Episode 1890 Scott Adams: Putin Attacks His Crimea Bridge To Prove He's Tough. Black Lives Matter
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Alleged fake FBI evidence against Keith Raniere?
Key points of Kanye's interview
Putin's bridge to Crimea blown up
PayPal can take $2,500 for spreading misinformation
Two words: Made In America
Biden's Ukraine war has huge potential for US
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the finest program in all the land.
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Go. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. That's good.
I'm seeing more AI art of me over the Locals platform.
They're showing me art that the artificial intelligence made, usually of me.
And I'm pretty scary looking, according to artificial intelligence.
Very scary looking.
Would you like to talk about the news?
We've got some interesting news.
We will talk about Kanye, but we'll wait for some more people to stream into the livestream.
Are you following the story?
It's a small story, but maybe it should be a big one.
And the small story is about Nexium and Keith Reneri.
Now, you all remember the story.
So the alleged story was that Keith Ranieri was a cult leader.
This is the story.
I'm not saying this is my interpretation.
He was a cult leader.
And part of that cult, it was a subcult.
And in his subcult, it was a sex cult.
And he had his sex slaves branded.
This is what they said.
And, I don't know, controlled them in various ways.
But then he was convicted of, among other things, I think, sex with an underage girl.
The biggest part of the evidence of that, or a key part of the evidence, was a photograph of the underage girl on his computer.
Now, since the photograph had a date, and it was a picture of the girl, and clearly the photo indicated in context that there was an underage thing going on.
Now, I don't know the truth of the story.
So don't ask me to tell you what really happened.
I do not know if Keith Ranieri did anything wrong, or if he did what it was.
Don't know. I will tell you that Alan Dershowitz is working on the Keith Ranieri defense, so that should be a little flag that goes up and you go, what?
What? Why would he be working on that?
Well, let me tell you.
It turns out that they've produced several ex-FBI employees and forensic experts who all seem to say the same thing.
The photograph which was key to the prosecution was faked by the FBI. That's what it looks like.
So the forensic people say, uh, it's really obvious.
This is totally faked.
It was a key piece of the prosecution.
A key piece. Because it basically put a date on things.
I think that was the main thing.
And according to Dershowitz...
Now, Dershowitz is not saying...
We've proven it's faked.
He's still saying alleged, which, you know, you should say.
At this point, you should say alleged.
But if you see the little snippets of the actual experts talking about it, they're not saying probably.
The experts are not saying, oh, this could be faked or maybe not.
They're saying, oh, this is definitely faked.
Oh, absolutely.
This is just fake.
Now think about that.
Do you remember a time when you would have said to yourself, that's just what the guilty people say.
That's just what any defense would say.
Right? You don't think that now, do you?
Do you believe that the FBI could have been part of a conspiracy to convict him?
What do you believe? Just without any evidence.
You don't have any evidence.
You just have some claims, right?
All you have are claims.
You don't have any evidence.
You have only claims. Based on the claims themselves, do you think that the FBI was part of a plot to put him in prison?
I think more likely yes than no.
I think that the presumption of guilt is on the FBI. Now, I've said this a number of times.
If the FBI were an individual citizen, let's say one person at the FBI is being accused.
If it's one person, I'd say presumption of innocence.
Because whenever you have one person, like a citizen, presumption of innocence, that's just got to be the way.
No, there's no wiggle room there whatsoever.
But if you're talking about the whole organization, yeah, they're guilty.
You better prove you're not guilty when the evidence suggests you are.
Like, that's their problem.
They need to fix that, not me.
That's not my problem.
The presumption of guilt is on them.
Is that my fault?
Should I take any responsibility For the fact that I presume guilt on the FBI in this specific case.
I say no. I say I'm completely free of any bad feelings about that.
That is the brand that they've created.
It's the brand that they've presented to the public.
And I'm just responding to their brand.
If that's who they tell us they are, why am I going to mind-read and come up with some different hypothesis?
I'm going to take the brand that they present and just say, if that's who you are, that's who you are.
So keep an eye on that.
I have no idea what Keith Ranieri did or did not do.
I will tell you that the branding part of it was bullshit.
That part I can say for sure.
That was willing adults doing willing adult stuff, period.
And everything about that was just taken out of context.
That part, I can say, was with some confidence.
I saw a survey that said that when asked the question of whether the black Americans should be given any extra help to succeed, Because other ethnic groups did not get any extra help in their histories.
But, of course, you can't compare, right?
There's nothing like the legacy of slavery doesn't really compare to Irish people being discriminated against, right?
So these are not the same thing.
But the question was asked, the question was asked of black people and non-black people Do you think that black Americans should get a little extra boost to compensate for past injustices?
And surprisingly, guess what black people said about themselves versus what white liberals said about black people?
Black people said about themselves, we don't need that much help, you know, we're fine.
So black people were far more likely to say we don't need any extra help than white liberals were.
White liberals said black people need extra help to succeed.
Black people themselves, not so much.
No, we got what we need.
That is, there's no other thing, how do you, how could you possibly label this except racist?
Is this not the most racist thing you've ever seen?
I don't know how else to interpret it, do you?
If it's white liberals who think black people can't succeed without help, but the black people themselves...
Again, these are averages, right?
We're not talking every person in every group.
But on average, there's a big difference.
A pretty big difference.
The black people think that they can succeed, and white liberals think maybe not.
Now, I've always suspected that the real racists were the liberals who had this point of view, because it's hard to hold the point of view that some group needs extra help unless you're also making some assumptions about the people in the group.
