Episode 1921 Scott Adams: It's The End Of Democracy As We Know It, AKA A Normal Election Day
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Neither team wants unriggable elections
President Trump vs. TikTok & The Courts
Fentanyl and attacking Mexico
Kari Lake political ad
Missing from climate change arguments
Is Howard Stern gullible?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
And welcome to the highlight of civilization, but also the total destruction of democracy.
Some people call it a normal vote.
But if you'd like to make it a little more exciting, let's call it the destruction of democracy.
I feel the same.
It's weird. But I know any moment now...
Any moment, the whole democracy is going to crumble from all of the voting.
I guess. But if you'd like to have a peak experience today, what would it take?
Well, it might take a brand new mug, if you haven't.
But if you don't have that, it's still a great place to be, and all you need is any kind of a cupper mug or a glass of tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask of a vessel of any kind.
Ahem. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dope being here today.
The thing makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
It happens now.
Go! Oh!
Democracy! Well, enjoy it while you can, because as soon as the election is over, our democracy is finished.
And that should happen, let's see, the election will be over by tonight.
Tonight, right, because it's election.
No, not tonight. Some of the votes will be counted maybe tomorrow morning.
Not tomorrow morning, but maybe sometime to the next day.
We'll have all of the votes.
No, well, not really done by tomorrow, exactly.
By tomorrow, I mean maybe November 14th or so.
Yeah, roughly the 14th.
We might have something like the end of democracy.
I don't know if I can wait that long for the end of democracy.
Can you? I mean, I've been waiting for this end of democracy for so long.
I don't know if I can wait another week.
But I guess we will.
Well, let's talk about all the fun things.
The simulation is trying to send us a message, but you have to know how to read it.
When the owners or the creators of the simulation want to send a message, it's usually, you know, it's not real obvious until you notice it and then it's kind of obvious.
So I'll tell you the message that they're sending us.
It's just a little wink, I'd call it.
I tweeted this, that Biden opposes the fossil fuels industry and drilling.
So he's against the fossil fuel industry and drilling.
But interestingly, the fossil fuel industry opposes fossil fools and drilling.
So you can have either fossil fuels and drilling, or you can have a fossil fool and drilling.
You can have either one. I feel like that's just the simulation saying, none of this is real.
You know none of this is real.
Watch this. All right.
So, as you know, advertisers were leaving Twitter because they're mad that it might become balanced again, or for the first time.
And someone asked Musk on Twitter if he has a tortious claim.
Tortious? How would you pronounce it?
Tortious, right?
T-O-R-T? Based on tort law.
Tortious, right?
Tortious. Or tortoise.
It's one of those.
It's one of those words that you can read and never have to speak.
If I could advise you, never try to pronounce that word in public.
Because nobody's going to know what you're talking about.
And you're just going to look foolish if you get it wrong.
So don't do what I did.
So it's a tortoise claim.
And Musk actually said yes.
So I don't know what a torturous, tortious claim is, and it's something about a tortoise, but apparently it's a big deal and maybe it applies.
But I don't really understand it.
Somebody's going to have to explain to me.
Why can't advertisers do whatever the hell they want?
How could you have a claim?
Now, it's not a claim against the advertisers, right?
It would be a claim against some entities that were pushing the advertisers.
Contract interference, is that it?
Can I get a confirmation on that?
Is it contract interference?
I feel like you can interfere with anything you want if it's free speech.
Can't you interfere with any contract you want as long as all you're doing is free speech?
You can't. Interesting.
Or are you saying no to something else?
Tortious just means you can sue?
All right. Yeah.
So I feel like we all have to listen to Harmeet, Dylan, find out what's going on.
How many of you are following Harmeet?
That was on my list to recommend to you.
So if you want to follow any of the legal stuff, one of the accounts you need to follow is Harmeet Dillon.
Torts means civil wrongs, yeah.
Torshus. Torshus is how you say it, I'm told.
All right. So the Terms of Service is a contract, sure.
But I feel like it should never be illegal to talk about things if you think you're saying things that are real, right?
As long as you believe what you're saying is real and important, how in the world could that be illegal or even tortious if it's true?
If it's true that you believe it.
I mean, you don't only have to believe it.
It doesn't have to actually be true, right?
Your free speech is protected as long as you think you're saying the truth.
I think, right?
I mean, short of crying fire in a theatre, I guess.
I guess we'll find out more about that.
In my opinion, the Republic is stronger than it has ever been.
You know, we always have this weird amnesia about history.
You know that in the days of Abraham Lincoln, The Republic was, like, barely functioning.
Just barely functioning.
And there have been plenty of times in our history when we barely, you know, were surviving in terms of the system.
But at the moment?
At the moment, I think it's the strongest it's ever been.
Here's my argument. Interest in voting is at an all-time high.
Would you agree? Would you agree that the interest in voting and participating in the process is the highest it's ever been?
Isn't it? I think it is.
You know, it seems like it.
I would say that fake news is actually on the ropes.
It doesn't seem like it yet, but it definitely is.
