Episode 1867 Scott Adams: Come Watch Me Change The Political Narrative Right In Front Of Your Eyes
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Today's Dilbert ESG comic
How TikTok programs human brains
What's up with Ray Epps and the FBI?
Alex Epstein, 12 myths in Inflation Reduction Act
Ukraine war update
Biden's Diversity Chief is racist?
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to anybody in the entire world since the beginning of time.
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Go! Mmm, yeah.
Oh, so good.
Well, let's talk about all the news.
Once again today, Dilbert is running another ESG-themed comic, and you'd probably like me to read it to you, wouldn't you?
Yeah, I know you would.
I know you would.
And it goes a little something like, uh-oh, Okay, there it is.
It looked like it was going to be a technical problem, but no.
So here Dogbert is just talking to Dilbert at the table, and Dilbert says, what is this ESG thing I keep hearing about?
And Dogbert says, imagine if a crooked politician and a crooked financial advisor got married and had a baby.
And Dilbert says, so ESG would be that baby.
And Dogmer says, only if it is colicky and has fire hose diarrhea.
Now, who would retweet a comic like that?
Who would be so low-born, so much a person of the people, that they would retweet such a controversial cartoon?
Well, one of them is Senator Tom Cotton, who tweeted it this morning.
And he said, congratulations to BlackRock and Larry Fink for appearing in today's Dilber.
And, you know, well done, Scott Adams.
So, here's what I was trying to do.
I did want...
This is exactly what I wanted.
I wanted to raise the profile of ESG, and I want to create the following thought in people's mind.
And the thought goes like this.
Nobody knows exactly what ESG is, right?
You know what the letters are, and maybe you worked at a company where they were implementing it, so you saw it up close.
But it's kind of big and unwieldy and complicated and ambiguous and hard to define, and it might be morphing and changing and nobody's quite sure exactly what's in and what's out, and how would you measure any of this anyway?
So it's this big amorphous cloud.
So it's hard to say anything good about it or anything bad about it because you can't actually talk about it in any way that anybody would understand because it's just too big, right?
Too big and too many...
It's like three different topics that they melded together into this souffle of God knows what.
Now, here's the only thing that people will know when I'm done.
You ready for this? This is the only thing the public will know.
A giant company called BlackRock thinks it's a good idea, and the Dilbert cartoonist thinks it's bullshit.
That's it. Because if I tried to get in an argument about the details, how well is that going to go, right?
Everybody gets lost in the details and nobody understands anything.
But if you just understand two things, there's a big giant company...
That thinks it's a terrific idea.
And there's the guy who makes the Dilbert comic who says it's a bad idea.
So, good luck.
We'll see if we can kill this by the end of the year.
Now, kill it just means try to, let's say, try to bully it into something that we can live with.
I'm certainly not against, you know, the environment.
I'm not against the environment.
I'm not against companies doing things that are good for the environment.
I'm not against having good governance.
I think it's a good idea to have your governance, as much as you can, reflect the public and your customers and even your employees.
So, just to be clear, I don't have any problem with the objectives of ESG. You get that, right?
The things that they're asking for just seem like good generic things.
It's just the way it's done.
It's always the way it's done.
The thing I make fun of is always the way it's done.
When I make fun of management, am I saying that companies should not be managed?
Of course not. I'm only making fun of the way it's done.
So that's my beat.
It's not about the idea, it's about how it's implemented.
And here specifically is why it's a problem.
Because the people pushing ESG, what is the one thing that they're not concerned with?
What is the one thing they're not concerned with if they're pushing ESG? The profitability of the company.
So you need somebody who is in charge of all the variables.
You can't outsource some of the variables to another party.
That's not a management structure that can work in the long run.
It's always going to be a drag on everything.
And then on top of that, if you just...
By the way, that's all the argument you need, is you can't take management's control of all the variables where they're balancing, well, profit's good, environment's good, we're going to...
Make some calls here.
Now obviously you don't want them doing profits over the environment, but there's probably some balance there that we're not exactly hitting quite right.
So generally speaking, you want the people who are in charge to be able to control all the variables or else you don't get a good result.
Would you agree with that?
If the people running the company are not the ones who can control which variables are important and which ones get priority and which ones don't, it's not really managed.
They're just victims of outside forces at that point.
So it's a clever sort of back door way to introduce a form of, maybe some form of, I don't know, Cousin of socialism or something.
I'm not sure exactly what, but it effectively would take some control away from the people who have control and sort of give it to the people, in a way, if you think the people want ESG. And the people do.
I mean, everybody wants a good environment.
They don't necessarily want it this way.
All right. Remember I told you that YouTube has this app called YouTube TV, and it's an amazing app.
It had only one problem, which is the network that didn't work, and of all the content on there, the only thing that didn't work was Fox News, and it never worked.
And YouTube TV tweeted back at me and said, you know, maybe you should uninstall your app and reinstall.
And, you know, because I... I wasn't born yesterday.
That never works.
Especially when you've used it on five different devices and you get the same result.
Especially a brand new phone this week, same result.
All the other channels are fine.
Just that one channel.
So it's not impossible that somehow the problem was on my Android was just a technical problem.
It's not impossible. Anything's possible.
But let's open it up this morning, see if it works.
We'll give you a live demonstration of YouTube TV, which has not once been able to show The Five without glitching.
Let's see what it does after I complained.
They are probably going to get what they asked for.
It works perfectly. That's interesting.
And you know, Jessica, the majority of Americans who listen to Biden's speech...
It's all fixed.
So one day, not even one day, but basically the same day that I publicly called it out is the first day that has worked perfectly.
How about that?
Don't you love your coincidences?
Quite a coincidence, wasn't it?
By the way, do you know how I got their attention?
Did you notice that, how I got their attention?
So, I mean, not only that I did this publicly, but I tweeted it.
But did you catch the most clever thing I did to get their attention?
I don't know if you caught it.
So I did it yesterday on the live stream.
Now, the clever thing I did was, and this has to be honest, so I don't recommend lying.
