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Nov. 17, 2022 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:07:15
Episode 1930 Scott Adams: I Will Tell You How Trump Can Win Without Breaking A Sweat. And More Fun

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Good morning everybody and welcome to another highlight of civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and I don't think there's been a finer experience in your life.
And if you'd like to see if you could Pull that up another notch, and I think you can.
Oh, I think you can.
Here's what you need. All you need is a cupper mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And it happens now.
Go... And if you're looking at my handsome mug that is perfect in every way and saying to yourself, whoa, I wish I could get one of those.
There's still a few available for local subscribers.
So wherever the information is on getting that.
I forget the link.
I'm sure Erica can give you the link.
Erica the Excellent will remind you of the link.
Alright, so Wall Street Journal is reporting that the thing that damn near killed me this summer is actually a common thing.
And I'd never heard of it before.
And the common thing is that old people, and I'm now putting myself in that category, We'll often think that their age is why they can't move, like can't climb up the stairs and, oh, I'm so sore and all my joints ache and stuff.
It turns out it's this massive problem that's actually caused by their medications, but they don't know it.
Just like me.
That was my exact situation.
I didn't know.
That it was anything I was doing, I thought I was just old.
I thought, oh damn, I finally reached that age where walking up the stairs is going to be like torture for the rest of my life.
As soon as I get off my blood pressure meds, one day, completely solved.
I can bounce up the stairs like a teenager.
I can do anything I want.
I can work out all day long.
Literally, the only reason I leave the gym is because I've got to do some other stuff.
I can just stay there all day and keep working out.
And I'm not sore.
Now, it's not because I'm Superman or anything.
Apparently, I think our pharmaceutical industry is just killing old people.
It might be saving their lives, too.
But I've got a feeling that people are just being killed by just legal drugs.
It's looking like it.
So watch out for that. If you know any seniors who seem to be super unable to move, check out their medications.
Might be that. The Wall Street Journal is also saying it might be long COVID, but I don't feel like that's proven yet.
Do you? I feel like there might be something to it.
But I don't think long COVID is proven exactly, is it?
But anyway, that was mentioned in the story.
Do you remember Roseanne Barr's show, The Conners?
And when Roseanne got cancelled, so did the show, but it's back.
It's back.
And it shows a promotional picture of the new family, new actors, with all wearing COVID masks.
And that's their promotional poster.
Not new? What do you mean it's not new?
Is it not new because it's been on a while?
Somebody said it's not new. But it made me wonder if...
Oh, it's a new poster.
It made me wonder if whoever does the Conners...
Did Elon Musk fire their marketing department too?
Because if you're introducing a new cast and they're wearing masks, I think you did it wrong.
Let me give you the one thing I've learned.
I may have told you this story before.
Years ago, Newsweek contacted me and said, hey, we're considering putting a Dilbert character on the cover of Newsweek.
Back when Newsweek was actually a big deal.
And I said, oh, wow.
And they said, could you draw something?
Oh, by the way, we're considering a second alternative, so we can't guarantee that Dilbert will be on the cover, but we'd like to see what you come up with, and then we'll compare it to our other alternative.
So I said, what is that other alternative?
Well, we would put an attractive female model on the cover instead of a Dilbert character.
And, you know, we'll probably test to see which one gets more attention before we decide.
I guess they do little tests of that stuff.
And I said, in other words, you're wasting my fucking time.
And they said, no, no, no, no.
We're really seriously considering both options.
And I said, there isn't any way in the world...
That a comic character gets more eyeballs from the general public than an attractive female face.
I said, you can really make me do this work.
Complete waste of time.
But I got talked into it.
Yeah, they might, and that would be a big deal.
So I do my artwork, I give it to them, and they say, yeah, we tested it.
It turns out that this attractive female face got more attention.
Now, that's an example of something I wouldn't fall for at my current age.
Right?
When I was a little less experienced, I was sort of on the bubble, like I was just experienced enough to know it was probably a waste of time, but I wasn't experienced enough to tell them to go fuck themselves, which I would do today.
Because that was the right answer.
Go fuck yourself was the right answer to why don't you just do a bunch of work and we'll compare it to this other thing that's obviously going to be the winner.
Anyway, it appears we have a strategy that the media and the Democrats have come up with And maybe even Republican types and conservatives who don't want Trump to win.
It seems they're going to starve him of attention.
Have you noticed?
Did you notice that after Trump announced, first of all, it didn't get covered everywhere.
And then it was just like silence.
Here's one line.
Did you know Trump announced he's going to run for president?
It's like everybody acted like it didn't happen.
I think they're on to him.
They finally figured out what an energy monster is.
Will it be good enough?
Well, I give you, and I hate to do this, as my example, Andrew Taint.
Andrew Taint got cancelled everywhere.
They tried to turn him off, but he just went to the podcasts.
And the podcast made, you know, infinite number of viral little videos of things he said.
And he's everywhere.
Can you avoid Andrew Tate?
Tate? Tate?
It's probably not just the algorithm sending it all to me, is it?
But you see him everywhere, don't you?
He's all over Instagram.
He's all over Twitter.
And so by canceling him, he created a model, and I'll give him credit for this.
He created a model where if he does lots of quotable stuff on podcasts, those things always get sent to social media, and then nobody can control it, or at least as obviously.
They could suppress it a little bit, but not as obviously.
That's a model that would work.
