Episode 1713 Scott Adams: Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter, Russia's Biggest Ship Whacked, More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter
Whiteboard: Elon Musk Might Control Reality
Black Supremacist NYC subway shooting
Job, fitness and good shoes
Ukraine war musing
Ukraine took out Russia's biggest warship, Moskva
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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.
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You know, often you're attractive, but there's something a little extra sexy about you today, and I think you know it.
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Now, when you saw the news today, which you probably did, that Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter, did you say to yourself, Well, that's a perfect topic for Coffee with Scott Adams, because I did.
I did. I'll bet some of you did, too.
And we'll get to that in a moment.
But I like this story.
Do you know what an NFT is, those of you who follow anything crypto?
If you don't follow crypto, I'm going to describe it to you very simply, and you're going to think I'm leaving something out.
If you think I'm leaving something out, then you understand it completely.
An NFT is a digital image, the same kind of thing you could get from, let's say, making a screenshot of something on your screen.
And because it's special, or somebody has decided it's special, it's collectible.
And it's registered on the blockchain, meaning that anybody can check and find out it's really yours and what the path of it has been, who bought it and who sold it.
These NFTs can sell for millions of dollars.
Case in point, Jack Dorsey, last year, a year ago, sold his first tweet as an NFT. So I think he literally probably just took a screenshot of the tweet and sold a screenshot of his own tweet for...
$2.9 million. Now, I guess he donated that money.
But the person who bought it tried to turn it around for a nifty profit, tried to sell it for $48 million, somebody said.
I don't know about that, but okay.
So he did not give $48 million.
So he bought it for $2.9 million, and at the end of the auction, the highest bid was $280.
Dollars. So he bought it for $2.9 million, and the best bid for selling was $280.
So if you were thinking of getting into the NFT business to hit it rich, well, I would say look at diversification.
Don't put all your $2.9 million into one NFT. Don't do that.
Well, have you heard that Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter?
As I tweeted, this changes everything.
Do you believe that?
Now, I'm assuming that he succeeds.
Because there's certainly some possibility, maybe probability, of some pushback.
Because the employees at Twitter, well, they may not all be as delighted as potentially you and I are.
So there might be some pushback.
But let's say he succeeds.
Would that change everything?
Is that too big of a claim?
Because I saw somebody on Twitter say, you realize very few people actually use Twitter compared to the other social networks and compared to anything else.
To which I say, yes, there are not that many number of people in the United States, but here's what you need to know.
Persuasion-wise, now, here's something you don't want to try at home, to draw these clever graphs, because I'm a professional artist, so I can do this and not confuse you.
But if you try this at home, do you think you could have pulled this off?
No. I'm a syndicated cartoonist.
I can do this in my sleep.
You're saying to yourself, oh, I could do a stick person, too.
Could you? Could you?
Yeah, you could do a stick person, but could you do it this well?
Consider Van Gogh, if I may digress.
The first time you saw Van Gogh, you said to yourself, well, these lines are all wavy, and he's drawn everything out of perspective.
You probably said to yourself, I could probably do that myself.
Did you ever try?
It's harder than it looks, isn't it?
Try to draw a masterpiece yourself.
See if you can sell it for $40 million, like Van Gogh.
No, you can't do it.
So don't think that art is easy just because you look at it and say, I could do that.
You can't. Try this at home, right?
I dare you. You can't do that.
That's professional work right there.
Now, not just one, but I can do this all day long.
A lot of people would do this, you'd be exhausted.
You're not a professional.
Professionals can do this all day long.
All right. That wasn't really the point I was about to make.
The point I was about to make was that Twitter is not like other things.
Whoever has, let's say, functional control of Twitter, because it's the thing that journalists are most influenced by, And journalists tell us collectively...
I'm using journalists as a proxy for all the opinion makers.
So that would include any pundit, anybody whose voice changes your belief system.
Collectively, these people are addicted to Twitter.
And they can't really go too much against Twitter without inviting serious pushback.
So in my opinion...
Whereas Bezos found a good publication in the Washington Post that does have a huge impact on what news is considered news, probably nothing has as much leverage for the amount he's likely to spend, if successful.
If Twitter becomes more, let's say, less biased, which would be the goal, less biased, more useful content, Then these journalists who create the reality itself, in other words, our understanding of reality is created by the journalists, collectively.
And now Twitter controls the journalists, and maybe Elon Musk will control Twitter.
