Episode 1897 Scott Adams: Ukraine Starts War With Elon Musk. And Nancy Pelosi's Coup Attempt
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Real coup attempts vs imaginary one
Textbook companies own our schools
Catturd vs Bank of America
Social media gamifies politics
Starlink for Ukraine, who should pay?
Senator Leahy, Iraq WMDs, secret files
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to another highlight of civilization, the best thing that's ever happened to all of you.
Yeah. Today is going to be an awesome day for most of you.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, things are looking up today.
Why? Why? No reason.
You don't need a reason.
But what you do need to take it up to the maximum potential is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It happens now.
Go. Ah.
Do you know what we say after the simultaneous sip?
This is new.
Pay attention. After the simultaneous sip, it is allowed to say, sippity-doo-dah.
You can say that at home.
I won't be saying that here.
Sippity-doo-dah.
That is approved.
Well, you know, Facebook decided to launch Meta, or become Meta, and it's going to be all about the virtual world.
So how's that going so far?
Apparently there are a number of virtual worlds that have been built that nobody is visiting.
So it turns out that nobody wants to put on a headset and visit a virtual world that's empty.
And I have a question.
Did Facebook figure out how to make you not get a headache?
Not a headache, but any motion sickness from wearing the goggles?
Have they solved that?
Because, was it, I don't know, maybe four years ago or something, I was testing out some VR, and it was amazing.
You could tell it was definitely the future, but you couldn't do it for more than, I don't know, 15 minutes or something, because it'd be some kind of a, some kind of a, just motion sickness.
I don't even get motion sickness, but the VR goggles made me sick too.
And it's pretty bad.
The sickness you get, it'll last for a while after you take the goggles off.
You're down for an hour, at least, after you use them.
Now, that was the old days.
But maybe they fixed that?
Because I don't know what it was that causes it.
Yeah, once Replica gets into Meta, it will be a digital brothel.
That is correct. That's correct.
So you know there's a growing trend of men who are not having sex intentionally.
You know that, right? Now they say intentionally because they can't get any sex.
But what's going to happen when men start preferring their digital accompaniments?
I don't think you see how big of a problem this is.
Most men are going to prefer the digital accompaniment.
The majority of men are going to go digital.
I think the minority of men will reproduce.
And that's going to happen within five years.
Within five years, most men will not reproduce.
That's my... That's my prediction.
As in, more than 50% will not reproduce.
And the reason will be that women won't want to reproduce with them.
They'll just say, well, I'll just stick with these top 10%, you know, tall guys with good hair and good SAT scores.
I know. I'm surprised anybody has natural babies anymore.
I think that's going to go away.
So let me ask you, do you think that Facebook is going to succeed with Meta?
Because remember, Zuckerberg doesn't make too many mistakes, especially when he's predicting what's going to be big next.
And I completely agree with him that the experience you get when you put on the VR A headset.
Looks like it's the future.
I mean, to me, it absolutely looks like that's the future.
But he said it would take years.
You know, maybe they pump billions of dollars in it before it's even up to good enough.
Maybe. I mean, Facebook has the resources.
They could just keep pumping resources in there until something happens.
I think it might be more than a year away before it kicks off.
You think it's more than 10 years off?
Isn't it entirely based on how good the technology is?
And how fast the processors are?
That's all we're waiting for, right?
I don't think there's, you know, that plus applications.
All right. So the Swedes are claiming...
I saw Peter Zane tweet on this.
The Swedes are claiming that they know the Russians bombed their own pipeline...
But they can't tell you how they know.
So they can't share with us how they know, but they totally know.
And they know because of secret, secret Swedish ways.
And they cannot reveal their secret Swedish sources and methods.
Because if we found out how the Swedes determined that there's been an underground explosion, well, then we're going to take all their Swedish tricks and use them for ourselves.
And then... Sweden will no longer be the military superpower that it has been.
They'd be giving up quite a lot with that secret.
So it makes complete sense that the Swedes can protect themselves from superpowers by not telling us how they know that the pipeline blew up thanks to Russia.
Now, I don't know what kinds of sources and methods they used, but I think I told you that John Brennan...
Immediately accused Russia, before we had facts, John Brennan said, oh yes, this certainly looks like some kind of a Russian operation.
That's the only thing that makes sense.
And then I said to myself, well, I guess we can rule out Russia, because when John Brennan says Russia did it, the only country you can rule out is Russia.
Let me...
I don't usually give out my sources and methods, but this time I'm going to make an exception.
Here's how I did this.
It was hard, but I saw who said it, and then I just assumed the truth was the opposite.
Now, if you tell me I'm wrong, I'd say, well, it would be the first time I was ever wrong using these sources and methods because they've been pretty accurate so far.
Pretty accurate. Remember, this is the same person who pushed Russia collusion as an obvious fact and the laptop, Hunter's laptop, as Russian disinformation.
He said both of those on TV just like they were facts.
And then this is the third thing he's saying on TV, just like it's a fact.
There's a reason that the news puts him on.
It's because the other people won't say this stuff.
Apparently he's willing to say anything for whatever purpose.
So, yes, big mystery.
Who blew up that pipeline?
I put out this question on Twitter.