And there are two gigantic things that are happening.
One is that CNN is just fact-checking the piss out of Biden.
They're just fact-checking him right to his socks.
They're not holding back at all now.
Right? And that's new.
It's totally new.
It's welcome.
And it's correct.
And it strengthens the republic.
That's a big, big, big deal.
Because the left can't hide from CNN. The left can completely hide from Fox News.
They can't hide from CNN. That's a really big deal.
The other big deal is Twitter itself.
Now, in my opinion, it's too early to say, but it certainly looks like Twitter is evolving into a context giver, as opposed to a propaganda engine.
Do you think that characterization is fair?
At least that seems to be the stated intention, and I see movement in that direction, to make Twitter a context provider As opposed to telling you what to think and hiding views and all that stuff.
How big of a deal is that?
Imagine if every fake news that was important had a little note on it that gave you the context, just the other side, whatever's the argument on the other side, or just context.
That really does change everything.
Imagine if you couldn't lie with impunity on Twitter anymore.
I mean, you could still lie. It's just that somebody would add a fact jacket and it would just hang there forever.
These are improvements in the system that are enormous.
Enormous improvements.
How about this?
Trump hysteria is way down.
Would you agree?
So after the January 6th thing sort of fizzled, They were trying to ball up as much of the remnants of the Trump derangement as they could, try to package it up and make one more good push with the January 6th thing, and it didn't work. It didn't move anybody.
Remember my prediction that the longer Trump was out of office, the better he would look.
Best prediction ever?
Will you all give me that?
Even if you don't like Trump, even if you're not a Trump supporter, you'd have to give me that prediction, that he does look better to the public, maybe not you personally, but the public absolutely has a better opinion of him.
What does the black and Hispanic support for Republicans look like?
Really good. Yeah, it turns out that black and Hispanic support for Republicans in the midterm Might be the highest it's ever been.
Highest it's ever been.
So, how good is that?
It's like amazing. How about the fact that both the Democrats and the Republicans are bitching about elections being rigged?
Is that bad or good for the Republic?
Go. Bad or good for the Republic that both sides, both sides say, whoa, these elections might be rigged.
You'd better watch it really carefully.
So good. So, so good.
There's nothing that made me happier than waking up and seeing that everybody's talking about election reform.
Right? How long have I waited for that?
Today's the best day ever.
It's the one day the entire fucking country can agree our elections are not where we deserve them to be.
I don't use deserve often, because I don't like that word.
But I feel like we deserve better transparency and better certainty.
Now, my opinion is I have no idea How good or bad elections are or have been in the past.
But I can tell you how I'm going to react to the outcome.
I will accept it when it is called.
And I don't care how sketchy it looks.
I'm going to accept the outcome.
As it's called. Now, I suppose there could be some extreme thing that would change my mind.
But if it looks like a normal election, even if people are bitching about this precinct or those missing ballots or those extra things, whatever, I'm going to accept it.
Because here's what I've accepted as my truth.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want the system fixed in any serious way.
That's my opinion. So if neither team wants it fixed, then the potential rigging or gaming of the system, even in legal means, is now part of our process.
We have essentially de facto all agreed that as long as the cheating is below some line of obviousness, As long as both sides have all the rules, they know what to do, they know where to cheat, they know how to get caught, they're basically all playing the same game.
If they're all playing the same game, then I hate to say it, but you know how we judge a potential leader by how well they campaign?
And yet the campaign is not really a perfect proxy for how you would govern.
Campaigning's sort of a different skill.
But we do that anyway, right?
We make some judgments about the campaign.
I believe that the quality of the two parties is being expressed partly in how they game the system.
Would you want to support a party that couldn't game the system, if the other side is?
Do you want your side to be the one who's not trying to game the system?
Probably not, right?
You might have some, like, moral, ethical line, but if you know the other side is going to take advantage of every opening that they could take advantage of, you kind of want your team to do it too, right?
That's not irrational.
So we are going into an election in which both sides are going to try to game it every way they can.
Some elements of both sides will cheat.
Would you agree? Will you agree with me that both Republicans and Democrats, at some level, somewhere, will be cheating?
There's nobody here who thinks it's only going to be Democrats cheating, right?
Like everywhere, every state, every precinct, it's only going to be the Democrats cheating?
No. You don't live in that country.
Really? Really, you believe that?
No, you don't. You don't believe that.
I'm not even sure the mostly part sticks, or at least I didn't believe it until today.
Do you want to have your mind just blown?
Some of you already heard this news.
It's more of a Twitter thing.
I'm going to tell you something that will sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, partly because it's true, because I don't know enough about this topic yet, but also because the topic is so unbelievable that I look right at it and I think, I don't know what I'm even seeing or hearing.
I don't even think that's possible.
But it comes from good sources.
For example, Harmeet is actually one of the sources, and I wasn't sure I believed it until I saw it from her account.
But did you know, and I hope I have this right, that there was a consent decree back in the 80s that banned the GOP from actively participating in elections, like the management or the effort of the election?
