Episode 1852 Scott Adams: Trump's Motive For Keeping Secret Documents, It's What You Need To Know
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Ukraine counter-offensive
Environmentalists supporting nuclear power
California power outages during heatwave
Real world explanations of Mar-a-Lago documents
How Maggie Haberman spins her NYT lies
Eric Swalwell's death threat
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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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So good.
Well, what's going on?
Big congratulations to Greg Goffeld, who woke up this morning to find that he was trending.
And his show Goffeld owned August.
He beat Colbert.
I think it was like number three of all shows at that time or something.
It knocked ABC out of third place.
Normally the cable shows are only competing with other cable shows.
It's hard for a cable show to compete with a network, but I think it knocked out the third place network.
So he's just totally dominating that space.
And that went from, hey, why aren't conservatives funnier, to, well, there you go.
He's owning the space.
So congratulations to Greg Gottfeld, just killing it, killing it lately.
So there's a weird set of coincidences happening, and I would like to give you Simulation alert.
Simulation alert. Simulation alert.
Simulation alert. I don't know if I'll ever go back to that.
It didn't come out as awesome as I hoped.
But here's the story.
You have to connect a few stories to see the beauty of it.
In the news in Vacaville, which is not too far from where I live, a giant tractor and trailer filled with tomatoes was spilled.
And so the highway there was just totally coated with tomatoes.
In an unrelated story, or is it?
Another complete truck with Alfredo sauce in Memphis spilled and covered the highway with Alfredo sauce.
So we got our tomatoes, we got our Alfredo sauce, we're waiting for pasta.
There was a big spill of chicken and another one of wine.
But they're all in different places.
Need to get a little coordination here.
A little coordination and get them together.
But who do you think gave me the tip-off that something was happening here?
Well, the person who told me that a road was full of spilled tomatoes and another road was filled with Alfredo sauce, his actual last name, which he uses on his Twitter account, is Skidmore.
Skidmore. Skidmore.
That's right. I learned this story from somebody named Skidmore.
And when I noted how coincidental it was that roads covered with slippery stuff would be tweeted to me by somebody named Skidmore, Mr.
Skidmore tweeted back and said, and I assume this is true, Mr.
Skidmore said, by the way, my dad made car brakes for a living.
True story. His name was Skidmore, and he made car brakes for a living.
I don't know what to think about any of this, really.
I assume it's just that we're noticing it more, but it certainly seems like there are a whole bunch of coincidences.
Here's the other coincidence I keep running into.
I keep running into people who know personally, people who are in national news.
Like, all the time.
I'll say, hey, did you hear about somebody, somebody?
And somebody will say, oh yeah, I went to school with him.
What? Really?
Are you noticing that yourself?
The number of people who are in national news who you know somebody who knows them.
I feel like more of that's happening.
Or maybe it's just me. I don't know.
Well, in the good news category and very good news, do you like good news?
Do you like news about awesome things happening to people and problems being solved?
I know you do.
So here's some. Now, this is a follow-up to something I mentioned before.
So I had a video that I'd made some time ago about how to deal with anxiety.
And it was so well received, and I was surprised, people said it actually cured their anxiety.
Imagine having anxiety and then having it cured by a video.
But that's what people said.
And a number of people said it.
And so I had a request to do another video on social anxiety.
Specifically the anxiety of going to a group that you're not familiar with or not comfortable with.
And so I did a follow-up video that I posted to my subscription platform, Locals.
And the Locals people looked at it and said, you have to make this public.
In other words, they thought the value was sufficient, that even though they paid to have it privately, a number of them said, all right, we can't keep this private.
So, you know, put it on, tweet it out.
So I tweeted it out.
You can see it at the top of my Twitter feed.
And it's a set of reframes to help you walk into a room full of people and just own it.
Do you think you could do that?
Does that sound even possible?
So if there's somebody here who has extreme social anxiety, and you think to yourself, okay, I've had this all my life, there's no way you're going to say something in 11 minutes that will just make me think differently, and then suddenly my biggest problem in the world will just go away?
And the answer is, yes, that's exactly what I did.
That is exactly what I did.
In 11 minutes, I will completely cure some of you.
Not all of you. Everybody is too, you know, individual.
You can't use one set of reframes that just works on everybody.
That's not a thing. But there will be a tremendous amount of people, probably at least hundreds, possibly thousands, depends how many people see it.
Well, hundreds or thousands of people will have the biggest problem in their life just solved in 11 minutes.
And... If you don't think that's possible, just watch the video, even if you don't have that problem.
If you watch the video, you're going to go away saying, I think that actually could work, and you'd be right.
So watch the comments, and you'll see that some people are having a big impact, or there's a big impact.
So this is additive to my anxiety thing that mentioned the potato.
That's a separate one. So what are we supposed to think about the so-called Ukraine offensive?
So this is what CNN reports.
And I think we could all agree that everything we hear out of Ukraine is suspect, right?
And the thing about war that's especially suspect, and I was reminded of this by Newt Gingrich's awesome documentary about George Washington called The First Citizen?
Is that what it's called? I highly recommend it.
So it's a Gingrich production.
