Episode 1723 Scott Adams: Who Wins And Who Lose In The Florida Battle Between Disney And DeSantis?
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Content:
Whiteboard: Disney vs DeSantis
Mushrooms last night
Biden's accomplishments?
Depp or Heard, who's the abuser?
Pressure for Apple Store to drop Truth Social
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You know, I've noticed that you look good in almost anything you wear.
It's weird. I don't know how you do it.
And you're funny. You're smart.
I could not love you more.
Alright, that's probably the best thing you're going to hear from anybody today.
This is something I learned from the Dale Carnegie class.
That compliments work even if you believe they're insincere.
They still work. Because your brain is just like a machine.
You put in the input, gives you a certain output, and you don't really have to believe the input, weirdly.
That's why movies work.
You can watch a movie and feel emotions even though it's not real.
Compliments work just like that.
Hey, that compliment isn't real.
Feels good. Feels good.
Why does it feel just like a real one?
Because it doesn't matter if it's real.
Your brain processes it just like it's real.
Within limits.
You have to be able to convince yourself that it's real-ish.
But would you like to take this experience up a level?
Hard to believe.
I know. But you can.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or cyan, a canteen jug or a flask.
A vessel. Of what kind?
That's right. Any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Best thing that's ever happened to you?
Today. Go.
Oh, I've just been welcomed to someone else's simulation.
What if our dreams are the real world and this is the simulation?
Whoa! Whoa!
Okay, that wasn't very deep.
But we're going deep.
This Disney and DeSantis thing is way more interesting than it should be, meaning that I started out thinking it was sort of a thin story, there wasn't much to it, but there's really a lot of interesting elements to it, and I don't know they're fully appreciated.
So let's talk about that.
So just an update, if you don't know, Disney, years ago in the 60s, negotiated a deal with the state of Florida where they would have some autonomy in a certain part of the state that they owned.
So it was their own property.
And they could put in their own city services, you know, water, sewage, roads, stuff like that, as well as other powers.
But that's mainly what they wanted to do, was take care of the infrastructure.
And I guess they got tax breaks or no taxes or something like that.
And in return, they built the Disney properties.
And the state would benefit from the people coming in and having a big business where there had been nothing but, you know, unused land before.
And then Disney would benefit.
From the efficiency and the tax breaks.
And that was a good idea until Disney opened its mouth about the poorly labeled, don't say gay law, that really wasn't about that.
It was more about not having teachers teach little kids things about sexuality.
Or even things about gender identity, stuff like that.
So that was the basic idea.
So then Governor DeSantis retaliated, and we'll talk about whether that word really fits.
I don't think it does. He retaliated, so to speak, by revoking Disney's special deal.
And it was just because Disney spoke up about the law.
Now, all right, that's the setup, just so everybody's up to speed.
Here are the things that people have been saying about it.
One is that Disney had an unfair deal because they weren't paying taxes.
Unlike other corporations, they weren't paying taxes.
And so why is that good for Florida if Florida is giving up some autonomy and they're not getting taxes?
It's a bad deal for Florida, right?
No. No, there's a reason that Florida made the deal.
No, I don't own Disney stock, except that it's a component of an index fund.
Good question. By the way, you should always ask that question.
If you see me mention any product, or even a CEO, ask it.
Just remind me, because I just don't remember to do it.
Because there are some of these companies that I have some stock in.
And I do think it influences me.
Even when I don't feel it, of course it does.
Money always does. But I don't have any specific stake in Disney.
So... Here's the thing.
Disney employs 60,000 people in Florida.
So that's 60,000 employees who get a paycheck, and then what happens with their paycheck?
Money comes out of it that's called taxes, and it goes to Florida.
Now, that's 60,000 people who...
Either wouldn't be there to work or would have had, I don't know, were competing with other jobs, would have been higher unemployment.
It would have been something different.
But 60,000 employees is quite a few people.
How about the tourists?
All those tourists who come into Florida, they're paying hotel taxes, right?
So a hotel tax is almost like an income tax on somebody who doesn't live there.
It's just sort of an indirect...
Income tax. So Florida actually has a way to, in a conceptual way, to levy, because it's a destination state, everybody wants to go there, for vacation anyway, they can essentially put an income tax on other states.