Did you know that? And the only reason that that got reversed, which was in the past year, I guess, is that the judge who was keeping that live died.
If the judge had not died, it would still be the case.
And so, apparently, the Republicans taking advantage of this change...
As Harmeet says, this election cycle, GOP has recruited and trained over 80,000 poll watchers, poll workers.
She's a comma, poll worker, so I'm not sure what that sentence means, but I think the 80,000 means they're poll workers, I guess.
We've engaged over 1 million volunteers, conducted 5,200 leadership trainings to prepare for Election Day operations, filed nearly 80 lawsuits, retained dozens of litigators, trained hundreds more, etc.
And here's the part that this will just make your mind explode.
I don't even know how to hold this in my head.
This is just so mind-bending that we're finding this out today.
She says, this effort started last year, once a long-running consent decree dating back to early 80s, barring the GOP from engaging in election day efforts.
Expired. Judge literally expired.
He died. Next judge refused Dem effort to extend it.
And then her firm is working in multi-states on this.
Is your head exploding?
Like, I feel like I need a fact check on this, even though Harmeet is highly, highly credible.
Right? Like, I'm sure she's right, and I still can't believe it.
Right? This is one of those weird things where you can believe it and not believe it at the same time.
Like, I believe it.
I believe it because the source is good.
But I don't believe it.
Right? Are you having the same reaction?
It's just not believable.
But I think it's true. It's the damnedest thing.
It's really playing with my mind.
But I don't know. I guess we'll find out more about that.
Here's why our system is stronger than ever.
Another reason. There are more election deniers than ever.
That's just the best thing.
I think I said that before.
You're seeing, as I said, more black and Hispanic support for the GOP, I think, is a sign of strength of the system.
What would be a weaker system than 98% of black people voting for the same party every election?
Could you imagine a stronger signal of a broken world?
I mean, that's just broken.
But if you get to, you know, I think we're only talking about 17%, but that's double what it was.
So movement in the right direction.
Movement in the right direction.
That's all good. All right, so that's the good news.
I think the system is strong, and I love today.
Today is really a celebration of America.
With all of our bitching and complaining and all of our conspiracy theories, this is who we are.
Am I right? This is who we are.
We complain about ourselves, meaning America.
We will complain bitterly.
We'll fight like cats and dogs.
But today, we all support the same system.
We all support the same system today.
It's amazing. It's a cool day.
Alright, no matter how it goes.
And I don't know how it's going to go, frankly.
Alright, what do these things have in common?
Fentanyl, TikTok, teachers' unions, and abortions.
What do they all have in common?
Fentanyl, TikTok, teachers' unions, and abortions.
Two things they have in common.
Number one, they are things which Democrats aren't doing anything about or favor.
And they're deadly for children and fetuses.
You know, if you want to make the distinction between a child and a fetus.
Not all of you do, and I respect that decision.
But it's kind of a...
It's starting to be kind of obvious that the Democrats are anti-child.
Am I wrong? Like, it seems to be everywhere.
It's everywhere. Like, shut down the schools.
Oh, that's good for the adults.
Not really, but...
Everything seems to have the same quality to it.
Now, I would like to slam the Republicans as hard as I possibly could for also being worthless on TikTok and fentanyl.
And what some people said is, but Scott, Trump signed two executive orders trying to ban TikTok.
So that's a real thing, right?
No. No, that's not a real thing.
Now, the courts became a big core battle, and the courts overturned it, right?
Let me ask you this.
Do I not understand what the commander-in-chief job is?
Am I confused what a commander-in-chief is supposed to do?
Am I missing the whole concept?
TikTok is not a potential threat.
It's a current, active, military threat that Against the children of America.
It's an ongoing war.
They're being brain damaged and degraded by China right now, while we sit here.
Now, if you tell me...
Can I give you a little warning?
There's a real good chance some cursing might come out.
In the next few moments.
If you don't want to hear anything, let's say not an appropriate word for social media, you might want to check out now.
This would be a good time. Okay?
Because I've never been a commander-in-chief.
But let me tell you how I would play it.
And this is apparently not how Trump played it.
It would go like this. I'm signing an executive order to ban TikTok in my role as Commander-in-Chief.
And then the court says, wait a minute, you can't do that.
And then I say, fuck you.
You're not the Commander-in-Chief.
And then the court says, but wait, you can't do that.
And then I say, I'm not sure you heard me the first time.
But fuck you to death.
You're not the commander-in-chief.
But, but, but, but, but, just give us one week to see what the courts say.
Maybe you didn't hear me the first time.
Fuck you. There's only one commander-in-chief.
It's not you. Do you understand what the commander-in-chief does?
Do you understand the fucking job?
It's to keep you safe, And the only requirement I have in the real world, not in the legal world and not in the constitutional world, I'll give you that Commander-in-Chief is not all-powerful.
I'll give you that, right?
But there is one case where the Commander-in-Chief is all-powerful.
It's when the entire fucking country agrees with him.
In that case, and in that case alone, fuck the Constitution, fuck the courts, fuck everybody.