So what if Twitter decides that their big thing is going to be transparency and showing both sides?
Instead of censorship, just make sure that anything controversial gets tagged with the opposing view.
Imagine that. It would be pretty radical, wouldn't it?
And it would basically neuter all of these journalists in terms of their ability to control the narrative.
Because every time they tried it, the counter-narrative would be right there.
You just see the counter. So when I say that Elon Musk buying Twitter changes everything, if successful, we don't know if he'll succeed, it could change everything about the way you see the world, which is your everything.
Right? That's your everything.
So this is way bigger than you think.
Did you see the price he's offering?
$54.20 a share. $54.20. $54.20.
you Is that a coincidence?
Probably not. Probably not.
But the thing I was wondering is, was he watching the stock price and adjusting his offer until he could make those numbers work?
Okay, it's $419.
Make it $420, yeah.
Publish 420. It makes me wonder if he was actually watching to see when that was the right thing to bid, that he could also make his other claims about the percentages that it went up.
So, what do you think the insiders at Twitter are doing right now?
What do you think the people who run the algorithm are doing besides deleting everything?
And sabotaging the company.
Now, wouldn't it be hilarious?
Hilarious in a terrible way.
It wouldn't be hilarious in a good way.
But in a terrible way, you could sort of almost imagine the Twitter engineers taking down the whole company.
You know, just like deleting the source code and completely getting rid of all the databases and stuff.
To hide whatever they may have wanted to hide, or possibly for political reasons.
Maybe political reasons.
They just don't want Elon Musk to have that much control over that kind of a platform.
So I would really worry about employee sabotage.
Wouldn't you? Now here's the funny thing.
What if Elon Musk simply wanted to destroy Twitter?
What if that's all he wanted?
Yeah. Because Twitter might destroy itself just because he offered to buy it, which would be the funniest thing that ever happened.
If he could destroy all of Twitter because he offered to buy it, and then let's say they say no.
So let's say the engineers are busily destroying the company from within so he doesn't get it.
At the same time, the board is rejecting the offer.
And if they reject the offer, Elon will sell his 9%.
So you can imagine a case where Elon gets in for 9%, gets out for, you know, doesn't lose too much there on that transaction, destroys the entire company because they destroy itself to avoid being taken over.
It's just gone. Now, I don't think I would be laughing about it because it wouldn't be good for me or any of you, but that kind of could happen.
I wouldn't rule it out.
Right? So, one of the things that...
Somehow I missed this.
Maybe I saw it before and don't remember.
But apparently, not too long ago, Elon Musk tweeted that San Francisco's homeless should be moved into Twitter's headquarters.
LAUGHTER And the thinking is that Twitter had gone remote.
So if it's a remote company, and really the whole thing could be remote, you think, why doesn't Twitter headquarters become the place that has all the homeless?
Now, is that not entertaining?
Is that not entertaining?
That's entertaining.
Here's something else entertaining.
Max Boot, who you might recognize that name, From being a the Democrats' Democrat.
He's like the most Democrat you could possibly be, Max Boot.
And his response to the story about Musk maybe buying Twitter is, I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter.
He seems to believe that on social media, anything goes.
For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.
What? Can you imagine doing a tweet in which you call for censorship, but you call it content moderation, and you think that's a good look?
Or that the public's going to say, yeah, we need more content moderation.
Well, actually, probably Democrats do.
I'll bet a lot of Democrats retweeted this and liked it.
But here's what I would add.
I wouldn't argue with moderation.
I wouldn't argue with moderation.
So actually I would agree with the max boot.
Better moderation would actually be better.
But not censorship.
So the better way to do it is to tag any provocative thing that looks wrong with a counter-argument.
So that anybody who sees the wrong thing can somewhat immediately see the counter-argument.
You don't have to know what's wrong.
Because a lot of us have made...
Let's say predictions and whatnot that seemed wrong at one time that became right later.
So Twitter doesn't need to decide what's right or wrong.
They just show the other argument.
That's all. Is that too hard?
And do you think that Elon Musk doesn't see that that's the obvious way to go?
Just put the counter there?
Because the solution to free speech's excesses is the counter argument.
Always has been. So if you just put the counterargument there, you're done.
It isn't hard.
Why do we always act like it's hard?
This whole free speech argument...
Literally, we just act like it's hard.
It couldn't be easier.
The whole point of free speech is show both sides.
That's it. The whole thing.
