Episode 1924 Scott Adams: Trump Alienates His Base, And Elon Musk Tries To Turn Twitter Around
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Content:
A breathing reframe
Georgia runoff
Twitter peer-to-peer payment system
Student loan forgiveness
President Trump vs. Governor DeSantis
Arizona election rules delaying results
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I don't know. You've probably been exercising a little extra?
Maybe doing your breathing exercises?
I don't know. After we do the simultaneous sip, I'm going to give you a reframe that will change your life.
That's my challenge. Do you think I can do that?
Do you think I can give you Like two sentences that will change your life.
I think I can, actually.
Like, actually, I think I can.
Truly. Alright, but before we do that, we're going to take it up a notch.
You ready? Here we go.
All you need is a cup or mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice of stainless steel.
A canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now. Go.
Savor it. Savor it.
Good. Good. All right.
Are you ready for the reframe in just a few sentences that will change your life?
Ready? Here it comes.
You're not waiting in line.
You're doing breathing exercises.
That's it. So I've been trying to figure out some way that I could work the habit of breathing exercises into my daily life.
It turns out that every day I spend at least some time standing in line.
Right? Grocery store or Starbucks or gas station or something.
So you're always standing in line.
So, you could take out your phone, which is what I used to do, take out my phone, and then I would probably make myself more anxious.
I would enjoy it.
That's why I look at my phone.
But it makes you a little anxious, doesn't it?
So instead, I'm having really good success with that Andrew Huberman two inhales and one long exhale.
You know, you do one big sniff in with your nose.
And then before you exhale, you do a second aggressive sniff.
So you fill your lungs with two nose sniffs, and then you do one long exhale.
And I can actually feel the extra energy that causes anxiety.
I like to say it that way.
I can actually just feel it go away instantly.
But it doesn't stay away.
But if you keep doing the breathing thing, it does feel like it lasts a while.
So I've been doing the breathing exercises, got off all of my blood pressure meds.
Yesterday I checked my blood pressure.
It was 118 over 78 on no meds.
And the only thing I've been doing differently is the breathing exercises.
But I have been walking and exercising and doing all the right stuff.
And let me check in with you.
Honestly, I've always believed that I could get a lot of benefit out of breathing exercises, because all of the science, everybody who's tried it, it's very consistent, right?
It's one of the things you've been hearing for years, but it's hard to actually work it into your life.
And the part that I couldn't figure out is how to carve out a little breathing time or a little meditation time.
And I just realized I don't need to.
Just whenever I'm bored, Instead of my phone, I'll just do some breathing exercises.
It's been great so far. Wait till you see how that changes your life.
You know, interestingly, on a similar topic, I guess Dr.
Huberman, who is the person promoting this breathing exercise, and other things, he did some big live event at the Beacon Theater in New York City.
It was packed. I saw a picture of it.
And... I saw a tweet from Adam Dopamine, who says, you'll know it's the golden age when educators are celebrities.
And I thought, whoa, that's kind of happening.
Jordan Peterson is a celebrity educator, wouldn't you say?
Yeah. You know, weirdly, Joe Rogan's a celebrity educator, you know, in his own way, through guests.
But yeah, Andrew Huberman is exactly that.
He's famous for being somebody educating people.
Yeah, Lex Friedman.
I think Tim Ferriss, maybe the original.
But V.D. Hansen, right?
So I like that.
Now, I've used other descriptors like Internet Dads and stuff, but I try to do the same thing.
You know, I'm trying to give you useful things and see if it helps your life.
The best Fetterman joke so far from Twitter user Blake Bee, and he tweeted this today.
Biden slash Fetterman 2024.
It's a no-brainer.
Yeah, that would be, that's the bumper sticker I want to see.
Biden-Fetterman 2024.
It's a no-brainer.
It's tough to top that joke.
I've been waiting for somebody to capture just the right spirit of it.
There it was. There it was.
Now, many of you are probably saying to yourself, and I heard this a lot on social media, Fetterman, how can those Democrats elect somebody who performs so poorly in public?
And that was actually my digital assistant talking to me for some reason.
Anyway, but here's what I would counter through that.
Have you had that same feeling?
The Fetterman doesn't look like he's up to the job of being a senator.
You've had that feeling, right?
Let me give you some context.
Think about how many people are in Congress, okay?
It's a lot. Add the Senate to the House.
How many are there?
If you add them together, 535?
Or is that just the House? 435 plus 100, yeah.
So there are 535 of them.
Alright, now here's a question that's going to mess with your head.
How many do you regularly see on TV? It's the same 12 or so, right?
And do you know why you see those same 12?
And think about that on the Democrat side, that 12 would include Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
It's the best we have.
The 12 that you see, it's the best we have.
Now, I think some of those 12 are actually very strong, right?
Tom Cotton, you see him a lot.
Very strong politician.
Rand Paul, yeah, very strong.
Ted Cruz, very strong.