So if the mainstream media continues to suppress Trump, you can do the same thing.
Just go on all the podcasts, do little video clips of the one thing he said that was really quotable.
Just as good as the regular media.
Just as good. So I don't think the media can shut him out if he decides to go the podcast route.
We'll see. All right.
Let me tell you...
How Trump can win without breaking a sweat.
And I'll remind all of you that I don't have a favorite candidate for this upcoming 2024 election, because I'm a single-issue voter on fentanyl, and nobody's made me happy on that.
If somebody does, I'm all in.
Doesn't matter who it is, Democrat, Republican.
I'll go with anybody who can solve that problem.
So if I say something that sounds good about Trump, just put it in the context that if it were Biden, I would also say it was good, and I have.
I think you can confirm at this point that I've noted that Biden has done a number of things that were persuasion correct, and I've noted them.
A number of things that weren't, but, you know, that works both ways.
All right. Number one, a lot of smart people are telling us that Trump cannot win.
You've heard that, right? Trump can't win.
Oh, sure, he might get through the primaries, but in general, there's not enough Republican support because they're mad at him, and there certainly wouldn't be Democrat support, so he can't possibly win.
So basically, any Democrat could beat Trump, right?
And that sounds actually kind of true, doesn't it?
Would you dispute that?
If Trump can't even get the Republicans on his side, he can't win, right?
Alright, now let me play with your brains a little bit.
Let's say you accept that that's true.
Now tell me the person who can win.
What you'll find is that nobody can win.
We've actually created a situation where if you do a straight-line projection of every single candidate, Democrat or Republican, none of them can win.
Right? So I don't think there's any Republican that can get past Trump in the primary.
Correct? I don't think DeSantis would.
I think Trump would take him out in the primary.
But I also don't think he's going to enter the primaries.
That would be a disastrously stupid mistake.
Now, I'm not trying to discourage him.
I think he'd be great. I think he'd be a strong candidate.
I'd like to see the country decide on DeSantis.
Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you like to see if the country could be comfortable with him?
That would be really interesting to me.
But I don't think it's in his best interest.
And I think that's how he should make the decision.
And I think he will. So here's the problem with DeSantis.
Why do you like DeSantis?
The reason you like him is he continues to make decisions that are objectively smart.
Would you agree? It's just like he lines them up.
Smart, smart, smart, smart, smart, smart.
And they're not crazy.
You know, I think he went too far with Disney.
Small, small thing, right?
So if you think DeSantis is exactly who you imagine him to be, he's the person who makes smart decisions...
Do you think it would be smart for him to give up the most storied and successful governor in my life?
He would give that up when his kids are a certain age and entering the national race would destroy him.
Why not just wait until Trump's not in the race?
2028. And then you just walk into the job if you want it.
And you have that long to decide if you want it.
This is not a hard decision.
That if DeSantis enters the race, he's not the person you thought he was, because he would be an idiot.
Let me say it as clearly as I can.
If you think DeSantis is smart, you have to think he's not going to run.
If he runs, I will have to change my opinion of his intelligence, honestly.
I would change my opinion.
I'd love to see him run, but it would be stupid.
It would be stupid. And you know he knows that, right?
Because that's why you like him.
The whole reason you like him is he's not dumb enough to walk into a buzzsaw, right?
Oh, there's that smart guy I like.
Why is he walking into that buzzsaw that everybody in the world can see as a buzzsaw?
He won't. He won't, I think.
That's my prediction. All right, so if it's not DeSantis, nobody else can take Trump out, can they?
I mean, Trump could take himself out somehow, but let's say he doesn't.
Alright, so now you've got a scenario in which there's no other Republican that can or would win.
So now the only question is, which Democrat can beat Trump?
Well, Hillary Clinton was pretty strong, wasn't she?
As soon as you say there's a Democrat that can beat Trump, you're ignoring all of his skill.
And you're also ignoring that the Republicans are going to bitch and complain and then pull the lever for Trump, because they're not going to pull the lever for Newsom or somebody else.
Now, do you think that a younger adult white male, let's say Newsom, could win the Democratic nomination?
I don't know. It only depends how women like him.
Because the Democratic Party is just the woman party at this point.
If women say, you know, we, especially young white women, if they are pro-Newson, you know, they think he's handsome, they think he did a good job in California or something, he'd be pretty strong.
But I don't know if they can go one more cycle nominating another white guy.
Do you think the Democrats can go one more cycle nominating another white guy?
I don't know. And do you think that if the Trump team includes Newsom's ex-wife, do you think Newsom's ex-wife knows anything about him that would be damaging in a big election?
That would be a pretty risky thing.
How would you like to run a national election and your ex-wife's on the other team?
Do you think she knows where his weak spots are?
It's a worst case scenario for him.
Now, I happen to think that Newsom has all of the tools.
He has all of the tools, right?
Looks good, talks good, young enough, experienced, you know, probably would have tons of backing in his own team.
I think he has all the tools.
But maybe his time has passed.
Because the Republican Party is just not...
They're not the white man party anymore.
And I think he might find that out.
So... Anyway, let me tell you how Trump can win.
In lots of ways.
So first of all, he would scare off all of his GOP challengers or just beat them in the primaries.
And I think most of you would agree that that's going to happen.
Would you? Would most of you give me that Trump...
Is he going to win the primary at this point?
Even if people believe that he can't win the general, I think he'd still win the primary.
