Episode 1938 Scott Adams: Ye Visits Trump. You Thought The News Would Be Boring Today?
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Content:
Ye visits President Trump
Twitter censorship practices, before Musk
Robert Reich's Twitter doom prediction
Venezuelan oil deal
Taking Russia off the geo-political map
US manufacturing in China?
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the Highlight of Civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and today is a special Black Friday edition.
And if you'd like to take your Black Friday up to, oh, levels we've never seen before, All you need is, you know what you need.
All you need is a cupper, mug or a glass, a 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 that dopamine hit the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
It happens now. Go.
Yeah, that's the good stuff right there.
Wow. So today is, as you know, Black Friday.
It's a little bit racist because when do white people get to shop?
I mean, how come white people don't have a day to shop?
Why is it only black?
What? Oh, oh, black.
I'm sorry. Turns out that Black Friday has nothing to do with race.
I'm just so tuned to everything being about race.
I just think a white sale is for white people, and Black Friday is for black people, and if you try to shop at the black and white store, you better not go on the day that isn't your day, let me tell you.
Do you shop at the black and white store?
Wednesday is white people.
Thursday is black people.
Every other day, you have to make sure you don't go on the wrong day.
No, I'm making that up.
It's not true. None of that is true.
Everything I said is not true.
And that's how we play the holidays.
Well, there may be a story that you noticed.
Was anybody smart enough not to check the news before you came on?
Is there anybody who doesn't know the news about Mar-a-Lago and Trump?
Oh, perfect. Oh, perfect.
I'm so happy there's somebody who doesn't know the news.
Because I'm not sure you're going to believe it.
You might actually not even believe the news.
I'm going to tell you what is reported to have happened.
What's reported to happen is that Ye visited Mar-a-Lago and had dinner with Trump.
That part seems to be true.
So Ye reports it and reports details about it.
Now, apparently, the reporting, and credit to Tim Poole, I think Tim Kast probably got the exclusive on this.
So check that out.
So check Tim Poole's, the TimCast website.
So give him some credit for the scoop.
I think it's a scoop.
I think it's a good one, too.
So here's what we know.
Kanye did not go alone.
He brought Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes And somebody I didn't know before who worked on Trump's election in 2016 for Florida, I guess did a good job for Trump's campaign, Karen Giorno. Now, it's very important to the story that you know the cast of characters to try to figure out what's going on here.
And then I'll tell you what happened at the dinner.
The dinner didn't go well, according to Ye.
Alright? So, by Ye bringing this Karen Giorno, the thinking is that he's signaling his seriousness for running for president.
Because she's a serious player, people respect her for campaigns.
So that's the first part of the play.
The second part of the play is the two people who brought Milo Yiannopoulos as potentially his campaign manager.
I don't know if that's confirmed or just something he said.
And you're going to have to look up Nick Fuentes on your own.
Can you do that for me?
This story doesn't make sense unless you do your own research.
Now the reason I'm not going to describe him to you is that I don't want to be on record describing him.
And if you do enough research, you'll know why.
He has a lot of supporters.
So if I were to describe him in a way that they did not like, they swarm you.
They're called groypers.
So he actually has a very active community of people who will visit you in an aggressive way, in a variety of ways, if you said something that was not to their liking.
So instead of saying that, I would ask you to do your own research.
So whatever you want to think about him, The only clue I'll give you is if Kanye had two choices...
No, I can't do it.
I can't do it. Okay, this is the only clue I'm going to give you.
If Kanye wanted to get rid of the impression that he was anti-Semitic, this would be the worst way you would do it, which is not a statement about Fuentes, right?
So I'm not making a statement about Fuentes.
I'm saying that if Ye's intention was to someday get rid of that anti-Semitism claim, this would be the very worst way you could do it.
The very worst way.
In fact, most people hearing the story would say, oh, I guess we were totally right about what we were thinking about Ye.
So, Let's assume there's more to the story than we know so far, because I'm pretty sure that's true.
We're still in that fog of war phrase.
There's going to be some more surprises coming out of this.
But what you need to know is that if Trump had known If Trump had known who Yeh was bringing with him, and I think the reporting is a little unclear, he may not have known, and may not have actually been sitting with or having dinner with Fuentes, I'm not sure, because there were multiple tables there, so I'm not sure if he even talked to Fuentes, Trump himself.
So, the first question is, did, yeah, was Jared there?
That's a good question. He wasn't at the table.
But that's a good question. Now, apparently halfway through the meal, or halfway through the meeting or whatever, Trump was called away, took a phone call, and then came back, and the entire tone of the meeting changed, and it was clear that Trump was just trying to get them the hell out of there.
And I guess Trump said something about Kim Kardashian that was a little nasty, and Ye took that wrong, because he was like, uh...
That's the mother of my children.
That didn't go well.
Yeh says he asked Trump to be his vice presidential running mate.
Yeh says that didn't go well, but presumably Trump took that as not serious.
Here's what I think. I think that somebody called Trump out of the room to tell him that Fuentes was in the room.
Maybe. So somebody may have said, you just got sandbagged by who's in your room.
So you've got some people there that you need to disassociate with.
So somebody might have clued in Trump that there was somebody else in the associated area he wasn't aware of.
Maybe. Maybe.
So that's just speculation. All right?
So... So what do you make of the fact that Ye is acting seriously enough about his run that he actually convinced a serious Florida campaign manager to attend with him, and that she was also convinced to attend with Milo, who, if you don't know Milo Yiannopoulos' background, I'd ask you to do a little research on him as well.
Because I'm not going to I'm not going to insult or defend any of these characters.
I'll just tell you that if you wanted to be president, those would be your two most interesting choices.
It's almost like you would almost think Yeh was trying to make sure he never had a good reputation again.
Now, that's not a comment about who he brought.