But I'm thinking that the fact that we only see about six Republicans and about six Democrats, I have a theory that most of the rest of them would be sort of a John Fetterman if you put them on TV. A little bit more of a John Fetterman situation, if you know what I mean.
Now, I'm only partially joking, but not really.
There's a reason you only see 12 of them.
It's because they're the only ones who can do it or they're interested or they come off well on TV. I feel like the rest of the senators are a generic guy and a generic woman.
Right? Like all the rest of them are the guy who has the right hair That's about it.
He's got the voice and the hair.
I'm the senator. I've got the right hair and I've got the right voice.
And I'm the senator from the great state of...
I don't know.
One of the ones you never hear about.
I'm the senator.
on the race center.
And then if it's a woman, it just looks like a real estate agent who aged out of the real estate job.
All right, so Fetterman can't be any worse than the average.
And really, they mostly vote for their own team, so what's the difference?
He'll be fine. I continue to watch CNN for its indications it's really moving to the middle and it's going to stay there.
And sure enough, sure enough.
So I watched a clip on Don Lemon's morning show.
And I know, I know, as soon as I said Don Lemon, you said, well, okay, CNN's not moving to the middle there, right?
But watch me surprise you.
Don Lemon actually said something I totally agree with.
All right? Here it comes.
It's kind of mind-boggling, too.
This is actually mind-boggling.
Not only did Don Lemon say something that I agreed with, but you will, too.
You will, too. And it's going to make you angry, you know, if you're not a Don Lemon fan.
You're going to be angry how much you agree with him.
Do you think I can do that?
Do you think I can say something?
I can quote Don Lemon from this morning, And that my audience will agree with him.
Do you think that's possible?
He and some others were talking about a clip of Lindsey Graham giving a weirdly emotional plea for Herschel Walker.
And Lindsey Graham looked like he was going to cry.
You know, some people were teasing him, looked like he was drunk in the morning.
I don't think he was drunk. But he was weirdly emotional.
I mean, he's... I didn't understand it, honestly.
I didn't really understand why Lindsey Graham was so emotional.
But here's what he was selling.
He said that a vote for Hershel Walker would be, here I'm paraphrasing, would be inspirational for black conservatives.
And so voting for Herschel Walker is a much bigger importance because it could help bring black conservatives into the conservative movement.
And so it's much bigger than, you know, Herschel Walker.
And Van Jones said...
You know, not a big fan of Herschel Walker.
Van Jones says...
If you're a black conservative and you want somebody to admire, admire Tim Scott.
And I thought, that's why I like Van Jones.
I've always liked Van Jones.
Because he at least puts things in an attempt to see both sides.
He takes the side.
He takes the side.
That's okay. Everybody takes the side.
But at least he shows the other side when he talks about it.
So he actually gave an example of a conservative that black voters should look up to.
And here's the thing, he didn't hedge it.
You'd expect a hedge.
It's like, well, you know, Tim Scott, that's the best you can do, or just some kind of hedge, but no.
He just said, there's one you can look up to.
So I said, okay, that's CNN looking pretty open-minded.
You know, at the same time, he was slamming Herschel Walker.
And then Don Lemon busts Lindsey Graham's appeal to Herschel Walker as being an inspiration to black voters, and here's what Don Lemon said.
Isn't that identity politics?
Isn't that race politics?
Yup. Yup.
That's what it was. That was exactly race politics.
And now, how blown away are you?
How blown away are you that you're agreeing with Don Lemon right now on CNN? Now, he's pointing it out as a criticism, right?
It's hypocritical.
But as soon as I heard it, as soon as I heard it, I said, ah, why am I agreeing with you?
Because he's right. It's actually easy to agree with Don Lemon when he's right.
Turns out it wasn't hard at all.
He just had to be right. So Twitter...
The Twitter situation is just so interesting.
What a time to be alive.
So Twitter, depending on who you listen to, Twitter is either blowing up or it's going to be the biggest thing ever.
And I think it's totally a, you know, a Schrodinger's cat situation where it's sort of both.
And if you look at Musk's pattern with his other companies, they were all close to failure.
I mean, really dire situation before they became huge.
You know, Tesla and SpaceX.
And now he's doing the same play with Twitter.
So he's told the employees it's a dire situation, using that word, dire.
It's reported today he's even said bankruptcy is possible.
And, you know, advertisers are leaving, and they're bleeding money, $4 million a day, and the executives are quitting, and allegedly fired one of them for being disrespectful, and now all the executives are gone.
So, let me ask you this.
Have you ever heard of a tech company that didn't operate well because the executives left?
Will it make any difference?
What were they doing?
I'll bet those executives weren't doing anything but bitching for the last week.
There's probably no difference.
You know, as long as you have enough of the technical people coming to work, you're pretty good.
Now, the head of sales left, and I think the marketing all got fired.
So what happens when you fire everybody in marketing?
Well, if you're Elon Musk, he reports that Twitter usage is at an all-time high.
It's at an all-time high.
So he's getting all the interest he wants, and who knows how much of that will last.