Because if you make some money in another state and you want to spend it in Florida on a vacation, some of that money is going to go into the hotel tax and go into Florida's pocket.
So how many millions of people go to Disney every year and they're filling Florida's coffers through the hotel tax and then all these people are eating and drinking and buying goods and there's this ripple effect.
The size of the footprint of Disney's economic benefit to Florida It's kind of enormous, isn't it?
Am I wrong? If you were talking to an actual commercial successful economist, if you said to an economist, Disney doesn't pay taxes in Florida, would they just laugh at you?
I'm pretty sure that Disney creates more taxable situations, which is different.
They create more taxable situations than anybody else.
In Florida? I don't know. Who is the biggest employer in Florida?
Besides the government.
Outside the government, who's the biggest?
And maybe schools. Outside of government and schools, is it Disney?
Military. Could be military, but that doesn't count.
Well, Disney's one of them.
Somebody says NASA? I would think Disney's the bigger one in terms of tax impact.
So... Now, that's not counting the fact that Disney built their own infrastructure.
So instead of the town paying for roads, Disney paid for them.
Isn't that like a tax? It's in place of a tax, which was the whole idea.
You won't have a lot of taxes, but those taxes would have paid for the roads, but you're going to pay for the roads.
So just like a tax, you just have more flexibility to put the roads where you want them, And who knew better where to put them?
I mean, Disney knew where to put the roads and what kind and when they needed them, and it was their priority.
So wouldn't you prefer Disney build the roads to make it exactly what they wanted and built for the customer's impact?
Right? So he says, you're really trying hard, Scott.
You know, when somebody says that, like, I know I've sort of made some inroads.
Look for how many generic criticisms I get on this topic.
Watch how generic they are, and that'll be a topic coming up.
All right, so the first thing I would say is that the reason that Florida made the deal with Disney is not because Disney was so clever that they put one over on Florida.
That didn't happen.
I mean, there's no evidence that that happened.
The evidence is that two sophisticated entities, Disney and the governor of Florida, got together and they said, all right, what's good for you?
What's good for us? How do we make a deal that's good for all of us?
And by the way, when you decide how long a deal lasts, if you decide it's sort of a forever deal, that's part of your initial calculation, right?
If it's a bad deal, what happens?
Well, in my view, a deal is a deal, so that's a bigger factor for me than it is for some of you, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
So let me start with that.
It's easier. I'm going to go to the whiteboard.
So would you agree that some of you have different opinions than I do about the Disney-DeSantis thing, right?
Starting with the fact that we have different opinions of it.
But why? Is it because of the logic?
Or some knowledge?
Probably not. I think how you come out on this has to do with your priorities.
In other words, there are a lot of things in play.
So some people have sort of an anti-corporate power bias.
It's a filter they see the world in.
And so they say, hey, why should Disney have a special deal?
Maybe that's a high priority for you.
It wouldn't be for me.
But I could see why that would be for somebody else.
Parental rights. Now, of course, this is the central issue, right?
The parental rights. So I would say that for many of you, that's the number one thing.
And whatever it is that gets to support that, even if it's a little extreme, even if it's breaking a deal, it's just the most important thing.
So you might say to yourself, you know, I can be kind of flexible about everything, everything, if I can get this one thing.
I just want to have parental rights about how to raise my kid.
Reasonable. I don't have any pushback on that.
Anybody who has that opinion, I'd say, it's a good opinion.
Some people say that it's about winning.
You know, it's more important to win.
Other people say it's deterrence.
By the way, I was debating the word retaliation.
And I said that if retaliation is what you're doing, like just retaliation, you should be impeached.
Because you don't hire people to retaliate.
That's not really the job.
But here's what I realized.
Here's what I realized.
The comments are going crazy because you want me to use the word grooming.
That'll make you happy?
Yes. If you believe that the issue is grooming, I'm putting that under parental rights.
So I acknowledge that the issue is that people thought that their kids were getting groomed.
But that all comes under the category of you want control of what your kids hear, right?
Do you agree that's the catch-all for that?
Somebody says I'm wrong.
Where am I wrong? Issue is Disney lying?
Okay. So there are other issues.
People say Disney lying. I would say that if you use the word deterrence instead of retaliation, then I'll agree with you.
