Episode 1841 Scott Adams: All The News Today Is About Men Acting Badly. Do Women Make News Anymore?
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Things that can be said but not heard
Vitamin D and COVID
Sam Harris clarifications
Jake Tapper plugged Jared Kushner's new book?
President Trump, most persuasive person
Our fentanyl future
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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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Go! Well, I saw a comment on locals just now.
There's somebody doing this who uses a cup and a saucer.
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A mug's not good enough for you.
You got your cup and your saucer.
Alright. Alright.
Alright. Well, someday maybe the rest of us will come up to your level.
Saucers it is.
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Someday. Someday I will have a saucer.
Well, let's talk about the news.
I would like to publicly congratulate Brian Stelter.
As you know, he's leaving his position as CNN on Reliable Sources.
I guess the ratings were not that good, but I would like to congratulate Brian Stelter for being the only person to ever leave CNN for a non-penis-related reason.
So, that feels like a step in the right direction.
Do you remember a story, it wasn't that long ago, about this, there was a CEO named Dan Price.
And he had decided that the lowest paid person in his company would get a minimum of $70,000.
And so when he made that change, people said, my God, you, you are amazing.
You're amazing. And so for a long time he was hailed as a hero.
But there seems to be a string of sexual assault charges against him.
Let me see if I could have predicted that was going to happen.
Famous, young, unusually good-looking CEO. I think he's single.
What do you think is going to happen when a young, good-looking, powerful guy gets a lot of attention?
I don't know. I feel like some sexual impropriety accusations are going to come out of that situation.
But what I say about him, Dan Price is, and I don't mean this to be too cunning or too cruel, but Dan Price, you're no Brian Stelter.
You're no Brian Stelter.
Because he managed to go through an entire CNN career without any accusations of sexual impropriety.
Now, that could be either good or bad, depending on your point of view.
But let's say that it's good that he didn't do it.
I'm going to say this again, because no matter how many times I say it, it can't be heard.
I love this category of communication.
It's sort of a little hobby of mine.
Things that can be said, but they can't be heard.
What would be an example of something you could say, but nobody could hear?
Lots of things. It's basically everything that doesn't agree with your opinion.
I could say it all day long, but you're not really going to hear it.
It's going to change on the way in.
And here's one of those.
The people on the left and the people on the right don't have much of a problem with each other.
It's just the news.
It's just the news.
When I say just, let's say 95%.
95% of it is the news telling you that you're mad at the other side.
And then highlighting the people who get the best singers in on the other side.
And highlight the people who are getting the best singers from their other side.
When was the last time you had an actual unhealthy experience with just a regular person?
And if you did...
Was the reason that you had an unpleasant experience because you could tell that that person had been hypnotized by the fake news, right?
Show me somebody who doesn't follow any news whatsoever, and I don't care what their political leaning is, I don't care how left they are, Show me the, I'll just use an old term, show me some hippie who doesn't own the television and hasn't watched the news in 20 years, and I'll show you somebody I can get along with, great.
No problem at all.
You put me with a bunch of hippies, I love them.
I love them. And they would probably like me too.
We would have nothing to fight about.
Then take the same group of people, roughly speaking, but they've been watching CNN and MSNBC for the last five years.
I can't even be in the room with them.
So is there something wrong with the people, or is there something wrong with the media?
It's obvious. It's obviously the media.
But the media is also in control of telling you what the problem is.
So the people who are in control of telling you what the problem is are the problem, and that's our problem.
If the people who are causing the most problems would also point to themselves, which, by the way, sometimes they do.
And Goffeld does it all the time.
And Goffeld is part of the news industry, but it will tell you right away that the news is part of the problem.
So you can say it all day long, but people don't hear it.
What they hear is, my team good, other team bad.
That's all they hear. If you could convince people that the real problem was their believing of fake news, because that's mostly the problem.
Most of the problem is believing fake news.
Here's what we need.
We don't need fact checkers.
I mean, it's helpful.
I don't mind having them, you know, as long as there's some on both sides.
You can see both arguments.
What we need is logic fixers.
Let me give you an example. Today, yet again, in the news, there's a story that vitamin D seems to be highly correlated with good outcomes for people who have COVID. If you've got a low vitamin D level and you go into the hospital with COVID, it's probably grim.
But if you had high vitamin D and you get COVID, even if you're hospitalized, it probably won't be that bad.
So what did most of you conclude?
Do you remember in, I don't know, it was probably early in, I don't know what month it is.
Maybe some of you know. What month in 2022 in the spring did I say, hey, it looks like all the places that are having a bad time with COVID are coincidentally where they have low vitamin D. Do you remember me saying that?
I said, is it my imagination that all the people in all the places seems to be highly correlated with low vitamin D? But, I want to believe that, right?
How much do you think I want to believe that the very first thing I said, I think it was March I said the first, in May I did a long thread, But I think it was way earlier that I noticed the correlation.
If somebody has either a date on that, I'd really love to know.
But, alright, consider my situation, right?
I'm a public figure, and I make predictions and assertions about reality.
Don't you think I want to be right about that?
Like, how much do I want to be right that vitamin D was really the magic bullet all along?
Right? Because that would make me look smart.
It would make me look smart.
So I want that to be true.
But here's the problem.
Every time a new study comes out, they show correlation and they don't show causation.
They suggest that the argument for causation is getting stronger, but it isn't.
Because it's just more observational studies.
It doesn't matter how many you do.
Because the problem is, That people who have poor health in general have low vitamin D. So if you notice that all the people with low vitamin D are dying, it's either telling you that vitamin D makes the difference, or it's telling you that people with poor health often have low vitamin D. It doesn't mean it's the reason that people are having bad outcomes.