But people are bitching like crazy about feature changes and buying your little Twitter verification.
And now there's going to be a new thing where you're not only verified, which means you're a real person, but you're also some kind of a notable person or something.
I don't know. So people like me, we got slammed back at level.
I think it's going to stay that way.
So in other words, my sort of prestige for being a blue check person on Twitter, I think will be taken away, in the sense that I'll fit in with anybody who's verified now.
Is that good or bad?
What do you think? So not from my point of view, but from your point of view.
From your point of view, is it good or bad that I'm brought down to the same level as everybody else?
Most of you say good. Alright, I'll take your view.
Obviously, it's not my self-interest.
You can see that, right?
It's not to my self-interest.
I don't like it. But I'm not going to stop using Twitter.
And the fact that you all like it, that's good enough for me.
If it's good enough for all of you, that's good enough for me.
I don't have to win every game, right?
Sometimes you can win.
That's okay. You win this one.
That's all right with me.
All right? Some more interesting things.
Did you hear that Biden was asked, and it looked like a planted question from Bloomberg, the Bloomberg company, if Biden thinks that Musk's foreign business connection should be investigated by the government?
And then Biden gives this squinty, like, evil look, and then he takes a long time to answer, I think that might be worth looking into.
Now, of course, you know, he's got his own foreign connection problems that are well reported.
So there's the hypocrisy angle, but it's really chilling, isn't it?
Because on one hand, I'm glad that my government would at least be, you know, sensitive to a billionaire policy You know, who owns a major communication platform.
And if they have any foreign ties, there's a Saudi investor who's part of the deal.
So I don't mind that that gets looked into, but it doesn't look like they're looking into it because it's a good thing to do.
It really looks like they just want to take him out.
Doesn't it? Like, it doesn't feel like your government doing the government's job, which I wouldn't mind at all if they were a little bit vigilant about a billionaire with a major communication platform.
That's not the worst thing in the world.
But I think you need something a little solid.
To, you know, maybe hang your hat out before you scare the...
And even saying it in public is super douchebaggy.
What do you think of that?
Even if Biden believed that it should have happened, given that there's no specific claim of impropriety, shouldn't he have shut the fuck up like a citizen of the United States would do?
Like any good citizen would do?
If you only had a suspicion...
That there might be something wrong without any actual, you know, detailed allegation.
And you're the president of the United States?
You should shut the fuck up about a private citizen may or may not have done something illegal.
That's not cool at all.
You know, maybe if he were a political foe, that's different.
But he's a private citizen.
You don't accuse him of maybe being associated with something unsavory literally from the lectern of the presidency.
That's not cool. Not cool at all.
But I don't mind that the government is, in fact, looking into it.
All right. So apparently Musk had an all-hands meeting he called this morning, and he's telling them that one of the things he wants to do with Twitter, you've heard before, is turn it into a peer-to-peer payment system.
Now, if you say to yourself, I don't think that Elon Musk can save Twitter because not enough people will pay $8, Apparently the math agrees with you.
It doesn't look like that would work.
If you say you can't save Twitter because there won't be enough advertising revenue, Looks like you're right.
So it looks like if you added his subscriptions to his advertising fees, it doesn't come close to paying the bills, even after the layoffs.
Now, I'm open to a fact check on that, but I think that's true, right?
That it's not really close.
Am I right? Now, how much money could he make as a payment system?
What would a brand new payment system be worth if you're already using it every day, it's got hundreds of millions of users who are already the base, It's created by Elon Musk, who is one of the PayPal creators.
So, clearly, this is an industry that has connections and probably more...
He's probably as qualified as anybody on the planet to build a payment system on top of Twitter.
I mean, who else would you pick for that, right?
Now, imagine all of the things that you might want to use a payment system for, such as everything you see on Twitter.
Let me tell you what my experience is on Instagram.
So Instagram shows me an ad every day that I want to buy.
Every day. Every single day I see an ad, because they're really good at matching the ad.
I mean, so it's like they're reading my mind.
And do you know why I don't buy it through Instagram?
Because I don't have a payment system that's, like, automatically connected.
I don't know. Do they have even Google Payment connected?
I don't know. But it looks like it takes me to the individual company's own payment system, and then I have to put in all my information.
So you know what I do? I go to Instagram, I see an ad for something I want, and then I go to Amazon and I buy it.
And Instagram loses that transaction.
If Instagram let me click on the ad and pay it with a payment system that was built into Instagram, and I already have Google Pay or whatever it is, I have that.
So some kind of other system to connect in there.
Now, I'm surprised...
Yeah, the Apple doesn't work on the individual payment sites, though.
Like, if you go to the company's own site, Apple payment doesn't seem to work all the time.
Anyway, so here's my point.
The potential for Twitter as a digital payment site is way bigger than its potential as social media.
You get that, right?
Now, here's the next part.
If you could use Venmo, but you think Venmo might turn you off for your political opinions, or you could use the Twitter payment system, and you're pretty sure you won't get turned off for your political opinions, which one are you going to use?