That's a comment about how it will be seen.
So I'm not going to give you my opinion on any of it.
I'll just say that's how it will be seen.
It will be seen as almost mental illness, somebody said in the comments.
It almost looks like mental illness.
Except how does the mental ill guy get all those three people to go to Mar-a-Laco?
There's something else going on.
Alright, here's what I think.
I think, I think, EA just decapitated Trump.
Because even though the reporting might come out that Trump didn't really know who was going to show up, it will always be reported that Trump had some kind of dinner with these folks.
So the left has the perfect take Trump out angle.
This is basically the fine people hoax.
It's just that.
Because all you have to do is tell the story out of context and he's over.
And the out of context is, did he know who was in the room?
My guess is there's very little chance he would have allowed that.
If he knew, because I think he did know, you know, he did know the characters, he probably knew the people.
I don't think he would have allowed it, because it would have been insane, right?
So here's what I think.
I think that Ye has a backer who is trying to take Trump out, and he sent a little poison pill into Mar-a-Lago to end Trump's viability.
And that Ye may not have been exactly on that page.
Ye might just be thinking he's running for president and getting some help from some powerful people behind the curtain.
So somebody behind the curtain put him together with those two characters.
In a normal world, Ye doesn't meet Milo, maybe Milo, but he doesn't meet Nick Fuentes.
They don't run in the same circles.
There's a matchmaker here.
So when you find the matchmaker, find the one person who knows all three of those people, Milo, Fuentes, and Karen Giorno, If you find who knows those three people, you'll probably know more about this situation.
But it looks like it was to take out Trump.
What do you think? Because I can't see another reason for it.
It just looks like he was trying to take him out.
Now, suppose Ye actually runs.
And he actually, you know, gets on the ballot.
Who knows? Anything could happen.
I don't think he's going to fund it enough to get on the ballots.
I don't know. But suppose he does.
Could Ye change the vote enough that he becomes the kingmaker?
Could Ye be the one who decides who wins by just being one who could siphon off 2% from either side?
And could his endorsement in the end, let's assume he gets 5% of the vote or something in polls, and then at the end he has to withdraw, but he puts his support behind somebody.
Would that matter? I don't know.
Probably not. I don't think his endorsement would make any difference.
But it's the most interesting story, and I can't imagine that it happened organically.
Now, here's some more speculation.
I don't believe that Ye knows much about Nick Fuentes.
What do you think?
Do you think that Ye was actually fully aware of Nick's background?
Because if he did know his background, That would suggest that he's actually intentionally doing an anti-Jewish campaign.
Who would do that?
But then I would ask, who would say what Yeh has already said in public?
I don't know anybody who would do that.
Well, who's the basketball player who did?
I guess there is at least one other person who would do it.
Yeah, Fuentes is obscure for now.
Somebody's saying Nick Fuentes is obscure?
Oh, Kyrie, yeah. So Kyrie Irving's maybe the other person who'd do it.
But we're in strange territory where you can't rule out things just because it sounds crazy.
If you had told me a week ago, yeah, Ye will pick Milo Yiannopoulos as his campaign manager, I would have ruled that out as obviously crazy.
Well, that's obviously crazy.
But it appears to be happening.
If you told me that those three would go together to Mar-a-Lago one week ago, I would have said, no.
No, that's not going to happen.
That's crazy. But it happened.
Apparently it happened. So, I'm not sure what you can rule out.
What can you rule out and in anymore, if that happens?
How many of you, let's see, let's take the two hypotheses.
Let's see, take the temperature of the room.
I'm going to read the room a little bit here.
How many of you think it was exactly what it looked like and Trump allowed those three people who he understood were coming to come to Mar-a-Lago?
How many think it's exactly what it looks like on the surface?
Mostly no's. There's more to it, right?
All right. How many believe that Ye knew exactly the full nature of the people he was bringing with him or the full accusations against the Middle East?
It's a mix. Some of you think Ye knew, and some of you think he did not know.
Yeah. Could be either way.
Now, there's another possibility here, which is really interesting.
Really interesting. If Ye continues with his...
Maybe it's a strategy, I don't know.
But if it's a strategy, suppose Ye just collects everybody who's been cancelled.
But canceled for different reasons.
Pick somebody who looks racist against white people, but also pick somebody who's been accused of being racist against somebody else.
All the people have been accused of the worst things.
Milo's been accused of underage, let's say, promotion of underage stuff in the gay community.
I don't know if that's a good way to characterize it.
That's why I don't want to talk about them, because I don't want to get into the accusations.
That's the part where I don't want to be.
I just saw a funny meme go by on locals.
All right, well, I don't know what to make of this story.
In my opinion, you will find out how this matters by watching how Fox News covers it.
Now, you've noticed, I think you've seen the reporting that Murdoch, who owns Fox News and Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, that he's sort of anti-Trump this time.
So will they treat the story like it's a big story, because it's got these interesting elements to it, or will they ignore it?
Because think of this.
If they cover the story, it would probably be for the purpose of taking Trump out.
If Fox covers it as, oh, Trump made this huge mistake and now he's out.
He can't possibly win because he associated with people that will be easy targets for the left.
Or will they ignore it?
Will they ignore it?
And how does Fox News ignore this story?
How do you ignore it?
Have they ignored it so far?
Let's check. Alright, let's open the Fox News app.
I haven't done this yet.
So, we'll see.
So clearly, wouldn't you say it's the biggest story?
Yeah, somebody's saying Paul Ryan is on the board of Fox News.
All right, so I'll just look at the headlines.
All right, so there's a shooter thing, a lost hiker thing, an Elon Musk thing, more Musk things, another shooting thing, something about guns.
Nope. I'm going, going, going.
It's not a story. So Fox News is treating it as it doesn't exist.
Nope, it's not a story.