And Elon Musk could easily do that.
Just make sure there's an easy feature for tacking a good argument on the other side.
That's all. I wouldn't use fact checkers in the usual way, for sure.
All right. So here's another little irony that came out of this.
Is it irony or am I using that word wrong?
You decide. Am I using the word irony incorrectly?
Because it sort of moved into common usage to mean just something that's weird and interesting.
And I haven't decided if I'm going to go with a common usage yet.
Instead of the, you know, wordplay kind of original use.
But here's a real thing that's happening.
Would you agree with the following statements, that the worry about climate change was a big factor in Tesla's success?
Is that fair to say?
That a lot of the people who bought Teslas, and electric cars in general, were probably the people most concerned about climate change, because in some cases they would even pay a premium.
They'd pay a premium for the Tesla.
So it wasn't about money, and it wasn't necessarily the best-looking car.
You know, there are lots of good cars that look good.
It really, I think, was about climate concerns, wouldn't you say?
It's funny, a lot of people on YouTube are saying no.
I'm not saying that everybody bought one for that reason.
There are plenty of people who have Teslas just because they like the engineering.
In fact, somebody said, and I agree with it, that originally maybe it was more about the climate, but today it's more about the good engineering.
Would you buy that?
Would you buy that originally it was more about the climate, but now it might be more about just a good car?
But either way, my point will stand, because the climate concerns certainly made Tesla successful.
And then Elon Musk might use his fortune that he made from Tesla, that was based largely on climate change concerns, to destroy the left's control of the media, which promoted the narrative of climate disaster.
So did the left...
Make Tesla successful enough that Musk could buy the thing that made them worry about climate change.
And by the way, he's a climate change believer, so he's not on the other side of that.
But it's kind of a weird outcome.
Is it irony?
Is it irony? Or is that the wrong word?
Do you go with the popular usage?
Or are you classicals?
I'm still classical on that word.
I got this idea from Chase McMichael on Twitter.
His version was, what's so ironic, well, he likes the word, is many hard progressive Marxists are Tesla owners in the car and Tesla stocks, so they paid for this.
It's very serendipitous.
All right, so I think Sam McRoberts tweeted a meme that's based on an Elon Musk quote from 2021, right?
So I'm going to ask for your help.
So a number of you have been watching me for a long time, and I'm going to make a claim that's the kind of claim that a lot of you really hate.
But I'll do it anyway, because I don't care.
And so here's the quote from Elon Musk, and then wait for my point about it.
And people are calling it Elon's law.
And apparently he tweeted at one point last year that the most entertaining outcome, as seen from an external observer, not the participants, is the most likely.
The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
Now he said that in 2021.
And it's called Elon's law.
Have you heard me say that for the last five years?
And where have you heard it?
Did I ever write it down?
Because I'm trying to remember if it's in my book, Win Bigley.
Is it in Win Bigley?
Have I ever written it down?
Yeah, so those who have been watching me for a while...
If Elon said it in 2021, that would be maybe four years after I first started saying it?
Five years after I've been saying it?
Yeah, and I always talk about life imitating a movie and following the most entertaining outcome.
And I use it to predict.
That's why I talk about it a lot.
It's a prediction method.
So... Do you think that came from me?
So that's the part you don't like when I ask questions like that.
Because sometimes it might be true.
Most of the time, probably not.
Most of the time, probably just two people having the same idea.
Somebody says, heard it from you, but I think you were quoting someone else.
No. No, I definitely made that up.
That's definitely from me.
But here's the thing.
Elon could have also come up with it independently, and here's the argument for that.
Because he's also a believer that we're in a simulation.
If you believe we live in a simulation, then the next logical question is, why?
Like, why are we here?
If we're simulated, who made us and for what purpose?
And one of the obvious purposes could be entertainment.
It's just like a reality show that somebody watches in a different universe.
And so that would explain...
Now, how often have you heard me say that I get a plot twist every day?
Every day. Again yesterday.
There's this one through story in my life that I get a plot twist, like a completely unexpected thing on a left field every single day.
One a day. And it just never stops.
Even when I talk about it, it doesn't stop.
Like, you'd think that talking about it would make you stop, but it doesn't.
Yesterday? Plot twist.
Every single day.
So, and maybe some of you see that in your own lives.
Anyway, so the Elon Musk story is...
Hilarious. But this thing about the most entertaining outcomes, and I especially like the fact that everything about Elon offering to buy Twitter is hilarious.