Do you see it yet?
A Twitter payment system would be almost automatic for anybody who didn't want to use a system that was going to penalize you for being a conservative.
Do you know how much money Elon Musk could make with a payment system that wasn't going to kick you off for your opinion?
Nobody else is making one, are they?
Now, let me take you a little further.
If you're one of the richest people in the world, one of the things you should own would be a satellite network that does internet.
Check. Got it?
Got that. You also need a media platform.
That's Twitter. What's the last thing you need that you really, really need?
Not Mars.
No, not Neuralink.
Although Neuralink would be important.
No, not an army. No.
You need a bank.
Elon Musk, I think, is going to be your bank.
Now, I don't know that, but I don't think he'd be happy with just being another peer-to-peer payment company.
I think he would just go full bank.
If he goes full bank, there is no limit to how much money he can make.
Yeah. Yeah, now you're talking a trillion.
You're talking like as big a Wells Fargo size valuation.
So, the part that the average non-business person sees here is that he's in total trouble.
You know, he's bleeding money and people are quitting and they're all mad at him and the features aren't working and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you're blinded to the fact that combining Twitter with a payment system might be one of the biggest, most valuable companies ever created in the history of civilization.
Thank you.
So there's that.
There's that. All right.
So apparently on CBS, on a show called The Good Fight, which I've never seen, There was a plot line in which the real Governor DeSantis is accused, falsely accused.
So even in the show, even in the show, it's treated as a false accusation, but you don't find out it's false for a while, that there was some, like, sexual impropriety.
And the fact that a TV show would do a fictional story about an accusation of a real person with a sexual accusation is probably one of the worst things you'll ever see.
Now, they do treat it as a character made it up.
That doesn't help.
That doesn't help.
No. Because once that's in your head, it's paired in your head with, that's just not cool.
That's not cool. So I guess people were complaining about that and should.
I saw somebody refer to Biden's idea that he would do a student loan.
I guess Fox News calls it a handout.
What's it called? Debt forgiveness, but it's not really that.
It's just moving the debt to somebody else.
So Fox News calls it a student loan handout.
All right, let's call it a handout.
But it was the perfect bait and switch, wasn't it?
The only thing better than buying votes is buying votes and not paying for it.
Or buying votes with the money from your opponents or something.
Biden actually found a way to convince idiots that he was going to cancel the debt even though everybody told him it was illegal and couldn't happen.
And he just, oh, well, I'm doing it anyway.
And then all the people are like, oh, I'll vote for that free money.
And then he gets a lot of young people votes who are, like, trying to get their debt canceled.
I'll bet that's a big story part of the young female...
Oh, has anybody said this yet?
Young single women are more likely to have worthless college degrees than any other group.
Am I right? Let me say it again.
The segment that is most likely to have a worthless college degree, in other words, somebody who can't pay back their debt, is single women.
Because they don't have a husband to help.
That's not sexist.
You have just a partner to help.
And they're more likely to have taken a less useful commercial kind of a major.
By the way, I might be operating from ignorance and bigotry, but wouldn't the data back me on this?
I'm just spitballing here.
Has anybody mentioned that yet?
Have you heard anybody in the news yet mention the connection that The young women are the most likely to have debt that they can't pay back from college.
So this was really kind of a brilliant play by the Democrats to promise this thing, and then they get the credit for trying, even though they had to know it couldn't work.
You know, when I say that the Democrats outplayed the Republicans, they really did.
They really did.
The Democrats outperformed in the weasel tricks and the persuasion and stuff.
And let me say, if the Republicans had done the same thing, I'd still say it's a weasel play, but effective.
It worked. So, there's that.
A good bait and switch.
Alright, I know what you want.
Do you want me to talk about Trump?
Alright, so here's the basic story.
Trump did a lengthy attack on DeSantis, if you want to call it an attack, on Truth Social, and it bleeds over into the other platforms.
And Trump's story, I'll just summarize it, is that Trump is the reason DeSantis is successful, because sometime in the past when DeSantis was struggling to get elected for some lower office, I guess, Trump Trump backed him, and that was the difference, according to Trump.
And now Ron DeSanctimonious, as he calls him yet again, is being sort of a disloyal traitor to Trump for, I think, not ruling out a run for presidency, right?
And I think that's all it is.
And then, all right, so you've got Trump's turning on DeSantis, and then Trump also turned on Governor Youngkin.
And so today he mocked Governor Youngkin.
And he said, he printed his name as two parts, Young and then K-I-N-kin.
And then in parentheses he said, sounds like a Chinese name.
And that's when I tweeted, I'm out.
I'm out. I'm out.
I'm not going to do this again.
Not going to do it again. Nope.
Not going to do it yet. Here's my personal thinking, right?
And this is purely personal.
I lost about a third of my income for years, and probably forever, for backing Trump.
Backing Trump was really fucking expensive, both socially and economically.
I mean, it was just a disaster.
But I also thought it was something the country needed.
And so I thought, well, I can afford it.