I never recommend lying with persuasion.
So if you think I'm saying that, I'm not.
Here was the persuasion that I think was maybe not the key, but it was important.
I said that the people who developed the UTV did a great job.
They really did. It's one of the best apps.
That I've experienced in terms of the user interface, speed, technical excellence, etc.
So it sort of stood out that this one channel wasn't working.
Now, it could be that it was a tactical problem.
Because they said there was something wrong with...
At one point I heard there was something wrong with the feed, maybe.
And maybe they just solved the technical problem.
So I don't know for sure there was any strange bias or anything like that.
Could have been. Could have been just a technical problem.
But in any case, it got fixed.
So... So I don't know what percentage of total TV traffic the YouTube TV app has, but...
Yeah, Fox News probably just gained one or two percent in ratings.
You're welcome. You're welcome.
So they say one person can't make a difference?
How many times have you seen me change something?
And by the way, I don't know for sure if that wasn't a coincidence.
Could have been. You can never really rule out coincidence, can you?
All right. So, TikTok.
Apparently, TikTok is not guaranteeing that they will keep their data away from China.
So, TikTok is a Chinese-owned company, which means the government of China has control over them, and we don't want our American user data to get in Chinese hands.
But TikTok says, well, you know, we can't really promise that there's no situation whatsoever where they won't get your data.
And you know what's the funniest thing about this story?
It's a complete diversion.
Look at my left hand.
Don't pay attention to my right hand.
Look at my left hand.
Your user data.
Oh, let's worry about the user data.
Hey, look over here.
The user data might get in the wrong hands.
Look here, user data.
What about, no, no, no, no, there's nothing else.
Let's talk about the user data.
What are we forgetting?
How about the fact that the entire product is designed as a user interface for brains?
It's a user interface for programming brains.
Now, it's also other things, it's entertaining, it's social media, it's all those things.
But by its nature, I'm not sure if it's by design, but by its nature, you can figure out what people like, You can give them more of it.
And do you know how persuasion works?
Let me explain it to you.
Here are the main things that will persuade you.
Number one, repetition.
The more you see the same message, the more you think it's true.
Or the more you think it's important, both of those.
So can the TikTok interface algorithm decide who gets more of something?
Yes. That's the basic element of brainwashing.
What information goes to whom and how often and how much of it.
Now, what's the second element of persuasion?
Association. Association.
Can TikTok make sure that it associates the message with, let's say, couching it in between a bunch of things that are going to make you happy and feel good and you think are true?
What would that do to the message that's sandwiched between things that you love and make you happy and put you in a good mood and also you think are true and meaningful and important?
And they stick that one little thing in there that you didn't have an opinion on yet.
What happens to it?
Well, the goodness from the things around it and the feelings associated with those other things now are associated with the new thing.
So TikTok has a user interface that can control the quantity and frequency and the association.
Now what else do you need for persuasion?
Feedback. One of the most important things and often underappreciated.
When a hypnotist does hypnosis in person, A big part of the process, maybe half of it, is observing whether the thing you're doing is working.
And if it's not working, you change.
You try something else. See if that works.
Change. See if that works.
Now, that's why you can't learn hypnosis by reading a book.
Because reading a book won't let you see the change that's happening.
So you're not there in person.
In theory, I suppose you could practice it and observe, but it doesn't really work too well.
So now you've got frequency, you've got association, and feelings, so they can control your feelings.
What are the strongest bits of persuasion?
What is the number one strongest persuasion?
Fear. Fear.
Is TikTok able to, let's say, decide that you will see more things that might be scary or fewer things that might be scary?
They can control that, right?
They have control over if you see more scary stuff about, let's say, a topic.
Yes, they can. Let's take climate change.
They can completely control how much fear their customers see or experience.
So now they can control that.
Now what's the next most important part of persuasion after fear?
Well, I often talk about the high ground approach, but the high ground doesn't really apply in social media.
This is more of an argument thing.
Social media is more of a fire hose.
So the high ground doesn't really come into play in that.
The next thing that's important is visual persuasion.
Visual. TikTok's visual.
So they've got visual, they've got fear, they've got control over that.
How much you see, what it's associated with, what time you see it.
They can even control the time of day.
Don't you think that the time of day would determine how acceptable the message is?
It would. I've never studied it, but I guarantee it.
It's nothing I've even ever looked into.
But I can guarantee it.
The time of day, and based on what else you're doing at that time, completely determines how open you are to a suggestion.
Everything from how hungry you are to how sleepy you are, all of those things work into whether you're open to be suggestible.
So now, TikTok knows what's working and what doesn't, because it can observe you directly.
It knows if you're clicking on or watching something more or less.
It has every element of the human interface for programming a brain.
There's nothing missing.
Let me say that again.
There's no feature missing.
They hit every note.
Every note. If you were an expert in persuasion and you said, all right, let's develop a thing to program somebody's mind...
You would develop TikTok. That's the exact product you would make if you were designing a brainwashing tool, it would be TikTok.
It wouldn't remind you of it, it would be it.
Let me say that again.
It wouldn't be similar to, it wouldn't remind you of, it would be TikTok if you designed a brainwashing tool.
Because what's more important than having all your friends also being brainwashed at the same time?
Nothing. Nothing.
So that's the next element.
The social element of it, that you're part of a team, and the team's doing the same thing you are, is super persuasive.
I should have put that one maybe at the top.
You know, I don't think of that one because I usually think of a one-on-one persuasion.
I don't think so that one escaped me.
But I should have said that's near the top or at the top.
That it looks like you're on a team, and the team is awesome, and aren't you glad you're on that team?
And whatever that team says is what you want to say too, because you're on the team.
Now, how many people do you think in Congress understand what I just told you?
Think about it. How many members of Congress are with it enough that they would even understand what I just told you?
Well, you could practically name them, right?
Rand Paul would understand, right?
Tom Cotton would understand, of course.
You could name, you know, the ones that are obvious.
But do you think that most of them understand?
I don't think so.