The Commander-in-Chief is in charge.
That's the way you want it, it's the way I want it, it's the way Democrats want it, it's the way Republicans want it.
It's the only way it works, right?
Now, if Trump had banned TikTok, and then two months later the court overturned it, I would look into that as a little bit of a different situation.
But you know what happened?
The court got the first vote.
The court overruled the commander-in-chief on a military fucking issue.
On a fucking military issue.
Now, am I giving Trump a pass?
Because it seems like you did the right thing.
No. Failing, failing, failing.
Fucking failing grade. That is no commander-in-chiefing.
Commander-in-chief leads.
The commander-in-chief leads.
You don't wait for the fucking court.
All right? If the commander-in-chief, you know, does something crazy that the American public is not behind, well, that's at their own risk, right?
That's at their own risk.
But if the Commander-in-Chief does what the public, Democrats and Republicans, I'm pretty sure, by a huge majority are gonna agree with, the fucking court better stay out of it.
And if you allow the court to overrule your Commander-in-Chief, when you and everyone else agrees with the Commander-in-Chief, There's something wrong.
So let me say as clearly as I can, I don't support any candidates that are running for office in the midterms.
I also don't support any potential presidential campaign that seems likely to run.
Do you know who I don't respect whatsoever for their fentanyl opinion?
Carrie Lake. Chip Roy, anybody you want to name Trump, anybody you want to name who you think is a hard ass on fentanyl, not even fucking close.
They're not even in the zip code of being serious.
If they're trying to tell you that the border security, or even the death sentence for fentanyl dealers, which Trump promotes, if they're trying to convince you that that's dealing with the problem, they are fucking lying to you, or they're idiots, Or they're idiots, and I don't think they are.
None of the people I mentioned are idiots, clearly.
Right? They're not idiots.
So they're either wrong or they're lying to you.
They either don't know what to do or they're lying to you.
It looks like there's only one serious thing you could actually do about fentanyl.
Maybe two. Yes, I'm in favor of death sentence for the high-end fentanyl dealers, but it's not going to make much difference.
Yes, I'm in favor of airtight border security in general.
I think how much we turn the dial and who we let in is a separate question.
But absolutely, tighten that border.
That's just basic hygiene for your country.
But that's 5% of the problem, because fentanyl is so small, you can just throw it over the fence.
I mean, literally. You just say, hey, here's enough fentanyl to kill everybody in San Francisco.
Catch. So the wall isn't going to stop fentanyl.
Now, if you've been fooled by the...
I did a lesson on the Locals platform yesterday about how to create psychological blindness...
The way you create psychological blindness is you make somebody look in the wrong place.
If they move their frame of perception, they'll just miss something that they would ordinarily have noticed.
Here's what you would have ordinarily all known, except that all of the politicians on the left and the right are causing you some blindness.
Here's what you should all know that you don't know.
Border security is almost none of the solution.
Might be 5%.
That's it.
If you've been fooled into thinking that those are solutions, you've been cognitively blinded by people who are doing it intentionally.
Here's what a solution would look like.
I propose to level the cartels where they stand and to take functional control of the Mexican government to make sure that the cartels aren't running the government, and then we'll phase it back to Mexico once we are comfortable that their country is in good shape.
I would say we're saving Mexico.
How many Mexican citizens do you think would actually disagree with destroying their own government that is clearly owned by the cartels?
Probably none. Probably fucking none.
This is one of those things where I can't describe to you enough if you don't live among the immigrant community, as I do.
You don't understand their attitudes about anything.
There's nobody who came across the border, and probably nobody who remained unless they work for the cartels, who wants the cartel to be running their country.
Do you think there's anybody on any side who wants the cartel in charge of Mexico?
No. There's zero people on that side except the other cartel.
So... And then let me ask you this.
How hard would it be to conquer the Mexican government?
It's probably a day job.
Right? It's probably a day job.
Because I think they would just roll over, wouldn't they?
Probably. I'm not even sure the soldiers would fight.
Because it's only the leaders who are, you know, in bed with the cartel.
It's not the rank and file.
So if America went and said, we're going to change your leadership, but everything else is fine.
We're not going to change anything. We're just going to change out your leadership to get rid of the cartel.
You could actually probably get the military to go along with, at least the rank and file.
It's not like they have nukes, right?
Mexico doesn't have nukes.
Do they have missiles?
I don't believe Mexico has anything that could reach the United States with any real risk, is it?
As if they would attack the United States.
I don't think they would. Now, how much is your mind blown that I'm saying with no restrictions whatsoever, I'm not hedging this whatsoever, that the United States should attack and conquer Mexico, but temporarily.
We should give it back after we fix it.
Does it blow your mind that I can say that directly and out loud?
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
Now, you're saying it's delusional.
You're saying it's delusional because the odds of it happening are very low.
Wouldn't you agree? You see what I'm doing?
You see what I'm doing, though, right?
I'm actually changing the odds.
If the odds were going to stay where they are, I'd say, yeah, that's not going to happen.