And so it felt like I was on the right side, right?
The right side of history and stuff.
So you can do a little bit more, take a little bit more pain if you're on the right side.
But there are now alternatives to Trump, DeSantis being the obvious one, that make his contribution not essential.
In other words, policy-wise, Trump kind of established what is and is not a reasonable policy, and I think other Republicans are going to follow that example.
So you get now Trump policies without Trump, and here's the thing that makes me crazy.
I don't know if Trump doesn't know when he says things that people will easily interpret as racist.
I don't know if he doesn't know.
But whether he knows that he's doing it or not, I don't want to be part of it anymore.
Because he's at an age where I can't really endorse a president at that age.
And I don't want to be embarrassed by him anymore.
I don't want somebody to say, he said that racist thing, what do you say, Scott?
I want to say, I don't care.
I don't think he's going to be president again.
Now, if you've taken the temperature on social media, I've seen people who are saying, bye, they're already checking out.
So if you check the temperature on social media, you can see that people have really turned on Trump in a way that we never saw before.
We never saw before.
And if he were the only option, that would be a different conversation, but he's not.
Now, here's... So there are two things I don't like him.
When he said that young kin sounded like a Chinese name, I think what he was doing is saying that he has some connections to China that he wants you to worry about or something.
But the way it comes off is that other way.
It's like somehow ethnicity matters to something that it shouldn't.
So... And then the other thing is that he attacked two governors on his own team who really didn't have it coming.
And that's different than what we've seen from Trump before.
The thing you liked about Trump was attacking the other team.
Now, Trump would say, I'm sure, but you watched me attack all those Republicans in the primaries.
In 2016, right?
He attacked all those Republicans.
Nobody complained about that.
But that was in the primary.
That was in the primary.
If DeSantis says he's running for president, yeah, fine.
The moment that DeSantis says he's running for president, yeah, whatever he says is fine.
That's all part of the process.
And same with Junkin. But if they're not running against you, and they're on the same team, that just doesn't feel right, does it?
And I'm not necessarily backing either of those two people.
I'm just saying it just doesn't feel the same as it felt in the early days of Trump.
Now... Here's the only analysis that I think matters for this Trump-DeSantis thing.
And I saw a tweet on it from Unhoodwinked, a Twitter account.
And Unhoodwinked says this, there's no one who would vote for Trump that would not vote for DeSantis.
But that doesn't work the other way around.
That's all you need to know.
Do you agree? Now, don't treat it as a real absolute, because there are no such things as absolutes like this.
But... DeSantis doesn't really have any reason to reject him, does he?
If you're a conservative, he has no reason to reject him.
But Trump has reasons.
Reasons to love him, which I totally get, but reasons to reject him.
So, now here's the counter-argument.
I'll give you the counter-argument. The counter-argument is that Trump won, I think it was a white, rust belt, And nobody won them before, and you would need them to win.
I don't know that that argument works anymore.
Because I don't know that those Rust Belt people were voting exactly for his personality.
Maybe they were at the beginning.
But I think they like the policies.
So if they think they can get the Trump policies without being associated with a racist, I feel like that might be a better deal.
And I don't think Trump is racist, by the way, but in terms of how he's being framed.
All right. So here's some more people turning on people.
All right. So Trump says DeSantis turned on Trump.
So now Trump's turning on DeSantis.
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, according to the news, is allegedly turning on Trump.
Through his media organs of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and the Post, I guess.
And, yeah, there's some reporting that Murdoch is anti-Trump.
Your Post, yeah.
Have you seen it?
Have you watched Fox News in the last day or two?
Would you say that Fox News has gone pro-DeSantis and anti-Trump, yes or no?
In your opinion, Has Fox News gone pro-DeSantis and anti-Trump?
Yeah. So Tucker Carlson is going strong, DeSantis, and I think Hannity, too.
It looks like it, yeah.
So I would say that the evidence supports that hypothesis, but we have to speculate because we can't read Murdoch's head.
It looks like it. All right.
And the buzz is all the conservative commentators are, you know, Trump is dead and Trump is over.
So, now, Trump has a big announcement coming up.
Do you think he'll go ahead and announce that he's running?
Or will the feedback that he got this week...
Convince him to not run, which would be the most amazing mind F of all time.
I feel like maybe he has to run to keep Truth Social alive.
Because who's going to go to Truth Social if Trump doesn't run?
That would be a tough business barrier to get past.
Yeah, you would? Yeah, we'll see.
Now, can I give myself some wiggle room in case I'm wrong about everything?
All right, I'm going to give myself some wiggle room.
You have to remember I did this so that later when you call me to the woodshed, I'll have that little excuse.
Here's my little excuse.
Nothing about Trump is predictable.
Okay. So...
If three months from now, Trump is saying all the right things and DeSantis said that he's not running, for example, and it looks like whoever's going to run on the other side is a complete waste of carbon, you know, I might have to say what Trump is doing right, but I don't know if I can say I'm going to be a supporter.
But I'm going to be practical.
