Episode 1958 Scott Adams: The News Is Full Of Fakeness And Bad Opinions. Let's Have A Laugh
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Cliff Sims vs. stubborn fake news
Twitter real-time location stalking ban
President Trump's major announcement
Dana Gould COVID vax question
Senator Rubio on TikTok risk
Twitter Spaces discussion: Reparations
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There's never been a finer thing that ever happened in your whole life.
And if you'd like to take it up a level, it's not hard.
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 it.
I like coffee. Stop doing funny memes while I'm trying to do this.
Over on the local's platform, they can do photos in their comments.
You're killing me.
You're killing me. Alright, it's time now for the dopamine hit of the day.
The unparalleled pleasure.
Go! Oh yeah.
Is the mug picture wrong?
Oh, you're right. I just realized that the finger grip is a little bit wrong.
It should be a two-finger grip, two inside.
Yeah, good point. Well, here's a little lesson on how to handle your critics.
Tech magnate Marc Andreessen wakes up to find that there's a meme going around.
In which there's like a competitive playoff kind of a grid and people are being asked to vote on the worst people in tech.
The worst people in tech.
And Marc Andreessen is one of the so-called competitors for the worst people in tech.
So he wakes up and sees this is trending on Twitter and he replies, seriously though, any day the communists are still in favor of voting is a good day.
Pretty good. Pretty good.
Pretty good. You know, the best you can hope for is that your retort is more clever than the attack.
And that's definitely more clever than the attack.
All right, there is a thread by Cliff Sims, who I guess worked in the DNI under Trump.
And he tells two stories about dealing with the press.
And how the press just won't listen.
You know, they come in with a narrative.
He's talking about Natasha, Bertrand in particular.
But people were asking Ratcliffe, the head of the DNI, when the Hunter laptop thing came out.
The press was saying, some people were saying it's Russian disinformation.
And Ratcliffe, who would be the one person in the world most qualified to know if there's any evidence for Russian disinformation, said from the start, no, there's no evidence whatsoever it's Russian disinformation.
And then how did it get reported?
Well, you know, it might be Russian disinformation.
There's just nothing you can tell.
There's no expert.
There's no fact. There's just nothing you can say to the media that will stop them from writing a biased thing.
But you have to see Cliff Simms' full thread.
It's in my Twitter feed this morning if you want to find it.
Or you just go directly to Cliff Simms.
Fake news this morning, some of you might have seen.
There's some kind of House Oversight Committee hearing, and Congressman Michael Cloud was talking to a representative in Colorado.
There was some witness who was testifying.
I think it was this morning, maybe yesterday.
And the witness said that for kids thinking about their gender confusion, That the age of consent for mental health therapy is 12.
In other words, if you're a 12-year-old, apparently, at least within the school system, I think, maybe the medical system, too, you can ask for mental health help, but it's just the mental health part.
And apparently, they have the right not to tell your parents.
Now, if there's anything dangerous going on, Of course, parents have to be notified immediately.
But just in terms of giving them therapy, I didn't know this, but the law is 12 years old.
I think it might be 16 in California.
I'm not so sure. It might be different by state.
But here's the fake news part.
Congressman Michael Cloud tweets out, in today's House Oversight Committee hearing, a far-left Democrat witness said that parents have no right to know if their kids are going through sex changes.
That never happened.
And then he tweets the person testifying who doesn't say that.
She talks about mental health therapy talking to him.
Now, you could argue whether they should be allowed to talk to a mental health expert at the age of 12 without parental consent.
That's a fair discussion.
But they're not talking about a 12-year-old Julian, read...
I'm just saying that he tweeted something that says the opposite.
In other words, he tweeted the actual witness.
I listened to the whole thing she said, and she very clearly specified mental health therapy.
She never said a sex change operation a 12-year-old can get.
This is a terrible rumor.
This is really bad.
Because you realize that 40% of the people on the right will forever believe this happened.
There's nothing I can do to make people think this didn't happen.