Now, they would say it's not about the people in the group, it's about the circumstances which they're in, which would be a perfectly good argument.
It's just interesting how the biases of the two different groups are not lining up the way you would imagine they would.
It's kind of opposite of how you imagine.
And to the credit of black Americans, I do appreciate the fact that black Americans are not putting off responsibility on other people.
That's a good sign.
That's what you want in your America.
You want Americans who say, wait a minute, stop telling me you need to help me.
How about I figure this out on my own?
I don't need your help.
That's what I want.
Give me some more of those Americans, please.
Well, speaking of Ye, the artist who used to be called Kanye, the part two of his interview with Tucker was on, and My goodness, does this man know how to get attention in the best possible way?
I've said before, but there are a few people in our culture that you can just feel really confident in calling them a genius.
Elon Musk, I feel comfortable calling him a genius.
Kanye, I feel very comfortable calling him a genius.
Because his intelligence does expand beyond art.
You know, he's a much bigger cultural character.
But his importance, I don't think, can be understated.
Do you remember when...
Well, most of you don't.
You're not old enough. In the 60s, can you remember, if any of you are old enough, the peace sign was political?
No. Because of the Vietnam War, right?
So if you were doing the peace sign, or you showed the little peace sign, it was a political statement.
And if you were a conservative, you wouldn't want to, maybe you wouldn't want to use it, because that would indicate you were maybe on the left.
Right? But over time, over time, the Vietnam War fades, in our memory, and the peace symbol just turns into, well, who doesn't like peace?
And plus the symbol itself is sort of attractive to look at.
So, you know, the peace symbol becomes more of just a generic, you know, positive thing.
I feel as if that's what Ye did with Black Lives Matter as a slogan and as a visual element.
I think Kanye marked the point that Where it's no longer a political statement.
I believe he made it possible that somebody like me could wear this shirt unironically.
So I want to make it clear, I'm not wearing this ironically.
Why? Well, I'm going to just take a page from my spiritual leader.
That's my dog snoring.
Can you hear my dog snoring?
Anyway, so Ye, being my spiritual leader, has essentially made it safe for me to just say what is true and obvious, that black lives matter.
Nothing needs to be added to that.
Because now it's sort of taken out of politics.
Once you take it out of politics, I can fully embrace it.
Fully embrace it.
Yeah, Black Lives Matter.
Let's make sure we live that.
But, before Ye wore his White Lives Matter shirt, I would have said, this is purely political, and I don't want to wear a shirt that makes a political statement that I just generally don't wear clothes that make political statements.
It wouldn't matter what direction it was, I don't wear political clothes.
But now he's taking it out of the political.
Now it's art. Who else could have done that?
Think about it. Alright, I gotta go wake up my dog because I can't even hear myself talking.
Hold on. Yeah,
she's old. All right, I'm back.
I'll put on my microphones.
Bear with me for a second. I couldn't even hear myself thinking.
as loud as it was where you are.
It was like a jet engine in the room.
All right.
So let's talk about Kanye some more.
I don't know if you caught this, but in one of the clips, he said the following sentence, and there was no follow-up to this, it was just dropped in.
Did you catch this?
Kanye said at one point, and it was sort of not really even as connected to the question as you thought maybe it should have been, but Kanye said, if Trump was the first black president...
That he, Kanye, would be the first Hispanic president.
Did you hear that?
He said he'd be the first Hispanic president.
And then he said, why?
Do you know why? Because he says they, on average, they share his views about God and country and hard work, I guess.
So basically he was saying that, you know, so the joke's on the Democrats.
That the people coming into the country that they want to bring in, they're all Republicans.
They're just Republicans in waiting.
And I was the first one to warn you, I think.
Tell me if I was.
Am I the first one to warn you because I'm marinated in immigrant culture where I live?
And I started to notice this a while ago.
Whenever I'd be in a private conversation, they'd be pro-Trump.
And I'd think to myself, well, that's probably just a one-off.
I can't believe that's a common view.
And then I think four out of five people born in other countries, when I would talk to them privately, because they won't say it out loud.
They literally whisper.
Literally whisper. You know, I do like kind of Trump.
LAUGHTER So, Kanye, of course, has noticed as well.
And I think that was a funny comment.
All right. The other thing that Kanye was talking about, or yay, is that he couldn't say that he liked Trump for years because he was bullied in Hollywood and he also didn't want to make things worse for his children.
And he makes a great point.
Even as someone who is prominent and successful as he is, and he's an artist, so in theory he could say more than other people could say, even he did not have free speech because he had to worry about the effect of his children.
Just for saying sort of normal political things.
Not even crazy stuff.
Just normal political stuff.
And he was afraid for his children.
Think about that.
But apparently now, for whatever reason, he's more open about it.
But I can confirm that as an artist, that when I first got married, my first marriage, I had stepkids in my first marriage, and the first thing that happened was I couldn't do my job as soon as I got married.
I think I can tell you this.
Yeah, I don't think there's any reason I can't tell you this.
Correct me if I've ever told you this before.
So when I got married, my first wife had a prior marriage and had two kids and was finishing up that marriage.
Part of their legal agreement, which sort of dragged on for a while, was that the judge agreed with her ex-husband That her new husband could not write about his family life if it involved mentioning the children.
So just hold this in your head, that two people who are not me, so I'm not involved in this, there's a judge, and there's an ex-husband to my wife, A guy I basically hardly know, right, at the time. And those two could agree what I could write about.