No point in even talking about it.
No, I'm changing the odds, because I just did it right here.
I just said, let's attack Mexico and conquer them and destroy the cartels, and then give Mexico back when we're done.
And I didn't see anybody disagree with me.
Maybe I missed it. But I saw people sort of talking about it, But I didn't see anybody disagree.
That's persuasion. See, the first part of persuasion is people have to accept it in the set of possible things.
You just did that.
You just accepted it on the list of possible things.
And it wasn't there before.
I put it there. Do you remember you heard the story that Trump had asked about attacking the cartels with a drone or a missile or something?
And the first time you heard it, you're like, what?
What? That's crazy.
That's crazy. And then the second time you hear it, you're like, yeah, that's crazy.
The third time you hear it, you're like, yeah, that's something people are talking about.
I hope we don't do that.
And the next time you hear it, you're like, huh, huh, I wonder if that's actually something that could happen.
Then the tenth time you hear it, it's an option.
The tenth time you hear it, it's just an option.
So I'm going to move attacking Mexico from something unthinkable to a fucking option.
If somebody has a better idea, totally open to that.
And by the way, at the same time, I would work on demand.
I'd work on demand at the same time, as hard as you can.
But it's not a one-solution situation.
It's a do-everything situation.
It's all hands on deck.
The other thing you could do is you could ask America to narc on the fentanyl dealers.
I just had that idea.
Here's what I wouldn't do.
I would never ask somebody to narc on an American.
I would never ask you to narc on an American for, you know, doing American crime, because, you know, it's not going to happen and blah, blah, blah.
But fentanyl is not about American crime.
Anybody who's selling fentanyl is working for China, whether they like it or not.
They're either working for the cartel or they're working for China, or both.
Right? So would you drop a dime on a spy?
A foreign spy. If you knew somebody was working for China, against the interests of the United States, would you call the FBI? I would.
That's not narcing. Is that narcing?
That's not narcing at all.
Do you know who else should call the FBI? Criminals.
Even a criminal should call the FBI. Because, you know, even the mafia was on America's side during World War II. Am I wrong?
Even the mafia...
Is on America's side.
Right? So if you're the worst criminal in the world, you should still drop a dime on even a low-end fentanyl dealer.
Right? Every name of every person.
Because there are people who know the names.
I'll bet every fentanyl dealer is known to somebody who doesn't do fentanyl.
I'll bet every one.
I'll bet everyone has a...
There's somebody who could drop a dime on them.
And I don't think you should encourage dropping a dime on the heroin, the cocaine, the marijuana, whatever else.
Because that's just going to get you killed.
And I don't ask you to get killed to stop a crime.
I mean, that would be brave, but I wouldn't encourage you to do it.
But I would encourage you to risk your life for the country.
For the country. Fentanyl's an external threat.
I do ask you to risk your life for the country.
So drop a dime on a fentanyl dealer.
And they should all be taken off the streets.
And if you have a better idea...
Now, at the same time, I would make alternatives legal.
If you listen to somebody who's actually an addict, they will tell you that they would immediately leave fentanyl if they had something that was like similar and safer and all that.
But they don't really have...
It's not easy to have that option and affordable and accessible and everything.
But I suppose you could do it.
I don't know. It'd be worth trying.
I don't know how well it would work.
Gather the drug users into a tent city.
And destroy the market?
Yeah, there are too many of them.
The trouble is that the fentanyl users, you don't know who they are.
Somebody says, I'm sorry, but you don't know much about this topic.
There's somebody here who says I don't know much about the fentanyl topic.
Okay.
I'm not even sure if that comment was directed at me, because it's so, that's so far off.
I don't think there's much I know more about.
There's not much I know more about.
And you realize I'm, like, right on the edge of unloading on you right now, right?
You realize how close I am to just going...
All right.
Two sniffs and an exhale.
Serenity now.
Serenity now.
All right. Let's see what else is going on here.
And again, I saw somebody on Twitter saying that the war on drugs hasn't worked before, so why would the war on drugs work with fentanyl?
What do you think of that?
The war on drugs has never worked yet.
Why would a war on drugs work against fentanyl?
I'll tell you why. Because which other drug could be solved by attacking Mexico?
That was a reasonable thing to say.
Fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction.
We do do wars against weapons of mass destruction, unfortunately, even when they're not there.
Iraq being an example.
Don't compare the war on drugs to the war on fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a drug if you take it by prescription.
Would you all agree? In the context of prescription and the actual healthcare system, fentanyl is a drug.
It's a very good one, I hear.
Very good one. It's one you'd want to keep around.
But as soon as it's outside the domain of healthcare, it's just a weapon of mass destruction.
And it should be treated that way.
So the worst thing we could do for the so-called war on drugs wasn't very much.
But the worst thing you could do to fight a weapon of mass destruction is no limits.
That's a no-limit war.
The war against drugs is a very limited war.
You just do what you can get away with and what makes sense.
But the war against fentanyl?
No, you just take all the controls off.
And I'm talking about murdering the Chinese fentanyl dealers in their beds in China.