This is like the drinking bleach hoax.
Once it's out there, it's just out there.
So now politics will be completely dominated by a fake belief that 12-year-olds can get sex change operations without talking to their parents.
That's not true.
That's not true.
And, you know, there's a congressman tweeting it today.
All right. And by the way, if it turns out I'm wrong about that, and a 12-year-old can get a sex change operation without their parents being involved, if I'm wrong about that, we need to fix that, right?
Can we all agree? There's no way that can stand.
That can't stand.
But it's not true. So if anybody can make a case that that's true, let me know.
There's no way that's true.
All right. So, Musk has apparently, some people would say, reversed his position, but I don't think it's that clear.
On Twitter accounts that track the location of airplanes or people.
So, if your Twitter account is dedicated to just saying where somebody's going to be, specifically celebrities and famous people, then you will be banned on Twitter.
Now, prior to that, he had actually said explicitly that that would be okay.
But apparently he had some security concerns of his own, and it wouldn't be surprising if that influenced his opinion.
But he reports that, this is a Musk tweet, he said, last night, a car carrying Lil X. Now, I don't know who Lil X is.
A rapper? Famous rapper, maybe?
Lil X? That's his son?
Oh, my goodness. Okay.
I didn't realize it was his son.
Okay. But was followed by a crazy stalker, thinking it was Elon, who later blocked the car from moving and climbed onto the hood.
And he's taking legal action against whoever, I don't know, somebody.
But... What do you think about that?
Do you think that Musk reversed his opinion?
Or do you think he's just acting to block things that are obviously inciting violence?
Because here's what changed.
What changed was the environment.
When whoever was started tracking Musk's airplane, because I think that's maybe where it all started, there was a Twitter account that would just say where his airplane was going.
That was before Musk was really targeted so much, because it was either when he was thinking about buying Twitter or hadn't yet.
But once he bought Twitter, his own personal security was a different situation.
And if his own personal security is a different situation, then telling the public where he's at could be physically quite dangerous, right?
So do you think that if somebody is the type of person who could be targeted...
And Musk is clearly that type of person.
Do you think that it incites violence to simply track him and say, here he is at this time?
Does that incite violence?
It does accidentally.
It does not by intent.
Well, there could be intent.
I mean, you could imagine somebody having intent, but I don't believe the original tracker had that intent.
But in terms of does it have that effect?
Absolutely. Does it have the intention?
That's not an evidence.
But does it have the effect?
Of inciting people because they know where you are and they're already mad.
Of course. Absolutely.
Now, I heard some pushback saying that Musk was saying he would only ban you if he did things that are against the law.
Right? Things that are against the law.
But is it against the law to tweet that somebody's airplane is at a certain airport?
No. It's not against the law.
So is Musk now being inconsistent because he says we won't do anything that's, you know, not against the law?
Alright, well here's the argument for him.
Inciting violence is illegal, isn't it?
Or is it? Is inciting violence legal or illegal?
I thought it was illegal.
Maybe it depends where you are in the context.
But Is he supposed to wait until somebody gets hurt?
Because that's when the law is broken when somebody gets hurt.
He's changing it before somebody gets hurt.
Is he compatible with the law, or is he incompatible with the law?
He's saying if somebody does this, somebody might get hurt, but he's stopping them from doing the crime.
But he's also stopping people from not being information that would not be part of a crime.
So he's doing both. All right.
Why are you here, Sean?
Somebody's on here just to bother me.
Sean, could you just fuck off?
Like, I'll delete you after I'm done, so you're not going to be on the platform when I'm done.
But I'm looking at your comments, and you're just...
He signed up for my subscription service just to be an asshole to me, apparently.
So what the fuck is wrong with you, really?
Just get off the platform.
Could you quit today? I'll get rid of you...
Let me make a note so I can get rid of you later.
Sorry, I have to just do this.
That's the last time I'll put up with your fucking face.
God, fucking assholes.
All right.
Let's go back to the show.
So...