All right. Here's what he could do.
He could use podcasts to get around the media barriers, and then the podcast creates all these little viral videos, and then that's his campaign.
He could start his campaign by debunking the hoaxes.
You've seen my, what is it, 14 or 15 hoaxes, mostly against Trump.
He should just start and say, here's what they said about the fine people situation.
And then show the video of him denying it.
It's right there. And then show what they cut out.
So you can see how the hoax was created.
Then do the same thing for the drinking bleach hoax.
Here's the actual study that was in the news when I said it.
Here's me saying that light is a disinfectant.
Here's me saying at the end, yeah, we're talking about light.
And then you can see that the video is a snippet that cut off the two light references.
And you can see that it was a real thing in the news.
And you can confirm that it was in an account I follow.
And then they say, why did you say it was just sarcasm?
Well, I was just trying to make it go away.
Just say that. Why did you say sarcasm?
Honestly, I just wanted to make it go away.
It wasn't important. That would be a perfect answer.
Would it not? If you heard him say, no, I just said it was sarcasm because it wasn't important.
I thought it would just go away.
I didn't want to explain it.
Right? So, if he started by debunking all of the hoaxes against him...
Guess which one he could add to the list as of today?
The Washington Post reports that the documents at Mar-a-Lago were just personal mementos of no importance whatsoever.
No nuclear secrets, nothing of business potential, nothing he could sell, nothing that had any monetary value.
It was just souvenirs.
And when did they decide to report that?
After the midterms.
Does everybody see it now?
I realize Republicans have been able to see it for a while, but doesn't everybody see it now?
Like, that's some big fucking coincidence that they just said, oh, I guess that was nothing at all.
I guess it was just some documents in a box.
Just some documents in a box.
That's all it was.
Now imagine Trump having something like half an hour of camera time and a really high, let's say, what he would need is a visual production team.
Somebody would create the graphics that accompany him debunking each of the hoaxes.
So you'd have like a one-page debunk that could travel on social media along with every hoax.
So every time somebody mentioned any of the hoaxes for his entire campaign, you could take the one image created by Trump's own team that very easily summarizes how the hoax was created and what made it a hoax.
Right? So that every time it comes up, it just gets passed around social media.
Here's how they did it.
Here's how the hoax works.
You could easily do it with the...
You could show the headlines...
Here are the headlines. Here's what happened.
Here's how they admitted it was a hoax, or here's how we prove it's a hoax.
See, this is something that Trump needs to get better at.
He's excellent at creating clips where he's the star, you know, he's talking, but he hasn't figured out how to use graphic persuasion yet, something separate from his image.
And if he got the right people, that would be devastating.
Alright, so if he debunks the hoaxes, here are some things that he could promise that would make him unbeatable.
The following proposition would make Trump unbeatable, with all of his current known flaws.
Alright? It goes like this.
Number one, let's not talk about past elections, but I'm going to give you more election transparency than you've ever had before.
I guarantee that will be a high priority.
We'll do what we can to get better election transparency, make them more auditable, but let's not complain about what did or did not happen.
Let's put it behind us. Could he say that?
That would take a lot of discipline, wouldn't it?
That would take a lot of discipline.
But it is the high ground.
What if I taught you about high ground persuasion?
Once you find the high ground, the debate is over.
If Trump said, let's forget the past and work hard on bipartisan election transparency, it's done.
It's fucking done.
Nobody can argue about that position.
That's what the high ground is.
You recognize it, right? The reason I always give you examples of the high ground is that they're all a little different.
You have to see a whole basket of them before you can make your own.
But you see it, right?
The first person who says that, forget about the past.
It's going to be a big effort to get transparency.
The whole public says, yeah, I'm okay with that.
There's nothing left to talk about.
All right. Here's what else he could do.
He could have an aggressive fentanyl plant, including physically attacking the Mexican fentanyl plants.
I've tested this idea online, and I can tell you that the public is ready for it.
The public is ready for a military attack on Mexico.
And I base that on the responses to my social media.
The biggest response was, Scott, do you realize that's an act of war?
To which I say, do you realize that's the point?
Yes, I am advocating as clearly as I can an act of war against the country of Mexico in an unambiguous way.
I want them to know this is an act of war and we're going to treat it like a war.
Right? Now, do you think he could lose if he said fentanyl?
If he says that on fentanyl, he gets all the white women who know somebody who died of fentanyl back.
That's enough. That's enough.
Now, so he'd get me back completely with a good fentanyl plan.
He doesn't quite have it yet, but he's poking around the edges.
I mean, he's definitely getting close to one, but he doesn't quite have it yet.
Next, the way he should deal with the January 6 allegations is to mock them as ridiculous, the way I do and the way many of you do.
Yes, the media told you that Republicans, the most armed people in the world, stage an insurrection without bringing weapons, or at least if they brought them, they don't brandish them.
He should make that look like a fucking joke.
Say, yeah, you should worry about people with bison hats taking over the government.
And if somebody asks them about the insurrection, here's what I would do.
Let's say it's one of these insufferable media people, you know, somebody from ABC or something.
And you just say to them, let me ask you a question.
Do you think that Republicans believe they could conquer the United States by taking over a room?
Just make them answer the question.
Just walk me through it.
How did you think that was going to work?
And did you think those Republicans who didn't bring weapons or didn't brandish them, do you think that they thought they could hold that room and from there they would control the United States?