So if I hadn't read it on, I guess it's on The Hill, but I think The Hill got it from Tim Pool's reporting.
If we didn't have podcasts or podcasters, well, give me a fact check on this.
All right, here's a fact check.
Would this even be a story?
If Cassandra Fairbanks had not written about it on the TimCast website.
Because then I think The Hill picked it up, and then Twitter saw it.
MTG saying she might be on the ticket?
That's interesting. Somebody says, it's yay being yay.
Are you sure it happened? No.
Yeah, there are photographs of all the people in the room.
But it's like a blurry photo.
It's possible that they...
Now, I think there is a reporting that Fuentes was there.
I think there's enough reporting to say that happened.
Anyway. Milo is working for MTG, you say?
I don't know about that.
Photoshop? Yeah, could be Photoshop.
Could be just somebody else.
It was somebody with sunglasses on.
Move along. This is nothing.
It might be. Maybe it's a whole nothing.
One of the things I always liked about Trump is that he ran a pirate ship.
You know, his pirate ship was anybody who wants to help support him.
It's like, okay, you're a pirate, but you can get on.
And where is that? Yeah.
Yeah. Milo was full Trump with Tim Kass just weeks ago.
Yeah. All right.
Well, let's talk about Twitter, the other most interesting story in the world.
Apparently, Elon Musk has confirmed that there were no notable leftists who were ever banned on Twitter for anything.
And he's confirmed that basically it was a nest of San Francisco and Berkeley opinions that they were imposing themselves on the world, which is exactly what you thought it was.
Have you ever been this right about anything?
Like, normally...
To me, this is like finding out that the 69 moonwalk was actually faked or something.
It would be... You know, there would be a whole bunch of people who would say, that's exactly what it looked like to me.
I don't believe it was faked, by the way.
That's not my belief. But doesn't it...
I don't know.
It's almost too on the nose, isn't it?
It's so obviously true, and then it's confirmed.
I didn't really expect it.
I expected what we would find.
Was that there were a few people who had found a way to put their finger on the scales, and maybe the other people were a little bit unaware of it.
But it looks like it was a cultural fact that they were just suppressing conservative opinion.
Somebody's asking about Jack Dorsey.
I think he was just running two corporations, and it was hard to weed out You know, weed out what was going on below the hood, I think.
Probably. I think it was just hard to figure out what was going on there.
And maybe hard to fire the people who needed to be fired.
But apparently Elon Musk didn't have that problem.
He's firing anybody who needs to be fired.
And I guess a left-leaning Twitter account has been finally suspended.
So... A leftist was suspended for essentially death threats against libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh and gays against groomers and some other people.
And Tim Pool. Tim Pool's in the news a lot.
So I could not be happier about Twitter.
Is Twitter the thing that's most going right in the world right now?
And, you know, this whole thing we talked about, how Twitter is like a cybernetic brain.
If you get your cybernetic brain right, and it looks like Musk is on the way of doing that, like, that fixes a lot, doesn't it?
Because I don't think, you know, I've said this before, but it's worth repeating, because you're not seeing the full effect yet.
When the 2024 race gets under full speed, The mainstream media won't be able to lie like it did.
Because as long as Twitter was covering the lie, they could say anything.
But now Twitter won't cover the lies.
Twitter will be exposing the lies.
What will the mainstream media do?
Because they've evolved into propaganda platforms.
Can they pivot in time and actually do news?
I don't know. So, what else we got going on?
So, I'm watching with, like, weird interest that the Democrats who experience what I'm going to call Twitter failure porn.
Have you seen it yet?
People on the left who are anti-Musk and now anti-Twitter, and they're They're tweeting with glee about what they see as the potential, you know, complete destruction of Twitter.
Oh, it's not going to last.
And I watched, in the beginning it started this way.
Oh, 75% of the staff is going to quit.
He's in so much trouble.
And then slowly it starts dawning on you.
Wait a minute. He has successfully replaced the entire marketing department.
By just tweeting. And business is up.
So slowly you say, okay, okay.
Granted, there may have been a few too many people at Twitter, like the marketing department.
Okay, that's a special case, but that's not like the story of what's happening.
That's just one department.
Yes, yes, he can replace one whole department just by tweeting, but that's just one department.
And then you say to yourself, but, you know, those engineers are leaving too.
And then you realize that Twitter upgraded features, is rapidly iterating, and is already better and has gotten rid of pedophile hashtags.
And you say to yourself, okay, okay, it's possible that the engineers who left were not the A-team.
It looks like maybe the people who were there had fewer people to get in the way, and they just got some business done really quickly.
In a hardcore way, just the way Musk said.
So, okay, okay. Yes, yes, special case.
He doesn't need marketing. And I'll give you, I'll give you that he doesn't need every single engineer.
But man, that, you know, what about his debt?
I mean, his debt is gonna crush him.
I mean, there's no way he's gonna pay for all that.
Okay, if you get rid of half or 75% of your employees, and it is by far the greatest part of your expense base, yes, it turns out you could actually make it a cash faucet By doing the things that Musk is doing.
And probably if business stays good, the advertisers will slowly come back.
So, okay, maybe it's not a financial mess.
So, yeah, he doesn't need marketing, I'll give you that.
Maybe he's found a way to make it a little bit profitable, but how is that going to work when all the engineers are leaving?
Okay, maybe it was only the bad engineers are leaving.
Today, This is where it got all the way to today.
As of today, this is all they have left for their Twitter failure porn.
Robert Reich tweets this, Here's what Elon Musk fails to understand.
Much of a corporation's value lies in their workers, their knowledge, skills, and ideas.
When he fired half of Twitter's workforce, he drove off even more.
He wasn't, quote, cutting costs.
He was actively destroying what he bought.
And it's attached to an article about, or at least Wall Street Journal has an article today.