All right. Well, no, it's not a troll.
See, the problem with...
Trolls are a very specific thing.
There are some people who are just broken and they need to hurt other people in public for whatever reason.
I mean, this person is just fucking broken.
So, you're out of my life forever.
All right. So, one thing I learned in 2022, here's a little tip for you.
Would you like a tip on safety?
If you're the kind of person that somebody might want to kill, and you know, there are lots of them, the kind of person that somebody might want to kill, it's a good idea to let somebody that you don't like that much borrow your car.
I think I've heard at least three stories this year of somebody who got attacked because they had a borrowed car.
Have you heard those same stories?
I think I've seen, or three of them this year, right?
Wasn't there the, was it the Russian?
Maybe it was the Russian whose daughter blew up because she was borrowed the car.
And then there's a story about, something about the Beatles that I heard.
I think one of the, there's some celebrity who lets somebody else borrow their high-end car and got in trouble.
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of stories like that.
But basically, if somebody's trying to kill you, Let somebody that you don't like that much borrow your car.
That's my advice.
Alright, Trump said that he's going to make a major announcement today.
Does anybody have any guesses what that is?
He says that we need a superhero.
Now, do you think he's talking about himself?
We need a superhero?
Because that would be so cringy, it's hard to believe he's talking about himself.
Now, he did show a meme of himself as a superhero.
So it could be he was just referring to the meme, and it's not really directly related to the announcement.
So maybe the superhero thing is just a diversion?
It's just because it was a fun meme and has nothing to do with anything?
Is that what you think? Do you think the major announcement and the superhero thing are disconnected, right?
They're just two things that happen at the same time?
Because yesterday I was speculating that he was going to say Carrie Lake had joined his team or was going to be his vice president pick or something.
Now, if he did that, It would basically just throw the chessboard on the floor, wouldn't it?
It's basically just the whole game is up at that point.
At that point, everything is up for grabs.
Because if he has just an ordinary vice president, he doesn't have anything.
I think it'd be hard for him to win.
He's seeing some crushing polls, you know, with DeSantis easily beating him in the polls and stuff.
Yeah, somebody says it could be a Dean Cain-related announcement.
But would that be a major announcement?
If, let's say, Dean Cain joined his team in some capacity, that would sound like, we need a superhero.
Maybe it's something like that.
He's so good, Trump is so good at making us curious, he's always been doing this, and it works every time.
I hate that it works on me, but I'm actually genuinely curious what he's got going.
Dean Cain played Superman in a I don't know, maybe 30 years ago version or something like that.
It was a long time ago.
Now, by tradition, I don't think there's any law about it, but by tradition, presidents don't pick vice presidents until they're nominated, right?
That's the tradition.
But there's no reason for it, is there?
Is there any obstacle to doing it?
There's no downside.
There's only an upside if you pick the right person.
Adam West's already dead, yeah.
So, is Trump clever enough to know that he could regain the news cycle and maybe they can't keep Carrie Lake off of Twitter?
What about that?
If he picks his vice president, he can pick a vice president who is not banned on any social media.
And then he can have the vice president just tweet out his whole campaign.
That would be interesting, wouldn't it?
Now, the other possibility is that the announcement has something to do with truth social, but I doubt it.
I doubt it. I don't think it's a Dean Cain thing.
So, what would be big enough?
Because here's the thing, I don't think Trump is likely to disappoint.
I don't think it's in his nature, Trump, to say there's something big and then roll out something small.
Would you agree? Would you agree that Trump would never say there's something big coming and then roll out something small?
Right? So, you know, he uses hyperbole, so he's always going to say it's bigger than it is, but it's not going to be small.
So what is there? And he says we need a superhero, which makes me think it's something about a person.
Now, he might be the person, but, I don't know, the smart play would be announcing Carrie Lake before you're supposed to.
Because the first thing that would happen is, the news would jabber forever about how you're not supposed to name your vice president.
That's like free money.
Because it's so easy to talk about.
That's how you know it would be a story.
