Episode 1686 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About Hunter's Laptop And All The Fake News About The Fake News
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Content:
NYT says Hunter laptop is real
"50 intel officials" should explain their error
America is controlled by our intel agencies
Both Russia and Ukraine have good points, concerns
Arnold Schwarzenegger's visual persuasion
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Because we're going to be talking about Hunter's laptop and all kinds of stuff.
And somebody in the comments just said, I think I'm pregnant.
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It's the dopamine hit of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Some call it the sultry sip.
But no, it's the simultaneous sip.
Go. Ah.
Ah. What's a binger?
Somebody's going to do a simultaneous binger?
Is that like a... Well, I can't even imagine.
Well, according to Rasmussen, Republicans have an 11-point lead against a generic Democrat on the congressional ballot, with only 235 days left before the midterms.
And if the election were held today, 50% of likely U.S. voters would vote for the Republican, Well, only 39% would vote for the Democrat.
Does that tell you that the Republicans are going to win everything?
The trouble with this kind of a survey is that while it accurately captures what people are thinking, it doesn't accurately capture how they act.
Because how they act is they say, yeah, all these politicians are terrible.
Well, except mine. Mine is good.
But all those other ones in the other states, they're bad.
So as long as people vote for their own incumbent, which they typically do, I don't know that it's going to make that much difference that there's a big generic lead, because nobody votes for a generic candidate.
So I'm going to say this is highly encouraging for Republicans, but I don't think it's predictive and sort of a straight line.
I mean, you could have individual match-ups that are more important than the generic feeling of things.
If all the candidates who run are, you know, the best Democrat candidate against a second-tier quality Republican, then the Democrats would win everything.
I don't think the polls are going to tell you that.
Well, apparently the U.S. is getting close to announcing some kind of Iran deal, which the experts say is worse than the last one.
Do you believe it? Maybe.
I mean, it's easy to believe things got worse just because we have such bad attitudes about our government.
So that's easy to believe.
But I don't think we know anything about it.
The Iran deal is going to be another one of those big confusing black boxes where everybody will think they know something about it, but they don't.
They don't know what's going to happen.
They don't know if it'll work. They don't know what the details are.
But I can't see lifting their terrorist designation as long as they're still doing terrorist-y things.
How in the world can the sanctions be lifted?
And how could we not call them a terrorist organization if they act like it?
Or are they not acting like it?
Has anything changed in Iran, or by Iran's behavior, since Soleimani was killed?
I haven't heard anything of you.
So I haven't seen any news stories that says, you know, Iran used to do a lot of adventurous stuff, and they still do.
I haven't heard that story.
But I also haven't heard the story that they stopped doing it.
Is it possible that Soleimani was the terrorist part of it?
And maybe we just took him out?
And maybe the rest of the government wasn't so big on helping other people do stuff in other countries?
Maybe. But have you seen any kind of news either way?
Because I can't tell you in the last...
They bombed our embassy. Do you believe that?
Do you believe that? Do you believe that Iran bombed our embassy, or I don't think it was an embassy.
It was some sort of official structure, though.
Do you believe that they bombed our embassy and we just kept talking to them about this deal?
I don't. I don't believe that at all.
I don't believe that the U.S. knows they bombed our consulate, I guess it was.
You believe that they know Iran bombed our consulate, and we're just still talking to them about this deal?
That doesn't make sense.
Does it? You do believe that.
All right. A lot of people say yes.
That even though they bombed the consulate, we're still talking to them.
I mean, it's possible.
It's not impossible.
It's possible. But it seems to me that the first thing they would have done is said, let's back off, and this isn't the right time.
I mean, I think at the very least they would have said, we're going to wait a month before we get serious about this to see if you can stop doing this sort of thing.
You can ask your friend, he's right there.
Iran said they did it.
Well, probably there's a lot about this story we don't understand.
Do you think? In fact, I don't think we know enough about the whole Iranian negotiations, or maybe nobody does, to even have a good opinion on it.
Because I don't know what Iran's been doing lately.
I don't believe the news, just in general.
Do you believe the news?
If the news told you that Iran bombed the consulate, do you believe it because it was in the news?
I mean, it might be true, but I wouldn't believe it because it's in the news.
This is exactly the kind of thing that's not true.
If you're going to put it in a category, is it in the category of things that usually pan out to be true, or is it in the general category of things that later you find out, well, that wasn't exactly right, there was more to it, might have been a military facility there, who knows?
Might have been an accident, who knows?
Maybe it's true this time.
Maybe this is the first true story we got this year.
Could be. Could be.
So China is apparently doing this balancing act where they're trying to be friendly to Russia but not help them too overtly.
And apparently China's done some things which...
We're not exactly good for Russia, but it looks like China's deal is going to be consistent, and I have to say I respect it.