Not me, I didn't sign anything.
Think about that. I mean, just hold that in your head, how messed up that is.
That I was legally barred from doing my job, because you know what my job is?
When I'm writing or doing the comic, it's mostly, it's autobiographical.
When I write, I write about the things that happened to me.
That's what I do for a living.
I actually got married and it closed down my ability to write for several years.
And I did not write about the things that really would have been good to write about.
Like the things that are salient and everybody would recognize, you know, family types of interactions and stuff.
Couldn't do any of it. It just destroyed my career for years.
And I also couldn't be provocative in general because of the effect it might have on children.
True story. And also when my parents were alive, I also kept myself under the, you know, the trouble level that you wouldn't want your parents to ever find out about.
But now they're both gone.
And the children are old enough that, you know, nothing I do would bother them at this point.
So, I'm basically free.
If I don't mind getting cancelled economically, which is, of course, happening, I'm free.
Or close to free.
I'm freer than you are.
I can say more than you can say.
So, here's an interesting story.
So, you know, over in Ukraine, there's this area called Crimea that in 2014, What year was it that Russia captured it back from Ukraine?
2014? 2014.
So the thing you need to know is that Crimea has gone back and forth between Ukraine and Russia ownership.
But at the moment, Putin owns it.
Now, did you think that Putin was a badass before?
But remember John Brennan, who used to head up the CIA, so you know he's totally credible.
He wouldn't lie to you. John Brennan told us that it was probably Putin who blew up that pipeline between Russia and Germany.
And even though it was Putin's own asset, in a sense, something that he could use for making money, that he did it to show that his reach could extend anywhere.
And that he was a badass and he would blow up anything.
Not only would he blow up anything, but he would blow up his own pipeline.
He was such a badass.
And I thought to myself, well, that can't be true.
I thought to myself, John Brennan, you're so wrong.
There's no realistic way that he's blowing up his own asset.
And then I saw that the bridge between Crimea and Russia got taken out.
And I thought, my God, it's true.
John Brennan was right.
Putin is such a badass, he's now attacking all of his own assets.
He might start bombing his own military to scare us pretty soon.
I don't know, but I worry that Putin will use a nuclear weapon on Moscow to really show us he's serious.
Have you ever seen any of those movies where the bad guy has captured the good guy and the writer wants to show you that the bad guy is really bad?
The bad guy is not just ordinary bad.
The bad guy is really bad. So the bad guy murders his own employee right in front of you.
Well, that's bad.
Yeah. That's what Putin's doing.
Same play. So Putin first takes out his own pipeline asset.
I don't know the ownership.
It doesn't matter. But it was his asset.
Takes out that asset. Now, obviously, I mean, I don't need John Brennan to tell me this because I can do some of the analysis myself, right?
I don't need John Brennan for everything.
So it's obvious that Putin is...
Because really, John Brennan actually predicted it, didn't he?
Brennan actually said this might not be the end of it.
He might keep attacking stuff like this.
So it looks like Putin has probably attacked his own most important asset to Crimea, which some people would say would cause him to lose Crimea because they can't resupply it.
But I think the bigger point is that he's showing us what a badass he is.
So Putin is now attacking his own assets.
And I do worry about him using a tactical nuclear weapon on Moscow, because wouldn't that scare you?
I mean, I'd be like, oh, this guy, he's nuking his own city.
We need to give him anything he wants.
Anything he wants. So, I don't know.
He might have to take out a few other Russian cities before Ukraine is willing to negotiate.
But I think if he takes out...
You know, it's really just a matter of will at this point.
It's a question of how many Russian cities would Putin be willing to nuke before Ukraine surrendered, and of fear.
I think between four and five.
So maybe Moscow, St.
Petersburg, and three other Russian cities that I can't think of because I don't know anything about Russian cities...
But I think four to five Russian cities after Putin nukes them, if I were Zelensky, I would just surrender at that point.
I'd be like, you're crazy.
Surrender. So Russia is closer to winning this war than you think.
Hat tip to Joe Moore, who first noticed this Putin might attack his own bridge idea, which is pretty clever.
I told you yesterday that apparently Ukraine has a lot of lithium, unexploited so far, like a lot of lithium, like we really need that lithium.
Afghanistan had a lot of lithium.
Huh. Do you remember when we always used to get into wars, wherever there was oil?
It'd be like, oh, there's oil there, we're going to get into war.
And now it's lithium.
Apparently lithium's the new oil.
Now, there's nobody official or smart, well, I wouldn't say smart, but there's nobody official who's saying that lithium has anything to do with why we're in Ukraine.
It's just sort of a lucky coincidence, isn't it?
Remember I told you that follow the money works even when it doesn't make any sense?
Even when it shouldn't.
It just always works.
Huh. Isn't that weird?
Isn't that weird? That there are trillions of dollars worth of lithium that we need to advance society, and it's in Ukraine, and we're putting absolutely everything we can into Ukraine to make sure we still have access to Ukraine.
Huh. What a weird coincidence that it's exactly in our financial interest, too.
What about that?
Huh.
Total coincidence.
The other thing that Kanye was saying is that his kids are being indoctrinated in schools.
They're learning that Kwanzaa is a thing, but Christmas isn't.
I don't know how true that is, but I don't know.
So, yeah, I'm hearing Kanye say that the kids are being brainwashed in school.
He's right. I mean, he's 100% right.
But it's more powerful when he says it.
Now there's a story today that PayPal is updating its user agreement, and it would allow them to take up to $2,500 out of your account if you do various bad things, and one of those bad things is spread disinformation.