Just tell me you're thinking about it.
Like, I just want to understand how you could look at this situation and even ask the question.
How could he even ask the question?
He should never answer it.
He should mock it into the irrelevance that it is.
Now, he can't do this next part, but it'd be great if he could.
I wish I'd handled it differently.
Right? It wouldn't take much.
Wouldn't take much. I think the public needs that little bit.
They just need a little bit.
I wish I'd handled it differently.
Right? Now, he can never do that, but it wouldn't take much to just say, I wish I'd handled it differently.
It didn't work out for me.
Alright, let's go on.
Here's how else Trump could win without breaking a sweat.
Do you know how the Democrats, in my opinion, were super successful in the midterms because they were smart enough to know that if you tell somebody something will be taken away from them, that's more scary than, I promise I'll give you some free stuff.
Now that effect is so strong that I think it determined the midterms.
We're going to take away your bodily autonomy, said the Democrats.
We're going to take away your democracy, said the Democrats.
And what were the Republicans promising to give you?
I don't know. I don't know.
But it doesn't matter what they promise to give you.
What they promise to give you will never compete with what somebody says they're going to take away.
The takeaway is just the thing.
So here's how Trump could phrase his campaign as Democrats taking away stuff.
So imagine if he phrased his whole campaign as they're taking your shit.
So here's the stuff they're taking from you.
They're taking away your freedom of speech with wokeness.
They're taking away your ability to simply express yourself in the way that, you know, in your God-given way.
Isn't that stronger? If you say wokeness is bad, you're like, I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it doesn't.
I kind of like wokeness. But if they say they're going to take away your freedom of speech, you're like, what?
Yeah. You can't say stuff now.
They're taking that away. How about taking away your retirement?
Inflation is taking away your 401k.
The Democrats are bleeding your 401k.
They're taking away your chance of a happy retirement.
You feel that? Just let me say it again, and watch how your body goes into just fear.
Well, if you're a certain age.
If you're young, not. Watch.
I can activate your fear response just by saying the Democrats are draining your 401k.
Everything you've worked for, they're taking it from you.
You're going to retire into poverty if you let the Democrats keep doing this.
Did you feel it?
You can feel that as I'm talking.
That's not like an intellectual point.
You feel raped when I say that, don't you?
I'm using the word figuratively.
You feel actually raped by just the sentences.
Do you remember when you felt safe in your community?
Democrats took that from you.
Democrats took from you your right to happiness, to just walk outside and feel safe.
And they're going to take more of that from you and they're not going to give it back.
How about having a country that you knew had real borders and you were safe from external threats?
They took that from you.
They took that from you by opening the border.
You don't know what you're getting.
How about women being able to do women's sports?
I'm not on this point, but these are not my opinions.
I'm just saying what one could say.
How about your daughters in sports?
They wanted to do well.
They wanted to win. They're taking that from you.
That would be the trans argument.
I don't make that argument. I think sports are broken, not trans.
I think trans people are fine.
The way we organize the sports is suboptimal, so it causes a problem.
So, do you accept my point that everything that Trump talks about could be, let's take climate change.
They're trying to take from you your future by, you know, scaring you.
Here's what he could do with climate change, because he's very weak on climate change.
Here's a winning message on climate change.
You know, I'm not going to argue with the scientists who say that CO2 causes warming.
Because I think most Republicans believe that, that CO2 does cause warming.
What they don't believe is the doom and gloom portion of it.
Now, I know that not all of you believe it, that CO2 causes warming.
I'm saying that most Republicans do.
It's standard science now.
But what people don't necessarily believe is the predictions.
Or that, you know, we'll be dead.
So I think if he added some nuance to his opinion, you know, I think there is some risk from this warming.
But there might be a greater risk in the way we deal with it.
Wouldn't you love that? There is a risk of global warming.
I think there are enough scientists making that case that it would be unwise for me to doubt it.
There's also a risk for handling it wrong.
And that's what we've been doing so far.
Right? That would completely make me happy.
And I wouldn't even care if CO2 was or was not causing warming.
Because as long as he says the way we're dealing with it is wrong, I'm on board.
The way we're dealing with it is wrong.
Right? No matter what the actual science is, you can still say that cutting off our own energy supply was wrong either way.
And just say, I'm not the scientist.
They might be completely right about that, but what they're not right about is how to manage a country.
Eh? How about that?
How about I won't argue with the scientists if they don't tell me how to manage energy and the country?
I'll take their input, but that's part of the input.
Don't let your scientists run your government.
Right? Don't let the scientists run the government, but also don't ignore them.
Take their input. High ground maneuver wins every time.
Here's something that Trump could do that no other American leader could do.
I want to see if I can sell this to you.
I think you'll buy it immediately.
I won't have to sell it at all.
General Mark Milley says, and I think Biden says this as well, that we cannot tell Ukraine what to negotiate or when or how.
That negotiations are just going to have to be Ukraine's business.
Now, of course, we don't necessarily believe that, right?
We believe that...
I'm not done. We believe that...
Yeah, you're ahead of me. You're so ahead of me.
So... But we believe that behind the scenes, of course, America has and NATO has lots of influence.
But the story is, we're not going to tell Ukraine how to do it.
Here's something that Trump could do that no one else could do.
You ready for this? Yeah, I am going to tell you how to do it.
You're going to...
Crimea's going to stay with Russia.