Watch this. Watch this.
I'll agree. You probably didn't think that we could find a way to agree, but watch this.
If I asked you to replace the word retaliation with the word deterrence, that DeSantis pushed back in what you could call an unrelated area, To create a deterrence for not only Disney, but anybody else who would get into this realm and maybe interfere with parental rights or be, you know, promoting grooming or whatever it is you think is happening.
That worked, right? As soon as I said deterrence, you all said, okay, that's what I was thinking, right?
But it was just retaliation that wasn't working for me as a word.
So I think we were not disagreeing on the concept.
I think we only disagreed on the word.
And so I would blame the journalists.
Well, no, I blame myself.
Allow me to take responsibility for my own opinions.
I blame myself...
For being, let's say, a little bit duped by the journalists calling it retaliation.
Now keep in mind that the word retaliation was used on both sides, right?
CNN and Fox News have both used that term.
So it wasn't like I was biased by one side.
I was biased by both sides and the way the journalists chose to treat it.
But as long as you say the purpose of it was to set up a precedent and say, look, if you mess with parents or you mess with politics in a way that people on the right don't like, there will be consequences.
You won't like them, and they'll be fairly immediate.
And that that would form a counterbalance to the fact that the left is really good at...
Getting pressure on corporations.
So corporations already have pressure from the left.
They have had far less pressure from the right.
DeSantis is creating the first, let's say, memorable counterbalance.
Because keep in mind, from a persuasion perspective, it doesn't matter so much that he's doing it, it matters that you remember it.
It's the remembering it that's the important part.
You can do stuff all day long, but if people don't remember you did it, it will have no future effect.
So if you're looking for a deterrence, you're looking for a future effect, you've got to remember it.
And has DeSantis pulled that off?
Would you say DeSantis has succeeded, at least for the people who pay attention to politics?
I'm not sure everybody's paying attention to this.
This is probably like a 10% at tops.
But wouldn't you say that he succeeded?
Totally, right? People who have any kind of political memory will always go back to this example.
And the very next time a corporation speaks out, everybody's going to say, whoa, you better pull that back because you saw what happened to Disney.
You saw what DeSantis did to them.
So I would agree this works as a deterrence.
And I would also agree with the people who are saying that the right had not yet established a You know, mutually assured destruction that would keep the corporations on the sideline.
And if you think that that's a good thing, and many of you do, and that's a reasonable opinion, right?
If your politics aligns with the right, and you think the right has been bullied and pushed around, and you see DeSantis as essentially landing a blow for your side, but also creating a deterrence, Then I accept that as a trade-off that makes sense.
But let me tell you where you and I are probably different.
And it's not in the logic of it.
And it has nothing to do with, you know, I don't have a different opinion about parental rights.
I'm pretty sure we, I think probably all of you watching, or the most part, have a very similar opinion.
You know, the parents have to be in charge.
As much as is practical, they need to be in charge.
But here's where you and I differ.
I have been perhaps irrational, if I were to look at my own thinking, perhaps irrational, but it's there.
Keeping a deal is a big deal to me.
It's a big deal. And here's why.
I'll give you the rationality, but maybe there's some irrational thing that's driving me for this.
It's the only thing that holds society together.
The reason the United States works, relative to, say, some country that the government never works, is that in the United States, you have a reasonable expectation of people keeping their deal.
And if not, then there's some consequences.
Yeah, I was always impressed that China, as much as I criticized them, I always was impressed that they just waited for the 99-year lease in Hong Kong to run out.
Because clearly they could have forced the issue earlier.
Clearly. But they just kept to the deal.
And what about the UK? They owned this thing for 100 years, had this great value, and they said...
Deal's a deal. So, I always appreciated that, because every time you have a big example of somebody keeping a deal, even when it's really not cool for them, it's just really hard for them, but they kept a deal.
That's what keeps everything together.
Like, it's the most basic glue of society, is that you keep your deal.
So, does that apply to this special case?
I think a reasonable person could say, Scott, I get what you're saying, that that's important to keep your deals and that that's the glue that holds America together and really makes this special, I would say, because our court system will chase you if you don't keep a deal.
We do have that working, more or less, better than other countries.