I haven't seen an answer yet, but can anybody confirm that there's no life insurance company that offers a discount for being vaccinated?
Can we confirm that that's true?
There's no insurance company that offers a discount for being vaccinated.
Because if that's true, it also means that the insurance industry has valued the shot at zero.
Financially. Now, if you're not a financial person, maybe that requires a little more explaining.
But the insurance company essentially is in the job of putting a dollar amount on anything that's a big variable...
That would affect their income stream.
So they're all about figuring out the most objective, true, unbiased, realistic number, because that's the only way they make money.
If they get the numbers wrong, you know, their estimates of the future, they don't make money.
So this is like life and death for an insurance company is to get the numbers right.
And unless they're offering discounts for being vaccinated, They valued that as zero.
Now, not exactly zero, because it would be a transaction cost for including any new variable, right?
Like, it'd probably cost them several million dollars to even be able to track any new variable that they wanted to track.
But several million is basically zero if you're talking about a big insurance company.
So it looks like they don't think it's A factor.
Unless you tell me I'm wrong, and we find out that the insurance companies are in fact offering discounts.
Now, to be fair, there are lots of things that insurance companies could offer discounts for, but don't.
So maybe this is just another one.
Maybe they think you should get a discount, but as long as they don't offer it, they can make more money.
So there's another reason.
I mean, there could be another reason.
Could be just they make more money by pretending they don't work.
They're not going to give a discount unless they have to.
So it would require some other insurance company to offer the discount before anybody's going to go second.
You get that, right? And insurance companies are the ultimate confusopoly.
An insurance company is a confusopoly.
It's a word I coined, which is now in the economic literature.
And it means that when you're searching for life insurance, or any kind of insurance, you don't know how to compare one company to the other because they're so different and complicated.
You're like, well, this one has this advantage, but this one has this advantage, I really can't tell.
So the reason all insurance companies can sell their products is you can't compare them.
So basically, selling insurance is just, did the salesman talk to you?
And then you probably bought whatever that salesman sold you because you couldn't tell the difference.
So as long as insurance is a confusopoly, even if they believe the vaccinations were saving lives in a substantial way, they could just all agree not to talk about it.
And they wouldn't have to, like, have a meeting.
You know, the insurance executives would not have to be on a conference call and say, hey, if you don't mention this, I won't mention it.
They all know not to do it.
That's what the confusopoly is.
No meeting required.
Until somebody does it, they can all ignore it.
Right? So that would be the other reason that they're ignoring it.
Because they're a filthy, filthy industry.
Here's an update on the January 6th coup hoax.
Now, I'm calling January 6th coup a hoax because it was a gunless whatever it was.
Now, may I speak directly to the fucking stupid assholes who are going to say, but Scott, there were guns there.
Can I do a mocking impression of those people for you?
Who would like me to see a mocking...
I'm going to do a Trump impression of the people saying that there were, in fact, guns there.
Okay? All right.
I'll set it up this way.
This is me talking first.
It was a gunless coup on January 6th.
And now my critics...
Oh, but, Scott! But, Scott!
It was... There was that one gun.
What about that one gun?
What about Ashley Babbitt?
What about the one gun?
Alright, I just have to get that out of my system.
That's how you should respond every time somebody tells you, but Scott, there were guns there.
Yes, there were. There were guns all over the place.
Weren't there? I can't even take that seriously.
I would like to give you this following.
This is sort of a reminder.
So the reminder...
I guess I could have done Dale.
The reminder is on analogies.
If somebody tries to argue with you by using an analogy, here's how you should deal with it.
Well, I don't argue with analogies because those are just stories about a different situation.
But if you'd like to get back to talking about our situation, I'd be happy to do that.
Let me know when you'd like to do that.
Do not engage in an analogy.
An analogy is literally a story about something else.
It has nothing to do with you.
Now, an analogy can be used in the following narrow way, and you'll see me do it as well.
If the analogy is to explain a concept that someone knew...
Then it's good. To explain a new concept.
What it never is, is a convincing argument for anything.
It's not an argument.
The best it can do is explain your terms.
Like, oh, here's how I define this, or this is an effect that I think we should take into consideration.
That's all it can do. It doesn't tell you you're right or wrong.
If you're using an analogy to tell you you're right or wrong, you're really doing everything wrong.
That would be a complete abdication of reason and facts and common sense.
But it's the way most people think.
Most people actually ran.
I was waiting for that.
What took you so long, NPC? You know that I... I intentionally triggered the NPCs, don't you?
What are the NPCs saying right now?
Alright, I'll ask you over on the Locals platform.
See if you can guess what's happening over on YouTube.
Alright, well, you can guess.
Alright, as a service to historians, don't you wonder how historians will treat this period?
Because I don't know if there's been another period where the public did not agree on what happened.
Has that ever happened before?
Maybe we agreed, but we were wrong in the past.
Oh yeah, JFK, that's true.
I guess we do have some examples.
But even with JFK, there was an official story.
If you were to check all the history books, there would be one version of The Kennedy story, and then there would be reference to, you know, people maybe believe there were more people involved.
Right? Iraq...
Now, at this point, history agrees, right?
As of today, historians are on the same page about Iraq.