Russia's going to give up the stuff it took more recently.
And then I'll tell you what's going to happen with NATO. And then you're going to do it in a month.
He could just tell them to end.
Nobody else could do it.
Do you know why? Because when Trump said, look Zelensky...
If you don't go with this, I'm cutting you the fuck off tomorrow.
He's the only person you would believe.
The only one you would believe if he said that.
Even if he were bluffing.
He's the only person you'd believe.
Am I right? He's the only person who could just say, look, you fuckers, we're not going to spend a dime on this bullshit again.
Russia, end it under this deal, or I will just fucking kill you.
I will just wipe you off the fucking map.
Just do it now.
He could do that. Tell me there's any other leader who could do that.
There is not. He is the one person in the world who could just say, this is fucking done, and it's done in one month, and this is what it looks like when it's done.
Am I right? This is a situation where you need what?
Who do you need?
Dad? Dad?
Yeah, you said bully.
I give you credit for that answer.
No, you need Dad. Dad needs to solve this, right?
Because you've got Russians who want to solve, you've got Ukrainians who want to solve, you've got Europeans who want to solve, And you've got Ukrainians who want it solved.
Do you know what they're all waiting for?
Everybody's waiting for the same thing.
Do you know what it is? Fucking leadership.
Leadership. They're all waiting for the same thing.
They all want it to end.
And they all know what it looks like.
Right? Trump is the fake because...
I've taught you about a fake because.
When everybody already wants to do something, or any one person already wants to do something, but they can't pull the trigger, like, I kind of want to do that, but all you need is any reason.
You just give them a reason.
And they go, oh, well, okay, that's a reason.
All sides in this war are ready to accept any reason to end it.
They just need one. Trump is the only one smart enough who could give them a reason.
Hey, Ukraine, here's a reason.
I'm going to cut you the fuck off in four weeks.
That's a reason, right?
Hey, Russia, I'm going to crash your economy in six months.
It'll take me about six months, but I'm actually going to crash it.
I'm not just going to sanction you.
I'm going to crash your economy, because we're done.
He's the only one who could do that.
There's nobody else that would be believable.
The first thing you should do, of course, is fire Mark Milley.
Here's my impression of General Milley.
When other leaders, political or otherwise, talk in public, Even when I disagree with them deeply, and even when I know they're lying, and even when I know they're being political, I usually think they look smart.
You know what I mean? Let's take Chuck Schumer, for example.
I disagree with him a lot, and I think he's lying a lot, but he always looks smart.
Nancy Pelosi. You know, political, she lies a lot, but she always looks smart, right?
Like, these are smart people.
Even... Eric Swalwell.
Eric Swalwell does a shifty shift.
They're always doing things that we're mocking and laughing at.
But let's be honest.
If they took an IQ test, they'd do great.
They're smart people who are doing something you don't like.
Millie does not come off as smart.
And I don't know what that is, but I feel like that's a necessary component of leadership, is to look smart.
Is it my...
Am I the only one who thinks he doesn't even look and act smart?
When he talks, he acts like an idiot.
Doesn't he? And it's a weird impression because I've never had that impression from any general.
Like, even generals that we later found out maybe were not so good, they all sounded really smart when they talked.
They just maybe weren't right.
He sounds like he's wrong and not smart.
I've never seen that before.
Have you? Like, what would be one other example of that?
It's a weird thing. I don't know how we're putting up with that.
All right. I told you about the Mar-a-Lago hoax has been revealed.
And then for border security, I think Trump should stop saying wall, wall, wall.
You know, you can still build this wall.
It's an important part.
And I think people are starting to agree now.
But I think you should just talk about border security more generally.
Don't you think? And here's the other thing.
The other thing people are saying is that Trump is not giving us a vision of the future.
I just gave you some really clear visions of the future that he could give.
Here's something else he could say.
Imagine Trump giving a rally and saying, you know, the media says I'm not telling you like a positive vision of the future, but I don't think you need me to tell you.
Let me do a little test.
And they ask the crowd, crowd, when I'm elected, do you think I want to raise taxes or lower them?
And everybody would yell, lower!
Do you think I'm going to open the border or secure it?
Secure it! Do you think I'm going to be soft on crime or be tough on crime?
Tough on crime!
He could just go right down the list and the news would have to cover his audience shouting that they understand completely why he would do in office.
Because he has that weird advantage of having just been in office.
So Trump can erase every criticism against him somewhat easily.
If you put me in Trump's body and just said, Scott, go do all the things you just explained, Trump wins.
He wins. In a landslide.
He wins in a landslide.
Now Trump's worst enemy, of course, is Trump.
As I think we'd all agree.
Like, you know, the odds of him saying something that gets misinterpreted or not, that, you know, that sets everything on a different path, that could happen.
Pretty likely, actually.
All right, so I tell you again that I'm not supporting Trump for president.
I think his age is an issue.
And I support only the fentanyl plan.
But if you think that Trump can't win from this position, I think that's really wrong.
I think that's really wrong.
All right. Let's see what else is happening.
So, as you know, the midterms were a huge disappointment for the Republicans, because the only thing they won, really...
Just a small thing.
All they won was a slight majority in the House.
Just enough for them to investigate the living piss out of the Democrats.
In other words, everything I wanted.
I don't know about you, but I got everything I wanted out of this election.
I didn't miss anything.
I got a...
I got a government that's deadlocked.