But if you said this is a special case, I would say, ah, you got me.
Because I'm always willing to treat anything like a special case.
I'm never the person who says there's no special cases.
There's always a special case.
And would this be one?
If you're going to pick a special case, of all the reasons you could pick a special case, the special case would be if you think you're protecting your children, right?
Isn't that the ultimate special case?
Well, a deal's a deal.
Normally, I would not be in favor of somebody grooming my child, but a deal's a deal, and I don't want to go back on a deal, because it's a very important principle.
It holds society together.
No. You're going to break any deal if you think your child's well-being is at stake, right?
You'd break it immediately.
I think I have some irrational connection to this for this topic.
So if you and I disagree and you want to say, Scott, you're being irrational, here's where.
I'm being irrational and the deal's the deal.
That really bothered me. I have to say, strangely enough, it really bothered me that anybody would...
Now, let me say it another way.
It bothered me that the government would break a deal.
That bothered me the most.
Now, if you say, hey, the deal was made when it made sense, but now time has gone by, and Disney is doing so well that they don't need that special deal.
Okay. But I don't know if anybody did the analysis.
Did DeSantis do the analysis and know that they really make money on this deal?
Does the state of Florida really come out ahead?
Because they're going to be paying for the infrastructure now instead of Disney.
Do they? I don't know.
Did anybody do that math? All right, well, here are some of the answers that I got when I asked people, be specific.
What do you think DeSantis got in terms of a benefit?
And here are the things that people answered, and I want to show you how sort of muddy people's thinking is.
Everybody who said he created a deterrence, I think, is a clean thinker.
That's a clean answer.
You could disagree with it.
You could say, I don't think it was enough of a deterrence or something like that.
But it's a clean, specific answer.
That's a benefit.
Everybody would understand what that means.
And it could be explained in one word.
Deterrence. So that's like a good, good answer.
Here are the other answers.
So these are people who maybe are feeling something about the issue, but the thinking process hasn't gelled yet.
People said the benefit that DeSantis got was that it's a principle.
You know, he's upholding a principle.
He said obedience keeps Disney out of politics.
But does it? I don't know.
Will it keep anybody out of politics?
Because remember, the left is pushing people to be in politics.
So corporations are going to be damned if they do and damned if they don't.
I don't know. It won't keep anybody out of politics, but it might actually be a little deterrence.
Disney loses its monopoly power.
I don't even know what that means.
Something about losing their special control.
Some people were pointing out that Disney should lose that deal anyway.
So it doesn't matter that it's being used as a deterrence.
Should lose it anyway.
There's things like fairness and attention and blah, blah, blah.
So... I think the bottom line is that we probably are closer to agreeing on this than not.
Fox News asked some people about Biden's accomplishments.
Before we do this, let me tell you something I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about today, at least in this forum.
So last night, I decided that I would see if I could recreate an experience That I had in my 20s.
And it was an experience with mushrooms.
And I've talked about it often, and I said it was one of the most...
Well, first of all, it was one of the most enjoyable days of my whole life.
I mean, just off the charts.
But secondly, I said that I felt it changed me permanently in a positive way.
And I wasn't sure, if I were to do it again many years later, if I would feel the same.
Because I thought to myself, what if the benefits of the first experience sort of settled in and just became who I am?
Would I then be immune?
In other words, would the experience just try to make me what I already was, and I would just sit there saying, I don't think anything's happening.
Or would I just have another profound experience?
I had no idea. So...
First of all, kids don't do drugs.
So you're going to get a cautionary tale here.
If you think this is going to end with a delightful story of how much fun I had, well, it didn't go that way.
It did not go that way.
Here's what I think happened, but I'm not positive.
The specific form was in chocolate.
It was an edible. And it was sort of packaged and professional-looking thing.
And I thought, well, that's going to be safe.
Because I knew people who had experienced exactly the same product from the same box, literally.
And nobody had an especially bad experience.
I think one mildly bad ones.
But basically, so I knew this was a...
Relatively safe kind of thing.
Relative to things that are not safe.
It's not safe. Let me be clear.
It's not safe. It's just a little bit safer than it could have been, you know, if you just found a mushroom in the forest and started chomping on it.
I guess that would be the least safe.