There were no weapons of mass destruction except old ones, old chemical weapons.
But is that going to happen here?
Do you think that 10 years after today, we will all be on the same page about what January 6th was?
Do you think that will happen?
Because I don't.
I don't. I think this will be two versions of history that will just live forever.
One of them will be that a coup was attempted, and the second will be that, of course, there was no coup.
There's no such thing as a gunless coup against a superpower.
So what do you do with that?
Like, I mean, literally, I'm actually curious, what will historians do with a bifurcated history where the public is quite sure there were two completely different things that happened?
All right, Jenny, you get hidden for bad behavior.
Don't do that again.
All right. So, here, as a history to historians, there were two real coup attempts.
One failed and one succeeded.
The Russia collusion hoax was a coup attempt.
Is there anybody who would argue with that, that the Russia collusion hoax was a coup attempt?
Does anybody say that's not...
Would you say that's inaccurate?
No. Because I feel like that is just a statement of fact.
And that it was unsuccessful.
In the end, it was unsuccessful.
How about the Hunter laptop disinformation 50 current and ex-Intel people?
Was that a coup attempt?
Well, here it gets into the definition.
Is it a coup attempt if you do something to change the outcome of an election...
And it's done by intelligence agents working secretly within the government.
Now, if the Hunter laptop hoax had been run by, let's say, Democrat operatives, just a bunch of political people, then I would say, oh, that's just normal business.
That's one side always lies.
Actually, both sides always lie.
So in politics, people lie.
That's just business as normal.
But what happens if the liars are your actual intelligence agencies?
The so-called deep state.
That's not really just a lie anymore, is it?
That's actually somebody with the power to change who is in power and actually executing that power.
I mean, that's a little closer to treason, I would say.
I always get lost in the definitions of treason.
So I'd say the imaginary coup was the gunless January 6th protest.
So that would be three, you know, two real coup attempts, one failed, one succeeded, and one imaginary one that will probably get written in the history books as a real one.
Probably history will record that there was really a coup attempt, which is amazing.
Let me ask you something. Who do you think controls education in the United States?
Go. Who controls education for the, you know, under 18?
Unions? Teachers unions?
I'm going to say women.
That's an interesting answer.
I'm going to give you another hypothesis.
Are you ready for this? Textbook manufacturers.
Textbook manufacturers.
Publishers. Here's why.
If you're in a school, do you have a choice of buying any textbook you want?
You do not, right?
You have to buy the textbook that's approved by your school.
So there's somebody who sells textbooks who makes a lot of money.
A lot of money.
And the schools have to use, you know, one of these companies that sells all these textbooks.
You don't think that the textbook companies already own the schools?
Of course they do.
Of course they do.
Do you know how I know that the textbook companies own the schools?
It's easy. It's 2022.
There would be no textbook publishing companies.
They would all be gone.
Because it would all be online.
Wouldn't it? Why in the world are there textbooks?
There's no reason for textbooks.
The entire industry exists because they must control the teachers.
Or they must control the schools.
If they didn't control the schools, they'd already be out of business.
There's no way they could stay in business with that business model.
Here's another way we're having a degree in economics and a business degree.
Helps you see the world a little more clearly.
Clearly, the schools are captured by the textbooks companies.
As soon as you heard it, did you say to yourself, oh shit, that's got to be true, right?
Tell me. Tell me as soon as you heard me say that, you said, oh no, that's probably true.
Yeah. And it all comes down to this one question.
Why are there still textbook publishing companies?
Why do they even exist?
You're telling me that all that information isn't already available for free on the internet in an organized form somewhere?
Or it couldn't be. Or it couldn't be.
I mean, you don't think that a state or the federal government could just say, hey, we're paying all this money for textbooks, but it's all sort of available for free.
So why don't we just organize it on a, you know, set of web pages, and the web pages are your textbook now.
And nobody will have to pay for textbooks again.
Have you ever seen kids going back and forth to school with their backpacks so heavy they can't carry them?
Do you know what's in there?
Unnecessary textbooks. That's what's in there.
Unnecessary textbooks. And your money.
And drugs, usually.
Yeah. So maybe it's the Khan Academy, maybe it's something else.
But I think that the schools are just owned by the textbook companies.
It seems obvious to me.
Although I didn't realize it until recently.
One of the things I love about social media is that a trending term could be cat turd.
So Cat Turd, one word, who is an individual, an outspoken social media user, and he's been allegedly, Bank of America has declined their banking.
I guess he's got a partner he does a podcast with.
And so Bank of America allegedly shut them down and said with glee that they don't have to tell them why.
How scary is that?
Now, first of all, I don't believe the story.
Let me say that first of all.
This is still the fog-of-war version of the story.
It doesn't feel real.
Could be. It could be.
I wouldn't rule it out.
But I'll tell you, on the surface, it feels like something's missing.
So I would say, put a pin in this one and just wait.
Wait maybe two days, see if anything new comes out.
I feel like this story wasn't complete.
I don't know. I'm certainly willing to believe that financial institutions would be moving against conservative voices.
That doesn't sound unusual at all, unfortunately.
But I feel like there's something else to be known about this.
Just a hunch.
So, here's a little story.
I wonder how many of you are aware of this.