Now we do know We do know that vitamin D is essential for your health.
I think we know that. I mean, I doubt that's going to change.
So, certainly vitamin D is helpful.
We just don't know if these big numbers are really because of vitamin D or it's just a correlation.
People who have bad health have bad vitamin D. So, I would love to have somebody explain to people as it happens, well, we don't know if the data is right, but the way you're thinking about the data is definitely wrong.
You get that, right?
There are two unknowns here.
One is, is the data right in the first place?
And then secondly, did you analyze it correctly?
And I don't think necessarily either of them are true.
I'm not sure they analyzed it right, and I'm not even sure the data is right.
So if you're jumping to the conclusion that vitamin D has been proven to work, it might be true.
I certainly want it to be true, because that would make me look good.
But it's not there. It's just not there.
All right, here's a...
I don't know how to handle this next situation.
So, with your permission, will you give me a little flexibility on this next topic?
Because I'm going to confess to you that I don't know if I'm going to handle it the right way.
So I'm just going to do my best.
So the only thing I'm going to promise you is I'll do my best.
But I think I'm going to fall a little short.
And there's a couple of points to be made.
Number one, have I ever mentioned to you that every time there's a story in the news, It comes back to me somehow.
Like, somehow I end up being connected to stories and it doesn't make any sense to me.
I mean, given that I do this in public, but even doing it in public, I don't have that much exposure to the general public.
But the number of times that I have some kind of connection to something in the news is just weird.
It's just weird. All right.
Here's the story. So you know that Sam Harris was getting some pushback for some things he said about Trump.
And here's what happened yesterday.
I got a longish message from Sam Harris, private message, in which he explained his position better.
Now here's my problem.
What the hell do I do now?
It was a private message.
Right? It was a private message, but I thought it was an important one.
In other words, wouldn't you like to know his argument?
I don't know if he's made the argument exactly that way anywhere else.
So here's what I don't want to do.
I don't want to read you his message because it was a private message.
But I also don't want him to be sitting out there having offered something like a defense to somebody who's been talking about him in public and just leave him exposed.
Because the worst thing would be for me to paraphrase him and then argue against him when he's not here to defend himself.
And by the way, I probably shouldn't tell you what he said to me privately, even though it was related to a public discussion.
So I'm uncomfortable telling you what he said, but I thought I would do it this way.
So here's the way I'm going to approach it.
Do you remember I told you that One way to see if you're in cognitive dissonance yourself is see if you can defend somebody else's argument that you disagree with.
If you can take the other person's argument and give it in a reasonable way that's close enough to their argument, then you're probably not in cognitive dissonance.
You're probably just valuing things differently.
Maybe your risk assessment's a little different, that sort of thing.
So, I'm going to argue Sam Harris's point to support it.
So I'm not going to debate it.
I'm going to try to support it, and then you can see if there's any holes.
And I'll do the best I can. So I'm going to try to actually support it.
I'm not going to try to make him look bad by giving the weak version.
At least I'm not going to try to do that.
So if that happens, that would be a mistake.
Number one. Does Sam Harris think that Trump is like Hitler or in that class of danger?
What do you think? You've seen his public statements.
Do you think that he believes that?
Now, you might remember that prior to Trump being elected...
I think it was prior to...
Was it just after or prior?
But there was a point when I was talking to Sam Harris on his podcast...
That he did make a, he made a, let's say, almost an offhand Hitler analogy to Trump.
So we do know that there's at least some statement in which he's made that reference, right?
So some of you are confirming that you've heard him make that reference.
Now, in his message to me, He said that he does not think that Trump is in that category with Hitler.
Hitler occupies a completely different category of danger.
And so I'm going to say that it was hyperbole that he ever compared Trump to Hitler, but also early on, hold on, early on you could say there's that risk But now that Trump has served one complete term, one would have to reassess that risk.
Are you with me so far?
Would you give me this following point, that no matter what Sam Harris or anybody else said about Trump early in his term or before he was elected, that that could now be discarded?
Would you agree?
Because what you thought would happen has to give way to four years of experience.
And I would say that Sam Harris would be on the same page.
I would say that he would value the four years that we observed as a higher truth than guessing what would happen, right?
So I would say you, all of you, and he are on the same page on that, that you would put a higher value on actual experience than guessing, okay?
Now, having seen Trump perform for four years, I accept Sam's statement that there's nothing Hitler-looking per se in that.
There's not going to be a roundup of people.
He's not going to start a nuclear war for any obvious reason.
And that being tough on crime and tough on immigration is not really Hitler.
So, so far, would you agree?
So, his current view is that Trump does not occupy a Dangerous as Hitler situation.
Would you accept that that's a reasonable evolution of opinion?
From, well, we don't know what risk he poses, all the way to, well, we saw four ears.
You know, I still have my issues, but it's not a Hitler problem.
Would you accept that?
I do. I think that would be a reasonable evolution of opinion based on evolving information.
Now, what problems does Sam still have?
Well, there are two things which he's mentioned recently more than others.
One is Trump University as an example of Trump's character.
The other is that Trump doxed some citizens.
Now, I have to confess I'm not aware of those stories.
Vaguely, I can imagine I sort of have a memory of somebody getting maybe called out by Trump and had trouble, and if that happened, I would be opposed to that.
So is there anybody here who thinks that the President of the United States should be doxing individuals?
No, right? Does anybody think that the President should do that?
No. I don't think that's a good move.
So we can agree with him that it's It's suboptimal.
I think some of you are going to say, sure, he can do it if they do it first, whatever.
