits.
Trolls are kind of cool, right?
Kind of cool. But NPCs?
Not cool. There are definitely people who call themselves trolls all the time.
They call themselves trolls in their own profile.
I'm a troll. Trolling since 1998 or whatever.
But nobody calls themselves an NPC. Because an NPC is like, you really don't matter.
But these comments really don't matter.
They're not useful or insightful.
They're not even insulting. They don't even do what a troll is trying to do.
Even a troll is trying to at least get a reaction.
But the NPCs can't even do that.
Soylent green... Silent green.
All right. Yes, for those of you who don't know, NPC means a non-player character.
Somebody in a video game who's not central.
They're just background characters.
Hey, who's the hypnotist?
Stop that. I see your hypnosis sentences.
An NPC is seemingly a human that is unable to think objectively.
Well, I would say unable to do anything but reiterate bumper sticker sayings.
So I would say that an NPC basically runs on a program of bumper stickers.
They can only say what...
Depending on what side you're on, they can only say what Rachel Maddow said or what Hannity said or what somebody else said.
Worse than Watergate, yes.
NPC. NPC. Alright, that's all I've got for now.
I think you'll agree that this is the best live stream you have ever seen in the entire world.
And the only thing that you can say about it is, I imagine even tomorrow will be even better.
Because it probably will be.
Now, watch all of the news today.
And see if you get a better take on the Ukraine situation.
Now again, I want to be very careful and say...
I don't compare myself to the experts, but we do have an expert problem in this country of them continuously being wrong.
I'm not making that up.
Can you back me that the experts are having a terrible year?
I mean, I'm not imagining that, am I? It looks like they're having a bad year.
Now, part of it is because we notice when they're wrong, right?
When the experts do everything right, we don't notice.
But I do think that they got more wrong this time.
We all agree that the experts are usually right.
Usually right. But when there's a fog of war situation, I think it just all goes to hell.
That's my take. That's a good comment on locals.
The comment, I'll read it, is that this was an excellent show with a handsome host.
And that's no NPC there.
That's somebody who's thought it through.
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