I mean, I'm going to do what makes sense for America as I see it.
Wherever that takes me.
All right, so Georgia runoff.
Walker and Warnock are going to do a runoff.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
The Georgia race was very close, which is why there's a runoff.
And nobody's complaining about irregularities, are they, in Georgia?
Did I miss it? Is anybody complaining about election irregularities in Georgia?
Because it would be amazing if they're not.
Right? Some are.
Stacey Abrams was complaining.
Is she the only one?
I don't know that there are any specifics.
I think Stacey Abrams was more complaining about the rules in Georgia, not about anybody cheating.
I don't think she made a comment about any specific irregularity.
Wait, Glenn Youngkin has an engineering degree?
Hello, I just found my next president.
All right.
What's going on here?
Yeah, so I feel like that's good news, isn't it?
If Georgia did an election that was that close so far, and people are not, at least no credible people are complaining about it.
Now let's talk about Arizona.
All right, here's a little knowledge question for you.
The reason that Arizona's vote count for governor and senate, and more I guess, the reason that it's delayed You all know the reason it's delayed is that Arizona has different rules than other states.
Why? Go.
Why does Arizona have different rules than other states?
The most obvious question.
No, give me real reasons.
Not the funny reasons.
They're idiots, they're cheaters, blah, blah.
Hobbes, blah, blah. No, corruption.
No, no. Those are all the easy reasons.
No, not that. Don't give me the easy ones.
Give me the real reasons.
So it turns out there's actually a real reason.
You want to hear the real reason?
And I want to see if you've even heard it, right?
Because this was what was bothering me.
I follow the news every day.
Like, I follow it pretty closely.
I didn't know the reason.
I didn't know the reason that Arizona does it differently.
But there is a reason.
And it's actually pretty good.
And so far, not one of you knows the reason.
No? Well, signature verification is part of the reason, yes.
That's not what I was going for.
Here's the reason. They let you vote absentee up until Election Day so that you don't have to stand in line to vote.
They've eliminated the need to stand in line to vote, but you can still vote on Election Day.
You just drop it in a box, right?
Now, is that a good reason?
Let me tell you one of the reasons that people don't vote.
One of the reasons people don't vote is because they don't want to wait in line.
That's actually a pretty good reason.
Isn't it? Isn't that a pretty good reason?
The trouble is that it makes them out of line with the rest of the country and everybody complains.
But you could almost...
Let me give you my overall opinion.
If I were to engineer the system myself, I would say, let's keep that benefit, but make everybody the same.
So we'll have everybody vote on election day, any way they want, with paper ballot or anything else.
But you say, nobody gets any results for a week.
You just say, we're not going to give you any results for a week.
That's our new system. Then you've eliminated waiting in line, which has got to be a big part of the friction.
I mean, I wouldn't wait in line.
Anyway, so there are some other differences in Arizona.
One is that they got pushback in prior elections, and so they're going really, really extreme to make sure that they're doing signature verification correctly.
It takes longer. What do you think of that?
What do you think of them doing more aggressive signature verification, but it might take longer?
It might be good.
It might be good. Like, on paper, that's a pretty good thing.
Have I ever told you the concept of malicious compliance?
Malicious compliance?
You know what I'm talking about?
Right? I think that's what's happening.
Here's the Dilbert filter on the Arizona situation.
Take yourself back to the prior election.
You're an election worker, and you're not a leader.
You're a lower level functionary.
And you just got shit on by everybody for not doing a careful enough job of signature verification.
I mean, you really, really got beat up on that signature verification thing.
Next election comes along, and nothing's changed, except you got in trouble last time for not doing signature verification carefully enough.
What are you going to do?
You're going to maliciously comply, because they probably asked for a lot more resources.
Probably, right?
Probably got denied.
It's now the same fuckers who are pissed off because they got shit on for not doing enough verification are giving people exactly what they asked for.
Here's your careful verification.
If you want careful verification, I'll stare at this fucking ballot for an hour.
I'm getting paid by the hour.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think the people who are staring at the signature verifications, do they get paid by the job?
Or by the hour? What would you guess?
If you had to guess, of course they're being paid by the hour.
Of course. Of course they are.
They're being paid by the hour, and they'll get in trouble if they go fast, but they'll make all the people who complained about them look like assholes if they go slow.
So what are they going to do?
Malicious compliance. I've talked about this before.
You see it a lot. When people at a lower level get shit on, they start doing the job the way it was designed to be done, which is inefficiently.
Because if you follow all the requirements of the job, you can't even do the job.
I first learned this when I worked for the bank.
I was a bank teller. I've told this story before.
And I got in trouble for, I don't know, not checking two IDs or something.
I checked one ID for some lower dollar amount.
You know, I got in trouble, and my boss said, you know, you've got to follow the rules.
Like, these rules are here for a reason.
It's two IDs. And I argued something along the lines of, this is a regular customer.
This is somebody I deal with, like, once a week for, like, months.
I know this person.
I practically know their account number.