I forget if he attached it.
But Wall Street Journal has an article that Twitter might be having problem with all of their regulatory compliance, because a lot of the regulatory compliance people left.
It's all the way down to, well, we're not sure that the people left in the regulatory compliance group can cover all the work.
Have they had a problem so far?
No. No.
No. No, they have not had a problem that we're aware of.
I mean, nobody's suing them or anything like that.
So, apparently, you can just get rid of everybody.
Now, what about Robert Reich's point?
Do you believe that Twitter was really the real value is in the workforce, and now having gunned so much of the workforce, he's removed the heart from Twitter?
The beating heart has been removed from Twitter.
All right, well, Robert Reich, I believe, taught at the business school where I got my business degree at Berkeley.
And that's not exactly what I learned in business school.
This wasn't exactly the version of business that I learned.
The version of business I learned goes like this.
You can get rid of half of any group.
You can get rid of half of any group.
If it's a mature group, you can get rid of half of them.
You'll be fine. That's what I learned.
I learned that your groups become bloated over time.
Jack Dorsey said it directly.
He grew too fast.
He said it directly. He said that's on him.
So all I see is that he cut the dead weight and he's redoing the business model and everything looks like it's going to be fine.
Musk was actually mocking people saying, wasn't Twitter supposed to be dead by now?
It was more traffic than ever.
Well, here's a story that's a good thing it came out on Black Friday so that it wouldn't get much news coverage.
But apparently the Biden administration is very close to approving a Chevron deal in Venezuela to pump a lot of oil in Venezuela.
Now you might say to yourself, Scott, why don't we just pump more oil in the United States?
Because oil is oil.
And why wouldn't we just keep the money in the United States and pump our own oil?
Why would we let somebody who may be a communist hellhole, why would we help them when we've been sanctioning them?
Well, here's what you don't know.
That sweet, sweet Venezuelan oil, that's not like American oil.
That American oil, that's like climate change-y.
Like, you get some of that shit on you, you put that in your car, The entire planet just starts disintegrating.
I mean, the atmosphere of the planet would actually, if you could see it from space, you'd see it starting to crinkle in.
That's the American oil.
You put some of that Venezuelan oil, that's green oil.
That is green, green oil.
You can actually put a straw in it.
It's that green.
Now, I don't know if this is confirmed yet, but there are lots of reports of people rubbing the Venezuelan crude oil on their body to cure COVID. COVID. Yeah, COVID is completely cured.
Now, this is not, it wasn't a randomized controlled trial, but observationally, I think there's some strong observational data that if you rub, and you have to get it all over your body.
Some people make the mistake, it's like, oh, I'll rub a little of that Venezuelan crude on my back or my chest, and then I'll cure my COVID. No.
You have to practically dunk yourself in it.
You've got to get it all the way under the fingernails.
Because the COVID, the COVID can get in and out, you know, from the smallest hole.
So you've got to completely cover yourself with crude.
And so far there's, I don't know if you've heard this, but there has not been one COVID death in Venezuela from someone who covered their body with crude oil.
Zero. Now, if you tell me that's a coincidence, I'll tell you, what have you been smoking?
Because that is something called science.
Science. If a lot of people had covered themselves with crude oil and then also died from COVID, I'd say, well, I'm not going to trust that as a COVID cure.
But zero people have covered themselves entirely with Venezuelan oil, died of COVID, I'd say that's, well, that's science.
Occam's Razor, right there.
So that's all good news.
At the same time, weirdly, apparently there's this massive oil refinery that got approved 30 miles off the coast of Texas that would add 2 million barrels per day of export capacity for the U.S. Now,
if you're following your energy stories, You have Biden not allowing Americans to drill more oil, but maybe approving the Venezuelans to create oil, but we're building a massive export refinery to export the massive amount of oil that we can't drill for.
All right, it's all confusing.
It's all confusing. Yeah, it's actually for export.
All right, here's what I really think.
I think the Ukraine war has always largely been a war to steal Russia's energy business.
That's what I think.
I think this was always a pickpocket war.
Russia was too strong with their energy business, they were too strong economically, and they were too strong militarily because they were strong economically.
And I think that between the fact that our energy companies would like that business and the fact that Russia was getting too strong, but they had one point of failure.
Russia's one point of failure is they had one business, one main business.
So some people said Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons.
That's sort of all they are, a military and an energy business.
Well, if you can't beat them militarily, You can take them out of business, and then they can't fund their military.
So I think what you're seeing is a long-term, you know, maybe a neocon play to simply take Russia off the geopolitical map.
And it looks like it might work.
The only...
Scott has given ten different explanations for different reasons for the war.
Have I? Have I? What was my other reason?
I don't believe I have.
Now, I've reported that other people have speculated Ukraine is a big money laundering thing and, you know, and, oh, lithium.
Lithium. Lithium could be part of it.
But remember, lithium would be part of the American energy companies wanting to control energy.
So it's very similar to wanting to put Russia out of the energy business.
It's all related.
And yeah, it may be about laundering money.
I think corruption and laundering money may be a big part of the story.
That's possible. So, I feel as though for how much have we spent so far in Ukraine?
What's our cumulative price tag?
I remember seeing $56 billion, but somebody said $200 billion, $40 billion, $70 billion now.
Yeah, we're probably going to pass $200 billion, wouldn't you think?
Because eventually we end up, you know, reconstruction and all that.
All right, let's say it's $200 billion.
Do you think, if you knew in advance that $200 billion would take Russia just off the map in terms of something we have to worry about, do you think that would be worth $200 billion?
Now, it's also, of course, destroying Ukraine, so that's a separate question.
It can't be ignored. I don't know.
I think that a lot of people would argue that it's a good investment.
My economics degree tells me it's a good investment if it works.
If it doesn't work, it's the dumbest thing anybody ever did, right?