Everybody would talk about, oh, historically we haven't.
Here's the reason we don't.
But why did he do it?
Why is it different this time?
Is there something special about Carrie Lake that it makes sense?
Is there something special about the landscape of the news where it makes sense?
Is everything moving faster?
Is there really a thing called Trump time?
See what I mean? You could talk endlessly It's not really even terribly important.
It's like a little tradition with no special backing to it.
So, if that's what he has in mind, it would be brilliant.
If it's not what he has in mind, it better be good.
It better be good, because he's teased it would be big.
And if he teases something big and doesn't come through, No, it's not going to be a lawsuit.
Because he said...
Oh, it could be.
It could be a lawsuit if you're sure that the superhero part is not connected to what the announcement is.
That's possible. Yeah, I'll give you that.
That's possible. But I don't feel like a lawsuit is a big announcement.
Do you? Like, would Trump say a lawsuit was a big announcement?
It's got to be people.
There's something about a human being.
It's like a glaring signal because it's Trump.
Trump doesn't make a big announcement about paperwork, does he?
You think Trump's going to make a big announcement about paperwork?
I don't think so.
A legal process? That would be so counter to his instincts of being a good promoter and what actually excites people.
All right. Is anybody blown away as I am that we still don't agree as a country whether the vaccinations were unambiguously a good idea or unambiguously a bad idea?
Now, I don't want to hear anything about myocarditis in young men.
Stipulate it. I'll even stipulate it.
Can I beg you?
Can I beg you not to mention it because we all already know it?
I'm just begging you, just don't say it.
We all know it, okay?
There is no conversation about young men.
That part we can agree on, right?
Are you right? But the rest of the people, all right, I will stipulate that the data is sketchy for young men, okay?
Okay, I stipulate that, so you don't have to say it.
But, let's just say for older people.
And I would be curious just to see where you're at right now.
Now, my current opinion is, how would I know?
That's my current opinion.
How would I know? So I think there are three opinions and two of them are unsupported.
If we can agree on this stipulated part, that young men seem to have a greater risk with the vaccination.
Everybody seems to know that now.
But for not that group, for the people older, older than that, just older, forget about kids, that's a whole different conversation, but for the older population, how many of you think that the vaccinations were more good than bad or more bad than good?
Go. Just for the older people.
Older only.
Older only. Oh wow, I'm surprised.
I'm very surprised.
Yeah, there's a big difference between the locals and the YouTube people.
YouTube says more bad than good, and locals is more good than bad.
But anyway, either way, it proves my point.
How in the world could we be here and not know that?
I mean, how could it be?
Is there anything more important than that?
Like, literally, how could we be at this point and still disagree about whether the vaccinations worked or didn't for older people, only older people, only older people?
I have to say that every time.
How is that even possible?
Now, so the three opinions are, it was the so-called vaccine...
Oh, here's the other thing.
Can I do another stipulation?
One more stipulation.
I never, ever, ever want to hear you tell me that you shouldn't call them vaccinations because they don't stop the spread.
Everybody knows that.
Everybody knows that.
I will stipulate it.
If you'll please, please stop saying it.
I'd now stipulated.
Ah, good stuff.
So I was listening to a little clip by comedian Dana Gould.
It was very funny, one of my favorites.
But his routine was, it's interesting, because in his bubble, he said, basically, that how could anybody be against what he called vaccinations, which I stipulate, I stipulate, I stipulate that when he used the word vaccination, I stipulate that they don't actually stop the spread of transmission.
It's just something he said.
And he said, how in the world are we, let's say, going against the experts?
I'm paraphrasing. Basically, he said, everything that we do in life, we're trusting experts, so why is this different?
He says, I use my zipper.
I don't know how that works, but I use it anyway.
So his view was, everything...
That you do is because some expert told you it was okay.
It's no different. So why wouldn't you do the vaccinations?
Totally, totally good point, right?
And then he mocked his brother for not getting vaccinated because his brother said he doesn't know what goes into those vaccinations.