There might be somebody watching this live stream who knows I can see your fingerprints.
And that's all I'm going to say about this.
I can see your fingerprints.
So you know the story about the New York City subway shooter.
And I guess there's at least one major story that described his, I think, age and his height, but not his ethnicity.
And the story is that he's literally a black supremacist racist who has, you know, videos and stuff on social media of him ranting and wanting to kill people and apparently wanting to kill white people because he wanted to kill white people.
And was it Greg Goffeld who was the first one to say this story is going to just disappear because it's so anti-narrative?
What are the odds that when Biden is in office, it would be one of the biggest or the biggest?
I don't know. Is it the biggest mass shooting?
I try not to pay attention too much to mass shootings, but is this the biggest one under Biden?
Yes or no? Is it the biggest mass murder thing under Biden?
Somebody's saying he was a CRT trainee.
That's a joke, right? So what are the odds of that?
I mean, again, isn't this...
I hate to say it because there's nothing entertaining about all the people who got shot, right?
So if we can be on the same page that the tragedy has to be respected for the horrific nature of it, but it's kind of the most entertaining outcome.
Again. Is it not?
Now, some of it is because the most entertaining outcomes are the things that make it into our consciousness.
So you just notice the ones that are entertaining because that's what you talk about.
That's what makes it news.
So there are definitely reasons that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
Now, the mechanism that I believe is that if all of us are thinking what would be the most entertaining outcome, I think it happens.
I think it's the society thinking that that could happen and it would be entertaining if it did, such as Trump winning the presidency.
That would be really entertaining if it happened, right?
And I feel the fact that it is entertaining drives people toward that behavior because they want to create entertainment for themselves, even if they're not thinking about it that way.
We kind of like...
Why is somebody on Locals continuing to say CRT trainee over and over and over again?
He wasn't literally that, right?
Is that just a joke? I don't know what that means.
All right. So I talk about the value of diversification all the time.
You should diversify your stock portfolio.
You should diversify your bosses if you can.
In other words, have lots of clients or customers and then they become your bosses.
So if one fires you, you still have lots of bosses left, customers.
So diversification works in everything and skills as well.
If you diversify your skills and you do it wisely, you can find skills that work together for your talent stack.
Now here's another category I'm going to add to this.
Because you keep seeing this pattern everywhere.
Somebody mentioned to me recently that if you had a job and you belonged to a gym as a man, you're a top 5% eligible male.
That's all you need. You've got a good job.
I'll say good. So you've got a good job and you go to the gym.
You're in the top 5%.
And all you did is combine two things.
Now, here's the second part of the advice I give you.
The second part of the advice, which I just saw a comment that made me forget, but I'll remember again.
So here are the things that I would put together if I were trying to build a talent stack.
And I remembered my point.
You should control everything you can control.
That might be the best advice anybody ever gave you.
In that few words.
Control everything you can control.
That's it. If you did that one thing, do you know how successful you'd be?
Real successful.
You just control all the things you can control.
So here are some things you can control.
You can control your career to a large extent by learning new skills and applying for new jobs.
You know, there's a pretty well-defined process for improving your job.
You have control over that.
That doesn't mean you get every promotion, but you definitely have control over your career.
How about your fitness?
Your diet, your exercise?
Definitely have control.
Very much control over those things.
How about your shoes?
Well, if you have a little bit of disposable income, you do have control over your footwear.
You can completely control your footwear.
Now, here's where I don't follow my own advice.
I need to be much better in the footwear.
Because if you're a man especially, women will judge you by your shoes.
So you can wear, you know, ratty jeans and a T-shirt, but if your shoes are killing it...
Women will look at you and say, stylish, especially if you're fit.
If you're fit, you have good shoes, you're in good shape, right?
So think about what it is you want out of life, and let's say that a good social life, maybe good love life are things you want.
Just consider the fact that 100% of the things that really matter, the ones at the top of the list, They're all the ones you control.
They do. So even if you were born with not the best physicality and look, if you get those things right, job, fitness, and good shoes, you're 75% there.
Now, other things I would add is learning how to talk to strangers, maybe add some activities and travel makes you more interesting.
Ambition always looks good.
If your career is not killing it yet, but you have a clear ambition and something that looks like a plan to get there, people will respond to ambition as a positive thing.
So build a talent stack for your social life, but control the hell out of everything you can control.
All right, I'm going to give you another really abusively...