And one of the things I didn't know about the George Washington story is that he had completely lost.
At one point, Washington's army was basically just wiped out.
It was just a bunch of barefoot, bleeding people with no food.
Barely any of them left.
And somehow he managed to pull it out.
So the thing about...
The thing about war that we don't fully appreciate is how surprising it can be.
Who imagined that we would go to Afghanistan and the Taliban would basically win?
A lot of smart people said, well, that's not going to happen, even though it happened to Russia.
We thought, well, it's not going to happen to us.
We've got better weapons. We're smarter.
We learn from them. And then it happened to us.
So war is thoroughly unpredictable, even when you think it's not.
So I would say that we really don't know what would happen with a Ukraine offensive.
But here are some of the things that are being reported.
CNN says it's early days of this so-called Ukraine counter-offensive to regain territory.
But it says in its early days, Ukrainian forces have already...
Captured back four villages from the Russians.
What do you think of that?
They've recaptured four villages.
Now, that's probably kind of trivial, and one assumes that the Russians are not guarding everything with the same amount of defense.
So I assume that those were the easy targets, you know, lightly defended places.
So it probably doesn't mean much.
So, so far, it's a lot of nothing.
But here's a little part I didn't know.
The counteroffensive is going to, I think it's aimed at Kherson, trying to take that city back, which I didn't realize was a regional capital.
So the only regional capital that the Russians conquered was Kherson and Ukraine's trying to get it back.
Do they have a chance?
I don't know. I have no idea.
But apparently the Ukrainian military is a little pluckier than people imagined.
You know, some of these towns are so deserted that I think recapturing them probably doesn't mean much.
You know, there's probably nobody there.
The Russians probably didn't even care.
Like, yeah, you can have that one.
But reportedly, Ukrainian troops have broken through Russian defenses, quote, in several areas of the front lines near the city of Kyrgyzstan and some others.
But I would say you shouldn't believe anything coming out of the war zone, so who knows?
But let me ask you this.
Do you think that the Ukrainian military would have staged a counteroffensive If they didn't think they had the assets to reasonably have a chance of succeeding?
Is there anything about the Ukrainians that looks suicidal?
In other words, are they anything like, let's say, the first Iran-Iraq war, where the Iranians would send waves of human sacrifices lightly armed across the machine gun fields?
It doesn't feel like that, right?
Ukraine looks like they're a well-trained force.
I think NATO and Americans help train them.
So if you have a well-trained military force...
So let me ask you this question.
If you have a well-trained military force and they stage a major operation, which the counter-offensive is, would you assume that they're doing it with no chance of winning?
In their own estimation, do you think they said to themselves, well, we have no chance of winning, but we have to do it anyway for some reason?
I don't think they would do the counteroffensive unless they thought they had a chance.
And why would we second-guess them?
They're actually putting their lives on the line.
Lives. They're betting their lives that they have a chance.
If you see a professional, well-trained military betting their lives, because they don't have to do this, right?
They could just say, all right, you've got that territory, we'll just keep this territory, we'll see if we can stabilize this.
They don't have to do this.
So if I see a well-trained, probably well-equipped, at least in terms of modern equipment, well-equipped military going on a counter-offensive, Don't you have to assume they have a chance?
Is that crazy? Now, I know that we all think, okay, they don't really have a chance against Russia, ultimately.
Like, ultimately, Putin could win anything he wanted to win.
He'd just have to put enough resources on it.
But why would they do it?
Can you think of any reason that Ukraine would even attempt to do it?
Because they'd have heavy losses, presumably.
Uh... In World War I, they did suicidal charges.
But do you see that happening in Ukraine?
I'm not going to say that nobody else ever did a suicide charge.
Gallipoli? And why did they do that at Gallipoli?
So here's the thing.
A suicidal attack Can make sense if you're trying to capture something of utmost importance, right?
If you say, all right, we have very little chance of taking this hill, but if we don't take this hill, we're all dead.
So we're going to do a suicide attack on this hill, maybe we get lucky, maybe we get the hill, and then it changes the fate of the war.
But that's not what's happening in Ukraine.
The territory that Russia took and they're trying to retake feels optional, right?
It feels optional. Like, they don't have to do the counterattack.
So that makes me suspect that they have a little more chance than the media is giving them.
Well, NPR has a big article today, the content of which is surprising for NPR, but it's a sign of the times.
And the title of NPR's article is, Why Even Environmentalists Are Supporting Nuclear Power Today.
And it mentions, you know, Michael Schellenberger's efforts and some others.
Stuart Brand, I think. Somebody else.
And it talks about how people who had been associated with the environmental movement were some of the most effective people in getting nuclear power back to a A respectable place in our minds.
And I'm reminded, because Michael Schellenberg was retweeting some of these stories and such, and you forget where the national opinion was on nuclear just five years ago.
Is this one of the most amazing...
What would it be?
Persuasion? Persuasion?
Would you call it persuasion?
I think this is one of the best examples of successful persuasion I've ever seen.
What would you say?
Have you ever seen anything that worked?
Because five years is a pretty short time to turn around something that was, I don't know, 20 years of truth, and it got unwound in maybe five.