But generally speaking, I don't think you want your president targeting law-abiding individuals who are exercising freedom of speech.
I think we'd all be on the same page, right?
And I don't think there are any Trump supporters who think that Trump University showed Trump in a good light.
My personal belief about that is that Trump was just a hands-off manager and probably didn't know what was going on there.
I don't know that.
But it's an assumption that matches everything I know about executives who have lots of businesses.
I think he had 400 businesses with his name on it, if you count licensing deals.
You don't look after all 400 deals.
I've done licensing myself.
Right? I've had lots of licensees for Dilbert.
Do you think I managed all of them and tracked them all to make sure they were doing what I wanted them to do with my property?
Well, we required it.
I mean, they had to report to me, but not really.
Not really. That was sort of other people doing their job, and you hope they did it well.
I'm guessing, and I don't have any information to back this, but if you have 400 companies with your name on it, And you're doing as much business as Trump was doing, you probably didn't watch any of them too closely.
I don't know how you could.
So... Yeah, so the question is, who did Trump dox?
But I don't think that's going to be the critical question here.
So, as I understand Sam Harris's point, and I'm going to understand it to support it, There are two examples in which Trump's character is called into question.
Trump University, and then doxing individuals.
Would you say that those two tell you something about Trump as an individual?
I think so.
I think so. But here's the interesting thing.
Why would you pick those out?
So here's my observation as a hypnotist.
As a trained hypnotist, one of the things you look for to see if somebody is hypnotized is that their reaction is extremely non-standard.
Not completely crazy, just completely non-standard.
When was the last time somebody said, that Trump has to go because of those times he doxed people?
Have you heard anybody else ever say that?
Has anybody ever heard anybody ever say that a big problem with Trump is his doxing of individuals?
So there's no way to know what's in the head of other people, and so I'm not going to diagnose somebody by reading their mind.
That's not a thing. I'm just saying if you were looking for a signal for a cognitive dissonance, that would be a gigantic, glaring signal.
Doesn't mean it is.
Doesn't mean it is. It just means that that's exactly what a signal would look like.
A highly unusual opinion which still has some logical connective tissue.
Because when somebody is hypnotized and they come up with, let's say, the cognitive dissonance explanation of why they're doing something, the cognitive dissonance explanation also makes sort of sense.
In other words, they can piece it together with some kind of logical trail.
But you still look at it and you say, I don't think anybody else in that situation would have said that.
Of all the things you could say, That's an unusual one.
So without saying, without having an opinion of whether the doxing is good or bad, I think we'd all agree it's bad if we heard the examples.
I'm not familiar with the examples, but I'm open to the fact that if a president doxs somebody, that's really bad.
Shouldn't do that. Right?
So when you see an unusual opinion, that's a flag.
Now, that doesn't mean that he's experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Are you clear on that? It doesn't mean he's experiencing cognitive dissonance.
It just means that if he is, it would look exactly like that.
That's all. Now, the other thing you would look for for cognitive dissonance is a trigger.
A trigger is if something that you were sure would be true doesn't happen.
So I said from the beginning that Trump would be an expensive president, meaning he'd cause a lot of trouble and he'd break a lot of dishes.
But that there might be some big things that the country wants, or at least part of the country wants, that he would get done.
And sure enough, he got done.
In my opinion, North Korea defused that.
The Abraham Accords, I think he tightened up the border better than, not as good as somebody wanted, but better than it's been done.
And so you could come up with a bunch of things they did.
Now, in my opinion, My expectation of Trump was pretty close to what happened.
So there's no trigger for cognitive dissonance in my case, or at least one that I can't see.
Maybe you can see it, but I can't see it.
Because I got what I expected.
But now imagine if you were talking about Trump in the most, let's say, cataclysmic terms before he got elected.
And it looked like the end of the world and you'd really gone out there saying it was going to be a disaster.
And then Trump gets in office and he does something closer to a good job.
Not at all what it looked like it was going to be if you were a critic.
That's a trigger. That's a perfect trigger.
That's a textbook trigger for cognitive dissonance.
What you expected is wildly different than what you got.
And that wasn't true for Republicans.
Republicans expected a set of behaviors from Trump, and they got them.
For the most part, they got exactly what they expected.
There's no trigger there.
It's only the people who are surprised who are triggered.
So again, that doesn't mean he's experiencing cognitive dissonance.
It just means it would look exactly like that if he were.
That's all you can say. But let me take his argument and finish it, because there's something to it.
And he goes on to say that Trump's, what he would say is obvious character failings, as evidenced by Trump University, this is Sam's argument, and as evidenced by doxing and other behaviors that look cowardly and or selfish.
That those are dangerous characteristics to have in a president, but nothing like the danger of a Hitler.
And so, when Sam says he's not too concerned that maybe the Hunter Biden laptop story got suppressed for the purpose of helping...
Helping Trump lose the election, that maybe that's not that different than the wiener laptop coming out that may have helped Trump get elected, hypothetically.
So if you said to me, well, those things are about equal, maybe it would be better if neither of them happened, but they're not that different in impact.
That's not... That's not crazy.
That's not crazy. Put yourself in the other situation.
If you knew that the only thing that kept Hillary Clinton out of office was some sketchy stuff in the news, in fact, maybe that is exactly what happened.
We don't know. But if you knew that's the only thing that kept her out of office and you were a Republican, how concerned would you be?
You wouldn't be that concerned.
Now, I don't want to speak for you, but on average, people are willing to accept a little imperfection on their own team if they get what they want.
That's pretty normal.
So I think it's pretty normal for somebody to say, I would have accepted a little imperfection to get the outcome I wanted, because I think a different president makes a big difference.