Like, he doesn't know how that works.
And then Dana said, again, paraphrasing, That you don't know how anything works.
Like it's a crazy point.
Just because his brother doesn't know how that works, his brother doesn't know how anything works that's, you know, technical.
So how do you make any decisions?
And I tweeted that and I made the following observation.
Who is more likely to screw you?
Somebody who knows more than you about the topic or someone who knows a lot less than you about the topic?
Over the course of your life, have you been more screwed by people who knew more than you?
Let's say, crypto?
Crypto would be a good current kind of thing?
Why do you think that Sam Bankman-Fried could build his company, FTX, and get away with it?
Because he knew more than you know.
He's the expert.
100% of the people who fuck you are the ones who know more than you.
That's how they do it.
Do you know when people do, like, financial scams on you?
Or they, you know, do insider trading?
Is the insider trading happening because they know less of you?
No, it's because they know more than you.
That's how it works.
It's the knowing more than you that's the whole trick.
Everything depends on them knowing more than you.
They can't fool you if you know more than them.
Okay? I don't know how more clear that could be.
The people who know less than me almost never fool me.
Do you know why? Because they know less than I know.
That's why. It's only the people who know more than you in politics, in economics, you know, every form of finance, crypto, everything.
It's only the people who know more than you that are screwing you.
Doc Anarchy has another great thread that actually you'd need to be subscribing to his substack to see it all.
But he's going after the AMA and medical studies.
And once you see how often the people who know more than you have intentionally lied to get a drug passed, you would have to have no context in your life whatsoever to think that vaccinations are safe because the people who know more than you told you they were.
The worst reason.
Now, there might be. I'm very explicitly not giving you my opinion on whether these so-called vaccinations that don't vaccinate, whether they're more good than bad.
How would I know? I mean, seriously, how would I know?
And somebody's going to say, oh, do your own research, Scott.
It's all out there. No, it isn't.
Nothing I believe is out there.
Because everything out there would be put together by who?
What would be a general description of all the people who put together those studies you think I should look into?
Like a general description of them.
Are they people who know more than I do?
Right. So I can't check their work.
I can't check their work because they know more than I do.
Now I can check some of them.
I mean some of them just are like screamingly obviously bullshit.
But I can't check all of them because they know more than I do.
Dana Gould. Alright.
I'm thinking of creating a sort of a version of me that's like the dark version.
Everything like me, but it's like opposite me.
Like, wherever I have a socially appropriate opinion, you know, Dark Scott would be the one that's the opposite.
Because over on Reddit, there's a version of me that's Dark Scott.
And I can tell when they come over to Twitter, because they all have the same misinformation.
So over on Reddit, they believe I was pro-mask.
I actually led a anti-mask campaign.
They think I'm pro-vaccination.
I delayed as long as I could until I wanted a vacation, got the minimum I needed for the vacation, and never looked back.
So that's pro-vaccination.
Do I think the vaccinations helped me?
I don't know. I just know I had a good vacation.
That's all I know. I don't know anything else.
I had to make a choice.
Cost-benefit, no information.
I just made the one where I could have a good vacation.
And then, what was the other one?
Oh, also on Reddit, they believe that I'm in favor of digital passports.
So Dark Scott is in favor of digital passports, masks, and vaccinations, and I promoted all of those things.
All opposite.
All opposite. None of that's true.
Now, on Twitter, mostly people know that, but when there's a bunch of trolls coming over, I think it's because I'm not positive.
But when I started hitting TikTok hard, I started getting a lot of trolls on unrelated topics.
And one of the consistent ones, I think they're from Reddit, but they could be just Chinese trolls.
One of the consistent ones is a tweet in which I was questioning people on digital passports for vaccinations, which are not vaccinations, really.
I'm going to stipulate that they're not actual vaccinations.
Don't want to start any rumors.
So, I wonder if that's China.
Is it a coincidence I'm talking about canceling TikTok and then suddenly trolls with all the same message are hitting me?