Yeah. So I would say, you know, if there was any kind of academy award or anything for persuasion, the successful nuclear persuasion, to put it back in the mix for the future, is one of the greatest things that's ever happened in America, I think, and maybe the world.
I mean, it's an amazing accomplishment.
But I don't know if everybody's going to get the credit that they deserve, but it's pretty amazing.
Meanwhile, California is warning that where I am, that they're going to be turning off the electricity every now and then because it's going to get really hot this week, I guess.
So starting today, my city could be asking me to turn off my AC. Now, I told you that my power company called me and asked if they could have control over my AC in my house.
Did I tell you that? So apparently they have some technology they can hook to my system, and they can turn off my AC if I give them permission to do that.
Now, let me clarify.
It's not nearly as bad as you think.
If your first thought is, that's the worst thing I ever heard, it's not as bad as you think.
What they promised to do, and of course you'd have to trust them, right?
What they promised to do is that in a very limited situation, you know, an emergency, they would turn off some people's AC for 15 minutes, just to get past the tough part.
And if they turned off some people's AC for 15 minutes, the temperature of your house might go up 2 degrees.
On average, two degrees.
And then it would come back on.
And then it would come back on.
And then you'd go back down to two degrees.
Would you notice it?
Would you notice it?
You might, but it wouldn't be the biggest problem in the world, right?
That's the 15 minutes you could go do an errand.
So I don't think it's going to happen at night.
It's going to happen in the middle of the day.
Now, over on Locals, everybody's saying, nope, nope.
So that's what I said.
So after they went through their pitch that, you know, this would be no big deal and it'd be good for everybody, you know what my answer was?
Nope. Nope.
You do not get more control over my resources.
You do not get more control over my life.
You haven't earned it.
Haven't earned it. There is...
You could imagine... And let me test this with you.
If the last five years of your experience had been different, could you imagine saying yes to that?
I could. I could.
I could easily imagine saying, you know, my government's done a great job.
My government's done a great job, and if they need me to pitch in, I'll pitch in.
But they have not earned that.
They have not earned any trust.
So this is how expensive that lack of trust is.
Because I absolutely would have said yes to that if I trusted my government.
And I don't.
With anything. It's the worst it's ever been in terms of trust.
So you've got to fix that.
You better fix your trust.
It's expensive. Alright, my biggest curiosity about the news is why the hell did Trump keep top secret documents allegedly?
Isn't something missing in the story?
What's the biggest part missing in the story?
Why? What was his motive?
How do you have the story go this far when nobody's even speculated a motive?
So let me show you the...
So here are the...
Oh, so we saw a picture of the documents.
So now we know that there are some documents in Mar-a-Lago that are labeled with top classification cover letters.
So the thing that we're pretty sure is true, I don't think it's a fake picture, but it looks like it's a bunch of things marked high security.
Right? So here are the possible reasons that Trump would do this if he did it.
So assuming that what has been reported is true, that there was some resistance to giving things back, and that they are confidential, and that they are, you know, or were at Mar-a-Lago.
And it is further complicated by the new information that some of these were in his office.
So some of the ones that were marked with these high classifications were in his office, not just in that storeroom, which is worse, right, because the office is lower security.
So here are the possible reasons I could think of why Trump would want to keep these top-secret documents, or at least how we got here.
Number one, he wanted to keep some blackmail or dirt on the deep state for his own protection.
All right? You can imagine that, right?
You can imagine he would want to protect himself by having some blackmail on somebody else.
Possibility. Now, would that be one that we would not be told?
Because that would explain why we're not told what's in there, right?
How about he kept them for the benefit of a future biography?
He wants a book written and he wants some original documents that the biographer can look at to get it all right.
Seems like he could have just unclassified those and taken a copy, right?
Because the government owns the originals, but if he had declassified it, he could just make a copy and give it to the biographer.
Now, that doesn't mean he went through the process of doing that, but one possibility, he wanted it for a biography.
Another possibility, the Democrats would say, is that he wanted it for treason.
Treason. He wanted to sell these documents or to sell out the country.
Not likely, but that's what the Democrats would say.
Number four, he didn't know he had them.
Did not know he had them.
Does that seem even a little bit possible?
That he didn't know he had them?
And maybe he kept saying, I gave them back, and then he didn't know he had them?
We'll talk about that.
Number five, the documents were planted by the FBI and were not there at all.
Possible? I hate to say it, but it is.
I think it's a very low possibility.
But we no longer live in a world where you can say there's zero chance of that.
It's definitely not a zero.
The FBI is known to make up evidence recently, specifically about this president.
So they made up, you know, if the Steele dossier got as far as it did, this could easily be completely made up.
It could be. I think that's a very low chance.
But it could be. Can't rule it out.
And then the sixth one, that the documents are just mislabeled or overclassified.
I'm now going to tell you the answer.
There is one answer that is glaringly obvious.
Which one do you think it is?
There's a glaringly obvious explanation for this.
Which one is it? You want to hear the...
Yeah. Okay, you all got the right answer.
I was going to tease this out for a little bit longer.
Let me tell you what a Dilbert organization looks like.
Now, this happens to be one of the very few things that I have expertise on.