Now, what about the...
Sam Harris also famously said that he had, I forget the exact words, but in some ways more respect for Osama bin Laden than for Trump.
But this has to be understood in terms of an intellectual argument.
As soon as you put it into an emotional argument, it makes your head explode.
No, Bin Laden's a monster.
Trump's just a politician.
No. But that's not what he was talking about.
He's not talking about Bin Laden directly murdering people versus Trump having a policy he doesn't like.
The point was that Bin Laden was operating on principle.
It just happened to be a principle that we hate.
But he was sort of internally consistent with his Islamic beliefs, at least the extremist Islamic beliefs.
Whereas Sam's point is that Trump is not moored to any moral or ethical foundation, and therefore he's a little more unpredictable and likely to operate for his own best interest in any given situation.
So do you think that it's dangerous to have somebody you can't predict as president?
Because he's going to sort of go where the self-interest goes.
That's not a terrible argument.
Now, I have, you know, I can counter the argument, but I'm not going to do that in this conversation.
Because this conversation is to see if I can explain his argument in a way that Makes it make sense without making it sound crazy.
And I think that his argument is not crazy if you accept the following clarifications which he has provided.
Clarification number one, he does not believe that Trump is dangerous like Hitler would be.
He believes he's unpredictable because he's not moored to a moral, ethical foundation.
I accept that.
I accept that. If I were arguing against it, which I'm not going to do today, I would say something about the presidency has more transparency than most things, and that he's offered to give us those services on our behalf, and we can watch it happen while it's happening.
But there's not that much transparency, so there's always an issue.
And so if I take Sam's argument, I'd say there's not that much transparency, there's not enough, because we still wonder what happens behind closed doors and stuff.
But it's not a bad argument.
So if you allow that the Bin Laden argument was just an intellectual exercise, which is what it was, that's fine.
It's just an intellectual exercise.
If you allow that the Hitler stuff was just hyperbole and also has given way to experience, we've seen what Trump can and cannot do in office.
I don't think Sam's opinion is as crazy as you do.
Let me ask you this. If I said there was some other president coming into office, let's say it was a Democrat, and you felt that that Democrat's history suggested that the Democrat would do whatever it took, that there was no moral underpinnings, would you be uncomfortable with that president?
Probably. Probably.
Right? Yeah.
Were you uncomfortable with LBJ? Were you uncomfortable with...
I'm not sure about Bill Clinton.
I'm not going to go that far. I have a different opinion about Hillary than I do about Bill.
I think Bill Clinton was a solid president.
That's my opinion. I think he was a solid president.
And I'm not looking for an argument on that.
You know, people can disagree on stuff like that.
All right. So, how'd I do?
How'd I do? You don't have to agree with my argument, but do you think that I've made Sam Harris's point look reasonable?
Does it look reasonable?
Once you take away the hyperbole, there's a solid core there.
I guess some yeses.
Mostly noes. You know, we're deep into team sport territory here.
And when you get this deeply into team sport, I know you don't want to give the other team a point.
I get that. But, Let me ask you this.
Did I at least pass the test that I could express the argument in a full-throated way?
Would you accept that?
Did I express the argument in a full-throated way?
I think I did.
I think I did. Now, that would suggest that I don't have cognitive dissonance.
And again, this is a rule of thumb.
It's not like some scientific guarantee.
But the strong indication is that I can tell his argument and I don't have an unusual opinion about things.
All right? So, okay, I feel good about that.
But here's my bottom line.
I think that the difference between Sam's opinion and mine comes down to one thing.
Wildly different opinions about what is dangerous.
Wildly different opinions about what's important.
For example, I would say that the 50 intelligence agents lying about Hunter's laptop destroys the credibility of our most important systems and also reveals that they're corrupt.
And I would put that in terms of a scale of 1 to 10, that's like a 9 in terms of how bad that is.
That's like a 9. How bad is a president doxing an individual?
Well, on a moral, ethical, and preference level, it's a 10 in badness.
But in terms of how it affects the world, it's a 1.
It's a 1. It affects those people, and I don't like that at all.
You know, any doxing by president, I'm completely against.
But you have to put it in perspective.
I would say that the 50 intel people, ex-intel professionals lying is a big frickin' deal.
That's a nine.
Doxing, it's a one, except that the individuals involved, of course, it's a ten to them.
So I don't know that Sam and I differ on the logic of anything.
I don't know that we have different data.
At least that hasn't been obvious to me.
But we're definitely valuing things differently.
I'll give you another one. I imagine that January 6th would be higher in, well, since he hasn't talked about it, I won't put this in his head.
Let's say me compared to a Democrat.
A typical Democrat would say, January 6th was just horrible, like it was nearly the end of the Republic.
Do you know what I say about January 6th?
Again, not counting the violence part, which is if you were a recipient of the violence, or you were jailed because of it, that problem is a 10 and a 10 for you, no question about it.
But what effect did it have on the world or the country?
In my opinion, stronger.
There's, well, okay, I just outed myself there, didn't I? I guess that was a non-standard opinion, wasn't it?
So then I have to ask myself, was that cognitive dissonance?
Here's why I say stronger.
I'll give you my argument. It doesn't mean I'm not experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Now, keep in mind that I've condemned Trump's actions on January 6th.
So in theory, that should protect me.
Because I'm on record.
I said Biden won from day one.
That's not going to change.
I've never gone back on that.
The system elected Biden.
So even if there were hypothetically any imperfections, I still go with the system.
We've got to fix the system.
But you've got to go with the system while you're fixing it.
That's just my opinion. So...