What do I call it? Annoying point.
So sometimes I follow my own advice, and I've been trying to upgrade my footwear again, but I should do more with that.
But with fitness, I try to follow my own advice.
So, you know, lately I've been working on my bicep, and this is something I can completely control.
So I have complete control over my arms.
Somebody said sense of humor.
You don't really have control over that.
You can't really control your sense of humor.
People, if they have one, they don't.
So I wouldn't recommend that you work on your sense of humor, necessarily, by juicing.
No, that's literally just going to the gym more and having a personal trainer, which I recommend.
By the way... Here's another piece of advice.
I exercised all my life without a personal trainer because I always looked at what they were doing with clients at the gym and I thought, eh, it looks like they're just standing next to the useful machine making them do something weird.
Why not just use the machine?
You're standing right next to it.
But when you actually have somebody who knows what they're doing, work the muscles that are like the opposite muscles.
The gains that you get in a few months When somebody who knows what they're doing is telling you how to do it, big difference.
Big difference. So that's your other advice for the day.
Control everything you can control.
Here's a question I asked on Twitter.
Would the NATO countries be better off with Putin or no Putin?
So let's say the two options are Putin leaves office or...
He's overthrown in a coup or something.
Would we be better off with him or without him?
Because if he stays in office then the NATO countries can degrade Russia forever economically.
And then their military will be more pathetic than it is.
They'll still have nukes, but that's okay.
We don't want them to fear being attacked, and that would protect them.
But are we better off just having Russia degraded for, I don't know, another 10 years or 15 or 20, however long Putin can stay in there?
Or would we be better off if they immediately replace Putin, and then suddenly we don't have a rationale for the sanctions, right?
Because what if they put in somebody who's sort of Western-friendly?
What are we going to do? Keep the sanctions on?
We wouldn't, right? We wouldn't.
So which one is better?
I don't think we know, do we?
We keep talking in terms of Putin has to go, and that's the right thing to say.
But I don't know if we're better off.
From a military perspective, we might be better off if he stays because he's ruined Russia as an economic entity and that should degrade their military to the point of being irrelevant.
Right? I actually don't know.
And I don't know that anybody can know that.
So I wouldn't be wishing too hard for him to leave because you don't know if that's better.
Big story from the Ukraine war is that...
Maybe Ukraine used a missile, or it could have been, Russia says it, some kind of fire that maybe happened on its own, on their biggest ship in the Black Sea, the Moskva.
And it's one of their premier ships, a Slava-class cruiser, as I learned from Jack Posobiec tweets.
You should all be following Jack Posobiec, by the way.
And so what I've learned since yesterday is that it's the biggest of their ships that's relevant to the Ukraine situation at the moment.
They could move assets. But they only had one, only one ship that was sort of that important in that area.
So it looks like, probably, Ukraine took out their biggest ship.
It's being towed back to Russia...
How do you think the Russian public feels about their biggest warship being taken out with one missile, probably, and being towed back to base?
Now, how much does that degrade their naval importance?
Probably a lot, right?
Now, I've seen two opinions.
One, not much, because you could just maybe move your command and control, and I don't know.
Or replace it or something.
And then I've heard other thoughts that might make a big, big difference.
It also might prevent them from moving another big ship in there because the next one is going to blow up too.
So, yeah, it was a 40-year-old ship, but probably central to the, let's say, the coordination efforts, I'm guessing.
So I don't know much about the Navy and much about these ships, but there's a possibility that this is a huge psychological blow But maybe even militarily.
And I just want to drop this thought that sounded crazy before.
Crazy. Have you noticed how quickly things can turn?
Where you said to yourself, oh, Russia's going to totally take over Kiev in two days.
And then suddenly, uh-oh, this doesn't look good at all.
It looks like it could take forever, or not at all.
And then suddenly, they just pull out.
Like one day you wake up and Russia's just leaving Kiev?
Just like that?
So you can be close to tipping points really quickly without noticing them.
And I keep seeing Ukraine cleverly knocking out the table legs one at a time.
And I feel as though the Russian military is at close to a tipping point.
Which is not to say that they won't regroup and just mow down Ukraine and take their time, I guess.
That's always a good possibility.
And the experts, a lot of them are saying that's going to happen.
But let's just game it out.
What happens if Ukraine just took out enough of the military, or the Navy, the Russian Navy, that it doesn't work as a supply route anymore?