I believe I can claim expertise on large organization inefficiency.
Would you give me that as the 34 years or whatever of drawing Dilbert?
Do you think I have a good sense of how organizations act incompetently?
I do. I'm an expert.
Here's what this situation looked like to me.
Hi, this is the GSA. We've got some records that say some documents are at Mar-a-Lago.
Who am I talking to?
Oh, I'm some assistant person at Mar-a-Lago.
Okay. Can you help us figure out how to get those documents back?
Sure. I'll add it to my list of 45 things I'm doing.
And then after I get off the phone, it's like, ugh, I've got 45 things to do today.
Where is returning documents that are just sitting in a box in a warehouse?
It's last. It's last.
Well, I'll work on the other stuff.
A couple weeks go by.
Ring. How is the progress on getting those documents back?
Oh! Oh, the documents.
Yeah, I'm getting on that.
And, you know, I'll tell you what, I'll be done by the end of today.
I swear, I'm sorry I waited so long.
Yeah, I got it. So then the person goes into the warehouse, looks around, finds some documents that are, like, easy to find, and they say they're secure, gathers them up.
It's probably a whole process of, you know, record-keeping and who's watching and who has access.
So it's probably a big operation.
Just to gather up some documents and get them to where they need to be, okay?
So the person gathers up some documents and gets them over to the GSA. And now weeks have gone by.
Why have weeks gone by for something that should have taken one day?
Why? Why did it take weeks for something that your common sense should take one day?
Here's why. Because everything takes weeks.
Everything. Everything.
Just name anything.
It takes weeks. So now you've got the second phone call, and now some documents have been returned.
What happens in the real world next?
In the real world, every time, you can guarantee it, you can go to the bank on it.
You've returned all the documents.
What happens next? What happens next?
Every time. You know what happens next.
One more thing.
One more thing. Well, I'm looking at my records, and I'm pretty sure you missed some.
So could you put that back on the top of your priority to go look and really, really tear down that room and really find those documents?
And the person who's the underling to Trump says, How important is this really?
Is it really important? And they put it at the bottom of their to-do list.
Two weeks later, the GSA says, we're not fucking around.
We really are serious about these documents.
And the guy says, I know, I know.
I'm trying to help. Did the best I could, and I swear I'm going to get to go look for those other documents.
And then that guy goes on vacation because it's summer.
Two weeks go by because the only person who was working on it is on vacation, just like everybody, right?
Two-week vacation. And then the GSA says, all right, you motherfuckers.
We thought this would be easy.
We thought we could work with you.
We thought we could just get some answers.
But you won't do it.
We're going to call in the authorities.
You tell me it didn't happen like that.
Right? Now, I'm guessing that there's going to be some kind of a hybrid of what I just described...
Plus Trump wanting to keep some documents for whatever reason, right?
Probably Trump is going to say, some of those documents I did want to keep.
I thought I declassified them.
Maybe there's a question of whether it was done right or done on time.
And maybe a few of them he wanted to keep, but they got confused with the ones that he didn't want to keep, and nobody knew which ones had been connected, and did they get them all, and why does my list not match your list?
By far, by far, by I'd say 20 to 1 odds, this is just confusion.
Now let me ask you this.
If Trump believed that he had declassified something, did they take the cover page off?
The moment that a secret document that's labeled secret and is in storage, At Mar-a-Lago or anywhere, I guess, in storage.
The moment they declassify that, does somebody run over and rip the cover page off?
I don't think so.
Because again, not in the real world.
In the real world, you just say, oh, all those boxes are declassified?
All right. And then you just walk away or you write it down somewhere.
But you're not taking the cover page off them.
I doubt it. I mean, maybe you should.
That would make sense. Here's another category.
How about things that at one time were very sensitive, but it's now obvious that they're not?
That would describe a big category, wouldn't it?
At one time it was very secret, but now it's not.
Yeah, just on a date, stuff like that.
Do you think that the president could have said, all right, let's look at some of these secret things, and he just flipped through them and said, none of this stuff's secret.
This doesn't even look slightly secret.
So just treat it like it's not.
Just keep it. Maybe something like that.
So somewhere in this story, there is an individual, we don't know who yet, who was taking orders from Trump at the same time as taking orders from the GSA, right?
There's somebody in the story whose name I don't know who was that person at Mar-a-Lago who was in between Trump and the GSA. Do you think that person had an easy job?
No, because it probably went like this.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, can I have one second with you?
And Trump looks over and sees it's the document person again.
He's like, oh, shit.
Like, I really want to have one more conversation with the document person.
Do you know what is more interesting than talking to the document person?
Everything. Absolutely everything I was going to do today is more interesting than having another conversation with the document person.
Right? So do you think he gave, like, really good complete answers to the document person?
And that person, oh, thank you for your time.
And I appreciate that you took two hours to go down there and look through those boxes, you know, so we'd really have a complete answer for the GSA. That didn't happen.
There was some poor bastard, which is weird because it sounds male.
What's the female equivalent of a bastard?
Don't tell me. But there's somebody who was in the middle, and it had to be that.
It had to be. Now, on top of that, there might be a document that there's some question that Trump thinks is not secret, that the government thinks is.