My opinion on January 6th is that it made America stronger.
Would anybody agree with that before you hear my argument?
Before I give you the argument, January 6th, the protests, even with the violence, which I condemn totally, made America stronger.
Yeah, I think reasonable people can disagree on this one.
Here's my argument.
It's sort of the Jordan Peterson argument about individuals, that you should be dangerous, but learn to control it.
Your nature should be as dangerous as possible.
It keeps society operating.
Here's what I want.
I want my government, no matter who it is, be they Democrat or be they Republican or anything else, I want my government to know that if I've got questions and my fellow citizens have questions, we're going to show up.
We're going to show up. Well, not me.
I like to have bathrooms I don't have to wait for, so I won't be there.
But people who like to do that kind of stuff, they'll be there.
I'll try to do something useful at home where I'm more comfortable.
But the rest of you, I love the fact that you show up.
So my take on...
And I'm going to say the same thing for Black Lives Matter.
So here I'm going to show at least maybe a possibility that I'm not experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Black Lives Matter created some bad stuff.
Created lots of destruction and death.
I don't mind living in a country where people are going to hit the streets to fight for fairness.
I don't hate that.
I hate all the violence.
I hate the disruption. I hate that they may be confused.
I hate that they may be semi-hypnotized.
I hate that the news is brainwashing people.
I don't know that the protests were useful.
So I'm not saying they were useful.
So I'm going to make a real strong distinction.
I don't think necessarily that January 6th was useful.
And I don't think that the BLM protests were useful in the end.
But do you want to live in a country that won't do that?
I don't. I want to live in a country where if the Republicans think something went wrong, they're in the streets.
And I want to live in a country, you might not like this, where if the Democrats think something is just terribly wrong, they're going to hit the streets.
Right? So give me the country that protests.
Thank you very much.
And let them go wild.
Let them make their case.
And let them see if they can prevail.
Because you have seen cases where protests turn into something good, let's say civil rights.
You've seen them where they don't turn into anything good, let's say Antifa.
But I still want to live in this country.
I still want to live where people will take to the streets.
All right. So I just value things completely different than other people, and therefore we can get to different conclusions.
All right. While I'm defending people that you might not want me to defend, let me throw another one in the mix.
Jake Tapper is getting a bunch of heat today because he retweeted Ivanka Trump's tweet promoting Jared's new book.
And people are saying, Jake Tapper, how can you retweet Jared?
Are you part of the elite?
What's going on here?
Are you selling us out?
Say the CNN observers.
To which I would like to add the following context.
I also plugged Jake Tapper's book when it came out.
It's an author thing. That's all it is.
As soon as you think this is more than one author being, let's say, professionally courteous and maybe thinks that the audience would be interested in the book, it's not an endorsement of the person.
It's not an endorsement of all that person has done.
It's more like, I wrote a book, you wrote a book, I bet your book is interesting.
Maybe other people would like it too.
That's it. All right, authors promote other people's books.
It doesn't mean anything.
Scott is waffling again.
What the fuck am I waffling about?
Somebody says I'm waffling.
I don't think I've waffled less on any livestream than today.
So you could have your own opinions about Jake Tepper's politics and performance, etc., but let the guy promote a book from anybody.
Just let them promote a book.
And I like to say this every few months at least.
I insist on the right of association.
I insist, as a citizen of the United States, on the right of free association.
If I want to talk to the worst person in the world and get a selfie with that person, I'm going to do it.
And I don't care what your opinion is.
And I'm never going to care what your opinion is.
If I want to tweet somebody's book and you don't like their politics, but I think the book is interesting, I'm going to tweet that book.
There's nothing you're going to do to talk me out of that behavior.
So freedom of association, there is no wiggle room.
That one's an absolute and can't ever change.
All right. Bill Maher continues to be interesting politically.
And he noted on his show that 85% of the people Trump endorsed for the primaries won.
85%. And he said, quote, say what you want about Mr.
Evil, meaning Trump, but boy, what a politician.
I mean, that's impressive in an evil way, but still impressive.
So, do you remember when Trump first announced...
Do you remember what I seem to be completely alone in the United States saying?
And I wrote a blog post called Clown Genius.
He was being called a clown, and I said, you better watch out for the clown, because this clown is a genius, persuasion-wise.
And then the clown became the President of the United States.
And then, even out of office, He influenced, you know, 85% of the primaries.
Now, can we give me some credit for calling on day one, the first one, at least, maybe not the first one, but among the first, to say there's something going on with this guy.
And I said that he would be the most persuasive person you've ever seen.
I believe that that's now the case.
I believe that even his biggest critics would say, okay, I don't like what he's saying, but there's no question about his persuasion.
He's got the entire package.
He does. The whole package.
B.J. Novak, I guess, was on Bill Maher's podcast, and he's a writer and humorist, stand-up guy.
He wrote for The Office, and he was an actor on that.
B.J. Novak.
If your initials are BJ, you've got to learn to tell a joke.
You've got to have a sense of humor.
But BJ believes what I believe, which is that wokeness is really people pretending to be offended on behalf of the people who don't exist.
Have you ever met anybody who was offended by words?
I never have.
If you talk to anybody individually, they'll say, oh no, it doesn't bother me.
It's just something some jerk said.
Why would I care about what some jerk said?
But I'm pretty sure other people are going to be offended.
I'm pretty sure other people are going to be offended.
Now, let me say again.
I'm a fan of wokeness.
I know. I know. It sounds weird.
Because I'm one of the biggest critics of wokeness, but also a fan.
And here's how that's consistent.
The Dilbert comic, for which, you know, I'm notorious, is about good ideas that are taken too far.