Because you wouldn't have to sink the Navy to make it useless.
You would just have to show you could take out their biggest ships, and they'd have to keep some distance.
And you'd have to show that if they had a troop carrier that got near the shore, that it would explode.
And the mines would do some of that.
So is it possible that Ukraine has already won the naval battle?
Because remember, things can change quickly.
So it's possible...
Now, those of you who say, no, I'm not going to argue with you, I'm not going to argue.
So if you say, no, this doesn't make any difference, you're probably right.
You're probably right. The only point I want to make is that we're really bad at knowing when a tipping point is coming.
Stupid bird. Every day.
Every day this bird walks in front of one of my security cameras.
So I think it's the same bird every day.
Just one bird.
So anyway, what if Ukraine manages to at least blunt the naval force?
What if Ukraine, now freed from protecting Kyiv, can consolidate its forces against the Russians in their stronghold?
What if...
The new, let's see, artillery, I guess, and some helicopters that the United States and NATO are providing to Ukraine.
What if those things go in and start making a few good kills?
What if Ukraine has better command and control?
Because they might.
What if...
Taking out the Russian navy is part of trapping the Russian army and not just about the supply chain and about an amphibious landing.
What if Ukraine is cutting off their escape?
I'm just going to put the thought out there that so far Zelensky has shown no interest in small objectives.
Am I right? When was the last time that Zelensky thought small?
Because first there was his successful entertainment career, and then he ran for frickin' president of the country.
And then he decided that he was going to take on the, what, second most powerful military in the world?
And he's doing okay, right?
So those of you who say, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, fuck you, you're not listening.
Try to listen a little bit better.
If I said Ukraine is winning and I can see it from here, that would be drinking the Kool-Aid.
If I say you can't tell when turning points are near, that is just a statement that you should listen to because you're a fucking idiot.
So if you'd pay attention a little bit more to what I said and stop trolling and criticizing things you're fucking imagining that are happening nowhere in the real world or in this broadcast, maybe you would be useful and not the worthless piece of shit that I'm sure your family thinks about you.
But I digress.
Anyway, I think with the modern weaponry that Ukraine is getting, plus better coordination, plus better motivation, better morale, better everything, how many of you would say it's impossible for Ukraine to win outright?
In the comments.
I'm not sure which is the yes or the no in your answer, so we'll just see if there's any difference.
Is there...
It's not impossible, is it?
So some people are saying it's impossible, but I think the hidden turning points always argues for possible.
Not likely. Would you like me to put a percentage on it?
I'm going to go... Let's see, if we just take mainstream assumptions, let's say that the news is telling us accurately what's happening.
I doubt that's true.
But imagine the news is accurate.
What would the percentages be?
I don't know. 80-20?
Maybe 70-80% of Russia at least controlling the eastern part of Ukraine?
Maybe? 80%?
But did you think that Ukraine had a 20 or 30 percent of winning outright?
Like a month ago, if I said, you know, I think Ukraine could win outright.
They could trap the Russian army and just reduce it to ineffectiveness.
A month ago, you wouldn't have said that.
But today, when I say, well, 20 percent chance, a lot of you are saying, you know...
20%. I can accept 20% because it doesn't change your opinion that Russia will win.
It's just that I think it does introduce a little bit of doubt, doesn't it?
A month ago I said that Russia wouldn't invade.
By the way, every time you remind me of that in the comments, that is correct.
And anybody who does what I do, you should remind us of both our correct and incorrect predictions.
But I always tell you to look at the reason for the incorrect prediction.
Because sometimes being incorrect might be more insightful than being correct.
In this case, the reason I said he wouldn't invade is that I thought he couldn't succeed.
And it was obvious.
Now, when I say succeed, I don't mean I didn't think he could ultimately conquer Ukraine if he wanted to put everything into it, but I didn't think it would be easy enough to be a smart move.
So my take was this is obviously a bad move, so he obviously knows it, so he's obviously bluffing.
The part that I might have gotten wrong, if mainstream reporting is correct, is that Putin didn't know that it was going to be hard.
What do you think? Do you think that Putin didn't know it was going to be hard?
Or do you think that he really just wanted to control the East and the move on the capital was more of a diversion?
If it worked, it'd be fine, but he didn't need it.
You know, it was just part of the long game to get the parts he wanted and control them and then start working on the rest over time.
Yeah, he knew it could be hard.
I think he had to know it could be hard.