So there's probably some disagreement about some of that.
All right. Here's how Maggie Haberman spins her lies in the New York Times.
She says, among the new disclosure in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded to three classified documents in desks inside Mr.
Trump's office. Holy shit.
Three classified documents inside his desk.
So that's worse than being in that locked closet.
With more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classifications markings in the residence, including blah, blah, blah.
That's interesting.
So the ones found in Trump's desk are described as classified documents.
Right? So the ones in his desk are called classified documents.
The ones that are in the box are described in the same article in the same paragraph by the same writer as...
Things that are marked confidential.
Interesting. So the ones in his desk are confidential, but the ones that were in the boxes are marked confidential.
You see the trick?
It's right there.
It's right there.
It's not hidden.
She's making a distinction between things marked confidential, which very well could not be confidential, very well could not be, Versus stating that the ones in the desk are confidential, which is a higher level of certainty than the story provides.
The story doesn't say that they are confidential.
The story says they're marked confidential.
And she fucking knows that because she said it in the same paragraph.
In the same fucking paragraph, she said they're marked confidential as she said they are confidential in the desk.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is propaganda.
That's not reporting.
That's propaganda. And then the investigators developed evidence that, quote, government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room.
Well, if they found some in his desk, is that the entire argument for there could be evidence that they had been moved?
Right? Maybe that's the entire argument.
If some of them were in his desk, that would indicate that they used to be in the storage room, and somehow they got in the desk, so that would indicate they'd been moved.
That might be all it is.
But it's also possible that they were just stored in two different places from the start, and some of them ended up in his office or something.
So I've got a feeling that just the fact that the documents were in more than one place may be their entire argument That there's evidence that they tried to move them.
And I'm not sure that those facts quite connect.
Sounds like there could be other explanations.
All right. So I think it's going to come down to some disagreement where Trump says, I thought these were not secret.
And then the government is going to say, we think that they are.
And then what is the court system going to do when it's a difference of opinion?
Where Trump has an argument where, maybe it isn't even a good argument, but it's an argument.
He goes, I thought they were all non-secret.
And I thought we gave them all back.
I don't know that any jury is going to convict him for that, right?
Do you think you could get 12 jurors to believe that his intention was bad?
That his intention was bad?
I don't think so. I don't think so.
You think a D.C. jury would buy it?
Yeah, maybe that's riskier, a D.C. jury.
That's true. All right.
So that story is so...
I hate having stories where we're guessing at what's in some document or investigation.
I mean, this is basically just a Russia collusion version 2.0, right?
Or 3.0 at this point.
Because January 6th was 2.0.
So this is just a Russia collusion 3.0.
I would not trust anything that the FBI says on this.
Representative Eric Swalwell.
Tweets, he said, I hesitate to share this, but how else do I tell you?
We're in a violent times, and the architects are Trump and McCarthy.
Bloodshed is coming. So, now, keep in mind that Swalwell is a California representative.
I think he represents me, I'm not sure, because I moved since then, but I didn't move far.
Here's what I said.
First of all, I retweeted with a comment, and I said that it's beyond horrible.
So let's all agree that this is horrible, and that's not up for debate.
And I also hope the caller is already in jail, because I don't know how he wouldn't be.
I hope the caller is already in jail, because I have zero tolerance for even the threat of violence in this kind of context.
However, because I don't have a boss, I get to say things that you can't say.
Isn't that fun? I get to say in public something you could never say.
Here's something you could never say in public, but I can.
I can, so I'll do it for you.
And I tweeted, you know, it's beyond horrible.
I hope the caller's in jail. And then I said, that said, if your job performance is such that the people you represent want to murder you, some self-reflection is in order.
A little bit of self-reflection.
Now, I get that public figures are often threatened.
I get that, right?
And, you know, I'm completely opposed to that 100 and 1,000%.
But I think this is a special case.
Now, people said to me, based on my tweet, would you say the same thing about Kavanaugh?
Do you think Kavanaugh should do some self-reflection because somebody threatened to kill him?
To which I say, you don't need self-reflection if the answer is obvious.
He ruled on abortion.
People didn't like it, so they wanted him dead.
There's no self-reflection required about your job performance.
Because it wasn't about his job performance, they just didn't like the outcome.
There's a big difference between there's something so bad with your job performance that we want to kill you versus we don't like that outcome, but at least the process was followed.
So, I think there's a big difference between somebody who has a specific reason to be targeted, which again I'm completely against, 100%, versus someone whose job performance is such that in general people want to kill you.
If people want to kill you in general, because I don't think this was based on a specific thing, I feel like it was in general, then you should at least ask yourself, is it something I did?
The funniest comic of all time...
I wish I could remember who did it.
God, I can't remember who did it.
It was a one-panel comic of a prisoner in jail, and he was making markings on the wall to count something up.
And he says to his bunkmate in jail, he goes, 19 arrests, 19 convictions.
Maybe it's me. I've been laughing about that for 30 years.
Nineteen arrests, nineteen convictions.
Maybe it's me. Maybe it's me.
And I feel like Swalwell's rhetoric is the kind of rhetoric that makes the world more dangerous.