I don't think so. I don't think...
I think that...
Yeah, Thomas Massey would understand, obviously.
So there are definitely some super smart members of Congress.
There's no doubt about that.
You know, we can make fun of them all day long.
But there are a number of them who are super smart.
Super smart. And I'm not sure they have enough power compared to how much they should.
Matt Gaetz would understand.
Yeah. Now, I'm just, you know, mentioning some People who are more right-leaning.
But surely there are people on the left who understand it, but I don't know if they care, because to them it might look like things are being persuaded in their direction, which would be...
Yeah, I would say anybody who has a legal background and has seen the app...
See, most of Congress has never seen TikTok.
Wouldn't you agree? How many members of Congress have actually held TikTok in their hand and scrolled it?
I don't know how many.
10%, maybe?
But you wouldn't really understand it unless you felt it.
I recently got addicted to Instagram Reels, which is basically TikTok, just the Instagram version.
You know, I'm sort of keyed into this whole persuasion thing, and my God, do I feel the pull, the actual pull of the swipe one more time, because it's learned exactly what to feed me.
You want to hear the weirdest one?
Here's the weirdest one.
I have this sort of strange, you know, I don't know if it's a health-related problem or what, but my hip gets really tight in the morning, and So tight that I can't use the stairs for like a few hours.
It's just so hard to even walk upstairs.
And I'm perfectly healthy.
By the afternoon I can walk for miles and run up the stairs.
But just this weird thing where my, I don't know, it feels like my butt or my hips are so tight I can't, I just barely walk upstairs.
Now, had you ever heard of that problem before in your whole life?
I never have. I've never heard of anybody who had that problem.
Never. Never heard of a single person with that problem.
My social media is filled with stretching exercises to fix that problem.
I've never Googled it.
I've never done a search for anything related to that.
I've only ever talked about it privately in my home.
And all of my social media is giving me solutions.
Now here's the weird part.
Not only did it diagnose me, it cured me.
The fucking algorithm cured me.
It listened to me talk about a problem, and it didn't just give me a commercial that was selling me something.
It actually gave me something that wasn't a commercial.
Their memes, I don't know, their videos, sort of commercially, but they weren't selling something direct.
They were just telling you how to stretch.
And I thought...
What else can it do?
How many other things will you be cured of because your social media listened to you?
Let me ask you this.
Oh, here's another one.
Here's another one. I wanted to see the trend of...
I'm not going to say the word out loud because social media won't want me to use the word.
But it's a word that starts with S and involves people ending their own existence on this planet.
And so I just won't use the word because I don't want to get picked up.
So I wanted to do a search to see if people who had a legal, you know, doctor-assisted situation, to see if that had grown or decreased in popularity.
So I was just looking for a general knowledge thing.
And my phone wouldn't let me search for it.
It wouldn't let me search for it.
It would only let me talk to a professional.
Let me say it again. It wouldn't let me search for anything on the topic, except to talk to a professional.
Because I think the algorithm assumed that if I'm looking for that, I might be looking for how to do it.
And that wasn't a bad guess.
That wasn't. But it was not a bad guess.
A lot of people who are going to search for it are looking how to do it.
And it comes up with a message instead, do you need to talk to somebody?
You know, here's somebody you can talk to.
Now, Yeah, that's actually good.
I have very mixed opinions about this.
Very mixed opinions.
On one hand, it thwarted me from just looking up some interesting information.
I didn't like that. I figured out how to do it just by typing it instead of speaking it.
But when I spoke it, it just wouldn't let me get past that look and talk to a professional.
Now, I think that was, you know, maybe a little heavy-handed.
You could argue that one.
But given how much...
Given that the intention of it is so obviously right-minded, I'm a little forgiving about the friction there.
So, I don't know, maybe that's the future where the algorithm will find a problem you didn't even know you had and then suggest a solution.
California's come up with a heat wave ranking system.
So they don't have the details yet.
They're going to work on it. But the idea is that in a heat wave, if you have to turn off somebody's electricity, they'll have some structured way to do it.
I assume this means that the hospitals keep their power.
Maybe some residences don't.
And I was trying to imagine where I might show up on the heat wave ranking system.
I'm like, well, you know, I'm not in the hospital, and I'm not in a senior home, not a school.
Maybe the schools need it first.
Maybe medical facilities in general.
I'm thinking that by the time you get down to me, I'm kind of in the kill box.
I think I'm in the kill box.
I think there's going to be a list that says, well, if it gets really hot, it's okay to kill Scott.
But save the other people.
We can let Scott go.
I just feel like I'm going to be on the list toward the bottom.
I don't know. It's just me.
Well, the Wall Street Journal is reporting what many of you already knew.
And by the way, if you live in a place that has lots of immigrants from below the border, you already knew this.
The Hispanics coming over the border, they're not liberal.
They're not liberal. They're religious.
They care about work, inflation, paychecks, that stuff, education.
So it turns out that the move toward the Hispanic population becoming more and more Republican apparently is quite pronounced.
So at this point, it's a thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
How many of you have been watching long enough...
That you remember me saying this was going to be a thing.
Because I can see it forming because I'm a little closer to that community.
I just interact with them all the time.
I can see it clearly.
You can see it clear as day.
There's no such thing as a woke Mexican.
I'm exaggerating, of course.
Of course I'm exaggerating.
But I've never met one.
And when I say Mexican, I mean somebody born there.
Now, they may be Americanized, and they may even be citizens or whatever.
But I've never met a woke Mexican.
Never. I'm not sure I ever will.
So if they're not natural Republicans, I don't know who is.
They're so natural Republicans, They even get past the fact that they think Republicans might be a little biased against them.
That's how much Republican they are.
They're even willing to say, you know, Republicans might not like me, but I sure like low taxes and having a job and stuff.
I like that stuff.
I like education. So I think there's going to be more of that I think one of the funniest political mistakes, and I think it's a mistake, is that Democrats are apparently funding the extreme mega-Republican candidates in the primaries under the clever theory...