That's what I mean by take all the controls off.
You just kill them in their beds.
And kill as many as you need to.
And just kill them all day long.
And then China will say, wait, if you're murdering people in our country, we might try murdering people in your country.
And then you say to China, well, big fucking duh, you just killed 100,000 of us already, and TikTok's trying to finish us off.
So yes, we're going to kill as many fucking Chinese people in their beds as we need to to stop fentanyl.
And I would kill anybody who was doing TikTok if we can't make them stop that, but I think we can stop that in an easier way.
We don't have to kill anybody to stop TikTok.
But I would murder them in their beds, and I would never stop.
Now, I don't know if we can, but we must have some assets in China.
We must have something. Somebody we could pay to do it, I don't know.
There's a Carrie Lake ad.
I was asked to rate for Persuasion.
If you haven't seen it, she's talking about her experience as a media person and how the media is gaslighting you and she's using a sledgehammer to break some televisions and stuff.
And I'm not even going to bother rating it because it's perfect.
There's almost nothing to say about it.
It's just perfect. And so I created a little scale of persuasion power, just so you see where everybody stands.
And here's where I put them.
I put, on a scale of 1 to Cary Lake.
So Cary Lake's a 10. There's nobody operating at her level right now.
Let me say that just unambiguously.
There's nobody else at her level right now.
Nobody. It's not like there's somebody at, like, a close second.
You know, Trump is second, but honestly, it's not close.
It's like another level.
So I put her at 10, but I put Trump at a 9.
I put Trump at a 9.
I put DeSantis and Gavin Newsom at 8.
Because they appear to be doing good jobs for their base.
So somebody asked me about DeSantis' persuasion abilities, which are high, but not because he has persuasion skill.
What DeSantis has is competence, and he reads his base really well.
Now, those are really good things for a politician.
What's better than competence?
What's better than knowing what your base wants and immediately responding to it?
Those are really persuasive things.
But they're not classically, linguistically persuasive.
I don't see DeSantis having the Trump skill or the Carrie Lake skill.
But it's certainly completely capable.
If you get a president who can do eight on persuasion, You know, that's your George Bush's, your Bill Clinton's.
You know, that's strong. You would be well served by an eight.
But we do have a ten, and it's just worth noting.
The thing she got right...
Are, like, everything.
She used fear persuasion.
She used visual persuasion.
She used pacing and leading.
She probably made you think past the sail.
I don't know. It was everything.
Basically, just everything.
It was all there. And the other thing she has going for her, which I think matters, but I don't see other people talking about it, is that, what's the right word?
Oh, I just lost the word. Her gender is...
Oh, how to say this without being insulting.
She has both masculine and feminine traits, and the weird thing is she has lots of both.
Androgynous, maybe, but that feels like insulting.
All right. Let me give you an example.
When... When Mick Jagger is performing on stage, let's say the younger version of Mick Jagger, he was weirdly masculine and feminine at the same time, wasn't he? And it really worked, didn't it?
Like, there wasn't anybody like him, per se.
I mean, Bowie may be the same thing, but, you know, wouldn't you say that Mick Jagger was both masculine and feminine at the same time, but also projected both of them with maximum strength, which is weird.
Very rare. And I think Carrie Lake does that.
That she is weirdly sexy while representing the better qualities of two different genders.
So that's how I turned that into a compliment.
She has the better qualities of two genders, right?
Now, I realize how sexist that sounds, right?
So I'm dealing here on a, let's say, on a stereotype level.
Just so you know, I'm aware of what I'm doing here.
On a stereotypical level, She has femininity, because she's got the look.
And she cares about the children and stuff, so she's got the nurturing thing.
But she's tough as nails, and she's using a sledgehammer for her ad, so you sort of imagine that as more of a male energy.
Yeah, that's really strong.
Basically, she just hits every note.
Every note. But again, I do not recommend her for office because there's nobody running who's got fentanyl right.
I'm just a single issue voter, which means I won't be voting because there's nobody who's good on fentanyl.
Twitter growth is at an all-time high under Musk, which I think explains why my user numbers are up.
Does anybody still have high user numbers?
You still getting a lot of new followers?
Let me check mine here.
I'll give you the... I'll actually show it to you.
Pre and post Musk.
So the Social Blade app shows you how many people are signing up.
So I'll show you, all right, so here you can see it.
Probably you can't see it very well.
But you can see in the top is Pre-Musk, and then it goes into post-Musk.
You see there's a huge jump.
So it goes from an average of maybe, I don't know, just eyeballing it, maybe 200 per day, a little more per average as new followers, and now it's closer to, you know, 1,000 per day.
But it's trending down, so I think it'll go back to some baseline.
So I would say that the change almost certainly is Musk excitement-level change.
And probably not because of some algorithm change.
All right. I was pointing to an article in which some climate activist was wondering, why is it that the whole population doesn't understand that we're heading toward destroying the planet with climate change problems?
And it was a pretty smart piece, but what was missing was something that's always missing from the climate change argument.