I've got to say that the way China handles the way they talk about their relations with other countries, they do that well, and they do it consistently, and their message is always the same.
We don't want war.
We want to be in business.
No war, more trade.
Am I wrong that China is very consistent about that?
It's like, no, we don't want to be involved in this.
We just want to sell you stuff and buy stuff.
That's it. So I think that they did the usual China good job of saying, hey, don't get us involved.
This isn't our fight.
But did you think that China was ever going to actually directly help Russia in the war?
No. How many of you thought China was because our news told us that they were thinking about it, right?
How did the news know that they were thinking about it?
Was it dozens of intel sources?
Is that how we heard?
Was it all of our intel sources?
I never believed that China was thinking of directly helping militarily or even directly backstopping them to the point where it would be effectively a military assistance.
And apparently they're not.
The indications are that they're not going to do anything too special for Russia.
Now, this might explain why.
Even though Russia and China do a lot of business, the total amount of business that China does with Russia is about 2% of China's business.
So 2% of China's trade is with Russia.
A lot of it is with America and the European Union.
So what's good for China is to stay friends with whoever's buying most of their stuff and to maybe be a little ambiguous with somebody who's only a 2% impact.
So if you ever thought that China would bet its entire economy to help Russia beat Ukraine, which is not even worth doing, at least from China's point of view, it has no benefit, Why would China risk its own economy?
Because they know that the sanctions would start to move into anti-China stuff if they do that.
Why would they do that?
To help Russia conquer Ukraine, of all things.
They couldn't have less interest than that.
So, I think that was always fake news, and I'm going to say that the The intel, if you can call it that, that said that China was going to help Russia, probably was just fake, fake intel, again.
How many times have you seen that?
All right. So New York Times has confirmed that Hunter's laptop is real.
I was a little surprised that that's still a story.
I thought everybody knew it was real, but I guess not.
Is it really a story that the New York Times says is real?
Because I wasn't aware...
I mean, obviously, you know, Jen Psaki and Biden and everybody said it was Russian disinformation, but we know Democrats lie and we know politicians lie.
But didn't the public already know this was real?
I haven't seen a poll...
But was there anybody in the public who thought it wasn't real?
I thought they all knew it was real.
But maybe I'm surprised.
Maybe the mainstream news was so strong with their brainwashing that they actually convinced the public it wasn't real.
Did that happen? Yeah, there is a phenomenon, which is that the news doesn't become real until the New York Times says it's real.
That's the thing, by the way.
If you don't know how the media landscape works, the paper of record, as they like to call it, is in the New York Times.
So when the paper of record says it's true, then everybody else can comfortably say it's true.
Well, the paper of record says it's true, so that's basically like our fact check.
So now they've said it's true.
Yeah, and the story was blocked by Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
Everything about this story is everything that's wrong with the world, or the country, maybe.
Maybe let's just say the country.
Let me deal with the...
There's a good comment there I wanted to deal with.
But remind me to talk about prednisone after I talk about Hunter's laptop.
Now, of course, as we look back on how this was presented to the public, we were told that dozens of former intel officials, I think 50 of them, signed a document saying that it was Russian disinformation, and rather obviously so.
Rather obviously, according to these 50 people who didn't look at it.
And now Richard Grinnell...
A Republican Senate must, in all caps, a good use of all caps in this case, a Republican Senate must hold hearings with all 50 of the people who signed that letter three weeks before the 2020 campaign.
Because the timing...
They all said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, and they didn't have a single piece of intel to suggest it.
That is correct. I do believe that the Republican Senate should talk to every one of those intel people and say, why did you say this with no information?
Was this purely to influence the election?
Because it looks like it was purely to influence the election, which would mean that the 2020 campaign was rigged by our own intel.
Is rigged the wrong word?
Because it's corruption.
I mean, based on what we could tell, maybe if they testify, they've got some story that is not obvious to any of us, that would suggest that maybe they were legitimately fooled.
Legitimately fooled.
Do you think they could make that case?
Yeah. What is the definition of rigged?
Let me look it up right now.
Rigged. Rigged.
Because I'm not sure if misinformation gets into that.
Okay, to rig, as in crime, okay.
To manage or conduct something fraudulently so as to produce a result of a situation that is advantageous to a particular person.
So did somebody manage or conduct something fraudulently?
Yes. The news.
Yes, the news was managed fraudulently, right in front of us, to create a situation favorable for one candidate, an advantage, in an election which had great consequences.
So yeah, actually, according to the New York Times, the 2020 election was rigged.
That's kind of big.
Trump was right. Now, he wasn't talking about only this.
I mean, he had other allegations, which, you know, we'll have to wait on some of those, or maybe we'll never know.
But if 50 intel people lied...