That's what it's about.
Because management is a good idea.
You can't have an unmanaged company.
But if you take it too far, you're micromanaging.
If you take it too far, you're doing whatever the latest trend is before knowing it's a good idea.
So everything I talk about is a basic good idea that's just been taken to some ridiculous point.
So what do I think about calling people by the name that they would like to be called?
I call that good manners.
That's not even a conversation.
Yeah, whatever you want.
If that's how you feel comfortable, I'd be happy to do it.
Now, if somebody said, I would like you to call me King Scott and I suck before you.
That's my legal name. Whenever you refer to me, call me King Scott, I suck before you.
And I'd say, no, no, don't call me Scott.
I prefer to be called King Scott, I suck before your great presence.
That's my full name. Now, that would be too far, right?
So there's got to be some limits on wokeness.
But I don't mind anybody has a he-her preference.
But as I've said before, and I will say it a million times, said before and I'll say it a million times, in return for my flexibility and my attempt to have good manners and treat people the way they would like to be treated, you're going to have to give me a break if I get it wrong.
And I am not going to take any wiggle on that.
If I get one wrong, I misgender you, whatever.
And you've got a problem with that?
If you correct me, I will take that under advisement and hope to do better.
If you attack me, fuck you.
Everybody makes mistakes.
Fuck you if you attack me for that mistake.
Because I don't have bad intentions.
You can attack people for bad intentions.
You can attack me for bad intentions.
If you ever see me with bad intentions, free hit.
Free punch. Let me say it again.
If you ever are sure, I'd hope you'd be sure about it.
Don't guess. But if you ever see me having bad intentions, free punch.
Come at me as hard as you want.
I try not to do that.
I don't think I ever have.
But, try not to.
Alright. So, let's keep pretending there are people who are offended when none of us have ever met any.
And by the way, if I ever do meet somebody who is offended by that kind of stuff, I don't really want to be their friend.
I wouldn't spend a minute with somebody who's offended by stuff like that.
Because you know it's just going to come back to you.
Basically, somebody who's offended by words is just telling you you don't want to interact with them in any way at all.
Just run away.
Alright. I'm seeing some graphs again that people are saying that the vaccinations are hurting people because there are more people hospitalized who are vaxxed than unvaxxed.
How many times do we have to go over this?
That the population of people who got vaccinated are by nature the weakest ones, so of course the vaccinated would have more hospitalizations.
It's exactly what you would expect, but it's being used as proof that vaccinations are hurting you.
Now let me be very clear.
I don't know. I don't believe any data about vaccinations.
None. There's basically nothing about the pandemic that I believe.
Because it's all been...
We've been fooled so many times that as soon as you think you know something, you're like, well, got disappointed there.
Now, I don't know if vaccinations helped or hurt.
But I'm going to tell you what I think my scorecard is.
All right? This will offend you greatly.
I'm going to say again that I had the best pandemic predictions by far.
In my opinion, nobody came close.
But I won't get any agreement on that because people still disagree what's true.
As long as we're disagreeing about what's true, then you can't say who had good predictions.
But mine are shaping up to be the truest so far.
Let me give you some ideas. So in early 2020, I said vitamin D looked like it was crucial in COVID. I just told you that I don't think the studies have proven it.
But they're all leaning in that direction, right?
So if that turned out to be true, or even just a correlation that was important, I'd say I got that one early and correctly.
But it's definitely not confirmed that boosting your levels would help you with COVID. It might be, later.
I predicted that the vaccines wouldn't work.
Now, a lot of people believe I did the opposite.
But when it was first announced, the experts said, we've been working for decades, we're not even close.
So I said, well, if the experts think it can't be done, I'll go with the experts.
Now, I don't always go with the experts, but in that case, I did.
And sure enough, the vaccinations did not work as vaccinations.
But I said at the time that we're probably going to come up with better therapeutics.
I would say I had one of the best predictions that the vaccines wouldn't work as vaccinations, but that we would come up with strong therapeutics, which I believe we have.
Then we see the latest studies that say ivermectin did not work.
Am I ready to conclude that ivermectin could not have worked under any combination of when you gave it, who you gave it to, or in any combination of anything else?
That, I would say, is unknown.
Unknown. But I said, don't buy into ivermectin right away.
I said, wait for studies, and every day that goes by without confirmation, you should lower your odds of it working.
So I did the same thing with hydroxychloroquine as with ivermectin.
I started with, well, there's some indication it might work and it doesn't hurt you.
But then every time some data came in that made it look like maybe it wasn't working, I lowered my percentage likelihood until I got down to about 10%, and that's where I stopped.
So that's where I have it.
Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, somewhere no more than 10% possibility that they ever could have worked in the right dosage, with the right combination, with the right people at the right time, that sort of thing.
So I think I had the best ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine predictions.
Still admitting, still admitting, we don't know if they worked.
Are you okay with that?
That at this moment, we still don't know.
But all of the information is leaning in one direction, which is the direction I was going at the same time.
What else? Let's see.
Yeah, I would say that, and then we don't want to talk about masks, but I was the, I believe the only person in the country who said that Fauci was lying when he said masks don't work.
And he admitted he was lying.
So I'm the only person who got that right.
And then when masks were rolled out, I said from an engineering perspective, they almost certainly have to reduce the amount of spread.
But we won't see it in the big numbers because I told you that you wouldn't see anything with leadership in the state and country level, which is why I was against mandates.
So I was never for mandates of masks, but unambiguously, if water gets stuck on your mask, there's some virus on that water.
We just don't know how much and whether it made a difference, but we can see it didn't make a difference on the state level.