Now, here's my take on digital passports, and here's why I confuse people.
I talk about both sides of every issue.
If you talk about both sides of every issue, somebody can, you know, just delete the conversation and take one side of it and say that's who you are.
So that's what happens on Reddit.
But I think that's maybe just Chinese trolls.
I don't know. But here's my take on digital passports.
Whether it's for vaccinations, which I stipulate, are not actually vaccinations.
It's a misleading word.
Simulated.
Here's why people think I'm in favor of digital passports.
Because I've said, do you know they can do all of that to you?
They can track everywhere you are, right now, and they can turn off all your finances anytime they want.
What do you think happened to SPF? The FTX CEO? Do you think they knew where he was?
Yes. They did.
Do you think they could turn off his banking?
Yes. The government just has to care about you, that's all.
They simply have to care about you, and they can do anything they want.
You know they can send people to your house with guns, right?
They can drag you out of your house, put you in a little cell.
They can do anything they want.
Now, would it be inappropriate, illegal?
Yeah. Yeah, but they have all those tools.
So if you give them...
And here's what people said.
They said, okay, Scott, I get that they can...
For all practical purposes, they can track you everywhere.
For all practical purposes.
Yeah, January 6th people.
Already. And they can also turn off your banking for all practical purposes.
But you don't want to make the mistake of making it easy, right?
So that's the pushback.
No, if you make it easier, they're going to use it more.
Anybody agree with that? If you make it a digital passport and they can just push the one button and you just disappear from the grid, that's worse, right?
Now, you know what's wrong with that, right?
Let me tell you what's wrong with that.
The person who is capable of making that decision about you, they don't push the button.
They don't have like a dashboard at their big old desk, and they're sitting there like, I don't like that tweet that Adams just sent.
Adams, Adams, there's the Adams button.
Boom, you're gone. You think the person who makes the decision pushes the button?
No. They say to an underling, make this person go away.
And then the underling does extra work, but does the boss care?
No. The boss doesn't care.
Do you think the, I don't know, district attorney or whoever is going to be tracking and turning off somebody's resources, do you think the district attorney does it himself?
No. Some underling puts the paperwork together to do whatever needs to be done.
So I don't think it makes any difference.
I don't. I think they can turn off anything.
They can track you anywhere.
It's a very small difference.
Now, did that sound like I'm in favor of digital passports?
Did it? I think it's fair to say that if you had digital passports for anything, it would provide you some conveniences.
It would take away a little bit of freedom, because you write and make it, like, a little bit easier.
But the difference is so trivial.
It's probably a trivial difference.
Did I say I'm in favor of it?
Did you hear me say I'm in favor of digital passports?
No. I just said what is the potential risk and the potential upside.
I just described it.
I simply described it.
That's it. So I can't call myself Dark Adams because there's a movie out called Black Adam.
Very confusing. You know, The Rock has a movie out.
So I can't be Black Adams.
That would be confusing. So I guess I'll have to hold off on that.
What else has happened? You know, Rubio and a couple of Congress people are trying to stop TikTok to ban it.
And Rubio was talking on Tucker's show about that.
And to Rubio's credit, allow me to give Senator Rubio a little compliment.
He was able to describe the risk of TikTok accurately.
He described it not only in terms of the privacy, because they collect all the information.
That's only part of the risk, and maybe the smaller part.
He accurately explained that they could use it to influence, and probably did.
And he had an anecdote of where they probably did.
But whether the anecdote is true or not, it demonstrates that it's a thing they can do very easily.
Now, let me tell you why this is really clever.
And something's going to happen here really soon.
Have you ever heard anybody argue for keeping TikTok?
Like a person in Congress?
Any politician?
Any Congress? No. Not one.
Not one. And Tucker said, do you think you have enough Democrat votes?
And I sat there watching that and saying, what?
You have them all.
There's no Democrat vote you don't have.
There's not a single person who's on the other side.
And then I said to myself, are they really gonna vote against it?