To change the result of an election, or at least that would be the presumed intention of that, the 2020 election was rigged, and the paper of record just confirmed it.
What do you think of that?
But the way I just said it will not be the way the public hears it, right?
They're never going to hear that.
They're just going to hear with their own team all the time.
But yeah, wow.
The New York Times confirms that the 2020 election was rigged by the Intel community.
Amazing. But we're so numb to bad behavior at this point, it won't make any difference.
Do you remember...
Speaking of Russian disinformation or the United States creating disinformation about Russian disinformation, do you remember when Russia spent almost nothing to make a bunch of memes for Facebook that if you saw the memes, and I have, you'd know two things.
Number one, you don't know anybody who saw them.
They weren't memes you've ever seen.
Number two, they looked like they were developed by a high school project.
Meaning that there was nothing about the memes that suggested any kind of persuasion skill whatsoever.
Trust me on that.
That's sort of my domain.
There was no persuasion quality to them whatsoever.
And they spent, what, $100,000?
Which is nothing.
So the whole story about Russian election interference was technically true, but the part they leave out is that it's a little bit like pissing in the ocean.
Did Russia piss in the ocean?
True. Did the shoreline show any difference?
Not so much.
No, not so much. Did the sea level rise when Russia pissed in the ocean?
Technically, yes.
Not enough that you can measure.
So that's sort of what the Russian election interference was then.
And how do we know there was so much Russian interference then?
Well, I believe we heard that from plenty of current and former intel officials, am I right?
Current and past intel officials.
So pretty much everything we've heard about Russia is disinformation from our own side, often disinformation about their disinformation.
Just to complete the picture.
So spot the pattern.
It's pretty clear that the United States is now completely controlled by its own intel agencies.
I just said that like as a matter of fact.
Did you like how I did that?
I just said the most provocative thing that's ever been said in the United States.
But I said it like a matter of fact.
And you just said, yeah, that's true.
That the United States government is captured by our intel.
Now, I have a theory that all governments eventually are captured by their own intelligence agencies.
Because it has to happen.
Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
That if you just take any situation where there's a strong intelligence entity, that if you wait long enough, that intelligence entity will control the government that hired it.
Right? You can't really go any other way.
I mean, there's a reason that Putin's in charge of Russia, right?
Going from the intel agency to running the country is a pretty direct path in a dictatorship, for sure.
Yeah. At this point, it does look like the U.S. government is essentially an intelligence agency cutout, or just a puppet.
That's what it looks like. Now, I probably get kicked off of social media if I say, I have proof.
That's what it is. I'm just saying that based on everything we've seen just in the public domain, that would be the reasonable interpretation.
Am I wrong? Who disagrees with me?
It's a reasonable interpretation based on public information, no special research needed, that our intel agencies are running the government.
Effectively. You know, on anything important.
Certainly on anything that involves foreign countries.
Maybe far less for domestic stuff.
Yeah, let me modify that.
I doubt our intel agencies are having much impact, if any, on any domestic policy.
Because they don't care. But I think they have a lot of impact.
Maybe it's the only impact on foreign relations.
So that's my take.
All right. So...
Trump is right again.
Starting to become my best prediction that Trump would look better every day he was out of office.
Do you all believe it yet?
How many believed me when I said it?
Do you remember when I said it in the beginning?
I said he would look better every day he's out of office?
I'll bet you didn't believe it, right?
All right, let me talk about Prednisone.
There was a Mike Cernovich tweet today that said, among other things, That Putin has a worldview, so if you're just looking at him as a crazy person, you may have been hypnotized or brainwashed by the media.
I'm adding that last part.
The point being that listening to Putin, you don't get the sense that he's insane necessarily.
He's obviously stressed.
But he has a worldview that holds together, even if you disagree with it.
And therefore, he's not operating from insanity.
He's operating from a different set of priorities or, you know, a sense of what's important.
Now, when Mike Cernovich said in that tweet, he said that if you're thinking that prednisone is the explanation, then you're not a serious person.
And I've said he looks like somebody who could be on some kind of drug, and that prednisone would be a good guess.
Because prednisone, my experience with it, because I took too much of it in 2019, and it just changed my personality.
I mean, I could feel it in real time.
Those of you who are watching me on livestream, can you confirm, I think you can, can you confirm that when you knew I was on prednisone, because I told you publicly, that I was more aggressive?
Can you confirm that?
Based on just observation.
I mean, you don't know what I'm thinking.
I know a number of you are going to say yes, but I want those of you who didn't witness it to hear from the ones who did.
You saw me every day, and you saw me on prednisone, and you saw me off, and I don't think you could miss the difference.
Am I right? The difference wasn't small.
The difference was striking.
And I could feel it in myself.
So while you were observing I was different, I could feel it too.