But it can't be a coincidence that he's putting his own people in jail.
The people who should have told him that it was going to not just be hard, but maybe really, really hard.
Well, what do you think of this Putin price hike?
Even MSNBC ran a poll.
It said that even on MSNBC and even the Democrats, just nobody's buying this Putin price hike thing.
So people were asked, you know, what causes inflation?
38% said Biden.
28% said COVID stuff.
23% said greedy corporations.
But only 6% thought the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in other words, Putin price hike, had much to do with the prices.
Now, wouldn't you have known this just by listening to it?
Let me tell you why the Trump labels work and this doesn't.
Trump labels work because his labels call out something that you felt was true.
Maybe you didn't notice.
So when Trump said, low-energy Jeb, you probably weren't thinking Jeb was low-energy.
But the moment he said it, you said, well, yeah, he is.
I noticed that. So his nicknames are completely compatible with something you've already thought or you could easily think because as soon as you hear it, you're like, oh, yeah.
When he said, was it Crooked Hillary?
Now, when he says Crooked Hillary, he's mostly talking to his base, who believed she was crooked.
So when he adds the clever nickname to something that you already think is true, the clever nickname can be quite active.
It can activate your already held belief.
Here's what Trump doesn't do.
He doesn't use this trick to convince you of something brand new.
Like, that nobody ever thought of.
But this Putin price hike, nobody was really thinking that.
Like, the public wasn't saying, oh, this Ukraine situation will raise my gas prices, even if it does.
The public was not there, and since the other explanations for it were more compelling, they weren't going to get there.
So this is a very basic mistake of persuasion, to think you can change people's minds.
Or at least not in this context.
You can't change people's minds.
You know, a clever nickname doesn't do that.
What it does is it reinforces where your mind already was, or could very easily be because you have no objection to it, and once it's called out, you say, yeah, I can see it.
But let's say you call this out.
It's a Putin price hike, and you never thought of that before.
You never thought that it could be somehow related to Russia.
And then Biden says, the Putin price hike, does that connect anything you were already thinking?
Not at all. It just feels like it comes out of left field.
So a very basic persuasion mistake, especially if you're trying to talk to your base, because the base wasn't there, and he couldn't get him there.
All right. Ukraine also destroyed some big Russian bridge where a Russian convoy...
It wasn't a Russian bridge. It was a convoy in Ukraine where the Russians were crossing it.
So here's my big question about this kind of war.
Given that Ukraine has modern military equipment, how could a large naval ship survive...
The modern military stuff.
How could any convoy ever get across a bridge?
You can't take out every bridge that has a convoy?
How does anybody get across a bridge when it's your home team and you've got all this modern weaponry and you know they're coming and you've got an advance notice?
I don't know how they ever do it.
And I said before, how do Russian tanks, at the beginning of the war, even before, I said, how are tanks going to survive modern defensive weaponry?
And the answer is, not very well.
Are you seeing tanks being an important part of the battle?
Am I wrong that tanks became irrelevant?
I think tanks just became like a metal coffin.
Right? So...
Big war equipment only works against relatively under-tooled opponents.
If you're up against anybody who has access to modern military equipment, all your big stuff blows up on day one, doesn't it?
Imagine China and the United States getting into a naval confrontation.
Both sides would lose all their big warships on the first day.
Because you can't really defend anything like that against a modern military.
And are you surprised at how easily Ukraine got to the biggest Russian ship?
Weren't you thinking to yourself, well, they must have all kinds of defensive screening, they can stop any missile coming in?
Maybe not. Maybe not.
Maybe they can't stop shit, right?
Now, our Navy allegedly has all these countermeasures and stuff, or do they?
Would they actually work?
Would our Navy be able to fight off two missiles coming from different directions?
I don't know. Maybe nobody can defend anything big against the modern military.
All right. So if you haven't seen this yet, it's really worth watching.
So Brian Stelter...
Had some pollsters on who did this test where they had a bunch of Fox News viewers.
They paid them to watch CNN for 30 days to see if it changed their views.
Now, I'm going to pause for a moment while you fill in your own joke about how you have to pay people to watch CNN. Do your own joke.
Okay. Good.
You got one? Good.
Okay. I didn't need to do that one.
This is actually just the story.
I don't need to add the joke if the setup is the joke.
So some people had to be paid to watch CNN for 30 days.
And then they were asked questions later to find out what they knew about certain topics.