Yay. And I got a Republican investigation of the Democrats.
Now, keep in mind, I'd either like no investigations, unless it's something really big.
I'd like either no investigations, or let's do it both ways.
Let's have the Democrats investigate the hell out of the Republicans, and the Republicans investigate the hell out of the Democrats.
Let's just make it part of the process.
You know, as long as it's not stopping the government from working.
So, yes, in the name of transparency, I would certainly like to know what we're going to find out about the Democrats.
This is the best-case scenario.
It really is, for the public.
It's not the best-case scenario for Republicans, you know, the professionals.
But for us, it might not be too bad.
It might not be. Alright, once again, reports of people being automatically unfollowed from my account on Twitter.
How many of you have experienced believing you were following me for some time and then suddenly you weren't?
Has that happened to any of you?
I've asked this before and I know it's happened to a lot of you.
And it happened to other accounts, too.
It's not just my account. Now, I was speculating that it might be because some people also have TikTok, and when you sign onto TikTok, it asks you for permission to post its content onto Twitter.
If you say yes, it gives that TikTok permission not just to post, but to, you know, change stuff.
And so, in theory, TikTok could be changing things on your Twitter account.
Like who you follow and likes and stuff.
Now, so I did a second poll on Twitter today and asked how many people who are having this experience also have TikTok?
Because if it turned out most people with the problem have TikTok, well, you would have found the problem.
Turns out it's the opposite. So very few people who are having the problem, like 3% or something, actually also have TikTok.
So I'm eliminating from my probability set that TikTok is the main reason that that's happening.
But that doesn't eliminate other apps.
You might have some other app that was doing something with your Twitter account and you gave it permission that you don't remember.
It's possible. So, one of the things I'm curious about is, and I tweeted this at Elon Musk this morning.
I doubt you'll see it, but maybe.
He's pretty busy, I hear.
He's sleeping at the Twitter headquarters and working all day.
But I ask this question.
If you knew for sure A specific user who got unfollowed from me recently, so you knew the user and you knew me, and you knew there was an unfollow activity, could you trace it back and find the fingerprint?
Could you find out why? In other words, could you say, oh, that came in from an API command?
I'm sorry, I'm using some buzzwords here.
If you're not all technically jargon literate, an API is what lots of Internet companies make available.
It's a set of instructions for other companies to access their systems.
So if you just wanted to tweet on behalf of TikTok within your Twitter, you could give it permission to mess with Twitter through something called an API. So I would say an API is one of those basic tech...
Knowledge things that even if you're non-techie, you should know what it is.
Because it's the thing that allows one internet entity to, or any entity on the internet, to interact with another entity.
And that gives you some abilities, but also some risk.
So just know that that's the thing.
Alright, so it's probably not TikTok by itself.
Unless TikTok did it to me...
So at one point I had TikTok but got rid of it.
I don't think they can keep any powers after I get rid of it, can they?
I don't know. So we'll find out if there's any way to find out about that.
The Sam Bankman-Fried story and FTX, it just gets deeper and more interesting every day, and I didn't think it was possible.
And So apparently he texted some journalist, I think, and the text exchange has been made public.
And so we can see the actual inner thoughts of Sam Beckman-Fried.
And some of the things he said is that all the woke stuff was just bullshit.
Everything he was doing to show that he was like a woke guy with climate change and everything else, it was all bullshit.
It was just to make his company look good.
Totally admitted it.
And he also said that ESG is bullshit.
It was perverted and distorted or something.
Yeah. So the king of bullshit says that ESG is bullshit.
Now, if the king of bullshit says something's bullshit, you want to listen to that.
Well, I don't know if I did it in his case.
I think everybody in the business world could see it.
So he probably just saw what everybody else saw.
So, it's just amazing.
It's amazing that we got to see behind the curtain on that.
So here's some L.C. answer.
I'll give you his verbatim.
So he was asked by whoever this journalist type was, he said, you were really good at talking about ethics for someone who kind of saw it all as a game with winners and losers.
And here's what he said in separate little text messages, like, you know, he sent a bunch of them at once.
The first one was, yeah, he, he.
I had to be. It's what reputations are made of, to some extent.
I feel bad for those who got fucked by it.
But this dumb game we woke Westerners play, where we say all the right shibboleths, and so everyone likes us.
You may have had to look up the word shibboleths, but it refers to the peculiar way that people act.
You know, for some purpose.
So he's saying that wokeness is just a peculiar way that people act to make people like him.
That's pretty much it. So the weird thing is I'm liking him more and more, and that's not supposed to be happening.
Like, I'm not supposed to be appreciating his honesty right now.
That's the wrong attitude.
But here we are. And then, because the simulation loves us, and it wanted to give us a little wink, a user named Beth, who I believe is probably not the real name of this user, and I'm going to say that Beth is very likely a second account of somebody who's pretty powered.
Somebody who kind of knows how things work.
Because little Beth, with her cat picture profile, He pointed out that there's an upcoming New York Times-sponsored live event, and he showed four of the main speakers, like in a little row, so you can see how good their event is.
Here are the speakers that they have lined up for the event.
There's Sam Bankman-Fried.
Bad timing there.
He is next to Zelensky, the President of Ukraine.
Who is next to Mark Zuckerberg, who is next to Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury.
And little Beth, who I don't think is Beth, in a little cat picture profile, tweeted that at me with just these four words.