That if their Democrat candidate runs in the general election against the most extreme person, that they've got a real advantage because nobody wants the extreme person.
So much so that they're massively funding the most extreme Republican candidates.
So it's Democrats who are funding their opponents to make sure they get the worst opponent so they have an advantage.
What do you think of that idea?
Pretty good idea or pretty bad idea?
Let me tell you the five-lane persuasion highway that they opened that maybe they haven't noticed yet.
And it goes like this.
Let's say I'm one of those extreme Republicans who just won the primary.
Here's what I would say.
I got more donations from Democrats than Republicans.
And we're done here.
This is better.
Don't say you got more.
Say, I got more donations from Democrat sources than any candidate who's run in this state before.
And you're done.
Because it's true.
It's true. Fact check it.
Now, suppose you fact check it, and then the voters get wise, and the voters catch on to the nuance.
They're, wait a minute, the voters say.
You said that they funded you, but now that I know the details, really, this was a special case.
They're really funding you to win the primary, to be better.
Voters don't understand that.
The ones who do understand that have already made up their mind.
If you follow politics enough that you understand the Democrats were trying to fuck with the Republicans, if you understand that, you've already made up your mind who you're going to vote for.
If you're anywhere in the hardly paying attention, I could go either way candidates, the only thing you're going to understand is that the Democrats also supported this Republican.
That's what you'll come away with.
Because remember, people are only getting 10% of every topic.
The 10% of that topic they'll understand is that both sides donated to this guy.
I don't know, it looks like one of the biggest political mistakes of all time, and somewhat obvious one.
But if they pull it off, I will tell you I was wrong.
I will tell you I was wrong if they get away with it, but I think it's going to backfire.
So I'm going to bet that the ones who got massive Democrat fundings under this condition, under the following condition, that those candidates recognize that saying that they got the most funding from both sides that anybody ever got is the way to play it.
They'd have to play it right.
They have to play it right, not just ignore it.
But if they play it right, I think they're golden.
Mike Cernovich being Mike Cernovich more than anybody has ever been Mike Cernovich.
I swear to God, one of the things I love about that guy more than anything is that he's not like anybody else.
And he's like, aggressively not like anybody else.
So it's always interesting.
And he tweeted today, the FBI has to be closed down.
It's beyond reform.
State and local law enforcement can prosecute the real crimes.
And parenthetically, he says, pedophiles like Larry Nassar and Epstein.
Disband the Stasi. And when I first read that, I thought, oh, that's too far.
That's too far. But then I realized, you know, if you're Cernovich, you understand how things work.
And there's no such thing as too far.
There's just an opening offer, right?
So opening offer, get rid of them completely.
And I agree completely.
I'm totally on board.
Opening offer is get rid of them completely.
Now, it seems like that would be a giant problem, because it would leave, you know, a big gap in things that are covered, and we would want those gaps covered.
And I don't think local law enforcement could necessarily fill in.
So I don't think this is a practical idea.
But as an opening offer, uh-huh, yep, I'm on board.
I have no idea how this could be made to work.
But on the other hand, the current situation is untenable.
You don't really have a choice of continuing the way we are.
So, opening offer.
Completely get rid of them.
I'm totally on board with that.
And here's a sort of an analogy, I guess.
When I was in...
I worked in banking. I'm not sure if this is still true.
But if you were a banker, you were required to take...
And I can't remember...
I think there were some...
That every employee has to take four consecutive days off in a calendar year.
And you say, why is that?
I mean, I get that they have to take vacations, but what's important about four consecutive days?
And it turns out that there were some ways that employees could steal money from banks that required being there every day to re-falsify the records.
So you had to continually re-falsify to move forward your fraud.
And so they would make every employee take four days off because they couldn't move forward their fraud while they were gone.
And that's how they'd catch them.
And they caught a lot of people that way.
It actually worked. And I think about that With the FBI. Like, somehow that reminds me of it.
Because it's pretty radical to say that you can't even come to work for four days, because not only do we suspect that you might try something, but we know you will.
So bankers Have a very, let's say, realistic belief about people.
They have to. If you're a banker, you're very realistic about people.
Otherwise, you lose all your money.
And one of the things that bankers know is that it doesn't matter how honest you were when you were hired.
You get that? It doesn't matter how honest you were when you were hired.
If you see an opportunity to steal money and not get caught, It's gonna happen.
It's gonna happen.
Maybe not you, right?
Maybe not you. But there'll be enough people cycling through that opportunity, somebody's gonna take it.
So bankers know that if you leave anything stealable, it'll get stolen.
That's probably the most basic banking theory.
If it can be stolen, somebody's gonna steal it.
So that's what the bank does, keeps it from getting stolen.
And it seems to me that the FBI, much like Mike Cernovich's point, might be beyond the point Where tweaks would make a difference.
Because the people doing the tweaking would be the people we didn't trust.
So you might have to completely dismantle it and then rebuild it.
I mean, maybe you keep the rented space and stuff, I don't know.
But you might have to do something closer to destroying it and rebuilding it from scratch.
I don't know what that looks like. But it's a conversation, as people who don't have any good ideas like to say, it's a conversation the country has to have.
You know what's the least useful thing a pundit can say?
You know, that's the conversation that a country needs to have.
I just did it because I don't have any idea how to fix anything either.
Here's a feeling that I have got.
You know, we've got a zillion different topics and there are reasons to vote for one candidate versus another and you could talk forever about all the different ins and outs of Advantages and disadvantages.
But every now and then there's something that pops out as a single issue where I would just say, okay, I don't care about anything else.
I'm just going to vote on that single issue.
Probably a lot of Democrats will vote, and maybe Republicans too, on the issue of abortion.
Now, if that was your single issue, I would respect that.
It's not mine. It's not my single issue.
But if it was yours, if it were yours, I'd respect that.
That would be important enough to be a single issue voter on.
Immigration, same thing.
If you said, I don't care about anything except stopping immigration, or I don't care about anything except stopping inflation, those would be good, pretty good single issue topics.