I mean, the data doesn't seem to support it.
So I would say that I was by far the most right about masks.
Nobody was even close. I would say I was probably close to 8 or 9 out of 10, and I think most people were closer to a 3 in rightness on that.
Now again, this depends on the data that we have now.
Continuing to prove out, which might change.
So I could be, let me say clearly, I could be wrong on any one of these things.
Because we never have final confirmations, it seems.
But I would make my argument that there was nobody even in my general neighborhood of rightness.
I wasn't even, nobody was even close to my predictions, in my opinion.
There is room for disagreement.
All right. So I asked this question on Twitter a few times, and I think I have an answer now, about the Mar-a-Lago information.
And given that a president doesn't have any requirements for process for declassifying, I asked the following question.
If a president signals that something is declassified, is that good enough?
And one way to signal it would be, take these top-secret boxes and move them to Mar-a-Lago.
To me, that's declassified.
Because it's clear that anybody would know that taking them to Mar-a-Lago takes them away from a secure place, and anybody can see them.
So in my opinion, that would be declassification.
And so I asked lawyers, because I'm not one, I said, can a president do any kind of signal, any kind of signal at all, and would that count as declassification?
And the lawyer said, what did the lawyer say?
What do you think? Did the lawyer say that that's true?
As long as he signals by his actions, the answer is yes.
The people who identified as lawyers said yes.
He just has to signal it by his actions and it's declassified.
There isn't any legal risk here, is there?
Because even if you allow that you found, let's say you found a lawyer who disagrees...
If most lawyers think it's totally legal, you're not going to get a jury to think it's illegal.
Right? If most lawyers think it's perfectly legal what you did, you're not going to get a jury, 12 people, to say it was illegal.
It's just not going to happen. There's no legal risk here at all.
Is there? I don't see one.
Unless it's a complete rigged trial, and I don't think that's going to happen, because there's too much visibility.
Yeah. Well, we're done with the declassification talk.
All right. Lockheed Martin is putting into operation lasers on warships.
So we've heard about lasers on jets they're testing.
But now they've got a laser they can put on a warship.
So that's interesting.
Do you know what we're going to have to use lasers for?
I'll tell you the biggest use of lasers in the future.
Shooting down drones.
The small ones.
Not the big military ones.
Those would be a little harder. But shooting down the small ones.
And you know why you're going to have to shoot those down?
Because we're probably about a year away from them being filled with fentanyl.
And becoming the primary terrorist weapon.
Now, I did write a book about that in 2003-ish.
When was it? Somewhere around there.
And it's called The Religion War.
I might read that, read The Religion War, into YouTube and or Locals.
So I might turn that into an e-book just by reading it.
But there's no way that terrorists are going to not notice...
The fentanyl is deadly and it's light and easily available.
If it's light, a small drone can carry it and deliver it anywhere.
If it's deadly, it's better than dynamite because you can't get dynamite very easily.
It's hard to get, you know, C... What's the explosive?
C... C4? Yeah.
It's hard to get a C4 But literally every kid can get fentanyl.
A teenager can get fentanyl.
So there isn't any doubt where things are going.
There's going to be fentanyl and it's going to be on drones.
And we're going to need lasers to shoot those drones out of the air.
Although maybe that's bad too because the drone is still going to crash and the fentanyl is going to get down.
I don't know. Maybe there's no solution.
As long as China is sending us fentanyl and it's going through the cartels, it's going to us, our future is guaranteed.
It's fentanyl on small drones for unlimited terrorist attacks in our population centers.
There's no way to stop it.
Except... Wipe out the cartels.
And then tell China they're next.
I would definitely kill the fentanyl dealers in China, on Chinese territory.
Because China isn't going to nuke us for taking out their terrorists.
They're going to get really, really mad about it.
But fuck them. It's war.
We can go into their country and just take them out.
I wouldn't drop a missile on them.
I wouldn't fire a missile into China.
You're going to have to do it on the ground.
But it wouldn't be hard.
How hard would it be to kill a fentanyl kingpin just by giving him an injection of fentanyl?
Pretty easy. All you need is a blow dart with a little fentanyl and it's like...
And Mr.
Kingpin is dead. Now, I don't know how hard it is to get a Chinese agent into China, but I've got a feeling that there might be a couple people who are not happy with the government over there.
Might want to give us a little help.
There might be somebody.
Yeah, blow darts with fentanyl.
Get over it. As long as the fentanyl's in the dart.
Okay, it's not the safest thing anybody ever did, but murder is never really that safe.
It really isn't. I'm going to make a prediction.
There isn't the slightest chance that we will not attack the cartels in Mexico.
There isn't the slightest chance that's not going to happen.
Because, let me tell you what's going to happen.
Let me tell you what's going to happen.
The number of fentanyl deaths will keep climbing.
And at some point, you're all going to be where I am.
Well, I've been there a long time.
And where I am is, we're in the middle of a war, and there's nothing I won't do.
Nothing. Nope.
Would I kidnap the president of Mexico?
Yes. Yeah, I would.
If it would work.
I mean, it wouldn't work, right?
Would I annex Mexico?
Yep. Yep, I would annex Mexico.
You would have a hard time coming up with something I wouldn't do to stop this problem.
I can't think of anything I wouldn't do.
Would I start machine gunning the, what do you call them, the coyotes?
Yes, I would. I would start killing the coyotes where they stand anytime you can see them from our side of the border.
In fact, I'd send drones in and just start killing the coyotes wherever they are.
Would it help? I don't care.
If you took out the cartel operations, would it stop the fentanyl trade?
I don't care. I don't care.
It might slow down the next person who wanted to start it.