And have you noticed it?
What's the big thing that they always forget?
Now, they always forget, you know, the odds of technological improvements, you know, step changes and what we can and cannot do.
But that's, you know, everybody ignores that because it's basically impossible to predict.
There's one other big thing.
They always leave out the military.
So here's where I think an education would get people on the same side.
Haven't you been, like, puzzled why the left could think that climate change should be the priority when you know it would degrade your economy, and you know that degrading the economy degrades your ability to defend yourself?
That those are connected.
And I think Republicans just sort of instinctively see those things as connected, don't they?
Don't you see the economy as being your national defense?
Because it is. Without an economy, you can't bribe other countries, you can't get them on your side, you can't make them want to be your friend, you can't buy weapons, you can't last a long war, you can't do anything.
So the economy is your defense.
The only times that's not the case are special cases, like Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has no military because they're our little buddy, right?
If you want to be America's little buddy, maybe you don't need a military either.
Japan doesn't need a full-sized military because they're our little buddy.
So, when I see an article that says, why doesn't the public understand that climate change is so dangerous to us?
I say, where in your article did you mention that you can't have a wind-powered military?
The pro-climate change, aggressive change people always leave out the military, don't they?
Show me any article where a climate change activist has at least even mentioned...
That there would be an impact on national defense.
Even mentioning it.
Even somebody saying, well, here's all the pros, here's all the cons, but on balance, I think we should go for electric and wind power as hard as possible and get rid of those fossil fuels.
Have you ever seen that? Right?
It's just missing. It's just missing.
Am I having a microphone problem?
Some people are saying. Um...
All right, so you can't take a climate person seriously unless they can say, this will probably hurt the military, but I think it's better to do anyway.
Now, I could respect that opinion even while disagreeing with it.
Am I right? That would be an opinion that you could say, I disagree with that heavily, but I respect that you've shown all of the elements.
You didn't leave out something just to fool me.
You mentioned everything.
And now I can agree or disagree, but you're not an asshole.
Am I right? If they can at least mention all the things that matter, well, at least I can have a conversation with you.
But don't leave out the military.
It's like, I want to live under the ocean.
What are you going to do for oxygen?
What? No oxygen.
You said you want to live permanently under the ocean.
What are you going to do for oxygen?
What? It's like acting like the biggest thing doesn't matter.
It's crazy. It's crazy.
All right. Howard Stern tweeted today that preserving democracy is, quote, the only effin' issue on the table in the midterms.
I started to do a tweet thread on all the ways that's dumb.
And I thought, I don't have the energy to do that.
I don't think I'd ever run out of ways that's dumb.
I don't even know how to deal with that comment.
Do you? Now, first of all, would you agree that he has high intelligence?
He does, right? Even if you disagree with him politically or whatever, that's one thing.
But there's no way he got to the level he did being dumb.
That didn't happen. He's clearly a smart guy.
Above average. Above average, in my opinion.
So why would somebody that smart, he's at least smart enough for the point I'm going to make.
Why would somebody that smart say that preserving democracy is the only effing issue on the table?
And what does everybody being really excited about voting have to do with hurting democracy?
Did he actually believe the January 6th story and the TDS and everything else?
You know, one of the things I've noticed is that the people who have a personal problem with Trump just can't get over it.
Just can't get over it.
Right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like Howard Stern and maybe Bill Maher have had, like, personal issues with Trump a little bit.
It feels just personal.
Yeah, they just feel broken.
But apparently there's no limit to what people will believe.
I think the point at which you knew there were no limits to what people would believe, no matter how ridiculous, was there one point in our recent past where you said, okay, that proves absolutely anything will be believed?
It was the drinking bleach hoax.
Now, I would say the Charlottesville fine people hoax, but the reason I'm not using that one is that even though it was a hoax, what he said, it is still true he should have handled it differently.
I accept that as true.
If he had handled it better, he could have solved his own problem.
So I think there's some room for some criticism on Trump about the fine people hoax, but not because of what he said.
Because he didn't say what they believe he said.
But the drinking bleach thing, I'm pretty sure he said the right thing.
He started by saying he was talking about light as a disinfectant, then he talked about it, and then he ended by saying, you know, light as a disinfectant, at the same time that light was being used as a disinfectant.
Now, when I sign off from YouTube, I'm going to lock the locals feed here.
So I'm going to lock you out of the locals feed.
I'm going to tell the people on locals something behind the curtain that I don't think they necessarily know.
Not all of them. Some of them might know.
I'm going to give them a little bit of a A little bit of a behind-the-curtain thing.
And yes, I think most of you know that there was an actual study about using light to heal light technology, I think it was called.
But I'll add something for the locals' crowd in a minute.
All right. Did I cover everything?
I think I did.
Wow. What an amazing, amazing livestream.
That's probably what you're thinking, right?
You're thinking, I've never seen a livestream this good.
Let's talk about...
Musk tweeted that he's promoting people voting for Republican in the midterms because he thinks we operate better, meaning America operates better with a split government.