I'm going to give you my single issue topic.
What's up with Ray Epps?
That's my whole topic.
That's the reason to vote Republican.
Because if you vote Republican, there's some chance we might find out what's up with Ray Epps.
So if you don't know, Ray Epps was the person who was on video encouraging people to enter the Capitol on January 6th.
But he was not arrested.
I don't believe his phone was taken, but we don't know that for sure.
I don't think we know that, but there's no evidence.
He was given the same treatment as, let's say, Mike Lindell, who the FBI surrounded and took his phone from him.
His phone from which he runs his entire company.
Most important tool he has.
They just took it from him. And Thomas Massey tweeted this.
He said, when Merrick Garland testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee, I showed him this video.
He then refused to answer...
The video was about raps, I believe.
He then refused to answer my question of how many agents or assets of the federal government were present on January 5th and 6th.
And I'd sort of forgotten that the government had confirmed that they were part of that.
And when I say confirmed, by refusing to say they weren't.
To me, I accept that as a confirmation.
Now, we don't know how much.
If it was, you know, just a little, I'd say, okay, that didn't matter.
If it were a lot, then I would say that's the whole story.
And so, independent of whether it matters that Ray Epps was or was not part of the FBI, independent of whether that matters and independent of what he did, the fact that your government won't tell you, this is the central question of the Republic.
And let me say this.
If it turns out that Ray Epps was nothing but a patriot who was trying to make his beliefs known, which is entirely possible, Does anybody rule out that it's possible he's just a patriot?
It's possible, isn't it?
It's possible.
I know you think, probably not.
I'm not going to argue with probably.
But it's possible.
Right? It's possible.
So I would say that if he's legit, and a related question, if he was legit, as in not a Fed, and the Feds ever give us an honest answer about their involvement, then I would say, you know, it looks like Trump might not be the best solution for the country.
Because he was involved in this, and even if you want to excuse his behavior, he's just part of this big ugly thing that would be a blight on the Republic, and maybe we should just move on.
Clear the slate.
Just start with a clean plate.
I can see that.
But... If it turns out that we are not being told what Ray Epps was up to or any other federal assets, if they were there, if we're not going to be told that, then that's my one issue.
Then I could support Trump.
Even if everything about him that you say is true is true.
Even if he had secrets he shouldn't have had in Bar-a-Lago.
Even if he...
Is guilty of some, I don't know, minor financial campaign thing?
I don't know. I wouldn't care about any of it.
Because if your republic won't tell you if they're the ones who did the treason, because that would have been...
If the FBI was that involved, you know, as much as the people on the right like to think, if they were, then that was treason.
Wasn't it? I mean, it was a form of treason.
If they weren't, then it looks more like the argument that the badness was all in the right.
But we need to know that.
We don't need to just pass that.
That's a do not pass Ray Epps, you don't get to go anywhere else.
So that would be my stopping point, my single point.
I need to know an answer to that question.
I need to know the answer to Thomas Massey's question.
And if I don't get an answer, I'm all Republican.
I'm not a Republican, but I'll support whoever the Republican candidate is.
I don't care who it is. But they've got to promise that they're going to get to the bottom of this.
If the Republican candidate says, hey, we have to leave it in the past, then I'm like, okay, that's different.
So basically neither of you have an idea.
But... This is it.
I want to know if he's just a patriot.
Because if he is, then maybe I'll disbelieve a lot of the things that the Republicans say.
Or a lot more.
Will I actually vote?
Probably not. But I would definitely make noise.
And I think that would be a legitimate, single-topic vote.
You have to tell us, this is the minimum we need to know, is do we have a republic still?
Am I wrong? The minimum you need to know, as a citizen, does the republic still exist?
Because remember, they did show their hand with that 50 current and prior intel people who said the laptop was fake.
Once we saw that, and now we know for sure that that was an op, That was our intelligence people running an op on the public.
That was real. That's confirmed.
We know that to be true.
We don't have to guess.
Given that that was true, we don't know if we have a republic.
And I would say that the answer to this whole REAPS plus any other FBI assets that were or were not there, the answer to that question tells you if you have a republic.
Am I wrong? Let's not...
Don't make us think past the sale.
Do we still have a republic, or has the deep state completely taken over?
Have they completely taken over?
And I would think that this would be an interesting appeal to independent voters, because I would, if I were a republican especially, I'd say, here's the deal.
All of you independent voters, I know you can go either way.
That's what makes you independent voters.
In reality, they usually go the way they always lean.
But there might be a few.
You say to them, look, I'm going to find out what happened with the FBI and Ray Epps if I'm president.
Whatever it is, whatever the answer is, we're going to live with that.
But we're going to find out.
You independents, that's the only way you're going to find out if we still have a republic.
I will tell you if you still have a republic, but you've got to get me into the presidency to do that.
Because I kind of am very curious.
And here's the persuasion angle on this.
Curiosity is the most underrated persuasion energy.
Have you ever done something stupid because you were curious?
Oh yeah, you have.
Yeah, you have. If you're human.
Yeah. Have you ever been obsessed by something because you didn't know the answer and you just had to know because you're so curious?
Of course. We're born to be obsessed by those things that are not answered and yet important.
You're designed that way.
So, I've never...
I can't think of any politician who's ever taken advantage of that.
But authors do all the time.
If you read a Harry Potter novel, at the end of each chapter there's like a little mystery.
Like, where did that sound come from?
Why does that happen? I'm going to get back to your question, Carpe.
So... Anyway, I think that if the Republican candidate says, look, we've got this mystery.
We don't know if we still have a republic.
But I'll get to the bottom of it.
I'll answer the question for you.
That would be really, really motivating to me.
Because curiosity is a real driving force.
So Carpe Donctum just asks a question.
If I use my persuasion abilities...
For two years and really worked on reducing the homeless problem in California, could I do it?
The answer is no. I couldn't even come close.
No, that would be completely impossible.
Because I can't talk to the homeless.
And if I did, they would say, we choose to be here.