And I think that he needs to examine his rhetoric.
Because even in this very tweet, he said, bloodshed is coming.
That's not what you say if you're trying to avoid bloodshed, is it?
It would be different if you and I said it, because we're not elected officials.
If an elected official says bloodshed is coming, that causes bloodshed, doesn't it?
Or at least it promotes it.
And again, freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah.
So you and I can say any crazy thing we want, freedom of speech.
As can he, because he has freedom of speech as well.
But on top of his freedom of speech, he's got a job that we elected him for.
He also has to do the job, right?
He doesn't get to say, oh, freedom of speech, so I didn't do the job.
No, the job is to manage the nation.
I don't think saying that bloodshed is coming is managing the nation very well.
I don't think that saying things that are obviously intended to get the Republicans fired up in sort of an overactive way, I don't feel like that's trying to reduce violence.
You know what would reduce violence?
Here's what would reduce violence.
Just to be clear, if Trump didn't violate any laws, I'd like to know that too.
So we could clear him and move on with business.
Or something like that. I'd like to hear Swalwell say something that makes him understand that Republicans are not worthy of death, basically.
Say something.
Just anything that acknowledges some respect for the other side, even if you disagree.
Just show some respect for the other side.
And he doesn't do that.
That's the part he should re-examine.
Because he would not only be more, I think, more effective, so it would make him do his job better, but there's a reason that some politicians attract more negative attention than others.
And I think he's got to examine his rhetoric there.
Now, I'd say the same thing about Trump, by the way.
You know, presidents get a lot of death threats, but Trump's rhetoric certainly invites it.
So if you need me to be consistent, I would say, yeah, Trump needs to examine his rhetoric as well.
That's something I've never been comfortable with.
So I'll say the same thing for him.
All right. Rasmussen did a little poll on electric cars, and 28% of Americans...
Believe that electric cars are practical today for most drivers.
Only 28% think an electric car is practical.
Now, I don't think they mean economical, but maybe that's how they interpret it, like they're too expensive.
But the biggest problem is that people think they'll have trouble getting them charged, I think.
54% think electric cars aren't practical.
Interesting. Here's what I think.
I think the arc of our knowledge about electric cars mirrors the argument about nuclear power.
The public had an impression in their mind that nuclear power was negative for a number of reasons, and it took years of persuasion To convince them that not only had things changed, like there was better information, there was better ways to handle waste, etc. But it took a long time to educate the people that the thing they worried about wasn't true.
Electric cars are still in people's minds about five years behind.
Let me say that better.
People's understanding of electric cars is five years behind.
Very much like people's understanding of nuclear power was years behind.
There's some asshole who comes on here just to say he's bored.
Really, all the things you had to do today, you wanted to go somewhere where you knew you were bored to tell people you were bored?
Do you think you could reach...
Any more spectacular level of being completely useless in society?
Is there anything you could do that would be worth less than that?
Maybe piss on your own breakfast before eating it?
Can you even think of something that would be worse use of your time?
Well, I'm sure you will.
All right.
So is the world falling apart or getting better?
What do you think?
Are things getting worse or better?
Worse?
Worse, worse, worse?
You think we're worse than the pandemic?
I don't know. It seems better than the pandemic.
It's a little of both.
We've got quite a few trolls here.
Just getting rid of some of them.
Got quite a few today.
All right, so here's my last provocative statement.
I know...
Can we agree that none of us want mask mandates?
Is there even one person here who wants a mask?
That's probably not, right? So we're not arguing masks.
Can we agree that we're not going to talk about masks?
I just want to make one comment about expertise.
Because André Speckhaus pointed me to an article, because it was in the context of people arguing about masks, an article that seemed to indicate that A positive benefit of masks.
But then when you dig into the article, you learn that the person who says that masks probably work is an engineer, not a doctor.
An engineer. Now, here's my claim.
That 100% of engineers will say masks work.
100%. Once they hear the argument.
Not today, but once they hear the argument, 100% of engineers will say masks work.
But, not 100% of doctors.
So there's an engineer who thinks that the water that's on the inside of the mask doesn't have any virus in it?
No, I could talk you out of that in about 30 seconds.
If you believe that you're an engineer and you think masks don't work, then you have to explain how the water on the inside of the mask, the moisture, how did it lose all of its virus?
Where did that virus go?
Now here's the only thing I'll say.
The rogue doctors who say masks don't work, and I say they don't work in a macro level, they don't work enough to have a mandate, for sure.
But the rogue doctors, they have a little bit of an inconsistency.
Because the rogue doctors will tell you that the amount of virus that you initially come in contact with makes a difference to how sick you get.
Right? That hasn't changed, has it?
The medical consensus is that the more virus you're initially exposed to, the worse it'll be, because your body will have less time to catch up.
How does this guy keep coming back after I hide him?
Is he just changing his name that quickly?
There's somebody who's really, really putting in the work this morning.
Good job. Good job, Joel.
Because of all the things you could do to better yourself, coming over here and changing your name really rapidly to troll me.
It's interesting. So it looks like there's a whole army of them coming over now.
They're all doing the same comment.