I felt it maybe even more strongly than you could observe it.
I felt fundamentally like a different person.
In other words, even...
If I always had that personality that I had under prednisone, I would think I was a different person.
But of course, the prednisone goes away and I go back to my normal situation.
So I'm going to...
Agree with Cernovich.
But I'm going to say this.
If you think the entire story is bred in its own, you're wrong.
So I agree with him on that.
It's not the entire story.
I'm not saying that he doesn't have, or that Russia doesn't have some historical claim or interest to Ukraine.
That's true. They do. And I'm not going to say that they don't have any military or defense...
Because they do. Right?
I mean, you could, if you were to write on paper, write an essay, try to write it from Putin's point of view, does he have good reasons, or just reasons, to do what he's doing?
I think you could make a case for it.
You could make a non-crazy case for what he's doing.
It's not working out.
So you could say that he's failing.
That's a separate question.
But he had a reason. Here's the question.
If you have a reason to punch somebody, do you always do it?
If you have a reason to punch somebody, do you always do it?
The answer is no. Now I put you on prednisone, and I give you too much of it.
Now you still have the same reason to punch somebody.
There's no change. You had the same reason to punch somebody.
Now do you take the punch?
Maybe. Maybe you do.
So definitely I agree with Cernovich that you can't say this is a prednisone-only or any drug.
You can't say it's a drug-only situation.
It's not, of course.
It's Russia has a good point.
Ukraine has a good point.
That's why there's a war. If they didn't both have a good point, it wouldn't look like this.
Now, I'm not saying I agree with Russia's point or agree with Ukraine's.
I'm saying that from their points of view, they can make an argument that holds together on paper.
Not everybody can do that.
I'm just saying that if you add prednisone to any situation that's already tense, it's going to get tenser.
It's not going to get more relaxed.
So it is possible, but there is no direct evidence that I've seen, It's possible that prednisone is a variable.
I would go as high as 20% possibility that it's either prednisone or some medication is changing Putin's personality in his judgment.
I'd give it a 20% chance.
But I'll tell you, he looks like he's a guy who's different.
Yeah, he looks like a guy who's changed.
Now, when I say that, I'm not saying that, well, let me be as careful as I can with my words.
I'm not intentionally telling you something that I don't believe to be true.
In other words, I could be wrong that Putin is on some kind of drug.
I could easily be wrong.
But I honestly think he is.
And I have a strong feeling about it.
I have a strong feeling that he's on drugs of some kind that's affecting his behavior and that I can identify it just by his mannerisms and his look.
Now, you know that there's a lot of science that says that people can identify people who are sick just by looking at their face.
Did you know that? That's an actual thing.
It can be tested. Now, people don't get it right every time.
But if you showed two faces and one was sick and one wasn't, the humans can pick it up like that.
Because we're designed to identify other humans who are good for reproduction.
And you're going to be less likely to want to reproduce with somebody who looks sick than someone who looks healthy.
So we can pick out healthy just like that.
We're really good at it.
And I look at Putin and I say, I don't see health.
I see bad health.
Doesn't mean I'm right, but humans are good at this.
The only case I'll make is that we are good at it, and he does look sick, or something's going on.
All right. Why did our intel know that Putin would invade long before he had 150,000 people surrounding the country?
At that point, it was a little more obvious.
But... How did our intel get that one so right when they got so many other things wrong?
What do you think that is?
Now, you're going to say it wasn't hard because Russia had said enough things to indicate it and they had started massing troops.
So really, they were just looking at what was happening.
So it wasn't that much of a prediction.
But I want to give you at least one other possibility without evidence...
So there's not any evidence to what I'm going to say.
It's just in the possibility set because we don't know what's going on.
One of the possibilities is the reason our intel people knew that Russia was going to invade is that they caused it.
Do you know it's a lot easier to predict things that you cause on your own?
Have you ever seen me do that?
All right, here's an interesting question.
For those of you who have been watching me for a long time, have you ever seen me predict something...
And then after it came true, you said to yourself, wait a minute, did he predict that?
Or did he cause that to happen?
And he knew he was going to cause it to happen, so he just acted like he was predicting it.
Have you ever seen me do that? I'm seeing some yeses.
You know, you can't be sure, right?
Because you'd have to trust me.
And, you know, you shouldn't trust anybody, really.
As a general rule, I just don't trust anybody.
Okay, so during the 2016 election cycle, there were things that I did attempt to directly change, and I know things went my way, but it's hard to know how much effect you had.
All right, true or false, Russia, as Wall Street Journal is reporting, is Russia, or at least Ukraine, is it becoming a graveyard for Russian tanks?
Do you believe the report that 400 Russian tanks have been stopped or destroyed by the Ukrainians?
Now, 400 is a lot of tanks to destroy.