Just because there's a Democrat...
It's a bipartisan bill.
Are the Democrats gonna vote against a bipartisan bill because a Republican likes it?
But it's also bipartisan?
So here's what I think is gonna happen.
We're gonna find out who China owns.
For the first time, we're going to have unambiguous evidence, I would say proof, because literally there's no other argument.
If anybody votes against this bill and doesn't have some clever reason that you haven't heard yet, there might be some clever reason that I haven't heard yet, but if somebody votes against it and doesn't give you a reason, they're owned by China.
No fucking doubt about it.
Check my reasoning.
Check my reasoning, because this is a big accusation.
There's no counterargument.
Nobody's ever offered one.
The news has never reported one.
And even when they talk about the bill, it's bipartisan, and neither of them are aware of anybody who has a different opinion.
There's no awareness of any different opinion.
For the first time, we'll know for fucking sure who the traitors are.
We're gonna know for sure.
I'm not wrong. We're actually gonna find out who the traitors are.
Because I think if they're bought off, they're still gonna have to vote for China.
And it's gonna be right there.
It's gonna be right there.
Some people say Mitch, because his wife is Chinese-American.
I think that's both unfair and also, let's keep an eye on him.
It's racist and unfair to assume that McConnell is going to be in the tank for China because his wife has some connection.
Yeah, I know it's a Taiwanese connection.
I understand the difference.
But I don't think that's fair.
But on the common sense, well, let me separate it.
As a citizen of the United States who loves his constitution and says everybody's innocent until proven guilty, it's totally unfair to think that Mitch is in the tank for China because of his wife, who's Taiwanese, or has a Taiwanese connection.
Totally unfair. But in the common sense world, which is a different world, there's the Constitution, what's right, and what kind of society do you want to build.
In that world, don't come close to this topic.
That's off base. But in the real world, people are influenced by their spouse.
There's no exception to that.
You don't think Trump was at least a little bit influenced by Melania sometimes?
I mean, I don't know what topics, but of course he was.
You can't not be influenced by your spouse.
That's not a thing. So you've got to keep an eye on him.
But I think it's unfair to just assume there's something bad going on there.
Alright, DeSantis picks up the free money again.
So Florida is going to hold the medical establishment accountable, says DeSantis.
So he's got a grand jury that's going to investigate mRNA shots and big pharma, and they're going to investigate cardiac-related deaths tied to the mRNA vaccination.
Now, I don't have a prediction of how that will go.
I'm not entirely sure what their fact-finders would find, if I'd believe them anyway.
So who knows?
But the part that's salient is that it's free money.
Are you telling me that all the other governors could have done this?
Is that true? Because there's some rule in Florida that there's a law that says you can't mislead people about medical stuff.
But is there only one state that has that law?
There's only one state that says you can't mislead people about medical stuff?
That feels like maybe that's a little more common than one state.
So why in the world is only Florida picking this up?
And the answer has to be the obvious, that DeSantis can recognize free money, and every time he walks by a table with free money, he's like, hey, does anybody own this money?
And everybody's like, eh?
And then he just scoops it up and takes his free money.
This is like two points of support over Trump.
It's just free. You can imagine DeSantis looking at this, you know, I don't know who had the idea or whatever, but when he's evaluating whether he should do this, he's probably like, okay, if I do this, my approval will go up 2% compared to Trump, and what's my downside?
And they'll say, well, they'll think you're like a vax denier.
And then he'll say, I'm not doing that.
I'm getting people who know more than I do to figure out what's true.
I'm the opposite of knowing what happened.
The opposite is I don't know what happened.
So I'm getting some smart people to figure out what happened.
It's pretty easy to defend.
No matter where it comes down, you could say, I didn't tell you where it was going to end up.
I told you it's important and the people care and we have to look into it.
That's my job. My job is not to tell you where it ends up.
So, I mean, it's a perfect position.
It's completely logically, morally, ethically.
It's just clean.
It's like the cleanest thing a politician could ever do.