And I guess I need a fact check on this one, too.
But are you aware that Biden just did some kind of sanction on China that made all of the, this is my understanding of it, and it might be wrong, that made all of the American employees of Chinese companies have to either quit or Where they were working.
Or lose citizenship in the United States.
Is that real?
Did Biden really tell Americans that they would lose citizenship?
Citizenship? If they work for a Chinese company?
I saw a thread on that that I tweeted.
Yeah. Again, this one doesn't feel real, does it?
Doesn't feel real.
Could be. What do you think?
Can anybody confirm that?
Because if it's real, the implication is that it would cripple the Chinese chip-making business to the point where it would collapse, because apparently these employees are key employees or something.
None of that feels real to me.
I can't believe that China would be depending on that many American Yeah, the semiconductor heads are having to leave.
But when the boss leaves, how much of a problem is that, really?
When was the last time a company had a problem because a boss left?
Maybe a key employee.
I know. So I'm going to say I would wait on this one.
Because it's not a front page story and it would be if it were real.
So I think you put a little skepticism on this story and then wait a little bit, okay?
Thomas Massey is introducing some legislation that sounds like it's pretty good.
Did you know there are basically four entities that own most of the meat processing in the United States?
Just four entities? Did you know that one of the four is a Chinese company and the other one is Brazilian?
So there are four entities that own all our meat processing.
One is a Brazilian company and one is a Chinese company.
Okay. So Thomas Massey's legislation would be...
It's bipartisan, so good for him on that.
And it would empower small farmers and local decentralized meat processors.
So there must be something that makes it impractical or illegal for small people to be meat processors.
Now, I assume that the intention was always for safety.
Maybe that's just...
That might be a generous assumption.
It does seem that food security requires us to diversify.
Right. Food security requires us to diversify.
So I would say, I hope this one just sails right through, because if we're arguing the politics on this one, everybody agree?
There's no politics on this one.
Can anybody explain to me how vaccinations ever became politically left and right?
Or masks? How did any of that become left or right?
Because you realize it could have gone the other way, right?
There was a world in which the opinions of the left and right could have been just switched, and everything would have gone on just normally.
I mean, it would be easy to imagine that the conservatives are the ones who said, you must wear a mask.
I could have imagined that.
I could imagine that. And it's easy to imagine that the Conservatives would be the ones to say, hey, medicine says this is okay, so go get your shots.
But as soon as, you know, probably there were just some opinion leaders on each side that got things going, and then it just sort of turned into this team sport.
Now, I've told you that I finally deduced the real problem here.
I'll say it again. That social media causes you to gamify politics.
Let me say some more about that.
In the old days, before social media, I would just read the news, and then I would think about it, and usually I wouldn't even talk to anybody about it.
I'd read it, and then I'd think about it, and that was it.
But when you add social media, Not only does it add all this energy, good and bad, and fake news and everything else, but the more important thing it does is it gives you points.
That's where everything goes off the rails.
When I'm on Twitter, I'm playing it like a game.
And I'm aware of it.
I'm aware of it.
I think this might be more for the larger accounts.
You know, the smaller accounts are still just following stuff.
But as a blue check account, and even trying to get to become a blue check, I play it for points.
Now, I shouldn't admit this to you, should I? Because this is not a good look, is it?
I mean, it doesn't make me look good.
But I had to be honest.
You know, when I actually, like, examined my motivations and, you know, I watched myself and I took a little bit of distance and said, alright, if I were looking at me from the outside, what would be my external opinion of me?
And my external opinion of me would be very clear.
I'm playing for points.
Now, in my case, Twitter is part of my business.
So that's my rationalization.
Isn't that convenient?
How convenient that I have a perfectly good-sounding rationalization for the thing that addicted me.
Oh, how convenient.
Anybody notice that coincidence?
That I happen to be addicted, but by coincidence, oh, it's my job, so I guess there's a good reason in my case, right?
See, that's me mocking myself as a third-party observer.
If I were a third-party observer looking at me, claiming that the reason I use Twitter is because it's for my job, I would laugh at that idiot.
I would laugh at that idiot.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, all of that dopamine you're getting every time you hit the thing and you see your retweets, all that dopamine, that's nothing.
You're doing it for a cold, hard...
Economic reasons, aren't you, Scott?
I would laugh at myself.
It is an addiction.
And I play it like a game.
Now, what is the obvious outcome of playing something like a game?
There's a second thing that happens.
You sort into teams, just automatically.
Now, I'm going to say something very sexist.
You ready for this? Twitter is for boys.
That's the most sexist thing you'll ever hear me say.
Twitter is for boys.
A sexist would say.
It's too late for that.
I'm trying Greg Duffield's defensive move.
But now, obviously, there are lots and lots of women who use Twitter.
Duh. But Twitter is 80% male.
Can somebody give me a fact check on that?
Give me a quick fact check.
On Twitter composition, 70% male?
80%? What would you say?
My followers are 95% male.
And then if you go into politics in particular, what's the ratio?
Yeah, if you go into politics in particular, it's probably extra high.
It's at least 75%.
So whoever is the 75% is going to be the primary thing, right?
So in my opinion, Twitter is gamified, because it gives you points, and mostly male.