Is it just one guy changing his name quickly?
Can't tell. Very, very...
He's very energetic.
These are bots who have a mission.
They have a mission.
Well, you've taken worthlessness to a new level.
Alright, here's my only point. The rogue doctors have a consistency problem.
They say, I think they would say, that the amount of viral load matters and they would also say that masks don't work.
The engineer would say, if it's true that the amount of viral load matters, then engineers work.
And masks have to work.
Somewhat. Even if only a little bit.
So the engineers are consistent.
They might be wrong.
Anything's possible. But what the engineers say is consistent internally.
If viral load matters, and a little bit of the virus gets on the mask, then that's a little bit of virus that didn't get in the person.
Because it was kept in the mask.
To me, the engineer opinion is the consistent one.
The doctor one is the inconsistent one.
But we all agree that we don't see any difference in the statistics.
There's no city that didn't wear masks and tripled their death rate or anything like that.
There's no macro evidence that worked at all that I'm aware of.
Hide user.
I do, it makes me curious.
The trolls make me curious.
Is it just the attention?
Is that the only reason that they do it?
Are they just broken people?
Is there just something wrong with how they were raised or something?
Subscriber-only mode will help with trolls.
Oh, so somebody is suggesting that there's a subscriber-only model for YouTube.
Is that true? So I could limit the comments to only people who would subscribe to my channel?
Well, that's going to happen.
Oh, well, how did I go this far without knowing this?
All right, well, we're going to make that change.
So if there are people here who have not subscribed, if you would like to comment on YouTube in the future, that will be the only way you can do it.
So we'll make that change.
Thank you. Thank you for that suggestion.
Very helpful. This is what I was talking about.
I introduced a concept yesterday by Twitter, and I call it Collaborative IQ. Collaborative IQ. So this is an example.
My intelligence and my knowledge could not solve that problem, but because this is a collaborative, you know, fluid situation, you solved it for me.
So this is a perfect example where my effective IQ is magnified by the cluster of people who are, you know, sort of in my orbit, which is really an amazing thing.
I think it's completely underappreciated.
Completely. And I don't know if it has something to do with the way I run this.
You know, it's more interactive than most things.
So it could be that. Patreon, not YouTube.
Oh, you use a tablet and you can't comment on?
I don't know about that.
All right. Make YouTube chat paid only.
Yeah, you're like an entourage.
So we haven't heard anything from Andrew Taint lately, have we?
Boy, he is such a good example to teach you how well you can be disappeared.
Now, I thought Alex Jones did a good job because he built his own website, and I think he was just a good entrepreneur, so he could build something valuable.
But if you're just famous for using the existing social media, they can just make you completely disappear.
When was the last time you heard of...
Oh, what was his name?
I guess that proves the point.
Milo? Yiannopoulos.
Milo Yiannopoulos literally just disappeared.
He went from being one of the most noticeable people on the planet to just gone.
Just gone. So I guess he's over there on Rumble.
Oh yeah, Stephan.
Stephan. Molyneux, you got disappeared.
Bill Mitchell? Think of all the people who were big names during the 2016 cycle who are gone.
There's a lot of people who are gone, isn't it?
There's a lot. Yeah, I think Tucker might have been his last mainstream media hit.
I told you why I'm still here, right?
Because I'm the one who said Republicans would be hunted.
And if you say Republicans will be hunted and you become known for that, they have to do you last.
I mean, I'm not Republican, but I know I'm going to get lumped in with that group.
Am I right? They have to do you last.
Because if you're the one who says, hey, they're coming for us and they do you first, you've proven the thesis.
But if they do you last, they can get rid of all the people who would say, hey, he said you were going to come for them, they'd already be gone.
I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong.
That does protect me.
The fact that I'm famous for saying they're going to come for us does protect me.
Right? You tell me.
That's not crazy. I protected myself by that prediction.
And that was intentional.
I was definitely thinking that when I did it.
It wasn't the only reason, but I was definitely thinking it.
Rogan said he's getting tired of the constant attacks and might quit.
Well, he could if he wants to.
So Joe Rogan famously...
He was talking about all the people who hurt during the lockdowns, and when asked what should people do about it, he said, vote Republican.
Now, he did it with a big smile on his face and a cigar, but the point is well made.
If you lost your business because of the lockdown, and you're blaming Democrats for it, vote Republican.
That is, in fact, the answer to the thing.
So I don't know if it was him saying...
He's a Republican or he's going to vote Republican.
He didn't say that. He was just saying it's the answer to the question, which I think is a fair statement.
The answer to the question is, what are you going to do about it?
Well, you do have something to do about it.
There's something very specific you can do about it.
And he's speculating that voters might be in the mood to do something about it.
Now, remember, the thing about Republicans that the Democrats always get wrong...
It feels to me that, well, maybe it works both ways in some way.
But I think Republicans are a little bit more about action than talk.
And so it's a little difficult to estimate how much action they're going to apply because they haven't talked enough to give you full visibility on the action.
And I think that's one of the reasons that Trump won with the election.
So-called secret Trump voters.
There was a little more action than there was talk.
All right.
Mike Tyson said he was going to vote Republican.