What? That's right.
PayPal's new agreement says...
That if they accuse you of spreading disinformation, they can just take money out of your account and keep it because you spread disinformation.
I wonder if that is ESG. That's a good question.
Do you think that's ESG? Or is that, you know, somehow a cousin of ESG, the forces that are causing this?
Now, you want to hear an even better story?
Did you know that credit card processing companies that process the various credit cards from different companies, so it's not a credit card company, but a company that credit card companies use between the retailer and them.
So there's a processing company that sits between the business and the credit card.
The processing company, in some cases, will give you a contract that will have lots of fine print, And some of the fine print says, we can take as much money as we want out of your checking account and not give you a reason.
We simply have to say that you did something bad and accuse you.
And then we have the right to take as much money as we want out of your account forever.
I once owned a business that signed that contract.
Because a credit card processing company, who reads the fine print?
Nobody. Like, probably not one person has ever read that fine print.
And what do you think happened?
Sooner or later, they claimed that something we did caused a vulnerability in I don't know, the user data or something.
And that the vulnerability in our system, in the restaurant as it was, the vulnerability in our system caused a larger vulnerability that caused a six-figure loss, and they started to drain six figures, that's over $100,000, I think it was a few hundred thousand dollars, out of my checking account, meaning the business checking account, without notice.
So we immediately contact the lawyer and say, uh, uh, what's going on here?
Because, you know, when we contacted the company or the bank or however we found out what was happening, because our checking account went to zero.
This is an active business, an active business, and our checking account went to zero.
And every time a deposit went in, it immediately came out and went to this company.
So they got, I don't know, A few tens of thousands, I think, before we figured out what was going on and shut the account.
Then they sued us for six figures, I forget what it was.
And they said, basically, there's nothing you can do because you signed the contract.
It's black and white.
You actually signed the contract, which we did.
This is true. They said, you can take money out of our account just because you claim something happened with no evidence shown.
You just have to claim it.
So what do you think happened?
Well, I can't tell you exactly what happened because I had to sign an agreement saying that I wouldn't talk about it.
It's part of the settlement. So I can't tell you what companies are involved.
I can't tell you how it ended.
I can tell you that I didn't pay any more money except to my lawyer.
And the lawyers did a good job.
I can tell you that.
But I'll also tell you The sooner or later I'm going to crash that fucking company.
I'm going to destroy them.
It might wait a few years.
It might wait a few years.
And I'll have to find some way to do it without naming them in this situation since I signed an agreement.
But I'm going to find another way to do it.
I'm going to find a back door.
I'm going to fucking own them.
However long it takes.
But I can't do it yet.
But I'm very patient.
I'm very patient.
And I'm going to fucking take their nuts off.
Eventually. It's a very big company.
It's one you've heard of. But when I'm done with them, maybe you won't hear about them.
All right. Chris Silliza, who writes for CNN... Was most famous, in my opinion, for doing anti-Trump commentary during the Trump administration.
Now, I don't know if this is a sign of the new CNN direction or not, but his opinion piece today...
He's talking about how Biden's popularity is, you know, genuinely bad.
Basically, it's worse than everybody's except Trump's at some point.
And with this bad approval, you'd expect something like losing 37 seats or more in the midterms.
So, I don't know.
Do you think it's going to go exactly the way it looks like it's going to go?
That Biden's popularity will cause a massive shift in the House?
Everything says it's going to go this way.
But are you concerned at all that something who knows what might change this obvious direction?
It could be because the elections are so fortified.
They might be fortified.
I don't know. I just don't believe in the obvious happening anymore.
Just in general, if every time it was obvious something's going to happen, but it's months away, if you bet against it, how often would you be right?
What if you just bet against the obvious every time?
You'd be right a lot.
You'd be right a lot.
Do you know that my most shocking predictions were all the ones where I just bet against the obvious?
You know, I bet that Trump would win when everybody bet he was a clown.
So I bet that Ukraine would kick Russia's ass when it was obvious that wasn't going to happen.
Obvious, right? What could be more obvious than the Russian RB would win against Ukraine?
All the experts said so.
So I bet against the obvious.
Who was right? So far, I'm the only one right.
In the whole fucking world, I'm the only one who got that right.
By the way, can you do a fact check?
Can you find anybody, anybody, let's say anybody who's a public figure or an expert, who said that Ukraine actually would come out well compared to the Russian military in this particular thing?
Did anybody else say that?
Malcolm Nance. Oh, okay.
Well, just Malcolm Nance and me, I guess.
All right, but now imagine if you had put no thinking into these predictions, and all you did was predict that whatever we think is true will be the opposite.
If you had predicted that the vaccinations would not work, that would be opposite of the experts.
That's what I predicted.
I predicted the vaccinations would not be vaccinations.
That's pretty radical, right?
Just pick the opposite of what you think is going to happen, and you're probably going to hit it at least half of the time just by betting the opposite of what is obvious.
Because we get pretty sold on our own ability to know what's true and what's obvious.
All right, was there anything else happening today?
How many of you saw the Joe Biden speech?
I think he was in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, an awesome state.
And he says, I've got two words for you.
Made in America.
Now, how many people would not have corrected that the moment they said, made in America?
Wouldn't almost anybody with a functioning brain have said, haha, I guess that's three words, but you know what I mean.
Made in America. Wouldn't everybody...
Catch that? It's hard to even imagine anybody who wouldn't have noticed the made-in-America's three words.