And what happens when mostly men get into a situation where there's going to be a game?
What's the first thing we do, men?
What's the first thing you do if you're going to have a game?
You meet in the park, and it's a bunch of guys, and you're going to have a game.
You pick sides. You pick teams.
It's automatic.
Boys are trained from birth that you're going to play a game and first you're going to pick teams.
So you throw me into Twitter and I recognize it as a game and I start playing the game.
Do you think that all of my training makes me go to a team?
Yes, it does.
Yes, it does. I'm the least...
Probably team-biased person I know.
Like, I didn't join a fraternity.
I didn't join sports teams in college while I played on a tennis team.
But I'm generally not a joiner.
I don't like to join your team.
I don't want to be in your club.
But have I not joined a team?
Have I not? I'm clearly on the conservative team.
I'm just not a conservative. But even I... Even I... I'm drawn onto a team.
Do you know why I'm on this team?
Let me ask you. Do you know why I am on this team?
And I am on this team.
There's no doubt about it.
Honestly, it's because of the way I was treated.
It's the way I was treated.
That's it. That there were some conservatives, and I'm not going to name names, but especially some notable blue checkers, who treated me with respect.
That's it. And I just said, well, I'd rather be where they at least respect me, even when they disagree.
And so I found that conservatives can be really ugly.
It's not like I haven't blocked a lot of conservatives.
But there is a difference.
There is a difference. I do think that if I equip myself well, that if I make my case in a, let's say, a patriot-friendly way, and I show respect for the other side, that conservatives are more likely to respect me while disagreeing.
I could be wrong about that.
But that's my anecdotal experience, is that the right will allow it, the left will not.
The other thing you see is how easily the right accepts the people that they're not supposed to accept.
You know what I mean? If you're a black candidate for Senate or something, and you're Republican, will the Republicans accept you?
Yes! Totally!
You know, if you're...
You know what I haven't seen yet?
Is a lesbian conservative running for high office?
Has that happened yet? A lesbian conservative for high office?
Because... Because my guess is that Republicans would...
I see your funny answers, and I'm not going to respond to them.
Dr. Oz. That was the funniest one.
Dr. Oz is the first lesbian running for high office.
I'm not even sure who that's supposed to be insulting.
If that was supposed to be insulting to lesbians, then I apologize because I didn't mean that.
There's just something funny about that comment.
I'm not even sure what it is.
Alright, so stop naming people.
That's not funny anymore.
It's a little bit funny, but stop doing it.
In my opinion, A non-binary could run for office as a Republican and would be fully accepted.
What do you say? If a non-binary ran for office as a Republican, would they be fully accepted as long as they liked the Constitution and the Republican side?
Yeah, they would be. They would be.
Now, would conservatives make very inappropriate comments about said person?
Oh yeah. Don't get me wrong.
People are people.
People are people.
But they would completely accept that somebody was on their team.
All right.
So Elon Musk apparently is going to turn off or not turn on part of Starlink because he's asked the government to pay for it, I guess he's put over $80 million into supporting Ukraine just through Starlink.
And then Ukraine, of course, was mad at him for suggesting that they talk peace before they had gotten back all the territory they think they should get back.
And so they told him to go F himself.
And then Elon Musk is basically not going to give them Starlink unless the government pays for it.
And when he was questioned about that, he said, well, we're just taking your recommendation.
Now, what do you think?
Is Elon Musk...
First of all, we don't know if he wouldn't have acted the same anyway, because he put $80 million into it without getting reimbursed.
So now he's asking the government to pay for it when they're putting out billions, so it doesn't seem like a perfectly reasonable request, right?
Asking the government to pay the bill is a perfectly reasonable request.
Now, is it reasonable for him to not turn it on while he's waiting for the answer?
What do you think? Is it reasonable that he doesn't turn it on Waiting to get paid.
I'm watching your comments, yeses and noses.
I'm going to say yes.
I'm going to say yes. And here's the weird thing.
Ukraine just opened up a second war.
They just declared war on Elon Musk.
And I think they think that that would be the easy one compared to Russia.
What do you think?
I think Elon Musk could crash Ukraine if he wanted to.
I mean, I don't know exactly how, but I feel like he could.
I feel like if he wanted to take down the whole country of Ukraine, he could just stop him if he wanted to.
I mean, it would be an ugly fight, but I don't think they know how dangerous he could be.
Now, I don't think he's that personality, so I don't think he's dangerous at all.
Imagine the smartest, richest person in the world being mad at you.
I mean, I feel like he could do some damage if he wanted to.
I don't think they should start a fight with Elon Musk.
That feels like...
And keep in mind, he's going to own Twitter.
If you were Ukraine and you depended entirely on public approval and the United States for your survival, would you want to start a fight with a guy who's going to own Twitter?
Which is the opinion maker of the United States?
I don't know. I think Ukraine played this wrong.
I think the right way to play it was to be thanking him harder than they were condemning him.
They could still condemn his moves, but maybe do it a little more respectfully, huh?
How about show a little respect for the fact that he's saving your asses?
I think a little respect would go a long way, and I don't think he got it.
Is there a disruptor against the Fed?
I don't know what that means.
All right. Oh, we found a link to the USA banning USA semiconductor exports from the commerce.