Where do you see the most energy gathering right now?
Oh, good question.
So I've often said that you can predict things by energy.
And there's a weird amount of consistent energy for the Trump world.
You really would have thought it would have died down, wouldn't you?
But it didn't.
So that's kind of surprising.
So I would say that the Republicans have a pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere.
Ideally, it will go into elections.
It might, in some cases, go into some violence.
So there are crazy people.
But I don't think you have to worry about their rank and file.
Now, I guess at the same time Swalwell was complaining about somebody threatening to bring an assault rifle in, Biden was giving a speech.
Is this a coincidence?
Well, you decide.
About how it's crazy for citizens to want assault rifles because...
They can't really protect against the government and their F-15s, as he said.
How stupid is that?
You know, I say this all the time.
There will never be a fight between citizens with AR-15s and the military with their jets.
Nobody thinks that's going to happen.
What's going to happen is, if the government says, you have to do X, And the public says, no, we're not.
There is not enough military to make us do it.
And the fact is that the elite in such a situation would never be able to go outdoors again.
There's not enough military in the world to protect a president who would, let's say, become a dictator.
Let's say that some president decided to become a dictator.
Immediately, the citizens would act on all of their family members, every ally who was unprotected.
They would never be able to travel anywhere again.
You know...
It's never going to be a nuke against a gun.
It's going to be that the citizens will make the country untravelable for anybody who is trying to oppress them.
They will make it untravelable.
You won't be able to get out of your car.
That's a pretty good, useful pressure, I would say.
Yeah, could you imagine a president ordering the military to fire on citizens?
Yeah. I mean, I suppose anything could happen, but...
All right.
Somebody says their smart, well-informed liberal friend never heard of the Abraham Accords, and he challenged me to list some Trump accomplishments.
.
Now, I think that works both ways.
If he asks for Republicans to mention any Biden accomplishments, they'd say nothing.
But he does have a list of legislative accomplishments that Democrats say are good.
Critics would say, well, you didn't get what you really wanted.
Those are weak legislation that spends too much money, and they're really failures.
All right. Can't wait to see the strafing runs with the F-15s, yeah.
Scott, are you still sad?
I'm not sad. I am not.
Would you like to know why?
So I found out what was going on with me.
And it turns out that I had intentionally Intentionally, I had changed my mix of medical marijuana dosing.
And I had intentionally done more indica.
But I had also unintentionally done more than I thought.
Meaning that I thought I was still doing a mix of sativa, which lifts you up, and indica, which makes you sleepy, and if you did too much of it, it could make you sad, over time.
And so all I did was switch my mix and I'm instantly fixed.
No problem at all.
You should modulate your pot use.
Two weeks off, two weeks on.
You know what would be wrong with that?
The two weeks off.
I can't do too much sativa because it puts you into an anxious frame of mind eventually.
You know, not on day one.
But if you do too much of either one, you get too much of either one.
The only thing that makes sense is to use one in the daytime and one if you want to go to sleep.
And that is great. That is great.
You are addicted. That is true.
But do you think that matters to me?
Let me list some other things I'm addicted to.
Exercise. You got a problem with that?
I'm totally addicted to exercise.
My entire life, I've never been able to go 48 hours without exercising.
I just can't do it.
Right? Yeah, there are a lot of things I enjoy that I'm psychologically addicted to.
I'm addicted to my dog, even though she's a pain in the ass.
Yeah, and if you don't smoke regularly, you get a completely different experience.
So the experience that I get is nothing like what anybody else would get.
For me, it's more like a change of attitude and energy.
For other people, it's a whole, you know, they can't function in society situation.
It's completely different if you do it all the time.
Too much of anything is probably bad, except for money, health.
All right. I'd like to end on an up note.
Anybody up for that? Let's end on an up note.
I do this often, but I don't think I can do it often enough.
How many of you have experienced an improvement in your life, because you watch my content, an improvement in your life beyond just having some entertainment every day?
Look at the other comments.
Now, I told you when I... I've been telling you for a while that the payoff for me is not really financial.
The payoff for me is this.
This is my payoff.
And it feels really good.
Let me tell you. You wish you were sitting where I'm sitting right now.
Just imagine this experience.
This is the experience I'm having right now, thanks to you.
So it's a collaborative experience.
I actually have goosebumps. Like, literally.
I don't know if you can see it. I have goosebumps right now.
Look at the comments. So, this is my payoff.
My payoff is that I said I would help you improve your lives in a variety of ways, and now people are saying, yep, yep, you did it.
That is amazingly satisfying.
Amazingly satisfying. And let me offer to you that if you're not doing something, that someday somebody is going to say, well, you really helped me out.
Maybe you should consider it.
Because there's almost nothing that feels this good.
Outside of physical pleasures.
In terms of psychological benefits, there's almost nothing that feels as good as I feel right now.
To know that I jacked into civilization.
I was part of something.
And according to many, many people, I made something significantly better for them.
You can't beat that.
That's just the best feeling in the world.
And that requires a farewell simultaneous sip, but only farewell until later.
And so, this is a thank you to all of you, because I'm glad that I could be helpful, but you have no idea how much you helped me.