Now, is that an indication of mental instability?
I don't know. All right.
I would like to do a little exercise now that I sometimes do, which is arguing the opposite of the case I would normally argue.
You ready for this? So let me give you the...
I don't know if this is a counterintuitive or...
I'm not sure how many people would agree with this.
All right, I'm going to give you a following argument that Biden is a genius.
Because wouldn't you agree that the standard belief is that even if you support him...
Even if you support him, you're thinking, he's not all there, but maybe his advisors are helping, and I'll ride it out.
So I'm going to argue that Biden is on the verge of one of the biggest accomplishments in American history.
It looks like it.
If it's true that our future requires lithium...
I don't know if that's true, but there's a good assumption that it might.
If it's true, and if it's true that one of the reasons that we're so gung-ho about supporting Ukraine, not the only reason, but one of the big reasons, if one of the big reasons is we need a supply of lithium and the other places don't have enough or they're unfriendly countries,
if that's why Biden has been so aggressive in protecting them, And Biden knew at some point that he could take out the Russian entire energy infrastructure and replace it with American energy infrastructure,
which is happening. And if he knew he could degrade their military for so long that they would not be an international threat, This is one of the greatest...
He's on the verge of one of the greatest foreign policy successes in American history.
And I'm actually completely serious.
The thing we don't know is how much is intentional.
Right? Am I right?
If Trump had done everything that Biden has done about Ukraine, what would I say about it?
Right? Let's do the shoe and the other foot test.
This is the Dershowitz test.
Shoe and the other foot.
If Trump had supported Ukraine, and amazingly, against everybody's impression, amazingly, Ukraine came out winning, would I call Trump a genius?
Yes. I know.
I know. It hurts for me to say this.
But correct me, you're not arguing, right?
If Trump had done everything that Biden has done up to this point, I would call Trump a genius.
Because he would have known that it could work out.
And I didn't know it.
Right? So it's possible that one of the outcomes here...
Would be Putin either completely powerless in terms of influencing things we care about, maybe permanently degraded and permanently out of the oil business?
Here's a frame for you to understand this whole point.
Whoever has the best energy business wins.
That's it. The energy business and your military are pretty connected.
The energy business and your economy are pretty connected.
Your economy and your military are pretty connected.
Your energy business predicts everything.
Energy predicts everything.
So in one action, the United States, by backing Ukraine, has not only, maybe, And again, these are all maybes.
Has maybe secured one of the biggest supplies of lithium that we could ever secure, because we have a friendly trading partner now, but also replaced Russia as the energy producer for Europe.
How big is that?
That's about as big as it gets.
And also removed the Russian blackmail threat.
I hate to tell you, but the Biden administration, whoever's making all the decisions, may be on the verge of something that's as big as the Louisiana Purchase.
Did you buy that?
In American history, if this works out the way it's going, and that's a big if.
That's a really big if.
Right? Very big if. I'm not saying it will.
But if it goes the way it's going, and that's how it ends up, this will be one of the greatest American foreign policy moves of all time.
It'll be up there with, like, the Marshall Plan.
It's going to be up there. Now, those of you who are having, who are starting to, and I know it's going to come, If I'm triggering you into cognitive dissonance, the way you'll know is you'll start to insult me personally.
And I'm watching for it, right?
Watch for the personal insults.
Those are the people who just can't deal with the fact that this might be true.
Now, it's also possible that Biden will start a nuclear war.
It's also possible that if Trump had been president, there would be no war at all.
But if there had been no war at all, you'd still have a powerful Russia and growing.
You'd still have a Europe that's under Russia's control, because they wouldn't have turned off the pipeline just because Trump wanted it.
And we wouldn't have a supply of lithium.
And we've lost, what, zero military that are American.
So if Biden pulls this off, he will spend whatever is the price tag.
Is it going to be, I don't know, $20 billion?
What's it going to cost when we're all done?
I'm not really paying it.
Is $20 billion in the range?
Something like that? Or is it way bigger?
Well, a trillion is what Afghanistan was.
You think it'll be over $100 billion?
All right, so let's say it's over $100 billion.
The energy that we're going to sell to Europe that replaced Russia plus the value of the lithium is trillions.
It's trillions. Low trillions.
We may be spending 200 billion to get back trillions.
It's an insanely good investment, unless there's nuclear war, right?
If there's nuclear war, everything goes to hell.
So you don't know what Putin's going to do.
Could go anyway. But at the moment, the moment.
Now, I saw a clip of Trump, back when he was in office, saying that it's crazy to not be friends with Russia.
And that, you know, basically we should figure out a way to live with them.
Imagine Trump coming into office after Russia's been beaten down by this war.
Trump would be the number one best choice for somebody to say, all right, Russia, you're in bad shape.
But we can work with you if you want.
It's just not under the old rules.
We would like to help you be a stable country because you have nukes.
But we don't want you to be trouble to us.
I think Trump could make that work.
I think Trump could bring Russia back into some productive arrangement with the rest of the world, I think.
Let me be clear about this.
I'm not celebrating that we made a profit at the expense of 100,000 dead people in Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian.
I'm not saying that I would have chosen it.
But the Ukrainians were probably going to fight anyway.
The war probably was going to happen one way or the other.
So the Ukrainians are doing what the Ukrainians want to do.
I don't know if I call...
that's not the same kind of tragedy as something that just happens to you.
They're choosing a risky fight for a big game and, you know, they're pretty brave and pretty amazing.
What happened if we didn't bankroll it?