Semiconductor exports?
Would that cause Americans in China to have to quit or lose their citizenship?
I guess we still have questions about that.
Yeah. Ukraine versus Albania.
All right. Well, here's the most interesting thing about the Elon Musk thing.
Musk could actually force Ukraine and Russia into talking peace.
But I don't know if that's a good idea.
And I don't know if he should push that.
Because if they talk peace before they're both ready, I'm not sure you get anything out of that.
I think we have to wait until our toes are over the abyss.
I think we have to be on the verge within minutes of a nuclear holocaust.
And then, maybe, people will talk productively.
But we're not there yet.
So any talk of peace talks or anything like that don't make sense, because nobody's going to talk until you run the verge.
So we have to get there.
So the reason I'm telling you this is so that when we do get there, and we will, Don't think that's the end of the world.
That's the point we had to pass through to get to anything.
So that part of the journey was going to be common to both good and bad outcomes.
So it doesn't tell you anything.
It was always going to happen.
So when it happens, there's nothing you can do about it.
It's not like you should hide under your bed.
It's not going to help. But don't lose sleep over it.
Because in all likelihood, it doesn't mean anything.
In the end, it probably won't.
Zelensky refuses to negotiate.
Now, here's the interesting thing I was thinking about Putin.
Imagine you're Putin.
Don't you believe that every single member of your, let's say, inner circle has at least calculated how much money they can make by killing you if they can get away with it?
Don't you think? Because no matter how loyal you are, you have to know that he has probably a 30% chance of not being in office in a year or two, which means you're in trouble too, because you're his close circle.
So if you were in his close circle, you would have to at least consider selling him out so you could survive.
You'd have to think about it.
It must be hard to look at the faces of all of his generals and stuff, because you know that those generals know that all they have to do is get a message to the U.S. Embassy, or any embassy really, and say, if I take this guy out, will you protect me?
And a few of them get together, and then they take him out.
Because Now here's the thing that a lot of people wisely said to me.
There's nothing I hate more than the people who are operating from old wisdom.
I guess that's the name for it.
Old wisdom. Here's old wisdom.
Be careful about wanting Putin to be gone, because who replaces him could be worse.
What do you say to that?
Here's what I say to it.
When I was 25, that was a good argument.
When I was 25.
Because I thought there was such a thing as irreplaceable people.
That if you lose that key employee, the company will fail.
If this one person who is the president doesn't get elected, everything will go to heck.
And then it never happens.
Anyway. So if I were Putin, I'd be pretty concerned about my generals wanting to cut a deal to take over Russia themselves.
Because don't you think there's at least one person in his inner circle who thinks, you know, if Putin were not here, the logical replacement would be me.
You don't think there's one person like that?
There has to be. Anyway, so here's what I know at my current age.
I didn't know at 25. You can't predict anything about what happens when somebody leaves.
You think you can, but it's really unpredictable.
And I would bet that whatever holds Russia together is different from whatever held, let's say, Iraq together.
I think that Russia has probably enough bureaucracy that something like stability would happen.
And that the next leader would want to not make the same mistake as Putin.
Now, Putin can't really just say, oops, I was wrong, correct?
So Putin is in a corner because he can't say, oops, I was wrong about everything.
But anybody who killed Putin, let's say, you know, a coup attempt in Russia, the coup attempt person could say, I killed him because he did everything wrong.
And then you have options.
Oh, yeah, Putin did everything wrong.
So I'm the new leader, so I say we're not going to fight with Ukraine, and you could have your four regions back or something.
They wouldn't do that, but something like that.
Or at the very least, he could make a peace deal.
Because it's not as if the Russian public is opposed to peace.
So a new leader could satisfy the Russian public by just saying, it was all Putin's fault, it's a good thing I got rid of that guy, Now, it might take a little while.
It might be like a little vacuum as the top three or four people battle to see who takes over.
But I think that would get solved by violence.
In other words, the top three or four people would create a slaughter fest, and one of them would come out ahead, and that would be the new head of Russia.
All right. There's a new report that the...
I don't know what to think about this.
So, Senator Leahy, L-E-A-H-Y, Leahy?
Is that how you say it? Senator Leahy?
Leahy? Well, anyway, that senator is writing a memoir, or wrote one, and in that memoir, he talks about being jogging During the Iraq run-up to that war, and when we were trying to decide if Iraq had WMDs,
two shadowy people who looked like they were probably in the FBI or intel agencies or something, because they had that look, you know, that I'm in the FBI or I'm in the CIA look, and they were jogging in the park,
and they just happened to be jogging when the senator was there, and they stopped him and they asked him, What he thought about this WMD stuff, and then they told him that he should ask for a particular secret file, a specific secret file that he never didn't know existed.
So he goes into the SCIF where all the secret files are, and he asks for the secret file by name, and the secret file contradicts what the government was saying about WMDs in Iraq.
And so he's thinking, holy shit.
First of all, who are these joggers?
He never found out. And second of all, how do they know about this file?
And third of all, why doesn't everybody know about this file?
And then I guess later the two joggers jogged by again and pointed to a second file, which he also found and also contradicted the official government story.
And so then he waited to tell the public in his memoir.