We are told that the Russian military advance has stopped in the last day or so.
Two days, I think.
Now, again, I'm not even sure if that's true.
They could be just regrouping.
Maybe they're not bogged down at all.
Could be anything. But...
So as a general rule, I don't believe any of the reports coming out.
The only thing you can believe is that Ukraine is still fighting.
They're very basic things you can believe.
Yeah, they're still fighting.
We know that. I would say at this point that Ukraine is poised to win the war.
And... I'll go back to my original prediction.
Remember, my worst prediction is...
And I kept the prediction long after it was obvious it wasn't going to come true because I just wanted to be consistent.
But I predicted that Russia would not invade because it would be the worst decision Putin ever made, and it was obviously a bad decision.
Now, I believed it because I thought that Russian tanks couldn't survive American technology.
Meaning the shoulder-mounted stuff and the drones and whatever else we have that you've never even heard of.
So I believe that Ukraine would have enough of the good technology that the Russian tanks would be stopped cold and that Russia really can't hold the country without tanks.
So here are my assumptions.
Ukraine would have enough modern technology, so having enough of it counts.
It appears that's going to be the case.
I said that their technology to defeat a tank would be better than the tank technology.
That appears to be the case.
And I'm going to add to that, I don't know if I said this originally, but I'll add to it, I don't think you can conquer a country without tanks.
So they need tanks and they're not going to have them.
That tells me that the Ukrainians will eventually stall their tanks and start picking them off until the Russian army has to dissolve or disappear.
So I think that the Ukrainian strategy of going for supply routes and tanks and nothing else, I mean, basically you could just go for those, that would be enough to win the war.
So they have the morale.
They have the strategy. They've got the communication.
They've got the coordination.
They've got the satellite view so they can find stuff.
They've got the modern equipment that's better than the tanks.
In other words, they can destroy the tanks.
What would ever stop them from losing?
I mean, Russia from losing.
How in the world...
So I'm seeing Richard...
I call him Dick, asking if I went to West Point.
And I would like to defend my military opinions this way.
Rock always beats scissors.
You don't have to be a military expert to know that rock beats scissors.
Right? If one side had nuclear weapons and the other had sticks and stones, would you have to be a military expert to predict who would win if, let's say, they all used all of their weapons?
Probably not. You don't have to be a military expert to know that there is some number of hand-held anti-tank weapons that is enough to defeat a given quantity of tanks.
Wouldn't you agree with that?
That given a certain number of tanks, it's only a question of how many people with handheld shoulder mounts there are.
That's the only question.
If there are enough of them, then the tanks all go away.
Now, I've heard much said about the Russians' lack of coordination of forces.
So if you've got a tank formation, you need to support it with, what do you call it, infantry?
You need to support it with air cover.
And apparently they're not doing a good job of supporting it.
I don't know that that's going to help them.
How much would air support help to stop two Ukrainians with a shoulder-mounted rocket?
Do you stop that with air support?
I can't imagine that would be a thing.
Can you find two people in a forest with air support?
I mean, you can hear the jet coming, so you just stand next to a tree when it goes over, right?
It just seems to me that there are some things that are so plainly obvious you don't need to be a military expert to know.
If I said to you, the United States is going to enter the war, would you wonder if our warthogs could take out the Russian columns of...
No, you wouldn't wonder that.
That's just rock meets scissors, right?
One weapon is better than the other weapon.
That's all it is. So I don't think you have to be much of a military genius to know that rock meets scissors every time.
And I think that's what we have.
They need tanks.
They're not going to have them.
Am I right? Let's take it down to that level and see if I'm wrong.
They can't conquer the cities and hold them without tanks, and they won't have them.
I think that's it. That's the end of the war.
You know, as long as the Ukrainians have food, and it looks like that's happening, I think they just keep fighting.
I think Russia's got to figure out how to get out of there.
All right, there was a deepfake Putin.
I'm wondering why there haven't been more of those.
Apparently the deepfake Putin was saying that Russia surrenders or something.
So we're not quite at the point where the deepfake isn't a little bit obvious when you look at it, but it's really close.
And I would guess that if our government tried to make a deepfake, it would look just like the real thing.
Whereas some person with a computer tries to make one, it's still pretty good, but it's not like a counterfeit bill.
You know, the United States can make a $20 bill that's got all the technology in it, and it's hard to counterfeit.
But a person can't usually do that.
So what happens when governments get involved making deepfakes?
Back in the Bin Laden times, when I thought we had enough technology to do it, I thought, we should be doing that.
Because nobody knows where Bin Laden is.
Everybody seems to be taking directions from it.
We should create a deepfake, and so nobody knows if they're getting the real Bin Laden or the deepfake.
In fact, we should make more deepfakes than real ones.