Well, something would have happened and the Ukrainians wouldn't have liked it, apparently.
All right. I'm very curious about your reaction.
If you accept the framing that I gave you as an exercise, if you just take it as an exercise, did I accomplish the shoe on the other foot?
Give me that. So your first feedback is, did my shoe on the other foot, did it enlighten you in some way where you said, holy shit.
Yeah. All right.
So would you say that that is a useful exercise?
Is that useful? I feel like it is.
I feel like that's useful.
Here's a question. I'll always go with this.
Do you know anything about Russia?
I'm not asking Rudminer.
I just wonder, do I know any Russian folks?
Well, I have talked to some Russians recently, but I wouldn't say I have any Russian expertise.
I would also say that the people who are experts are the least credible people in our world right now.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
It's not my choice.
It's just where we are.
And what we learned is that experts will lie to you.
So it's not a question that I know more than the experts.
Of course I don't.
Of course I don't.
But I can tell when people are lying...
So I'm good at detecting liars.
I'm good at detecting hoaxes.
I'm good at detecting when somebody's missed something obvious.
Because sometimes we have cognitive blindness to stuff, and if you're not in that same biosphere, you can just see stuff that the people who are in the bubble can't see.
So when I make a prediction that's opposite of the experts, I'm never saying I know more than the experts.
I'm saying I know something different.
And what I might know different is I know how to spot a liar.
So I don't need to know what you know.
I can just tell you're lying.
So that's what I do. So what I do is I try to stick to what I know, not what the experts know.
Is that fair? I think that's a good way to put it.
I'm good at detecting liars and I'm single.
You bastard.
That was funny.
Let's talk about Herschel Walker.
So I'm sort of generally sort of half following the story.
I guess he's accused of paying for an abortion for his girlfriend at the same time he's anti-abortion.
I don't have any problem with that at all.
I don't even know why it's a story.
Now, I get that you have a problem with it, but why do I have a problem with it?
I can't even figure out why that's even an issue.
Number one, that's their business.
That's their business. Number two, it was legal.
It was legal. It was legal and it was private, and it was their business.
Number three, paying for it Is sort of an honorable thing to do if it's going to happen anyway.
I get that he could have tried to use economic force to force a woman to do something she didn't want to do.
I get that he could have done that.
But that would have been less than honorable in my opinion.
Now, what is honorable, of course, is subject to personal opinion.
So if you have a different opinion about that, I actually wouldn't feel that I needed to attack it at all.
So if you said to yourself, you know, it's murder, abortion's murder, if you give it any support at all, then you're aiding murder.
If that's your view, I respect that.
I respect that.
But it doesn't bother me that somebody did something that's legal and supported somebody who was in a tough place and was not going to change their mind.
If he tried to talk her out of it, I don't know if that happened, but if he tried to talk her out of it and failed and then paid for it, I don't have a problem with Herschel Walker at all.
I mean, you could ask why he didn't wear a condom, but that's not the level that I'm going to get into.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, did Herschel Walker deny that he paid for it?
Is he saying it didn't happen?
Give me a fact check on that.
I thought I saw something where he was denying something.
He denied everything. Did he deny the pregnancy?
He has no memory of it.
Oh, he denies the money was for the abortion.
Well, so there might be more to this story.
Have I ever taught you the ratio of celebrity stories that are true?
Of all celebrity stories, what percentage of them do you think are accurate?
So this would be a celebrity story.
Maybe 20%.
20%.
About 20%.
That's just based on my own experience.
Now, the things they tend to get right are names and dates and anything that's on video.
There's some things they get right.
Well, actually, even the video stuff would be out of context.
So just based on reporting about me, literally the last report about me called me a right-wing cartoonist.
That's the last thing that the media said about me.
Here's who the media called the right-wing cartoonist.
Totally non-ironically wearing this shirt.
Because, as Kanye taught us, what is the only correct answer when somebody says, why are you wearing this shirt?
The only correct answer is, because it's obvious.
Because it's true. Yeah, it's obvious.
So that should give you an idea what the media's accuracy rate is.
Because it's obvious.
It's to cover up my abs, yes.
I don't want to intimidate anybody.
Alright, was there any other story that I forgot to talk about?
Or you want attention.
I always love it when somebody accuses me of seeking attention.
Do you know what I do for a living?
I seek attention for a living.
That's my whole business model.
I don't get paid a cent unless I get your attention.
That's 100% of what I do all day long, is I try to get your attention.
The only way I can get and hold your attention is if it's entertaining or useful.
Am I right? If it's not entertaining and it's not useful, I can't hold your attention.
So do you have a problem with that?
If I try to be useful and or entertaining, I try to be both.
But does that sit poorly with you?
Of course I'm trying to get your attention.
Of course. But I'm pretty transparent about it, aren't I? Yeah.
Have I also not admitted to you that I never do things for one reason?
I've told you that, right?
If anybody ever tells you they did something for one reason, you should automatically be skeptical.
I never do anything for one reason.
Is there one reason I'm wearing this shirt?
No. There are multiple reasons.
And one of them is, absolutely, I do for a living, I get attention.
So that's absolutely one of the reasons, of course.
Of course it is.
But it doesn't mean it's not true.
Like, I don't have to lie about it.
Black Lives Matter. There's nothing to add.
You're waiting for me to wear White Lives Matter out in public.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
That's not exactly a free speech issue, is it?
I mean, it's in the neighborhood of free speech.
But if you're intentionally provocative, that's sort of what your speech is.