Because we like drugs, and if you put us indoors anywhere, they're not going to let us do drugs.
So, all things being equal, I'd rather be drug than on the street.
Thank you very much.
So no, there's nothing I can persuade.
Because you can't persuade people to do something that's bad for them and they know it.
The street people know what they prefer.
If you think that they're wrong, so what?
You think I'm wrong, too.
Do you get a vote?
How many of you think I shouldn't have a third cup of coffee today?
Somebody. There's somebody who thinks I shouldn't have a third cup of coffee today.
Do you get a vote?
No, you don't get a vote.
Only I get a vote. The street people don't care what you think.
They only care what they think.
And in their opinion, as living human beings on the planet Earth and mostly citizens of America, they've looked at their options and they say, you know, I like being on drugs and being outdoors.
Compared to being off drugs and being indoors.
They get to do that.
That's their choice. So no, you can't persuade people to do something that is against their interest as they see it.
You could argue that they should see it differently, but you can't persuade people against their own self-interest.
Not really. That's the hardest persuasion.
So no, I don't think I could make a dent in that.
I could work around the edges.
I could work around the edges.
But I couldn't just clear the streets.
There's nobody who could do that with persuasion.
That actually has to be force.
If you were going to do it, it would be with government force.
We're going to put you in this home for 30 days.
After that, you're on your own, but we're going to at least try to fix you.
Something like that. You could argue about the ethics of that.
All right. Question.
If you were a January 6th defendant, why can't you call Ray Epps?
What am I missing? Is there a lawyer here who can answer that question?
If I'm a January 6th defendant, I'm still in jail, I'm mounting my defense, you're telling me I can't call Ray Epps?
Put him on the stand?
Find out if he's the Fed?
That's not relevant to my defense?
Because here's the argument.
The entire argument is about incitement to riot.
It's not about the riot.
Well, it's also about the riot.
But it's the incitement.
The whole question is, did Trump incite a riot?
Don't you need to know all the sources of incitement?
If the question is, did somebody incite it, well, you've got to put on the table all the potential people who could have been inciting it and see which one was doing the inciting.
So if it's illegal for a president to incite a riot, Well, certainly it's illegal for the FBI to do it, wouldn't you say?
Now, suppose the courts say, you can't put Ray Epps on the stand because there's no evidence that he's part of the FBI. To which I say, I don't get to find out for myself what's true.
I don't get to ask him in public.
I would put Garland on the stand.
If I were a January 6th defendant, I would put the Attorney General on the stand.
I'd put them all on the stand.
I'd put the government on the stand.
Because, in my opinion, incitement is incitement.
And I'd make sure that everybody saw all the incitement from all the sources.
I would put the ex-head Zucker of CNN on the stand.
And I'd say, do you think you incited anybody?
No. Yeah.
Or Ray, yeah. I'd basically put the whole fucking government on the stand.
Now, I don't know if the judge would allow any of that, but if they didn't at least allow the FBI or Ray Epps or somebody, I don't see how you could have a trial.
I mean, I feel like that has to go to the Supreme Court if you don't get that.
All right. You'd do nothing.
In D.C., you'd sit and rot.
Good luck. Yeah, I suppose if you're in D.C., it's a tougher sell.
So, you know this Inflation Reduction Act?
And my first opinion of it was, well, there's some stuff in there I probably don't like, but at least it was a full-throated financial endorsement of nuclear energy.
And I said to myself, well...
You know, nothing's perfect, but that's so important that the bill produced major funding to encourage the nuclear energy business.
I thought, well, that's so important that maybe I can live with this other stuff that I don't like.
And then I saw an Alex Epstein tweet thread, the 12 myths about the terrible Inflation Reduction Act.
And it turns out that it's not going to help nuclear energy at all.
It's a trick. The trick is this.
It doesn't matter how much money you throw at nuclear, they can't get anything approved.
Nothing's ever been approved by the entities that approve nuclear power plants today.
Let me say that again.
The entity that exists today to approve nuclear power plants has never approved one to completion.
Zero. Zero. So we have a system that allows zero things to get through it, but if they did, well, how about that funding?
So do you know what the nuclear funding was about?
It was a fucking trick to get more funding for green.
Because the money is in one pot, I think.
Not positive, but I think the money is in one pot.
And if the nuclear project had a great idea and they had approval, well, they could get some of it.
But they can't, because they'll never get approval.
And then the battery or the sun or the wind people say, I got a good idea.
Here's my project. It's all approved.
And they get the money.
So it looks like it's just a fucking trick.
Now, how worse could this be?
How worse could it be?
And by the way, did I mention it was a tweet thread about 12 myths?
I'm not even going to read you the other 11, but go to Alex Epstein.
You should follow him anyway.
Just follow him, and you'll see all the good arguments on energy.
So Alex Epstein, just Google him, or just search him on Twitter and follow him.
You'll see the other 11. But, oh my God!
Oh my God! Now, I'd like to think that the Biden government is also working on that approval problem.
So if they worked on the funding and they got that first, but then separately they're trying to remove the red tape, that'd be okay.
But I'd like to hear that.
And I'm not aware of any effort to do that, are you?
I feel like we would have heard about it if anybody was doing anything like that.
So I don't think it's happening.
But... Maybe a Republican would.
Don't you think that a Republican would be more likely to work on the streamlining of nuclear energy plants?
I think so. So there's another single topic reason to vote.
So you know how we were all puzzled by Lindsey Graham and pushing for this national abortion law so close to the midterms, it seems like a political error.
But then on CNN, Chris Silliza had an opinion that maybe it was a strategy.
And the strategy goes like this.
If the Republicans say nothing about abortion and just try to minimize it, the Republicans just own that argument, at least for their base.
They just own that argument. So rather than letting them just own the argument...
The hypothesis is that what Graham was really trying to do is give Republicans something to argue positively for.
In other words, his...
Here's a proposition.
I guess it's no abortions after 15 weeks or something like that.
And I guess that would make it compatible with much of the rest of the world, and it's a less extreme position than it could be.