So that would give you a Democrat president, and if everybody got elected in Congress on the Republican side, it would be a Republican Congress.
In my opinion, that was inappropriate.
But free speech.
It's legal. It's legal.
In my opinion, it was inappropriate for Elon Musk to take a voting position As head of Twitter the week before the election.
But he's not wrong.
I don't disagree with the point.
I just don't think it was the right move.
Because it's going to excite people in a way that they don't need to get excited.
Like, you don't want people going to the polls thinking that Elon Musk, you know, influenced the vote.
You don't want the guy who owns Twitter to be influencing votes at all.
At all. Right?
At all. Not inside the job, not outside the job, not in his private capacity.
But he can. But he can.
So unambiguously, he has that right as an American.
And I 100% support his free speech as an American.
So he has every right.
So he's right in his point.
I agree with the point that we do like a mixed government.
And he has the right to say it.
I just wouldn't have done it.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
I wouldn't have done it. I think I would have stayed out of it.
Yeah, I don't think it helped him or America.
Would you agree? That it didn't help him, it didn't help Twitter, it didn't help me.
I don't think it helped anybody.
But at the same time, would you want Elon Musk to not be Elon Musk?
Right? Do you want him not to do that?
It's really a tough one.
Because I could say I wouldn't have done it, and I could say I prefer he didn't do it.
But I would not want any pressure on him to not say exactly what he's thinking, whatever he's thinking.
Because his transparency is like a national gift, in my opinion.
It's just a gift. To be able to see what appears to be a complete, honest, and transparent approach to all of this stuff, you don't see that.
I want to see the real thing.
It's the same thing I say about Trump.
Trump says things that I wish he hadn't said.
We all probably think that.
But when he does, I have these two feelings.
It's like, ah, you know, I wouldn't have said that.
And at the same time, I think, I'm really glad he did, because I know what he's thinking.
Right? Don't you appreciate the transparency even if it bothers you?
Like, I'll take the transparency every time.
I just wouldn't have done it.
Michael Moore is saying directly that people voting for Republicans are not that bright.
So, that wasn't really the...
The best thing to say right before the vote?
Do the Democrats ever learn that insulting the actual voters doesn't work as well as you hope?
Yeah. And who was it?
Adam Carolla, who said that Michael Moore looks like a Out of work lesbian?
Is that what he said?
And then somebody on Twitter said, accused Adam Carolla of calling Michael Moore an overweight lesbian, and then he was corrected.
No, I didn't say overweight lesbian.
I said out of work lesbian.
So... If you could get that clear.
By the way, I love lesbians, so I'm not insulting them.
I just think it's interesting what other people are saying about other people.
I'm not jumping on the make you fun of Michael Moore for his appearance thing.
I used to. I just feel like...
You know what it is?
Let me be a little transparent for you.
When you're not much of a public figure...
Or you're not a public figure.
Dumping on somebody for their looks doesn't feel as evil.
But when you become more prominent in, let's say, talking about politics, as happened to me, I don't feel like you should model that.
No, I'm just talking about myself.
You can do anything you want. I honestly believe that making fun of people for their physical appearance is just all bad.
But when public figures do it, that's a little extra bad.
Wouldn't you agree? Don't you think that I should be held to a higher standard than you should?
Wouldn't you agree with that?
That I should be, because I'm a public figure, and I talk about politics, don't you think I should be held to a higher standard than the rest of you?
Yeah, I think so.
You know, with great power comes great responsibility.
But even with average power comes some average responsibility.
You have to take it up a little bit.
And so, in my opinion, if I can be, you know, some tiny little voice that says, let's not focus on people's appearance.
Let's not do that.
We can do better than that.
I think that's useful.
Trump does it all the time, but he does it sort of in a, let's say, a competitive context, which is really different than anything we're doing.
Plus, it works. When Trump does it, it actually changes reality.
If you and I make fun of somebody, we're just assholes.
That doesn't change anything.
We're not going to shame Michael Moore into getting an upgrade on his look or something.
And by the way, I'm nothing to look at either, so there's nothing I could add to that.
All right. I guess we'll find out more about Musk's tortious claims.
All right. Did I miss anything else I missed?
Rob Reiner. I think it's time for a closing simultaneous sip, and by closing I mean for the YouTube and Spotify people, as opposed to locals that I'll talk to you in a moment.
Are you ready? Go!
Correction? Correction.
I've got a correction in the comments here from Mavro, who informs us that she is bloody gorgeous.
I think she. I'm hoping you're she.
Bloody gorgeous. And I do not disagree with that.
Because I've noted that the people on Locals are unusually sexy.
That's a thing. In fact, if you subscribe to the Locals platform...
You become immediately 10% sexier.
And I promise that.
That's guaranteed. You can have your money back from somebody else, not from me, but somebody will give you money if it's not true.
I promise.
Every one of you is sexier the moment you subscribe.
Because you'll be smarter.
You'll be a go-getter.
You will have identified yourself as...
Above the unwashed masses.
More educated, more kind, more useful, and more successful.