So every time you got some Bin Laden information, you'd be like, I don't know.
Maybe. Can't tell.
That's what I would have done.
But maybe the technology wasn't there.
Well, the hacker group Anonymous has renewed their call for all hackers to attack Russia for their inhumane war on Ukraine.
Are you wondering why the lights are still on in Kiev?
And are you wondering why the Russian so-called great cyber capabilities have made no difference at all?
Is it my imagination, or did the cyber abilities of Russia turn out to be completely irrelevant?
I don't know.
I think we have a big question mark about all those cyber capabilities that seem to disappear.
All right. I believe that is all the fun news.
And did I miss anything?
You know, I looked at CNN. As soon as I saw on Twitter all the noise about the laptop being confirmed, I immediately went to CNN to see how they covered the fact that their news had been wrong for years on a really important story.
I don't think they mentioned it.
Can you confirm that? Does anybody have another page open?
Go look at CNN. I don't believe that they're even mentioning that the New York Times confirmed it's real.
There's a Putin rally.
What do I think will happen with the Hunter situation?
I think the Hunter situation will be...
Investigated until Joe Biden's end of office.
So I think the Biden administration, as it stands, will never have to answer for it.
And then after he's end of office, he'll still have lots of connections.
There'll be some kind of a Jussie Smollett kind of a situation where maybe justice acts...
But when it's done, Hunter serves 10 days in jail and suspended sentence or something.
I feel like something will happen that's nothing.
Because they can't do nothing, nothing.
They have to do something.
But they can't do something that matters, so they have to do something that's nothing.
Like with Jussie. Well, you're going to jail.
Well, not really going to jail.
And by going to jail, I mean you'll not go to jail.
That sort of thing. Now, one of the things that Hunter apparently did is he paid a million dollars of taxes after it was due.
But you don't really go to jail too often, even for not paying taxes, if you voluntarily paid them before you got to court.
So apparently, juries and judges, they look more leniently on somebody who has paid their bills.
If you haven't paid your bills, then maybe you go to jail.
But if you have paid your bills, you just didn't do it on time, that's not too different than a lot of America, right?
So if it turned out his only problem was taxes, he doesn't have a problem.
It's the other stuff that might be the problem.
And I don't know if there's going to be a smoking gun.
Or would you say there's already a smoking gun I don't know, it's like a pre-smoking gun.
It's like I can see how it might be a smoking gun, but it's not quite a smoking gun, if you know what I mean.
Because the stuff that I've seen from Hunter is definitely eyebrows go all the way up to your forehead.
Like, what? 10% for the big guy?
What? I mean, it sounds like the worst possible thing.
But we'll find out.
Or we won't.
Maybe we'll never find out.
But I'd certainly like to get to the bottom of it.
Now, watching how the news handles the fake news, it's probably the most frustrating thing I do.
Because if they wait long enough, they can just correct their story, but the story no longer is salient.
People have just moved on with what they're interested in.
So they can just keep the fake news going for years, reverse it whenever nobody's paying much attention, and get away with it completely.
Accused of money laundering.
Well, we'll see if they can prove that.
Remember, for all we want to criticize Hunter for, he was...
Was he a Yale-trained lawyer?
Do I have that right? Yale?
Now, he might have gotten in because his father was Joe Biden or something.
But I suspect that Hunter Biden is legitimately quite smart.
Do you think that's not true?
I mean, he's got his issues, no question.
But in terms of if you gave him an IQ test, I think he'd do really well.
I think.
You don't go to Yale and get a degree without being a little bit smart.
And he's an artist, of sorts.
All right.
and Anyway, keep an eye on that.
Keep an eye on that.
All right, here's my favorite story of the day.
Arnold, did you see Arnold Schwarzenegger's video in which he tried to talk directly to the Russian people?
And I gave it a 100% rating for persuasion.
I'll tell you, I've always liked Arnold.
And Arnold is one of the best communicators, which is ironic because, you know, he's got the accent.
But Arnold has been one of the best communicators in political or any life.
He's just the best.
I mean, really, he's better than Trump.
Now, Trump's more provocative, so maybe he can get more attention.
But in terms of actual persuasion skill, yeah, he's better than Trump.
And I don't say that lightly.
That's like a big deal.
Here's what he did right.
Now, first of all, let me acknowledge I saw some pushback on it when I said it was good.
A number of people said I turned it off when he said that the January 6th thing was actually an attempt to overthrow the government.
Now, I don't believe January 6th was an attempt to overthrow the government.
To me, that's obvious fake news.
But Arnold wasn't talking to you.
He didn't make the video for you.
Arnold made a video in which he wanted to demonstrate his credibility before he told the Russian people something that was hard to understand and hear based on the propaganda they've gotten so far.
So what Arnold did was perfect technique.