Because if it becomes nuclear war, it's the worst thing anybody ever did.
But there is a scenario Where the Biden administration took Russia completely off of the geopolitical map and replaced their energy business with American energy at some point, and we end up paying for it.
In other words, if American energy replaced Russian energy, or some big portion of it, that would be enough of a stimulus to the American economy forever I'll bet our tax collections, over time, would pay for it.
It actually looks like a reasonable investment.
Now, that's not a reason to do it.
I'm not saying, you know, go Ukraine and go buy us some energy business.
I'm not saying I approve it.
I'm saying it looks like it could work.
I know. I'm not sure I would have said that at the beginning.
Did not see that coming.
I'm not even sure anybody saw it coming.
But I do, more and more I'm convinced that the Russian military is at the point of total collapse.
Now, that might not be enough for Ukraine to take back territory, but it looks, you know, and before you say it, yes, I understand all of the reporting out of the area is suspect.
Nobody believes anything out of the area.
But if Russia were not at the point of collapse, I would expect them to be doing offensive moves, wouldn't you?
Can you imagine the Russian military being still effective but only playing defense?
And actually, I believe somebody was mocking them for saying that their only successes that they've claimed lately are how quickly they retreated.
That Russia actually reported as a success how rapidly they retreated from a Ukrainian onslaught.
Like, that really happened.
That's all they had. Well, we got a lot of people out.
So if you don't hear about any Russian offense except taking out energy plants, that all sort of suggests that their military just stopped working.
They might not have any offensive capabilities at all except shelling and drones and stuff.
The Russians don't engage in winter offensives.
I'll give you that.
But I'll bet it's more than that.
I think at the end of the winter there won't be much left because apparently the Ukrainian weapons are more accurate.
So they're just picking off...
Have you seen the videos of the small drones dropping little bombs on troops?
Imagine being there dug in for the winter as a Russian troop.
You know, you're freezing all winter long.
You don't have enough to eat.
You know, the bathroom is outdoors, probably.
And every day, like every day, there's a drone that comes over and drops the equivalent of a hand grenade into every little group of you standing around.
Those are the videos we're seeing now.
Now, I don't know how many drones they have that can drop a hand grenade or a little bomblet But they have them.
I can't imagine anything that would be more destructive to morale.
Do you? Like, if you're being shelled, that's pretty scary.
But you hide until the shelling stops.
So if you have a good hole, you're thinking, well, I'll probably not be killed because I'm in this hole and I know the shelling's happening.
But if you don't know any time you walk outside if this little hand grenade is going to drop from the sky, That would be super, super scary, wouldn't it?
Like the psychological impact of the drones dropping bombs on every little collection of Russian conscripts.
I don't think there's going to be much left of the Russian army.
So China's in trouble still, their economy.
They're going into more shutdowns, and that's going to create more maybe supply chain problems.
So Russia's economy is in the toilet.
So Russia's doing poorly.
China's doing poorly. How's the United States doing?
So here's the thing that I'm not sure anybody has caught.
When it comes to military defense and everything else that matters, whoever has the best economy usually comes out ahead because that's expensive stuff.
The only thing the United States has to do is do better than China and Russia.
That's what we have to do.
Our economy just has to be stronger than those two, and we end up still being the dominant economy of the world, and then we're in fine shape.
And it looks like we have gained compared to both of them.
It looks like Russia will be degraded forever, but I don't see that for America.
America is going to have an inflation problem for a long time.
But we can work through it.
It's something we know how to handle, basically.
You know, with great hardship, but we know how to do it.
And we have a lot of debt, but we also have the strongest country.
If the United States went, I don't know, what's the equivalent of bankrupt or whatever countries do, it would destroy the world.
So you need somebody who wants to collect your money and put you out of business before it can happen.
And default, yeah.
I think the United States could default and it would barely change its credit because nobody else would be better.
You know, you'd still be better off with a shaky American debt situation than with somebody else's better debt situation.
All right. So...
I don't know. We could be on the verge of some complete dominance by America in a way that we've never seen before.
At one point, we used to think America was the one superpower, but at least two others have some...
They've got some nukes that we have to worry about that are not on our side.
But I think we're going to go back to America as the only superpower.
Because it looks like China's in big trouble.
All right, here's what I need from my government.
I need from my government something like this.
Some kind of a matrix that shows me what industries have their manufacturing in China, and something to tell me what percentage is flowing back to somewhere else.
Could be to Vietnam. It doesn't have to be back to America.
I would like to know how exposed we are, and specifically for our key industries.
So I'd like to see, for example, I'd like to see China has 80% of our big pharma production, but we've already brought back 10% in the past two years because, you know, we're trying to be less at risk.
Have we? What if we brought back 10% already?
That would give me hope that we have this under control.
Like maybe it'll be 20% next year, etc.
What if it's nothing?
What if we've actually increased reliance on China?
I wouldn't know. Would you know?
I don't know any reporting or metric that says what percentage of our total manufacturing is ending up in China, and whether it's even flowing in our direction.
Don't you think that's like a super important number?
Has anybody ever seen that number?
Have you ever seen any reporting on that or any attempt to report it?
I feel as if the federal government should maybe make that a reporting requirement.
I hate government requirements for reporting, but given that this is the most important number, other than employment, you know, maybe GDP, employment, and then this.
That's like third most important number, probably.
Maybe debt.
But wouldn't you like to know if something is...
Because remember, Biden made a big deal about how he was bringing manufacturing back.
So is he?
Is he? Is he?
And if the Republicans could find that number and find out it isn't happening quickly, that would be a good avenue of attack.
I'd love to see the Republicans and Democrats compete, compete on the question of, you know, who could do a better job of repatriating manufacturing, or at least moving it to another shore.
We're taking Germany's business.