He waited to write his memoir to tell us that the intelligence agencies knew the WMD were not in Iraq.
He waited to put it in his memoir.
Do you know what's wrong with that?
Everything? Everything?
Everything? You don't think that Leahy should have maybe mentioned to his colleagues, hey, there's another file you ought to look through?
There's something wrong with this story.
Am I right? This story doesn't completely hang together, does it?
Why would you wait for your memoirs to tell us that story?
I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not buying it. You remember the 2,000 mules claims that individuals called mules were delivering a bunch of ballots illegally, allegedly, to ballot boxes in 2020.
But when asked for detailed information to support these claims, I guess it's the, who are they?
The True the Vote. That's the organization.
They continue to tell the attorney generals, I guess, yes, we'll totally give you that detailed backup information that supports our claim, and then they don't.
And then they ask again, and then they don't.
And it turns out that there is no data that True the Vote is willing to release that would back up their claim.
So anybody still think that the 2,000 mules thing is going to be the Kraken?
It doesn't look like it.
It doesn't look like it.
And yeah, so there's some trouble.
I think True the Vote is in trouble.
So they either need to produce some data or explain why they're raising money on these claims.
Because that's the thing.
They raised a lot of money.
On the claims, and the claims depend entirely upon we have data, we've seen it, and trust us, this data is there.
But when asked to provide it, they just keep saying they will and they don't.
I don't trust that at all, do you?
I don't trust that at all.
All right. There's a story Paul Thacker was tweeting this around.
That there's a potential $50 million contract that allows a PR firm, a PR firm, to be embedded at the CDC as part of the division.
So it'd be, you know, just sort of wrapped into the CDC. And I saw somebody on Twitter saying it might be the same PR people that were working for the big pharma companies that had the vaccinations.
What do you think of that?
Is that a scandal?
That they ask somebody to help them manage their messaging?
Alright, people, people, it's time for me to give you another Dilbert lesson on how big companies work.
Is it your belief that if they did not hire a PR firm, the CDC itself would not be spinning anything?
Is it your belief that if no PR firm were involved, you would get the truth from the CDC? Is it your belief that it's the PR firm that would cause us to see things in a skewed way, not the straightforward statements from the CDC? If you think that adding a PR agency to the CDC's own management communication is going to make it less reliable I don't know how you would come to that conclusion.
You're talking about a group that desperately needed professional help.
Desperately. Nobody needed it more than the CDC. Now, I don't know anything about this PR firm, but it must be a big one, or it wouldn't be looking at a $50 million contract, right?
So this is a big PR firm.
I'm going to tell you something that will blow your fucking mind now.
You ready? The only honesty that will come to the CDC is from the PR firm.
You have this all backwards.
If you think that the PR firm is going to bring dishonesty to the CDC, you haven't been paying attention.
The dishonesty is coming from the fucking CDC. The PR agency is not going to sign on to that.
You're not going to get a PR agency to lie.
They won't lie. They won't.
Do you know why? It's not good for them.
Yeah, they don't want to be the ones that got caught lying.
They want to be the ones who got caught telling a really good story, a really good narrative.
Now, will they be better at spinning the narrative than the CDC? Probably.
That's why they hire them.
That's the whole point, that they can spin the narrative better.
But in my opinion, based on my experience, The PR agency would increase the credibility of the CDC's messaging.
Part of it is that the CDC would say inconsistent things.
The PR agency is less likely to do that because they would control the whole messaging and they'd say, no, that's inconsistent.
You've got to do this right.
Or you have to apologize and correct.
The PR agency would help them do that as well.
So, do not automatically assume...
That hiring a PR agency and even bringing them into the staff, basically, they'd be just like staff.
Don't assume that makes them less reliable.
It most likely will make them more reliable because there'll be one other set of eyes that have different incentives.
The PR agency doesn't have the incentive to lie.
They have an incentive to do a good job.
That's what I think. Scott, Big Pharma and CDC, is there a difference?
Well, I don't know what your point is.
You worry that it will be harder to spot the BS? I wouldn't worry about that either.
Because one of the things that PR does is it makes it obvious what the PR is.
When you watch a commercial, You don't have any question about whether they're selling you something, right?
Or that they're spinning it in the most positive way.
Because they broadcast that.
That's something that the PR people can do effortlessly.
They can signal that it's PR at the same time they're doing it.
And it still works.
Because as long as they're not lying, they're fine.
Oh, all capital letters.
You have this all wrong in capital letters.
Use your words. You can do it.
Use your words.
What do I have wrong?
Sentences. It's okay.
Now, I'm being a little bit devil's advocate here.
I hope you detected that.
Could it be that hiring a PR agency makes everything worse?
Oh, yeah. Sure.
Yeah, you could get like a bad PR agency that's corrupt and they're willing to lie.
Yeah, you could get all that.
I'm just saying it's not automatic.
If you're automatic, oh yeah, you know, this clearly leads to this, is that a PR agency leads to more bullshit?
It's not that obvious.
Because they're just replacing a different source of bullshit that is poorly made.
So it's probably just, you know, better quality of bullshit.
All right.
What else is happening?
All right.
That's about it. Did I miss any big stories?
Tom Brady is going big for pickleball.