He showed how much he loves the Russian people and is connected to them with a personal anecdote of a Russian weightlifter who changed his life and he still drinks out of the same cup of coffee that this guy gave him years ago.
And he actually shows you the cup of coffee.
The actual cup.
And he says, I've been drinking out of this for years because it was given to me by my good friend.
And he shows the pictures of the weightlifter.
Have I told you that visual persuasion is the good stuff?
Oh my God! Arnold took the visual persuasion from actually showing the bodybuilder.
Then he talked about the fight he had with his dad, who didn't like Russians, because he'd been in World War II. And his dad wanted to take the Russian off the wall when Arnold was a kid, and Arnold refused.
Arnold was going to support the Russian guy.
Now, you've got the visual of him meeting the bodybuilder, and he shows the picture.
You've got the visual in your mind of a young Arnold with the poster on the wall, and then he ends it with the visual of actually holding the coffee cup that that guy gave him.
What do I say about visual persuasion?
It's the best. I mean, fear is the strongest.
If you have fear persuasion, you can't beat that.
But without that, the best one is visual.
And man, did he nail the visual.
He nailed it. Here's the other thing I teach you.
You have to pace people before you can lead them.
You have to agree with them before you can change their mind.
He did it masterfully, including, and I know you don't like this, sorry, The January 6th part.
If you don't think that was good persuasion because it's untrue, you're on the wrong conversation.
I'm not saying he was right.
I'm saying that if he was talking to a Russian public and he says, look, you can trust me, I'll be even throwing my own party under the bus.
Remember, he's a Republican. Arnold's a Republican who's throwing other Republicans under the bus.
He's saying, look, I'm throwing Republicans under the bus.
You can see me do it right now.
Now, that makes him wrong about January 6th, in my opinion.
But it does make him a really good persuader, because he's trying to establish his credibility.
And let me ask you another thing.
Is Arnold Schwarzenegger famous for telling it straight, or is he famous for lying?
What do you think? Just your own opinion.
Is Arnold famous for lying or famous for being pretty much a straight shooter?
I think he's famous for being a straight shooter.
I mean, maybe some story I don't know about, but I don't think he's ever been accused of not giving you his honest opinion, even if he didn't like it.
So even the January 6th stuff I kind of hate, but I do love his transparency.
I love the fact that his opinion is very clear.
And he said it, and it was against the grain.
Okay. I don't agree with it, but I respect it completely.
Now, I think that this is a bigger deal than maybe you think.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll bet Arnold is really popular in the Russian public.
Am I right? You know, above a certain age, and that's probably what he's targeting.
I would guess, because he's made movies with Russian elements in it, and he's an action figure, so those always play bigger overseas.
So I would guess that Arnold is maybe just about the exact perfect person, because he's not just a star, he's also a legitimate political figure in America.
And when he talked to the Russian people, he did a really good job of establishing his non-bias and his credibility.
A really good job.
Some said it lasted too long.
But he made it interesting the whole time.
I'm not sure if it lasted too long if it's interesting the whole time.
And he made it interesting because he's a performer.
It was a performance.
It wasn't a speech.
It was a performance. And it was a good one.
And by the way, anything you ever thought about Arnold's acting ability?
Well, my opinion of it went up.
Because this was an act, I mean, overtly.
He was putting on a show for a purpose, to persuade.
I think he nailed it.
I mean, I think it's... Not only is it persuasion perfect, even though you don't like parts of it, the persuasion part's perfect...
And he's the right person at the right time?
I think he could actually move the dial.
Now, the problem is, will any Russians actually see it?
And by the way, there was a translation that came with it, which is good technique.
We don't care if he's a rhino.
That's not the question today.
I mean, you could care about it separately, but it doesn't matter to today's topic.
Yeah, it doesn't matter what he did in his personal life, right?
Okay. Well, from the Russian perspective, as long as they think he's Republican enough, then it's good persuasion.
That's the only point. You used to admire him, but now you don't.
Do you think he actually wrote it?
That's a good question.
It's so good...
That I suspect he might have.
So if he didn't write it, he was obviously deeply involved in editing it.
My guess is he probably had a little help, but that there's no word in there that isn't one he wants in there.
My guess is that Arnold isn't going to take somebody else's thing and just read it.
Is that your take? I mean, Arnold's kind of hands-on, right?
He's not going to just say, oh, just go on camera and read this thing and make it convincing.
That's not going to happen. It looks like he wrote it.
I mean, he's the only one who knew about his connection to the Russian weightlifter and what happened when he was a kid and stuff.
So, I don't know. It just seems to me that seeing Hunter Biden memes go by...
Scott is working to get into a different set of clubs.