So I took one ID in that case.
And the boss says, but that's not the rule.
The rule is two IDs.
You've got to follow the rules.
So I started following all the bank rules, which resulted in me sending almost every customer to a supervisor because I couldn't handle the transaction.
All I had to do was follow the rules and I couldn't do my job.
And the line just went out the door.
And eventually my boss came over to me.
And she said, you know, you're not getting it done.
I said, I'm getting it done. I'm doing everything exactly the way you taught me.
I'm following every rule.
And these customers do not have proper ID. So I'm sending every one of them to you.
That is what you asked me to do.
That's your system.
And then she basically whispered to me, You see all these customers from Chevron?
Because we're next to a Chevron headquarters, so we've got all the Chevron high-paid people.
She says, you see that little pin that they're wearing?
I think it was maybe a tie pin or something.
So a lot of the people had like a 5-year, a 10-year, a 20-year pin.
You could actually tell how long they'd work for Chevron by their clothing.
They'd have a little pin with their length of service.
She goes, if you see that little pin, she goes, they're fine.
That's like the opposite of, you know, the very opposite of bank rules.
So basically, she told me to follow the rules or I'd be fired.
So I followed the rules, and she learned the hard way that no customer was served.
And then she said, don't follow the rules.
Just don't follow the rules.
It's the only way we could get this done.
That might be happening in Arizona.
That's what it looks like.
Alright, but it annoys me that the reporting on Arizona is just sort of generically, why don't they do a better job?
I feel like you need to dig down at least as far as I dug down, right?
Weren't you also wondering what the hell's going on?
Turns out there's a reason.
They don't like lines, and it's probably malicious compliance.
And I think they had a record number of ballots that need signature verification, too.
So it's just a bigger load than normal.
Which, by the way, to be clear, none of this explains why they can't just do it the way Florida does it.
You just have longer lines and some other trade-offs.
But they can do it. All right, let's talk about Ukraine.
It does look like Russia genuinely is pulling back from the Khursan Oblast region, but it looks like all they're doing is getting on the other side of the river.
So the river was like a natural defensive point.
So it looks like they're just taking a winter defensive posture.
So I'm not sure we can learn too much about what's happening at the moment.
It looks like both sides are making their winter strategy setups, so it's hard to know what's going on.
But I guess the United States has twisted the arm of Zelensky to at least say what he would accept.
Now, I'm operating from memory, so Zelensky said he would consider negotiating with Putin, but he would require that, at the very least, Putin gives back the territory that he took this year.
Interestingly, that would not include Crimea.
And I don't know why I'm not seeing a ton of reporting that Ukraine has apparently given up on trying to get Crimea back.
Now, none of us thought that that was likely to happen.
I don't think many people thought it.
But isn't that a gigantic change?
And fact-check me.
He did say that, right? He said he's happy getting back what they took this year so that Russia would keep Crimea.
And I think most people thought that's where it would end up anyway.
Then I think he's asking for, quote, guarantees that it won't happen again.
Now, that's a good thing to ask for because it's vague.
So, you know, there's room to work with that, you know, the guarantees.
Now, the guarantees could be that Russia says, all right, you can have NATO. Maybe that's the guarantee.
Or maybe they'd say we'll remove all, you know, offensive weapons or something.
There's probably a way to get it.
Then, wasn't there also something about reparations?
Give me a fact check of that.
Did Zelensky say there would have to be reparations?
Because if he did, that's the right thing.
Yeah, he did. So that's exactly the right thing to ask for.
Why? Why should he ask for reparations?
Go. Why should he ask for reparations?
Well, one reason is that he should get reparations.
But what's the other reason? It's something to trade away.
Reparations are an invisible, imaginary asset.
So he can imagine them into existence like Trump.
Trump was the expert at that, imagining something into existence and then trading it away, to trade a nothing for a something.
What Zelensky wants is his territory back.
And that would be the win of all wins.
I mean, he would be a legend forever if he did that and got a permanent peace.
So reparations would be nice.
You know, how awesome would reparations be?
But that's not going to happen.
It just gives them something to give up.
So if you were to read the ways Zelensky is responding, that does look exactly like somebody who's serious about peace, to me.
But as somebody else said, it makes no sense to actually agree to peace while the Ukrainians are gaining territory.
However, will they keep gaining territory in the winter?
So I don't know enough about the military capabilities in the winter to know the following answer.
Are we guaranteed going to have four months of nobody changing anything?
Because nobody's going to do much in the winter.
So we're kind of guaranteed to a four-month stalemate, right?
Yes or no? I see a no.
I'm not sure if we're smart enough to know this, are we?
A little bit of disagreement?
Winter favors Ukraine, somebody says.
Favors, okay. But is that enough that they will get any serious territorial gain?
I suppose you can just keep shelling in the winter, right?
I guess that still works, yeah.
So if Russia is still within the artillery range, then Ukraine will keep pounding them.
Yeah, that makes sense. Now, next question.