And so you're contradicting yourself all the time now.
What would be an example of that?
All right. So here was my experience.
I had no cognitive, let's say, psychedelic experience.
I took the low end of the highest dose.
And I felt physically uncomfortable, like I couldn't sit down, and I didn't want to be touched.
I just needed to be standing and walking.
And And a stomach ache, like a digestive problem that was actually pretty bad.
So he says the dose was too low.
Well, if the dose had been higher, wouldn't have...
Now, I didn't have an empty stomach, so I intentionally ate beforehand, like right beforehand.
So here's the thing.
If you think that I had a mushroom experience, I disagree.
Because having experienced it once, I can tell you that this wasn't it.
So I don't believe this was actually mushrooms.
And I did a little Googling to find out, sure enough, there are counterfeit mushroom chocolate products.
Now, I don't know if I had one, but I do know that I know what it should have felt like.
And it wasn't like a small version of that.
It was nothing.
So there wasn't any psychological effect.
Except that I was uncomfortable with my physical feeling, which I guess had a mental effect.
But there wasn't any cognitive change.
It just made me unbalanced.
And it felt like a stimulant, actually.
If I had to guess, I would say a stimulant.
And I don't think mushrooms ever act like that.
Are they? No, I wouldn't do that alone.
So, you know, I was in a safe environment, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. So, do they have any memories from the old tops?
Yeah, I have a very specific memory of the first time, and I can tell you that was dramatic.
The experience...
Is not subtle.
So here's my only warning.
The toughest thing with anything in this category is you don't know what you're getting.
That's the problem. Yeah, somebody said fentanyl.
And I actually... That's one of my suspicions.
I have a suspicion that it was something that would make you feel like you wanted to do it again.
Yeah, I'm actually wondering...
If the only people who would do it twice are people who have never experienced the real thing.
Because if you experienced the real thing, I don't think you would do this again.
But if you hadn't, you might say to yourself, oh, I got some...
Basically, intoxication was out.
I would describe it as intoxication and stimulation at the same time.
It was a bad combo. Somebody says the dose was too low.
Well... That's the problem, is you don't know what the dose should be.
I mean, if you follow the directions, it was on the high end.
But I did expect it to be, like, some effect.
There really wasn't any. Anyway.
Fox News asked about Biden's accomplishments.
And so if I act a little loopy today, I've got, like, two hours of sleep.
So I'm probably going to go to sleep as soon as this is done.
People ask about Biden's accomplishments.
And it's funny because if you see the professional Democrats answer the question of what has Biden done, usually they go to infrastructure.
Oh, we got the infrastructure bill passed.
But the public at large doesn't even know what that is.
So Biden's biggest accomplishment is something that literally 95% of his base Doesn't know about.
It's just, he passed a budget?
It just sounds like he passed a budget.
Like, it literally sounds like the most nothing that anything could sound like.
Hey, he passed a budget for infrastructure.
Okay. Don't they all do that?
Doesn't every government pass a budget for infrastructure?
No, this is like extra.
That's it? It's a little extra big on the budget for the infrastructure, which is basically your normal job.
That's it. And even people don't know that.
So people say stuff like, well, you know, we brought back the calm, sober leadership.
And what'd that get you?
How's that calm, sober leadership working out?
But the funniest thing is I saw Fox News mocking a Washington Post editorial in which the writer was saying that he couldn't understand why Biden isn't being more popular and successful.
And I'm thinking, I have a few ideas I can throw into the mix.
I don't feel like it's that complicated at all, honestly.
All right. This old Johnny Depp story, so he's suing a $50 million lawsuit against Amber Heard, his ex, because she wrote some article that claimed he was an abuser, and now he's suing, and seems to have proven, with audio tapes anyway, that she was the abuser.
So not only was she the abuser, but she accused him of being the abuser and ruined his life, basically, and his career.
And here's the thing that I love about this.
There are a lot of people learning that Amber Heard exists and that she has a certain set of personality traits.
And I believe that there are people...
Let me ask you. How many people are familiar with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard story?
And you said to yourself, oh my God, I know Amber Heard.
It might be a male Amber Heard or a female Amber Heard.
So gender doesn't matter.
But is there anybody who...
Look at the comments.
So many of you have met her recently.