You know, everybody who goes tribal on here, and your comment is, what club I'm trying to join, or if I'm trying to make some Democrats happy, or sometimes you say, I think he wants to sleep with AOC. All of those comments are the lowest level of analysis.
Really. I mean, you're welcome to participate.
Of course, you're all welcome.
But just know when you say that, that other people read and they're like, if your only take on this is tribal, about how Republican is Arnold, that's the thing that mattered to you?
And is Scott always on the side of the same side?
Sometimes does he agree with the other?
If any of that matters to you, you're operating at the lowest level of analysis.
And I'm not saying that tribal affiliations don't matter.
They do. But if that's what you're obsessed with, you don't have any value.
You have no value.
Because everybody knows that things are tribal.
Like you're not adding anything.
The Russian captions make me think it was produced by a propaganda outfit.
Well, here's my question.
Do you think the government asked Arnold to do it, or do you think Arnold just came up with the idea on his own?
The existence of the high-quality Russian translation that accompanied it suggests he had some help.
I mean, I don't think he put the Russian translation on there himself.
So I would guess that somebody in the administration may have reached him, or in intelligence.
Because it looks like a combination of government level and Arnold level.
It looks like a combo.
My perception has been got to over Ukrainian persuasion.
Is there anybody who thinks that the Ukrainians have persuaded me?
And that I'm believing their propaganda.
Who thinks...
So he says, yes, clearly.
All right, well, let me say as clearly as possible.
You shouldn't believe anything that Ukraine says.
Is that clear enough?
If you believe even one fucking word that the Ukrainians are saying during a war of survival, why?
And why would you think I would believe Ukraine?
Ukraine is one of the most corrupt governments involved in a war.
You can't believe anything they say.
Somebody says I'm a Zelensky apologist.
I've told you apologist is a sign for you having cognitive dissonance, right?
So why do you think that I'm pro-Ukrainian or I'm believing their propaganda when I tell you I don't believe any of it, like zero of it?
None of it. And I strongly recommend that you don't believe any of it.
The only things you can believe are the things that are sort of obvious.
There's a war. It's in Ukraine.
You know, just basic stuff.
That's all you know. And otherwise, we're all just sort of guessing.
Because the news is fake and everybody's lying.
So if you don't start from the premise that all the news is fake and everybody's lying...
Then everything's confusing to you.
So when you say that I have been co-opted by propaganda, how exactly do you get co-opted by propaganda that you are absolutely sure is false?
I mean, I suppose it could, but...
If I talk about Ukraine winning the war, it's not because...
I'm not even sure I'm that invested, honestly.
I don't know if I'm that invested.
Because... I don't know.
Ukrainians had some issues.
I'm not sure that it matters to the United States who owns Ukraine.
I just don't know that it matters to us.
So I don't think I have the personal interest in it.
I do have an interest that dictators can't conquer countries.
Like, I have an interest in that.
Because in some ways, you could look at the Ukraine situation as being entirely about China.
Have you ever thought of that?
Have you ever thought that the situation in Ukraine is not even about Russia, it's just about China?
Because whatever happens here is going to tell China what they can get away with, right?
So if Ukraine doesn't go well for Russia, Taiwan is safer, right?
Remember I told you that if you were to arm the Taiwan population with these same weapons and China had to get there by sea, For the most part.
I don't know. I'm not even sure China could conquer Taiwan without destroying it totally, and I'm not sure that they could do that.
So, I do think that Ukraine might be entirely about China.
Oh, Akira the Don has started up his live streams again, I hear him.
So, check out Akira the Don.
What's a corrupted Scott going to do?
China gets both Ukraine...
Yeah, you know, China might get Ukraine.
I heard somebody say that there's no way that Russia's going to starve their army because it's the green basket of the world.
So they're not going to run out of bread because it's the bread basket of the world.
To which I say, have you ever tried to eat wheat?
What do you do? Just grab a handful in the field?
How much wheat is growing in the winter?
Where is it stored? Do you think it's just stored where they can go get it and make some bread?
I don't think it's that easy to turn the wheat in the field into food.
You know, if you're in a country where anything that's a factory is going to get destroyed, how do you turn it into food?
It can't be that easy.
Yes, we do need fertilizer.
Fertilizer's a good question.
You've got to mill it. That's right, you've got to mill it.
The 13 dead on a Ukrainian island was a lie.
Yeah, most of what we've heard is a lie or out of context or something.
So, anyway, I say Arnold, good.
Russia, bad. And that is your show for today.
Possibly the best thing you've ever seen.
If you were a subscriber to Locals, you would have seen my micro lesson on how to control all the things you can control.
And... You can get a countertop milling machine.
Well, I agree that you can mill the wheat, but I don't know if you can mill it fast enough and efficiently enough to feed an army, and if your army is eating only bread and melted snow, I don't know.