So in that case, I would say your speech is not white lives matter.
If I were to wear that shirt in public, what I would be saying is, punch me.
I mean, that's what I would be communicating.
I'd like you to punch me.
And I wouldn't do that.
Now, I wouldn't have worn this shirt until Kanye turned it into art, which is also true, which makes it good art.
If it weren't true, I don't think I'd wear it.
Well, maybe I would if it were funny or something, but I didn't have to deal with that.
In other words, the newspaper comics politically don't show true reality.
Well, of course.
Of course not.
Florida Surgeon General recommending against the mRNA vaccine for men from 18 to 39.
You know, it's funny. I thought that was already the recommendation.
Is anybody going to ever tell us the truth that the reason vaccinations were required for the young is for the benefit of the old?
I mean, that was always why it was, but now that doesn't really even apply, does it?
Since it doesn't stop it from spreading, did it ever make sense that young people got the vaccination?
If Omicron is...
In the context of Omicron, young, healthy people should get vaccinations.
I don't even know if that's news, is it?
Is that news?
I mean, I'm not even...
I'm not under 39, and even I wouldn't get a vaccination now.
I'm just sort of surprised that that's even news.
You know? Yeah.
Now, here's a question that's really interesting to me.
The excess deaths that we keep seeing, do you think we'll ever know if it was caused by the long COVID or the vaccination itself or both or neither?
Do you think we'll ever know that?
I'm gonna bet on never.
I'm gonna bet on never.
Because I don't believe that our scientists are allowed to study that.
Or if they did, and they got the wrong answer, I don't believe they'd be allowed to publish it.
And if they publish it, the media would ignore it.
So I don't know if you could get there from here.
It's like there's this and there's this, but there's no path between them.
I don't know that we'll ever know the truth of that.
That's not a good situation to be in.
I believe I've done my one hour of awesome, awesome content.
Awesome. Let me just check with you.
How many think that it could turn out that history will say that the Biden administration did a good job on Ukraine?
How many think that history will judge it positively?
See, now, but check yourself.
Check your bias.
How much of your answers do you think are bias-based?
Now, I'm also making a big assumption that things end well without a nuclear holocaust.
If we get the nuclear holocaust, then, of course, you'll be judged quite harshly.
It depends on the writer.
It depends if the writer is a Democrat or Republican, probably, yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, but I hope you at least appreciated the exercise of arguing from the other side.
Is anybody bothered by that?
Does it bother anybody when I transparently argue the other side, just to see if they've got something there?
Yeah. I personally find it fun to learn that everything I knew was wrong or that there's another way to look at it.
To me, that's always exciting.
But I feel like to some people it's threatening to learn that everything they thought was wrong or could be wrong or that there's another way to look at it.
Yeah. It's a good exercise.
It's a real good exercise.
The other one that's related to that is what if everything's opposite?
You know, not just politics.
But because I'm a cartoonist, I sort of live in that world where I take everything that I see, and then the first thing I do to it is I say, well, what if it was the opposite of that?
Because that's how cartoonists think.
It's like, the normal situation is your doctor helps you stay healthy.
But the cartoonist goes to the doctor and says, what if it's the other way?
What if the doctor's trying to kill me?
Would that be funny? And it is a little funny.
So my dog moved from her place to be closer to me, and now she's snoring again.
Writers need to do the same.
Firemen cause fires.
You know, speaking of fires, I realize that the one reason why the idea of taking all the homeless and the drug people and putting them in their own location, you know, put them on a farm somewhere, is they would burn it down.
Am I wrong? If you move the homeless to any, like, you know, beautiful wilderness area or something, wouldn't they just burn it down?
Because I don't imagine that they're real careful with fire.
I mean, not intentionally.
I just think... Well, maybe intentionally, because they have mental illness as well in many cases.
Yeah. But I'd love to try it.
Here's what I believe.
I believe that a segment of society will not be able to deal with modern life and will have to be on some kind of drugs permanently and will not be able to integrate with the rest of the world because of the drugs and maybe other things as well.
We can't kill them, we can't live with them.
You can't kill them, I'm not recommending that.
You can't kill them and you can't live with them.
There is an obvious solution.
They have to live in a different place.
But not in some places cruel.
You know, not locked up in a little room.
Can we do anything that's kind and empathetic and maybe even beautiful?
And just let people who can't live in our world live in their world.
Number two. I'd like to test this hypothesis on you.
I've mentioned it before.
But people who actually do drugs...
We'll tell you that the risk of drugs is mostly in the purity, or knowing what you have.
And that if you solve that, you would have a whole bunch of functional addicts who could integrate with society, and you wouldn't even necessarily know they were addicts.
You just wouldn't even know.
They would just be below the level where it's causing them obvious physical harm.
Probably it's always harmful.
But they would be happy enough Because they need this little extra boost.
But they've learned to have the right purity so they get exactly the right boost that they want.
And they stay within this thin band of not too blown away and still functional.
So I feel like we have to do the brave thing.
And there's nobody who can say it out loud.
We have to figure out how to keep functional addicts in our midst.
And those who can't be functional, we have to separate them.
And probably the only path to that is to test it, right?
If you say it's a good idea or a bad idea, you're wrong.
If you say the idea of giving addicts pure drugs with no fentanyl, if you say that's a good idea or a bad idea, you're both wrong.
The only thing you can say is that it hasn't been tested in all the ways it could be tested.
Maybe it's been tested, like San Francisco had sort of a disastrous open-air needle thing.