I know. And I'd love also to see more reporting on local manufacturing methods, especially 3D printing.
Because in theory we should be getting to the point where the only thing you have to move is the printing materials.
You know, the raw material that gets printed into something.
Eventually that's the only thing you should have to move.
Everything else just gets made on site.
So are we anywhere near that happening?
What about chips? Does it make sense to you that we move our chip manufacturing to Taiwan?
I mean, I realize we don't have a lot of options, but wouldn't that be the worst place to move them?
Like if you said, all right, entire world, entire world, if we need to have less reliance on China, For those chips, and we want to take the chips out of China, where would be the worst place in the world to put them?
Well, how about in the place that China plans to conquer in a year or two?
How about that? How about that?
I don't even understand that.
I mean, it probably has to do with the fact that Taiwan was the only one who could do something quickly.
Right? See Mike Rowe's series on how America works.
Sounds interesting?
Sounds interesting.
All right. Stop calling for Mosa Taiwan.
Are you a Chinese agent?
Oh, do you know my favorite nemesis, Chen?
So Chen, I forget his last name, tweets on Twitter.
And he's always listed by Twitter as associated, like a government-associated News media or something.
So every time he tweets, everybody who gets his tweet sees that he's, according to Twitter, maybe associated with the Chinese government and therefore not just an individual tweeting.
But he is so damn good.
He is so good at tweeting in a way that works in America.
Like, I gotta give it to him.
He's just the best at this.
And even when I see him working against the interests of my country, he does it so well that I'm like, oh, damn it.
That was a good one. That was a good one, Chad.
Mostly what he does is he adds context And the context is often true.
So when America is criticizing China for something, he'll just drop in some context about America to show that we're now so clean.
And usually I read it and I go, yeah, well, that's a good point.
Good point, Jen. So he's my favorite nemesis.
Yeah, he's pretty smart.
Oh, somebody says, reframe the Trump meeting.
Trump took a meeting with a black man, a gay, a Hispanic, and a woman.
It was a diversity meeting.
You know, Trump could completely explain it away.
Do you know how Trump could completely explain it away?
I was actually going to say that, but you beat me to it, so I'll give you credit for the idea.
Like I said, the thing I liked about Trump is he ran a pirate ship.
Everybody was allowed to come in.
And it's a weirdly unsettling feeling to watch your president be open to all the citizens.
Think about it. You've never seen it before.
He's the only president who will take a meeting with Kim Jong-un to Alice, the woman who got into jail early, I forget her name, Alice Johnson.
So Trump enthusiastically embraces 100% of all Americans.
He can actually spin that as, you should be more like me.
Or how about, why don't you spend some time talking to people you don't agree with?
It'd be good for you.
Imagine him saying that.
You make the whole thing go away.
Say, you know what? I feel like America would be better if we all spent a little bit more time with people we don't agree with.
How about you do a little bit more of it instead of asking me to do a little less of it?
Because I'll tell you, if I'm a President of the United States, or even a candidate, and somebody comes to me and says, I've got something to say, I'm going to listen.
I'm going to listen. I'm not going to say, I reject you for things you did in the past.
I won't listen to your concerns.
Because then I'm calling favorites.
And America is my favorite.
So, yes, you can have your opinions about anybody who visits me, but, you know, if AOC wants a meeting, I'll take it.
If, you know, if Ilhan Omar wants...
Well, that's a bad example. You know, that's a bad example.
But he could just say, I meet with Nancy Pelosi.
What do you think of her?
I met with Chuck Schumer.
I would meet with Adam Schiff.
Yeah. If...
If Eric Swalwell wants a meeting, I will meet with him.
And you just equate the top Democrat leaders with Ye's party of people.
And just say, yeah, if you would simply remove everybody from your understanding of the world, you're not going to have a good understanding of the world.
I would also say, here's one I plan to use.
Sooner or later, I'm going to be in this situation where I get photographed with or like there's some horrible person I get photographed with.
And somebody's going to say, oh, that person's, you know, you're endorsing them or that influence or, you know, somehow their badness is wiping off on you.
Here's my response.
If you put me in a room with anybody else, do you think I'm going to become more like them or they will become more like me?
It's pretty good, isn't it?
And I'm not even going to answer the question.
I go, I'm an expert on persuasion.
You put me in a room with somebody I disagree with, what's the most likely outcome?
They will change. Right.
So the person you say you don't like that met with me, just hypothetically, I'll say, would you like them to be different?
Would you like them to be maybe a little more open-minded?
Because they probably were when they left.
So you probably want all the people you don't like to meet with me personally.
Because I'll fix them. I'll make them better.
Now, the thing is that, what would you do with that?
Like, that answer just shuts down the whole thing, doesn't it?
You could high ground this situation and say, you all should spend more time with people you disagree with.
And don't tell me that one person who visited me is my opinion now.
I met with a thousand people this year.
Do you think they all agreed with each other?
No. Which one is my opinion?
Because I met with them. No.
I'm listening to everybody. That's my job.
I listen to everybody. So, yeah, expect more of it, not less.
You're going to see some frightening meetings.
I'll be meeting with leftists you don't like.
Just anybody. They've got something to say.
All right, what's that?
Trade with China.
Oh, there we go. Trade with China by year.
It looks like our exports are growing.
Our imports fell...
From 2015 to 2020, but now it looks like they're climbing up again.
But I don't know. I don't know.
Is the big number the number we want to look at, or should we be looking at the important industries?
I think it's that...
You know, there are a whole bunch more trolls in the last few days.
Has anybody noticed that?
It seemed like there were fewer trolls, but in the last few days, like a couple of tweets, there was just a clear troll activity.
The troll activities are the ones who don't do anything except insult you personally.
Have you seen that? Because for a while it seemed like they were gone.
And then I had like three of them in one tweet that just came in to insult me personally.