Whoops. Lost my connection there for a moment.
I think I'm back. Those lesions.
All right.
Denyshenko... Denyshenko was the...
Who was he? Was Denyshenko the Steele dossier guy?
Oh, Pelosi.
Duh. All right.
So Pelosi's daughter...
You should know, is a famous documentarian.
So she's famous for making documentaries.
And apparently she was there on January 6th following Nancy Pelosi around where reports say Pelosi was acting very leaderly and take charge and stuff like that.
Now, that probably had something to do with the fact that she was on camera.
Do you think everybody acted the same on camera as they would have privately?
So that was interesting.
But it also suggests that Pelosi might have had some idea that the events of that day would need to be documented.
And so it almost looks like the January 6 coup attempt was a long-planned thing.
That's what it looks like.
I keep hearing things downstairs, which would be unfortunate because there shouldn't be anybody downstairs.
years.
So if I'm having a house invasion, yeah, maybe.
All right, was there anything else I forgot?
I think I covered it all.
Darren Beattie's Taiwan proposal, no, that's crazy.
I'll just mention this.
So there's a proposal just by a Twitter user suggesting that China does a bunch of stuff for us and in return they get Taiwan.
To which I say, we don't own Taiwan.
That's not ours to give away.
That seems like the worst idea I've ever heard.
But what do I know?
Why do I keep seeing Mike Lindell stuff?
Mike Lindell promoted his pillows in front of our recto.
Don't they need pillows?
So, do you remember when...
Do you remember when I had a startup and there was a...
I forget which disaster, a hurricane or something?
And I said on social media, oh, this is a perfect use...
For my company's app.
And then the internet, as one, puked on me and said, you can't use a disaster to suggest that people use a product that was made for a disaster.
That actually happened to me.
Yeah, don't be using this disaster to promote a product that's ideally suited for a disaster and would be useful for all the people involved.
There's no way you could do that.
And so I actually withdrew the tweet and decided people were not in the mood for it.
I did not read the room correctly.
And then Elon Musk promoted Starlink based on the war in Ukraine.
And what did people say?
Did people say, my God, why are you promoting your product?
This is a war. No.
They said, well, that would be really useful.
So we should use that.
What was the difference? What was the difference?
We both promoted a product that would have a specific use in a specific tragic situation.
That it was free?
Mine was basically free.
It was free for the producers.
He gave them away, but he's charging for it now?
He gave them away as a promotion, but now he's charging for it because now the giveaway worked.
The promotional giveaway showed that it was valuable, and now he wants to charge for it.
You know, I think that all of you who believe that commercial enterprises are icky, I think it just depends if there's a customer.
If there's a customer who wants it and they haven't heard about it, all you're doing is informing somebody of something they want.
I've never really understood the disgust with ordinary business practices of telling somebody that something would be useful in this specific situation.
Whenever there's an earthquake in California, there's a whole bunch of commercials that come on TV about earthquake preparation kits.
Completely taking advantage of the disaster.
Do you know what I say when I see those commercials?
Oh, I should get one of those.
I'm glad that they told me about that.
Does somebody have a different reaction?
I think the reaction to me had as much to do with my personality as it had to do with the idea.
I think there are certain personalities that can't get away with certain things.
and that was a good example.
Yeah, capitalism is about taking advantage of circumstances but not people, right?
I wasn't taking advantage of people, was I? Nobody even accused me of that.
Nobody accused me of taking advantage of a human.
Only a situation.
Just think about that.
That I was just trashed for taking advantage of a situation, but not any people.
There was no assumption that any people were disadvantaged in any way.
It was just a situation.
Yeah.
Oh, well.
I don't know.
The envious, disliked capitalism.
All right, I think I'm done.
Because there's nothing else to talk about.
Did I get everything? Everything covered?
Did I miss anything? We did everything from pickleball to Nancy Pelosi and all of our hoaxes.
Alright, you got it all? Excellent.
By the way, I've decided how to design my perfect town.
You ready for this? The perfect town would have a central park because it's the central part that matters so that everybody's kind of not too far from a park.
Then the park would be the bicycle hub for the rest of the town.
So you'd have bike-only paths, which would include e-bikes and scooters and stuff.
But you'd have an e-bike path that connects a central park.
And then from the central park, if there are multiple school systems, each of the schools is a hub.
So there's at least one path to every school and then one path out.
And the idea would be, That you could ride bikes for at least all the good weather days and reduce traffic.
That would be my idea.
Like the villages. Yeah, I'd love to look into that a little more.
Because that was a designed community.
Yeah, we talked about the Van Gogh sunflowers.
It's funny, that attack was covered with glass.
So the tomato soup they threw on the Van Gogh didn't make any difference because it was just on the glass.
All right. So I do want to build my perfect town one of these days.
That's still on my list, my bucket list.
I'll stay around until I do that, I guess.
Oh, you have a central park in your development.
Yeah. You know, I've met more of my neighbors walking my dog in my little park nearby than I have any other way.
So having a little dog park or something in the middle really makes a difference.
Dogs really help. Help you meet people, that is.
All right. Do not look at Disney's history building.
What? Fortress problem?
Well, my startup no longer exists, so you don't need to know about that.