Money laundering starter pack.
Let me read the four names again.
SBF, you know, Sam, Bankman, Fried, Zelensky, Zuckerberg, and Janet Yellen.
Money laundering starter pack.
Beth. Beth!
Now, I hope I'm not being sexist, Beth, but I don't think Cat Lady Beth was on this all on her own.
I think Cat Lady Beth might be some high-powered finance person or somebody in politics who doesn't want to be identified online.
So... Anyway...
Let me call out...
I love stories of people who are criticized for being wrong and stupid, who are later vindicated, because every now and then I'm in that category.
But remember when David Sachs, you know, famous internet investor type, was talking about Ukraine and everybody said, you don't know about foreign relations, what do you know about this topic?
You internet random person!
Why are you talking? And he just got so much shit.
And the main thing he said is that the way Ukraine will be negotiated, inevitably, will be that Crimea will stay with Russia, that the regions that Russia took over will go back to Ukraine, and they'll work out some kind of security guarantee or something like that.
Now, when he said that, the world just shit on him.
You can't tell Ukraine what to do and stop trying to influence events.
As of today, totally right.
Totally right. Yep, everybody agrees.
Crimea is not going anywhere.
Ukraine isn't going to retake it.
Basically, his exact solution looks like what is going to happen, probably.
So just a shout-out that the next time David Sachs tells you something, the worst take is stay in your lane.
That's the worst take.
It might be a good take for somebody who's a little underpowered, somebody who does not have any track record of doing anything, but it's David fucking Sachs.
Look at his resume.
Look at him being completely right in this situation, and then ask yourself if it's a coincidence.
Ask yourself, is that a coincidence?
No. No, there's some people you should listen to, and he's one of them.
Doesn't mean he'll be right the next time.
I'm just saying he's a high-credibility, you know, smart person who's trying to do the best he can for society, and I really don't think he has a political dog in any fight.
I think he was just being a patriot, and he was right, and it cost him, right?
So being right is just expensive.
All right. Candace Owens was trending, but bad news for her is that it was trending with her name spelled incorrectly.
That kind of sucks.
It means so many people misspelled her name that it trended wrong.
But she was calling out Zelensky as being a fraud and blah blah.
And she's got some good arguments there.
I do not disagree with her.
And I do always appreciate Candace Owens is one of those people that you can disagree with and appreciate at the same time.
So now and then I'll disagree with her.
But I always appreciate what topics she surfaces.
She'll latch on to something that we really should be talking about.
What we really should be talking about is George Floyd a hero.
We really should be.
And we really should be talking about Zelensky.
We really, really should be talking about that.
It could be that her take is wrong, but we really should be talking about that.
So good for her.
Another patriot. I didn't used to like using that word, calling people patriots.
It sounded so contrived.
But now I like it.
I don't know what changed. Correct me if I'm wrong...
I'm starting to think that everything in the news that costs more than a billion dollars is really a money laundering operation.
Here's my starter list of things that cost more than a billion dollars, and at least someone has accused them of being really a money laundering thing.
Afghanistan war, Ukraine, vaccines, maybe the pandemic itself, FTX, and climate change.
Are they all money laundering opportunities?
Now somebody said Black Lives Matter and I disagree with that.
Black Lives Matter is a money making operation, right?
That's a money-making operation.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about money laundering.
Literally something that looks like one thing, but money is going into it and then out the other door into another thing.
That's not Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter, the money went into it and they spent it on themselves in many cases.
That's a different situation.
So yes, it's fake.
Fake charities is another category of badness.
But the money laundering, you have to see that as its own thing.
Alright.
And related to this, as I also tweeted, I don't know how much America should spend on Ukraine.
I don't know. I don't think that, as a citizen, I know enough about what's happening behind the scenes in Ukraine.
So I don't know. Is one billion enough?
Is zero enough? Is zero the right number?
Should we just let Russia have it?
I don't know. I really don't know.
Genuinely, I don't have the information, nor do any of you.
I don't think any of us do. But if I had all of the information that our government has, you know, the secret stuff, maybe I'd have an opinion.
But I know I don't have that.
But here's one opinion I do have.
The general widespread love of Zelensky as a hero.
You didn't come by that opinion on your own.
That is an assigned opinion.
Yeah. The propaganda machine for Ukraine is the best I've ever seen.
I've never seen anything like it.
And even, I believe Mark Milley even said that, that their propaganda game is just off the chart.
It's just, like, really good.
And, of course, that's part of war, right?
So you wouldn't want them not to do it.
They're in a war. That's a tool.
Of course they're doing it. So, you know, that's not a criticism that they're using it.
But I want to allure you That there could not be a more clear case where intelligence agencies have assigned you this opinion about Zelensky and Ukraine.
Did you see how quickly people lionized him and Ukraine and they're all wonderful heroes?
That happened just sort of like just sprung out out of nothing.
Yeah, that's your intelligence agencies pushing the buttons and changing the opinion in the United States.
Washington made clear that zero is the right number.
Well, Eric, that was worth $50.
I agree. The strongest argument is that zero was the right number.
That might not be the right answer, but it is the strongest argument because we don't have all the information.
So that's sort of the default.
If you tell me to spend $56 billion without knowing what's behind the curtain, The strongest argument is don't spend the 56 billion, or whatever it was, however many billions, right?
Would you agree with that? If you don't know what's there, the strong argument is don't spend money on it.