Are the Russian supply lines, for food especially, are they more vulnerable in the winter?
It feels like it, right?
Is that an obvious question or not obvious?
Because I would think that the offensive ability might be limited in some ways, just as everything's limited in the winter.
I don't know. But I feel like the Ukrainians might be able to starve the Russians out if they have the high Mars system that can hit their food shipments.
But on the other hand, it seems like getting food to soldiers when you're in Russian territory feels like that's the most doable thing.
Maybe they just have to do an airlift or something.
I doubt you could starve them, actually, as long as Russia is a functioning country.
All right. I would say that where it's heading is they'll probably have some serious negotiations this winter, But neither side would agree if they think they're going to have the advantage after the winter is over.
So would either Ukraine or Russia have a reason to believe that they would have the advantage in the spring?
Would that give Russia time to recoup and give them an advantage?
So does Russia have the advantage by just waiting?
And just continuing to turn the lights out in Ukraine and bomb their power stations?
I don't know. Probably yes.
I guess I don't know enough to say yes or no on that.
All right. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the fascinating live stream for today.
I think I've delivered on my promise.
Not only have I paired waiting in line with breathing exercises, which will change your life.
But I think I've given you some takes you're not going to see anywhere else.
All right. Is there any topic I missed?
Any topic I missed?
Let's see. Oh, let's talk about the systems.
Yesterday, I optimistically tweeted that it was sort of breathtaking to watch all of our systems self-correct.
And I mean that.
So yesterday, the...
Did we get a good inflation report or something yesterday?
What was it that drove the stock market up?
It was a good CPI report?
Now, I wouldn't believe, you know, one CPI report.
I don't know that it was the election because the election...
We would have seen that the day before.
Yeah, so we were 7.7, now 7.9.
So heading in the right direction.
All right, here's what I think we are.
I think our election system had the most transparency we've ever seen, thanks to Harmeet and her army of lawyers and the Republicans having more access to be watchers.
So I think our election system might be the best it's been.
I think that having a...
A balanced government is exactly what the public wanted.
I think the public self-corrected the government by taking its power away.
I think that's what happened.
So that's good. I think the stock market is seeing the correction.
I think our supply chains are working their way, you know, are figuring their way out.
I think we are decoupling from China.
I think China's in trouble.
And almost all of our systems are self-correcting.
And it's sort of amazing to watch it.
I think the education system is self-correcting.
If you saw, Corey DeAngelis was taking a victory lap, and I think he deserved it.
Because it turns out that the pro-education choice people, the school choice people, those candidates did unusually well.
And I think he gets credit for that.
So our education system is self-correcting, slowly.
Our inflation is coming down, slowly.
The Ukraine war, to me, it looks less and less like nuclear war and more and more like Russia is permanently degraded.
Is that a problem?
Financially, it is. But if they don't nuke us...
I don't know. TikTok revealed that...
We don't know that TikTok had any impact on the election, but we can say for sure that the channel is obvious now, that the biggest group of voters, the young women, are also the target market of TikTok.
So if China wanted to change an election, they could do it.
Here's a comment I heard.
I won't say where I heard this, but apparently if you're a TikTok user, you will not see much about the immigration problem.
Now, I'd need a confirmation of that, but I don't think TikTok is sending a lot of, hey, immigration's problem.
Look at all these people streaming across the border.
But I'll bet you're seeing plenty on abortion rights.
Now, is that because of the algorithm?
It could be the algorithm is doing what it's supposed to do, which is it might be young women are very interested in abortion and much less interested in the border, perhaps.
So maybe the algorithm is just doing what it's supposed to do.
But the problem is that China can control that algorithm, and if they did or did not do anything to interfere with their elections, they can.
If you know they can, and you can see the complete path, Then TikTok has revealed its soft underbelly, and now it can be destroyed.
But until this election, you couldn't see the direct path of how TikTok is influencing the group that influenced the elections.
And if you get caught up on the question of whether that made the difference, I'm not claiming it did.
I don't see direct evidence that it did.
I'm claiming that there's now direct evidence that it would be easy.
It would be simple, and you wouldn't know the difference.
Is Scott a narcissist?
We've been through that.
Of course I am. Can you really do this job and not be a narcissist?
I think everybody who willingly takes a public exposure type of job, at some level, must like it.
Always a little bit. Yeah, but there are two kinds of narcissists.
There's the good kind and the bad kind.
The good kind tries to get credit for doing things that are good for you.
So, you know, there's a reason that people get, like, awards for things.
It's because when people feel good helping other people, they'll do more of it.
So if being a narcissist and liking to get credit for doing good things, if that allows me to do more good things, then don't complain.
But the other kind is more of a destructive narcissist.
and everything's about them, and there's no conversation after that.
Yeah.
Andrew Tate is going to fight Jake Paul.
Is that true? Interesting.
Alright. Oh, Atavium, you're too awesome.
Tainted love. Alright, I think I've covered everything, right?
Andrew Taint? Yeah.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen of YouTube and Spotify, thanks for joining.