Or one liker. And here's the thing that you probably thought.
There can't be two of those.
Right? How many of you had that experience and just said to yourself, there's no way there are two of these?
Like, I don't know what I experienced here.
But I can tell you one thing.
There can't be two of these.
There are a lot of them. If you look at the comments, it's just filled with people saying, yes, my ex, my blah, blah, blah.
Now, it's men and women, right?
So it's not a gender thing.
It's a personality thing.
If you look at the specific things that Amber Heard is accused of, and since I'm not a doctor, I cannot give you a diagnosis.
I will simply make an observation.
If you were to make a list of all the things that describe a vulnerable narcissist, and I think there are some other things like...
Some personality disorders that also overlap.
But if you just made a list of all the things they do, Amber Heard checks off all the lists.
And one of the weirdest ones is that projection thing, where they blame you, even in public in this case, of doing the crime that only they were doing.
That's the weirdest part.
Blaming you of a crime that only they are doing?
Like that one you don't think could happen with more than one person.
But it does. So here's the thing you need to know.
Amber Heard is genetically a human being.
If you checked her DNA, it'd be human.
But if you treat her like a human and assume that she will act like a human, she will destroy you.
One of the things that Johnny Depp said that just really blew my mind was...
He said that something like he thought that she'd been put there to take everything from him.
Like she was just an evil force who wasn't being selfishly evil, but rather just evil.
It was like she didn't have anything to gain.
It was just evil.
And so I think that's what he was responding to.
It's like, I don't even see what was in it for her.
It just looked evil.
And... If you've had experience with one person like this in your life, and so many of you have, I can see in the comments, just know that that wasn't one.
Now, do you know what the solution is that the experts say if you run into one of these people?
I'm just going to say one of these people.
And again, I'm not going to label it...
As vulnerable narcissism as if I could diagnose it, because you would need a doctor to diagnose.
I'm just going to say that there's a very clear checklist of behaviors and that she hits them all.
Right down the list. Boom.
And that's all I can say.
If you meet somebody who fits the checklist, what would the checklist be?
It would be like the emotional outbursts.
Here's the most incredible part.
Is that they'll minimize their awfulness like it's no big deal.
When you hear her on the audio tapes, like she was throwing things and basically physically abusing him, and he was literally hiding, and she treated it like he was a huge pussy and it was no big deal, and he should man up.
That's like you almost can't even believe it.
It's like unbelievable, but that's on the checklist.
You'd expect that one.
The having affairs, the...
The projection. It's just all there.
So this seemed like a small story, but I think it's a big story.
Here's the thing you need to learn.
The experts give you one recommendation if you accidentally get into a relationship with such a person.
Do you know what that one piece of advice is?
And it's all the same. No expert.
There's nobody who disagrees.
Run, right? Because if you imagine that they're like people, they are humans, But if you imagine they act like a person, then you'll just be destroyed.
Because they're not there to act like a person.
They're there to destroy you.
And once you get destroyed, they'll move to the next person and destroy them.
They don't stop destroying.
They just keep destroying.
So, just run.
And so, I think Johnny Depp...
It has done a national service of extraordinary value if we come to see it this way.
If we can see what he's telling us, he's teaching us to run.
He's telling us what to look for.
And he's saying, run, if you see it.
I mean, that's how I interpret the story.
Now, of course, he probably has a gigantic personal stake in this.
He's trying to...
Suing for $50 million doesn't make any sense because I don't think she has $50 million.
But I feel like he's...
It feels more like he's doing it for us, doesn't it?
I'm not even sure...
I'm not even sure that Johnny Depp thinks he'll get anything personally out of this, except the satisfaction of the truth, I guess.
All right. Speaking of the truth, so truth social now is on the rumble cloud, I guess, and people are being brought on on greater numbers.
So some of the technical problems seem to be perhaps resolved.
But I saw...
I'm seeing some activism now to ask the Apple Store, the App Store, to drop the app, which basically puts you in a business.
I mean, you could still have the platform, but if you don't have the Apple app, you're not going to thrive.
So, how do you succeed when Apple can just say, okay, you're gone?
And what would it take? It wouldn't take anything.
All they'd have to do is say, um, looks like you've got a bunch of right-wing extremists on there.