It's less extreme.
So what it would do is give some cover to Republicans so they could say, well, I like this less extreme thing that most of the world agrees with.
It's not crazy. It's not extreme.
It's anything but extreme.
It's similar to Europe.
So I think he's trying to give them an argument.
Here's why I think it won't work.
Because voters only absorb 10% of the nuance.
And all they see is abortion yes or abortion no.
How many Democrats are going to say, well...
You know, he's sort of against abortion, but he's being reasonable, like the European.
Nobody's going to do that. Nobody's going to do that.
Nobody. To me, it looks like a bad strategy, because it ignores the fact that people don't do nuance.
If people did nuance, maybe, but they don't.
All right. Over in Ukraine, Zelensky was in a car crash that was at least bad enough to get him some medical attention, but he had no serious injuries.
But what do you think about the fact that the leader of this country at war was vulnerable to a car accident?
Like, how does he travel?
Is it just, like, him and two cars?
Like, how do you even have a car accident?
He's not part of a motorcade or anything?
Or was he, like, the first one in the motorcade?
Like, I don't even know how that happens.
And I don't know how the person driving the car didn't get shot, but I think, I don't know.
So Putin is using his big missiles to take out Ukrainian infrastructure, and he took out a dam and flooded, I guess, Olenski's old hometown.
So a lot of this is getting personal.
That sounded personal. But what do you make of the fact that Russia seems to be mounting nothing like a defense on the ground, but they're using their expensive weapons just to fuck with Ukraine, and none of the stuff they're doing now looks like it could help them win.
I don't believe that taking out that dam helps Russia win militarily, does it?
That looks like just collective punishment.
Am I wrong? It looked like collective punishment.
It looked like an attack on the civilians.
Now let me ask you this.
Is there any scenario in which Russian citizens could occupy Ukraine now?
There's no way.
Now? Now?
There isn't any way that Russian citizens could be, like, resident in Ukraine and sort of managing things in control.
They would all be murdered.
There's just no way.
Because Putin's gone too far.
For a while, there was a way.
If Russia had, like, immediately taken over Kyiv and gotten rid of Zelensky and immediately started a propaganda campaign to, you know, propagandize people and say, hey, we saved you from the Nazis that nobody's seen.
I guess there are Nazis there.
It could have worked, because he has so much control over what people see.
But at this point, there are no Ukrainians who don't know that Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine out of what?
Anger? Not even a military purpose?
So, it's over.
I think the war is over in the sense that you can now know that Russia won't win it.
In the sense that they're not going to...
Russia will never, at least in our lifetime, won't take over the whole of Ukraine.
That opportunity is completely gone now.
The question remains about those contested areas where they're still fighting.
But I'm not hearing that the Russians are putting up a real fight.
It looks like the Ukrainians are just rolling them up.
Now, maybe they essentialize their forces in the most critical place, so there's a big battle to come.
But at the moment, the Ukrainians are just rolling them up.
Scott, you know Zelensky killed his own civilians.
When did he do that?
When did he kill his own civilians?
Oh, you mean before the war, right?
Because there was military action in the disputed zones.
There's a difference between targeting military, targeting civilians, and having them die in the fighting.
It's a pretty big difference.
When he shelled Donetsk?
Yeah. Well, you know, I'm open to...
I'm definitely open to hearing that counterargument.
And that would matter. That would matter.
I'm not a pro-Zelensky guy, by the way.
Did you know that? Zelensky...
There's a weasel vibe that I get from him that is, I can't turn it off.
So I'm not pro-Zelensky.
I will simply note when he does something that's effective for his country.
I'm definitely not pro-Zelensky.
There's something...
That bothers me a lot about that guy, and I don't know exactly what it is.
So the Biden administration hired a racist for the job of...
What's his job called?
Diversity chief at the Department of Defense's education wing.
So the diversity chief...
Apparently is an overt racist.
And when I say overt, allow me to read some of the tweets.
These were on the Twitter feed.
Somebody's calling me anti-Semitic.
What the hell is that about?
Anti-Semitic.
Oh, because of Zelensky? Oh, because Zelensky gives me a weasel vibe?
Is that why? Because if you hadn't mentioned that he was Jewish, I'd forgotten entirely about that.
Oh, you're joking?
Okay. If you're joking, I'll accept it.
All right. So here's the woman who was hired for this diversity chief job.
She was complaining about some meeting she was in where the white people were bothering her, and she said in a tweet, quote, this lady actually had the caudacity, the caudacity, that's Caucasian audacity, the caudacity, this lady actually had the caudacity to say that black people can be racist too.
I had to stop the session and give Karen the business.
Karen. A name that is only used for white women.
She said, we're not the majority.
We don't have the power, she continued.
Blah, blah, blah. On another occasion, Wing responded to a user who said, I'm exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women.
Where can I get a break from white nonsense for a while?
And Wing responded to that tweet with, if another Karen tells me about her feelings, I might lose it.
So, I guess she took down her Twitter account.
Now, apparently we're not supposed to say that's racist because she's black.
That's just racist.
That's not anything else.
This is just a racist person who is tweeting racist things in public and was put in charge of thwarting racism.
Yeah.
All right.
It's very convenient that black people can't be racist, isn't it?
How convenient? Only you can if you're not black.
All right, so more newspapers are canceling me.
I'm getting more and more news of being canceled.
There's something that I forgot about when I told you how newspapers are really good about not canceling people.
Remember I told you that?
And I said, well, you know, newspapers are the one place where you can have freedom of speech still.
Because the professional news people always had been just wildly free speech, as they should be.
But here's what I forgot.
Do you know who owns most newspapers?
Billionaires. Hedge funds.
The people who own newspapers also own businesses for which ESG would be important.
So, I didn't realize that I was directly attacking the owners of the newspapers.
So, not such a big surprise that I'm getting cancelled.
Who would be calling me at this time of day?
Hello? What?
Not talking? I guess not.
I get a lot of phone calls from people who don't say anything when I answer.