And I don't know, like what drives that behavior?
Is that organized?
It always seemed organized.
So he says, "Maybe our plan is to use everybody else's oil until we're the only ones with oil." You know, I've thought about that.
That's not crazy.
The only reason that I don't think we're doing that is that we're not really that farsighted.
Oh, holidays, less tech staff to police the trolls.
That's a good theory.
Uh... Yeah, it's difficult to say anything is a trend because of the pandemic.
You're right. It's kids on...
Oh, that could be.
That could be. Yeah, it could be younger people who would normally be in school and so they're just trolling.
That could be. But the comments don't look like young people.
They look like somebody who knows me well enough to, you know, try to get at me.
Maybe. All right, I asked around, I'd heard on Twitter, and I wanted to get a confirmation, that there's a heroin shortage, and that the heroin users are basically all using fentanyl.
So I did a little bit of research, and I found out that at least locally, the heroin users have simply formed a preference for fentanyl.
So at least locally, the reason that there's less heroin being used is that fentanyl is completely available, easy to get, and it gives you a, here's the phrase, a stronger nod.
So I don't know too much about doing heroin or fentanyl, but apparently you want to sit there in a stupor, That's sort of the deal.
You just sort of sit there in a stupor that you like.
But you get a better stupor from the fentanyl.
The risk is that it kills you.
So there's far less margin with the fentanyl than with the heroin.
Both can kill you, but the fentanyl is more of a hair trigger.
But it's a better high.
So we've reached the point where there's nothing to compete with it now.
You could say, we'll give you free heroin, and the addicts would still say, ah, thank you for that free heroin.
I'd rather steal something and get the good stuff.
So we may already be past the point where we can deal with it with alternatives.
We may have already passed that point.
Because once the addicts know the fentanyl's the better high, there's nothing you can do to stop it.
They're not going to take the lesser high.
That's not a thing. So that's a big F you to me, because I thought maybe there was some angle in where we could wean people into still deadly, but less deadly stuff.
That doesn't look like a path at the moment.
All right. Calling the herd, yeah?
Yep. I do think we have to take the assumption that the government is not too serious about fentanyl.
And the reason is that they're not the citizens they're trying to protect.
I don't think the government wants to protect that class of citizens.
And let me say it more directly.
If the only people who were dying of fentanyl were young women, we would have already bombed Mexico.
There are plenty of young women dying from fentanyl, but we don't characterize it that way.
It's probably still mostly men, isn't it?
Can somebody do a quick check?
I would bet that the overdose drug rate is 70% male.
What do you say? 70% male?
ODs? Does anybody have a sense for that?
So that's just off the top of my head what I imagine it would be.
Somebody do a quick check on that.
I'll bet it's 70-80% male.
So, and at least I conceive of it as more of a male problem.
And I think anything that kills mostly young males is not considered that big of a problem.
It's just not that big of a problem in America.
Because we have plenty of excess young men who are not going to invent a microchip.
I hate to say it.
But if you were losing your reproductive group, the women exclusively, we would have already conquered Mexico.
We wouldn't stand for that.
Now, imagine if Kanye does go ahead and run for president, and imagine he says he'll bomb the cartels.
What the hell am I going to do?
Vote for him? I'm not going to bother supporting somebody I don't think can win, but I'm going to have a dilemma if he says he's going to bomb the cartels.
Do you know what else I would have a dilemma with?
If he said he was going to meet with the cartel heads personally.
Because Kanye has something that Trump has, and he's the only one.
Kanye could actually have a meeting with the heads of the cartels.
Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
He could actually ask for a meeting and actually have a sit-down with the hands of the cartels.
I don't think anybody else could.
I mean, Trump's the closest you can get.
I don't think he could. And here's how you would...
The only way I think you could get the cartels out of the business is you would have to offer them a cartel retirement plan.
Because the problem with being a cartel leader is what?
There's no retirement. The moment you say, I'll be less of a brutal killer, some brutal killer kills you, and then they take over your operation.
So they can't really get out of the business.
So I fantasize, and this is pure fantasy because I can't imagine we can figure out a way to really do it.
I fantasize of an exit plan where you say to the cartel leaders, look, you've built this vast organization.
But we're gonna bomb it into dust.
Option two is we actually help you get into a real business.
And then the cartel says, what?
Yeah, like a real business.
Let's say, for example, we help Mexico legalize gambling in one county.
And then you can own the casinos.
But you have to get out of the other stuff.
You can't do the other stuff, but we'll put you in business in a way that, you know, you'll be fine.
Your family will be fine.
And you can essentially launder your criminal past into some kind of a future.
Now, I suppose there'd be too many people who would just want to kill them if they lost their iron grip on control, so maybe it can't work.
But I feel like you'd have to at least try negotiating with them first.
Because if you say, you've got two choices.
Work with us to get into some kind of a legal business and help Mexico become great.
Let me give you some context.
America was greatly benefited by the Transcontinental Railroad.
So you all learned the story in America that the railroad from coast to coast under Lincoln, right?
It was Lincoln who authorized it.
And do you know what a bunch of crooks the people doing the railroads were?
So the people, you know, the, what do you call them, the richest people, the, there's a name for them, the capitalists who built them.
But basically, they were all super crooks.
Robber barons, yeah.
The railroad robber barons were absolute criminals.
They were just flat-out criminals.
But they were rich, and they had lots of political influence.
But eventually those, I think, I'm going to say this without knowing for sure, I believe that the families of all those robber barons are now in completely legal businesses.
I used to work for a bank called Crocker Bank.
Crocker was the name of one of those robber barons.
He just created a bank that was completely legit, you know, was worth a gazillion dollars.
Wells Fargo bought it.
Completely legitimate business.
For many decades.
So it's not impossible to put robber barons into legitimate businesses.