So from the public perspective, that is correct.
Have you ever noticed this?
You've probably all seen lots of images from the war of Ukrainian military people And did you notice that they all have something in common?
All of the pictures of the Ukrainian military.
What is it? What do all those pictures have in common?
Especially if there are any Russian prisoners.
They all look very big.
They're unusually large human beings.
They're super healthy.
And they're all smiling.
And they're happy to be there.
And then the poor Russian soldier is 5'7", and he weighs 90 pounds.
I'm exaggerating, but there's a difference.
There's a difference. And do you think all of those pictures were like spontaneous?
Hey, wow, these Ukrainians are well-fed.
Look at these guys. Do you think any of that's real?
Of course not. Don't you think the Russian soldiers are roughly just as happy and the same size as the Ukrainians?
Nobody's smiling in a war.
Well, of course, there's people smiling in a war.
But if it's not obvious to you that all of those pictures are part of the propaganda machine, then you're not paying attention.
Yeah, that's all a PSYOP. So there's that.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, have I convinced you that Trump could win, not to say he will, that's not a prediction, I'm just saying that he's got the best path.
His path, there's nothing in the road.
There's literally nothing in his path.
He just has to do the things I explained, and he just walks down the path to the presidency.
Nothing would stop him. Now, What are the odds he will do those things?
Low, right? He does his own thing.
Yeah. What about vaccines?
He could also make us all happy on vaccines.
Just say, no mandate.
You know what I know.
You all have the same information I have.
No mandates, but do what you will with that information.
I thought it was a good idea to get vaccinated.
You have the same information I do, make up your mind.
I wouldn't do the apology.
I think apology would be a mistake in that case.
Because I think everybody early on who was doing an honest job of trying to make it right, they should just say that.
They should say, it was the fog of war.
We did what we thought was the best thing to do.
I don't think all of it worked.
Is that an apology?
I did the best I could.
We were kind of guessing, kind of guessing.
It didn't all work.
I would be completely happy with that.
Because I don't need an apology if you had to guess.
Like, what were our requirements of our leaders?
The requirement we put on our own leaders is do something.
Do something. And doing nothing is doing something, too.
That's a decision. But we told them to do something when we knew they didn't have the right information.
If you force them to do something knowing they don't have the right information, They don't need to apologize if something was wrong.
They don't need to apologize.
That was them doing exactly what you asked them to do.
That's what Trump did. Trump did exactly what we asked him to do.
His best with the information he had.
That's it. That's the whole story.
He did his best with the information he had.
Didn't all work. You can decide what you think worked and what didn't.
But he could easily say it didn't all work.
That's how it works when you're making decisions in a war.
You don't win every battle.
Don't get them all right.
I mean, that's the high ground.
The high ground is that's what leadership is.
It's making decisions without having perfect information.
And sometimes that doesn't work out at all.
I would just say that directly.
And just say, it's not the first time that's happened.
It's going to happen again.
That's the way it works.
Don't think that's not going to happen.
All right. But after the vaccination, he was still looking sketchy because he still defended it.
Again, if he said, I was working with the information I had...
Doing the best I could.
Our information was not good yet.
Some of it we got wrong.
But don't tell you what you got wrong.
Because I think everybody's going to decide on their own what was wrong and what was right.
But everybody has their own little list.
Well, this was wrong, but that wasn't so wrong.
We differ in our list of what's wrong.
If he starts apologizing, there's no end to it.
Well, apologize for the masks.
Apologize that you didn't try harder to keep the schools open.
Right? It would just be all that.
Much better to say, did the best I could with the information I had, some of it didn't work.
Just like every country.
Just like every other country.
Did the best they could, some of it didn't work.
I would be 100% okay with that.
And by the way, I'm the only person who told you at the beginning of the pandemic, the only one, that we're asking our leaders to make important decisions in the fog of war.
And we fuckers better understand who made them do that.
We made them do that.
And we should know that they were going to get some of it wrong.
And we should keep that attitude.
Now that doesn't mean there weren't some obvious mistakes.
Because there were. But it's obvious in hindsight.
Everybody who had the right answer in the beginning, don't get too cocky.
There were only two answers for everything we did.
It's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do.
And there were going to be people on both sides no matter what.
No matter what.
Some of them are going to get right and then say, I knew it all along, and I warned you, it's just guessing.
At the beginning. So, you know, keep that in mind.
All right. I believe this is the best live stream you've seen all day.
And I believe my analysis of Trump is the best one you will ever see.
Just like normal. Just like usual.
And I don't know if you've noticed there seems to be a horrible lack of leadership in the world these days.
And sometimes I feel like if I don't do it, it's not going to happen.
I realize that's just my own illusion, but damn, it feels that way.
It feels like, some days it feels like I'm steering the ship.
Does anybody else ever feel that way?
Do any of you think that it looks suspiciously like I'm steering the whole ship?
I see a lot of yeses on the locals' platform.
I'm not going to say that that's true, but it looks like it to me, too.
I mean, it looks like it in some topics in some ways.
But that's what confirmation bias gets you.
If you're inclined to believe it's true, then any evidence will support it.
Since I'm inclined to think that what I'm doing is not a waste of time, I'm sort of biased toward thinking it's working.
All right. Okay.
I think we've done it all. Did I miss anything?
Any stories I missed?
Anything that was fun? Nope.
Alright. Good.
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