But you have to make sure that everybody who deals fentanyl dies a horrible death, and fairly soon.
I would also start executing our fentanyl dealers publicly.
Publicly. I think a fentanyl dealer needs to be executed publicly, above a certain level.
I'm not talking about the onesies, twosies, street dealers.
I'm talking about the big ones.
Public execution.
In fact, if Trump ran on that platform, public execution for fentanyl dealers, and I will attack the cartels in office, I'd be all in.
I would be all in.
Somebody thinks I support Sharia.
Yeah, that's a little bit of a leap from attacking...
from killing mass murderers to Sharia law.
That's a little bit of a leap there.
How about the mules who transport it?
I think you have to make...
Some distinctions in terms of how much they're involved.
I wouldn't kill somebody for maybe necessarily transporting it across the border if they're an American citizen.
If it's not an American citizen and they transport one pill of fentanyl over the border, I would kill them.
I'd kill them. If they transported it to sell.
I would say, yeah, if you don't live in this country and you take one pill across our border, I'd kill them.
Too far? No, there's nothing that's not too far.
There's nothing not too far.
100,000 kids, mostly, well, young people, dying per year.
Yeah, for one pill.
Now, let me say it again. If I do the pill, now, of course, nobody's going to bring one pill.
So that's hyperbole.
If you're going to argue about the one pill, you're just arguing hyperbole, and that's useless.
I'm just saying if it's obvious they're bringing fentanyl to cell, I wouldn't care how much.
If they're bringing it to cell, kill them.
All right.
Looks like...
Oops, what's that?
The secret micro lesson, yes.
Yes.
All right. No more Pfizer commercials.
Dispromotion punishment.
Yeah. You know, when people are involved in mass murder, I believe that their own lives should be used for something useful.
Not like a regular.
If a regular criminal does something, you know, just let the justice thing do its thing.
But if you're a mass murderer, I think you should be killed in whatever way is the most useful to society.
And if murdering you in public makes somebody else less likely to do it, okay.
If murdering somebody in a horrible way in front of the public, I would hang them.
I'd hang them, actually.
Because the visual of hanging is just really good.
That's a good visual. Oh, actually, I take it back.
No, you don't want to hang them because some of them would be black.
So, no hanging.
No hanging. It's got to be something else.
Public execution, but no hanging.
Guillotine. Nah, too clean.
Nah. Dope 6 started this?
Yeah, maybe. Do you own a firearm?
Why don't you sneak in my house and find out?
Yeah, my personal defense system follows the fuck around and find out.
I'm not going to tell you what my personal defense situation is.
It's a surprise. Let me just say this.
If you get into my house, your problem is getting out.
Getting into my house, or really any house, getting into a house is not that hard.
All you need is a rock, right, to get through a window.
Getting into my house, no problem.
Getting out, good luck.
That's all you need to know about my defense.
All right. Sounds like a date.
All right, everybody. Was this the best show you've ever seen?
I think I've... Oh, let me...
One more thing. Apparently, the web browser on TikTok app can track every keystroke made by its users.
How incompetent is our government that they haven't banned TikTok?
What is up with that?
How incompetent that TikTok, which is clearly a military weapon, clearly, is a military weapon that we're letting the Chinese use on our youth.
And we're just like, oh, okay.
Yeah, here you go. So TikTok has to be banned.
I think Trump might be willing to do it, but he didn't.
You know, he didn't get it done.
I don't know what the limitation is there.
And the big news is that Facebook and TikTok have banned controversial figure Andrew Taint.
If you don't know who Andrew Taint is, You're lucky.
But he's like the Andrew Dice Clay, but he's got more of a homoerotic vibe to his stuff.
He's not gay, but he presents himself in sort of a homoerotic vibe.
And he got kicked off of Facebook and Instagram, same company.
For saying things which his fans say are just the truth.
Now, do you remember that I said a while ago that no man could say what he's actually thinking?
Like, you couldn't survive?
If a man just said whatever he was thinking whenever he was thinking?
Now, I'm not saying that I'm thinking what he's thinking.
I'm just saying it's a good example of somebody who is trying to say what he's actually thinking in public.
And he doesn't have a chance.
Yeah, he got a big following.
Do you know why he got over 4 million followers almost instantly?
Is it because males disagreed with him?
No, it's because they knew he was self-immolating by saying things that they sort of also believed or thought were true or rang true.
Anyway, so...
Well, so somebody's saying that Cernovich likes him.
I don't know if likes him is the right phrase.
But again, my right of a free association is not just for me.
If somebody I like or respect wants to spend some time with somebody I don't like or respect, that's fine.
Because Cernovich, like me, exerts his complete right to associate with whoever he wants.
Actually, it's one of the things I like most about him.
In fact, he associated with me, Cernovich did, before I had much of a following on social media.
And I think that was risky.
So, I'm never going to give somebody a hard problem for who they spend time with, endorse, prefer.
That's all just their decisions.
All right.
There we go.
Thank you.
Hello from Nigeria.
Yeah, we have to demand our freedom of association.
There are exceptions?
Really? Well, there would be maybe exceptions for what kind of time you spend with them, but not for a selfie.
I don't have any exceptions for that.
Alright.
There's some Andrew Taint impersonator videos.
All right, well, that's all I've got for today.
Would you agree that this is probably the best live stream you're ever going to see?
Maybe in the history of all time.
Yeah, very close, very close to the best thing you'll ever see.
Alright. I did fix my Photoshop problem.
There was a setting that changed somehow on its own.
And the setting that changed seemed to have nothing to do with the brush tool.
The brush tool has lots of settings in different places and you have to find them all.