It's not impossible.
Because we did it.
The United States did it.
So it's not crazy.
You just have to compare it to all the other Kennedys.
Okay, perfect. The Kennedy family.
The Kennedy fortune was made illegally with bootlegging.
Now that's confirmed, right?
I'm not saying something that historians don't agree with, am I? It's confirmed.
Kennedy's father was a bootlegger.
That's how he made his money. But is anybody in the Kennedy family running an illegal business today?
I don't think so.
Not that I'm aware of.
So there are plenty of examples of criminals who went straight.
And I believe that if I were the head of a cartel, I'd be saying to myself, you're such an asshole, the trolls here today.
You'd legitimize a criminal and they'd just switch bosses.
So, here's the second thing you'd have to do.
You'd have to work with the cartels to kill their competition.
Maybe you pick the strongest cartel, and you say, we're going to work with you to destroy your competition, and then we're going to turn you into a legitimate business.
But first, you have to kill all your competition for us.
And we'll tell you where they are.
Maybe we'll give you some logistics and some satellite stuff so you know where they are.
But just go kill them first so that this all works.
Now, I don't think any of those plans are necessarily practical.
But I will only sell you on one thought.
Ye is the only candidate who could even try it.
He's the only one who could try it.
Nobody else could even try it.
And I don't know that there's a better way to do it.
Nobody's mentioned one.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have for today.
And I've got to tell you, I'm in the itchy season.
So there's like an itch right...
Oh, God. Oh, my God.
It's exactly where I can't reach it.
Do you know how much better it is when it's in that place you can't reach?
Oh. Like, if you had an itch on your arm where you could reach it easily, it would itch, but it wouldn't itch that much, right?
But if there's one right in the middle of your back, the only place you can't reach with your hand if you're a guy, you know, women can reach everything, I guess.
But I can't reach the middle of my back.
Man, when that thing itches, oh!
I'm like that screen portrait.
So I can never be too far away from my back scratcher.
It's got to get to it.
You... There's a fake Rob Reiner over there saying he uses an elephant hose to scratch his back.
That was random.
All right. Is there any topic I missed?
I don't think there's anything else happening today.
So, with that...
I believe it's time to go enjoy your Black Friday.
And I remind you again, you don't have to be black to enjoy Black Friday.
It's for everybody. It's for everybody.
And I've got a feeling that 2023 is going to be a cool year.
Like, I actually think it's going to be a good year.
What do you think? How are you feeling?
Optimistic or pessimistic?
Give me your just feeling about 2023.
I'm seeing both.
I'm seeing a mix. Jim Keller mentioned me.
Who is Jim Keller? Jordan Peterson interviewed Jim Keller.
Who is Jim Keller?
You've got the house.
All right, Hulk Green, somebody got a house.
So a lot of pessimism here.
All right. Well, here's what I'll do.
I'm going to move this battleship for you.
I will turn you optimistic by the middle of January.
That's my goal. By the middle of January, I'm going to turn some of you pessimists into optimists.
That's what I will do.
By the way, somebody said, quit drinking.
And congratulations. Every time I see somebody who quit drinking, I stop everything.
And I say to you, to you who just said you quit drinking, thank you for telling us.
I'm really happy that you said that publicly.
Seriously, I'm very happy you did.
Every single person who says that publicly is adding something to the country.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, is there's some pretty prominent anti-alcohol people now, aren't there?
Cernovich, I think, is anti-alcohol.
I am. There are some other big...
Well, Trump. Trump is anti-alcohol.
Jack Posavec. Is Jordan Peterson Peterson?
Yeah, I think I saw something about that.
Berenson? Is Berenson anti-alcohol too?
I know he's anti-weed. Joe Rogan, but Rogan drinks sometimes though, right?
Is Joe Rogan anti-alcohol now, or is that a recent change?
Because I know he, in the past, not too long ago, he's enjoyed social drinking.
Huberman? Andrew Huberman is anti-alcohol?
Oh, he drinks whiskey only?
Yeah. And I know we're out of, you know, sober October.
But... Interesting.
Oh, Andrew Tate is not opposed to alcohol, is he?
I think he...
Tate is...
I don't want to mention him every day, but it's hard to ignore what a skillful job he's doing of controlling the media narrative.
I just got to give it to him.
I dislike him for personal reasons.
That's just between me and him.
But he's very amusing.
And one of the things he's pulled off is that apparently he's sold the idea that he can be a whiskey-drinking, or whatever he drinks, cigar-smoking fitness advisor.
I mean, he literally sits there surrounded by empty booze, glasses, and, you know, big cigars, and he tells you how to take care of your health.
And American men are saying, yep, okay.
That looks like a good role model right there.
But hey, you know, his social media following is through the roof.
Like, how in the world he's pulling this off?
I gotta give it to him. He is the energy monster of all energy monsters.
He's just turning the energy into clicks.
So good for him.
But just know what you're getting, right?
If you're deciding to follow his advice, just know what you're getting.
And by the way, a lot of his advice is good.
That's the weirdest thing.
A lot of Andrew Tate's advice is actually good advice.
But it's also stuff you've seen before, right?
Is there anything he says that's original?
Can anybody give me an example?
Has Andrew Taint ever come up with an original piece of advice that nobody's heard before?
I do like his advice.
Nobody can follow it, but his advice about having multiple passports to try to become uncancellable.
That kind of just works for people like him.
It's not really good general advice.
But anything that's like a new twist on anything?
I feel like he's just a best of kind of guy.
I think he's taken the best of pieces from other influential people and he just put it together.
But he did it well. Packaging other people's ideas is not nothing.
It can be actually the most important part.
Yeah, he plays the hits.
Yeah, all right. Well, good for him.
I wish him a good year.
And I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube.
I'll stick around and talk to the Locals platform.