You're done. Right?
And won't there be a lot of right-wing extremists on there?
I would think.
You know, probably some.
So it seems to me that Apple has every ability to just delete them whenever they want.
So how exactly do you succeed that way?
I mean, I guess you don't know until you have the fight.
And so that's the risk of an entrepreneur, is you've got to take that fight.
But that's a pretty big risk.
Now, here's my take on Trump running for 2024.
Number one, I think he could win.
And probably would be the...
Yeah, I think he could win.
And I think that if he gets in, he'd probably win.
But here's the problem. Given that January 6th was such a black eye to the Republicans, and a Trump administration would be looking to staff up with Republicans, how could he possibly staff up?
How could a Trump 2024 victory, how could he attract a talent pool when he's suffering under that January 6th brainwashing thing that was really effective?
Half of the country...
Thinks that he's a traitor.
And even if he wins, because he gets enough votes from his own people, I feel like people would be afraid to associate because it would feel like, oh, another one joins the traitor's party or something.
I mean, it was bad enough when he was only being called a racist, which, by the way, stopped happening.
Have you noticed that? As soon as they had this new thing, Trump stopped being a racist.
It just hasn't come up.
Doesn't matter anymore, I guess.
You know, as if it were ever true in any meaningful way.
He needs to make a point of destroying the FBI. Well, I think that this is the kill shot.
You have to ask yourself how he would staff up.
And to me, I don't know the answer to it.
Do you? Can you think of how he could accomplish that?
Or do you think people would just say, oh, it's a good job, I'll take it?
Because that didn't happen the first term.
The first term, there were a lot of people who didn't want a job in that administration.
It feels like it would be twice as hard in the second term.
Because even if there were a lot of people who agreed with Trump so they were willing to work with him, even those same people don't agree with him about January 6th in most cases...
Well, you're always going to get somebody to apply.
I'm not saying that there wouldn't be any applicants.
I'm saying that you're not going to get the top cream of the crop.
That's a problem, isn't it? Now, what about DeSantis?
DeSantis is good. Right?
Because DeSantis is actually developing an almost bulletproof...
Really, it is bulletproof.
I think DeSantis has the best bulletproof...
Set of conservative policies and actions that I've seen.
It looks pretty solid.
So... As much as I like a lot of what Trump has done and could do, you'd have to ask yourself if DeSantis would be more of a Trump than Trump.
It's a fair question.
So... By the way, does anybody disagree with me about the staffing thing?
I get that he could staff up somehow.
I've got a little disagreement there, a lot of disagreement.
I mean, we don't really know.
It's just one of those factors.
Disagree? No? Okay.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
Normally, when it's a faster news day, Or there's more news.
I would stay on here longer.
But, oh, we've got 45 minutes.
That's pretty good. And you prefer Schellenberger.
You know, maybe Schellenberger will be president someday.
He's got to make it as governor first of California.
And by the way, I haven't heard anybody who's looked at his...
This is Michael Schellenberger running as an independent for governor of California.
And what's different is he's bringing very specific plans.
He's written books about it, researched it.
So he's the most qualified in terms of knowing how to fix these specific problems.
And I'd love to see if that model ever catches on.
Like, if he wins, think of the precedent.
Imagine the precedent...
If Michael Schellenberger wins, first precedent is that an independent can win.
I mean, Jesse Ventura did, but I think that was a special case.
So it's unusual. I mean, they can.
They can do it, but it's unusual.
So it would make that more likely.
That might be good. But it would also make the idea of capable leadership based on knowing how to get things done and, you know, Really researching and stuff.
It might make that a thing.
What if that becomes a thing?
Wouldn't that be good? I saw a comment on locals.
I'm pretty sure that I did not have a bad mushroom trip.
What I had was something that probably wasn't mushrooms.
That's what I think happened.
So if you're thinking that I had a bad trip, I don't think I did.
I just had a bad experience with something that probably wasn't what I thought it was.
All right. There's a Rasmussen poll about...
Really?
Or you think there should be one?
It was a deliriant I don't know what that means exactly.
Alright, that's all for now.
And I'll hit decaf.
They're decaf mushrooms.
Alright, we talked about Elon's tweet about Bill Gates yesterday.