And sure enough, people who went from Fox News to CNN, as Brian Stelter was quite happy to show on his program, they gained new information about topics they didn't even know about.
So apparently, if you watch only Fox News, you'll miss entire angles or stories that CNN covers, and you won't even know it.
So they proved that Fox News viewers are kind of in the dark about a lot of stuff that CNN does.
So that was Brian's...
Oh, actually, there was a little bit more to the story.
So there were two of the pollsters, and they were both on to talk about it.
And the second one pointed out that the Fox News viewers who only watched CNN for a month didn't learn anything about the Abraham Accords.
The Abraham Accords.
Like, one of the biggest stories of all time, you know, like a major peace deal in the Middle East.
But if you watch CNN, you didn't hear about it, because it was a huge Trump success.
So watching...
And then Stelter's, like, trying to keep the smile as he's being chewed apart by this pollster who's just being polite.
And he's just saying, well...
Here's a graph that shows that if you watch CNN for a month, you completely missed one of the biggest stories in the world, the Abraham Accords.
And then what did Brian Stelter say?
He blamed the pollster of both-siderism.
I think that's the word he used.
Both-siderism.
Oh, so now you're doing the both sides thing.
No, that wasn't bullsiderism.
That was the study.
That was the study.
There's no bullsiderism.
He just proved that if you watch one network, you get half the news, and if you watch the other network, you get the other half.
That's about it, which we sort of already knew.
But it was hilarious to watch.
It looked like Stelter was just learning That he had a guest on that was going to show that you don't learn about the biggest story in the world if you watch CNN. And the guy who was explaining it to him, he was so sheepish about doing it because he knew he was destroying CNN right in front of Stelter.
He's like, well, you have to see his mannerism.
He's so polite. He's like, well, you know, actually, what we did find, you know, sort of.
I'm just laughing the whole time I watched this guy try to navigate that.
Well, MSNBC is failing hard, and in a hilarious way.
The only thing good they had going for them was the Rachel Maddow show, and then she took a big hiatus or time off.
But then she's coming back, but for her reported $30 million annual fee, she's only going to do one night a week on Monday.
I don't even think Monday is a good night for TV, is it?
Maybe it is, I don't know.
So I don't know if she gets to keep her whole $30 million for just showing up one day a week, but I like that gig.
It does show you how desperate MSNBC is that even this is being considered.
But apparently a number of their primetime shows bring in around 100,000 viewers.
100,000. Do you know how many people watch this live stream?
About 50,000, you know, if you count recorded playbacks.
So for the price of an iPad, literally, for the price of an iPad, I run a network that is 50% as good as MSNBC. So you're welcome, I guess. Now, to be fair, I think everybody who looks at these ratings is missing the business model.
I don't think that MSNBC or CNN are designed for live viewers.
I think that they're designed for creating clips, and then the clips of the live viewing goes around, and that's actually the news.
So if you go to MSNBC or CNN's website, there are all kinds of links to their video content.
The video content comes from their live stuff, and really it's just about commercializing the replays, I think.
So, thank you, Bill.
Because I know some of you who have some business experience were squirming when I talk about live ratings, because it's really not their business model at all.
They're really not about the live show.
And neither am I, all right?
Because did you see what I did?
I compared my replay numbers of 50,000 to their live numbers of 100,000, and that wasn't the right comparison.
Their replays are probably in the millions, and my replays are 50,000.
So it's not comparable.
But you can make it sound that way.
Tim Pool is bigger than CNN, but again, on the replay?
I don't know. I don't know.
So that, ladies and gentlemen, completes the best live stream of all humanity.
MSNBC is subsidized by the CIA, somebody says.
Well, I don't know about all that, but there does seem to be a CIA connection to our media.
And who was saying that CNN can't even get viewers during a war?
So the Ukraine situation is a major world war, one that we have great interest in.
And... Wow.
So even Fox News has a toad-venom psychedelic experience story that was on Jesse Waters.
Interesting. Everybody's talking about the psychedelic experiences now.
What, you don't like my tirades?
All right, let's take a vote.
How many of you like to see me go off on trolls?
Go. Should I keep doing it?
Or should I let them ride?
I've got a feeling that the locals people like it.
All right, well, there's some disagreement, but it seems to be that the people who are responding...
Now, those of you who don't like it, Is it because it triggers you for something in your personal life?
Or just not entertaining?
Probably a little of both.
How's my tennis game? I don't play tennis anymore.