I'm not sure you should be satisfying the needle people.
By the time you're putting it in your arm with a needle, I don't know enough about this world, but maybe they're already too far gone.
Maybe they're not the ones you can bring back.
But the ones who are snorting it, smoking it, or taking the pill, I believe those are people trying to be functional addicts and maybe succeeding in some cases.
So I think we have to do the brave thing and say that some people are going to be functional addicts.
How do we keep them alive? And some people can't be helped.
How do we keep them separate from us?
Those two questions are the dangerous ones that we can't answer because you don't want to be a jerk.
It doesn't show empathy and it doesn't You know, it just feels like you're being a bad person when you say that.
But I think we've got to grow up.
We've just got to grow up.
And just say, we're going to have to legalize...
Honestly, I think at this point, because of fentanyl, I would legalize everything.
Does anybody disagree?
If you take fentanyl out of the equation, I would be tempted to say some things should still be illegal, because we want to keep you off the heroin and the cocaine.
But if moving people to heroin and cocaine is safer, which is the current situation, moving people from fentanyl to heroin will keep them alive.
You know, statistically, that's more likely.
Still dangerous. But we're not, this is not your, and you've seen a number of people say this.
Geraldo said this yesterday on Fox News.
Geraldo was saying, he's obviously seen everything.
There's an understatement.
Geraldo has seen everything?
That's like the truest thing anybody's ever said.
I think Geraldo's seen everything.
Is there anything that Geraldo hasn't seen?
I mean, really. He's literally seen everything.
And even Geraldo says, this fentanyl, this is not like anything we've ever seen.
This is not like drugs.
This is a whole different animal.
And in that context, the question of legalizing heroin becomes probably yes.
If you take fentanyl away, I'd say, I don't know.
I'm leaning toward no.
I'm leaning toward no.
And I'm pretty soft on drug crimes.
And even I would lean toward no.
But as soon as you put fentanyl in the mix and it kills 100,000 a year, I say, shit, shit, everything's wrong.
Everything you know is wrong because of fentanyl.
If you don't get the politicians to say the following words, nothing could ever happen.
Here's the following words.
Because of fentanyl, everything we've ever done with drugs before is wrong.
They need to know that. Because here's the other thing they say.
If we build the wall, we can reduce fentanyl.
Nope. If you build the wall, you can reduce marijuana.
You know why? Because marijuana's big.
You can't make money shipping like a handful of marijuana.
But you could make a million dollars shipping enough fentanyl that I could reach through the fence on the border wall.
Because the border wall is a fence.
It's got, you know, you can reach your hand through it.
Am I wrong? You could take like a million dollars worth of fentanyl and say, hey, Bob, it's Juan over here.
Bob, I'm going to reach through with the fentanyl.
Why don't you take this and go sell it?
It's a million dollars.
And then he sells it.
A million dollars. So you have the Republicans who are fighting the last war.
There it is. I got it.
I got it. You know, there are some phrases that work on everybody.
Here's one. You want a phrase that will fix the Republicans?
Because the Republicans are just barking up the wrong wall.
They're literally looking at...
They put all their emphasis on the wall, and that has no impact.
It'll have no impact. So here's what I'm going to say to Republicans on the drug war.
If you're building a wall to stop fentanyl, You're fighting the last war.
You're fighting the old war.
The new war is not...
Fences don't work on the new war.
It might have worked for marijuana.
Even cocaine.
But we have to convince Republicans that they're fighting the wrong war.
The current war might require legalizing stuff they don't want to legalize.
It might. The other thing would be just to level the cartels.
Now, you know how you can tell that your government is not serious about fentanyl?
I'm going to say something now, and as soon as I say it, your jaw is going to hit the fucking floor.
We have never asked the head of the cartels to negotiate.
Just pause. Just pause and think about that.
We have never, the United States has never asked the head of the cartels to negotiate.
And again, why would you ask them to negotiate if they were selling you cocaine and marijuana?
Maybe you wouldn't. But that's last war.
This is not last war.
This war goes like this.
Hey cartels, we want to talk to you.
We'd like you to stop everything.
Like all the illegal stuff.
But if you send us one more ounce of fentanyl, we're going to kill all of you.
Do you understand that?
We're going to kill all of you.
And then do it. Just kill all of them.
And then when they rebuild, because they would, you kill all of them.
And then when they rebuild, kill all of them.
And just repeat. Just forever.
Now, if they say, oh shit, we're going to get out of the fentanyl business and we'll go back to our cat-and-mouse game with cocaine and shit, maybe.
Maybe we go back to our old game.
Maybe. Don't have to, but maybe.
But give me your reaction to that statement.
If the United States government is not directly asking for...
It's the asking for that's the important part.
Asking to negotiate with the head of the cartel, we are not serious people.
True or false? We're not serious people if we're not asking to negotiate.
If you're in a war and you don't at least ask, could we negotiate this away?
And you're not going to fight?
Pick one, government.
Negotiate or fight.
Or surrender. Negotiate, fight, or surrender.
Which of those three things are we doing?
Fuck nothing. No.
We're not fighting. All we're trying to do is capturing stuff at the border, which makes no difference.
We're capturing stuff.
How about giving that advice to Ukraine?
Hey, you've been invaded by Russia.
There are three things we don't want you to do.
Don't fight, don't negotiate, and don't surrender.
Anything else is fine.
But don't do one of those three things.
Don't fight, negotiate, or surrender in your war.
But that's what we're doing with the cartels.
We've eliminated the only three things you do in war.