Ovevec Ramswey's new fund, is that an anti-ESG fund?
Not an unexpected outcome.
So... Today, a lot of newspapers are cancelling, well, I don't know how many, but a lot of newspapers are not running Dilbert this week because of the topic.
But some of them will cancel.
So, if you're wondering, and by the way, I don't have any way to monetize ESG, I suppose, if more people read Dilbert, I suppose, indirectly.
But I'm just losing money.
By advocating on this topic at your request, it just costs me money.
You know that, right? And I say that because if I were making money from it, you shouldn't trust me.
Or anybody else.
If somebody's making money from something, don't trust anything, they say.
That's just a general rule.
Yeah. Now, this is one where...
Sort of the Spider-Man problem, I told you.
Given that Dilber is uniquely situated to make a statement about ESG, I felt like I had to.
But it wasn't good for me.
Yeah. And now I'd like to make this Ray Epps thing a thing.
And again, it's not so much about REAPs, it's a larger question that Thomas Massey asked, you know, can you tell us what was your involvement?
If they can't tell us, you have to let all of the January 6th people go.
And by the way, that's the way that Trump could play it.
How about this? Trump could say, if we don't have transparency about the FBI's involvement, I'm going to pardon everybody.
How about that? Because if you say, if we don't have transparency from the FBI, then even the left has a real trouble complaining.
If you say, I'm just going to pardon them because I think justice was not done, then it looks like you're pardoning criminals to the left.
But if you say, this doesn't have anything to do with their crimes or alleged crimes.
The pardon has nothing to do with their alleged crimes.
It has to do with the fact that if the government won't be transparent, then we can't assume that justice was done.
And if you have a situation where justice can't be done, I'm going to deal with it.
I'm going to deal with it.
So I wouldn't be involved if justice could handle it but justice can't be done because the FBI won't be transparent.
And if our justice system can't handle it, I'm not going to let them put people in jail.
The justice system has a hole.
That hole is it doesn't know what's happening with the FBI because the FBI is not talking.
As long as that hole's there, nobody goes to jail for those crimes, even if they did bad things.
even if they did bad things.
Yes, I believe Ted Cruz asked the same question and also got stonewalled by the FBI.
That's correct.
The last item in your laundry list lost me.
What was that? Alright.
I got a copy of Jared Kushner's new book.
I'm going to look through that and give you some opinion on that.
You know, that's actually the book I'm most interested in.
A lot of these alleged behind-the-scenes White House books, you always wonder, how much access do they really have?
Right? But...
Jared Kushner, he actually knows exactly what was happening everywhere.
He's probably the only one.
He probably knows more than the president knows about the machinery of what was happening at the time, because the president kind of floats above it.
But he probably knows more than anybody knows about that period of time, so I have the most interest in seeing what he said.
Watch his interview with Dave Rubin.
Oh, I will. Have you seen Navarro's comments on Kushner?
I don't remember seeing him.
What about Stephen Miller?
Well, he definitely...
Stephen Miller was in the mix, but I don't know.
But I think he was in fewer topics.
Yeah. Yeah. The Gorilla Channel.
Oh, yeah, I didn't talk about the immigrant buses going to Martha's Vineyard.
Let me say that from a persuasion standpoint, the Republican governors shipping those people to the high-end places, it's really good.
It's really good persuasion.
But it's funny because there are so few of them.
You know, the total number of people who are bust is just like nothing.
And they're still getting upset about it.
They're getting upset about having to share 1% of the pain.
In fact, that's the way I would express it if I were a Republican.
I'd say they're mad because we made them share 1% of the pain.
It's probably less than 1%.
But if you're not willing to share 1% of the pain, then you know what's really happening here.
We can be honest.
Once we've squeezed them to scream, then you can finally get some transparency about what's going on.
Everybody's in favor of somebody else paying the price.
Everybody's happy with the bill if somebody else pays it.
But as soon as they have to pay 1% of the bill, they're screaming like, no, don't give me 1% of the bill.
Yeah, and the Martha's Vineyard thing was just sort of perfect persuasion.
Now, Let me ask you this.
Do you think somebody's advising these governors?
Or did the idea just sort of bubble up and maybe more than one person had the idea?
Or do you think that there's a master persuader somewhere in the mix advising these southern governors?
What do you think? Could it be Trump?
Eh, maybe. Here's what I think.
This play is smarter than Governor.
That's what I think. As smart as DeSantis is, as smart as Abbott is, taking nothing away from their intelligence.
This is a grade point higher.
It looks like something they got convinced to do and would be happy they did it because it's working.
I feel like...
I feel like there's a very clever advisor somewhere in the mix.
A very clever advisor.
Guess we'll never know who.
No, I'm not cleverly telling you it's me.
I had nothing to do with it.
It wasn't my idea at all.
I had zero...
I had nothing to do with it.
I appreciate it, though.
I appreciate that it was a good play, but it wasn't mine.
Cernovich as special counsel?
Well, I think, as much as I love Cernovich, I think you need a working lawyer who does that stuff.
You don't need somebody who just has that background, the education.
You need somebody who does that stuff.
What about Pompeo?
All right. I believe we're done here.
Have we covered everything that's worth covering with the best live stream that ever there was?
Yeah, the train strike looks like they worked that out.
Yeah. Well, let me give you...
Nah, better not.
Changed my mind. Alright, yeah, so this was 10 out of 10.
Wasn't this the best live stream you've ever seen?
Probably the most fun you've ever had in your whole life.
Yeah, totally.
Oh, yeah, some of the migrants were bused to VP Harris's home. .
I haven't watched Zelensky's movie Servant of the People.
Apparently he made a movie that matched his reality.
Yes, James was the best viewer today.
Over on YouTube, James is claiming that he was the best viewer today.
I think you were.
I've been watching all of you and your viewing abilities were excellent.
Way above average.
A lot of people were viewing it You know, sort of sloppily.
But you, you James, you're like the viewer that viewers want to be.
You're the viewer that women want to be with and men want to be.