Why is he the only one who ever sees it?
It's just free money, just sitting there.
You pick stuff. All right, Rasmussen asked, I think it's likely voters, is the economy better or worse in the past year?
Your opinion, please.
Is the economy better or worse in the past year?
Go. Better or worse in the past year?
In the past year is the key.
In the past year, better or worse?
It's not obvious, is it?
I don't know either. I have no idea.
I don't think we'll know for a long time, probably.
We can point to things that are worse, and we can point to things that are improving.
But is anybody smart enough to net that out?
You know, I mean, I guess you could look at the GDP and say that's a net, but not really because inflation subtracts from the GDP. I don't know.
This is one of the few times when I look at a survey and I say, yeah, that makes sense.
Makes total sense that people are mixed.
Because probably if you lost your job, it looks worse.
If you don't own things that appreciate with inflation, it looks worse.
So I guess it just depends what TV you're watching and what's happening to you personally.
So to me, it looks like it's a little better.
Totally subjective, and you could talk me out of that opinion in, like, a second.
Like, I'm not wed to it at all.
But I'll tell you just my impression.
But I think I have, you know, optimistic poisoning.
You know, I'm basically, you know, optimism-driven.
Dow is down 5,000.
Well, not today, right?
You're not talking about today, are you?
Yeah, down 2%.
Yeah, so, and you all know that the market gets frothy at the end of the year.
Here's a little personal investment tip.
It goes like this. Stocks always get frothy.
They jump up and down toward the end of the year.
Because there are a lot of people who are saying, I need to take my gains or my losses in this calendar year.
So people are doing a lot of moving around just for tax reasons.
But also, there's something that gets into our psychology about the end of a year.
There are lots of rumors or not a rumor.
There are some historical trends about year ends where people will look at the history and say, oh, it always goes up in January.
I think it goes up.
Does anybody have the actual number?
The number of times that the market is up in January compared to December.
It's like seven out of nine, something like that.
Does anybody have the actual number?
There is a history to January as being good.
And recently we've violated that trend, I think.
Fuck you, money causes optimism?
You know, I'm barely rich.
You should have a few divorces and a lot of inflation and then have newspapers get whacked and then get cancelled by one of your bigger clients.
Definitely, for me personally, my economic situation is way down.
I mean, it doesn't matter because I'm at retirement age.
But in terms of earning income, well, as well as assets.
Probably down...
30% since before Trump.
Something like that. No, I'm not broke.
I'm not complaining.
I hear you.
I hear you. I will stipulate that I'm not suffering.
We can all agree on that, okay?
You don't have to mock me for it.
Alright, yesterday I did something fascinating.
I joined a Spaces where there's the audio conversation, so it's just audio, on Twitter.
And the topic was reparations.
And a big percentage of the audience were black Americans, I assume, based on their profiles and what I could hear.
And I'd never been, I'd never had the privilege, and I think it was a privilege actually, to be exposed to opinions that are so different from my own.
It was actually kind of, it was like really good.
It was really interesting.
Just to hear somebody who's so different So different in opinion.
And I didn't catch it all, so there may be some nuances I missed, so I don't want to characterize the whole thing.
But there was a pattern that I noticed.
And it goes like this.
People in favor of reparations didn't understand how economics work.
And would speak in public as if they did, which tells you how deeply their lack of understanding of economics is.
Now, I want to make sure that we don't drift into racist territory here, because you do know that the black community in America is very vocal about we need more economics training, personal finance and economics.
You've heard that, right? That's a real thing.
And that is a real, in my opinion, that's a sign of systemic racism.
Meaning just the system not with any intention, but sometimes the system just gets you into a situation that nobody intended.
And one of those is, I believe that white people in general, this is not true of all people, nothing's true of all people, I think white people sort of pick it up by osmosis.
Like you just pick up economics just by hanging around it.
Is that true? And I'll give you a specific example.
And I didn't realize that I'd gotten an entire economics lesson as a child, until I saw somebody else on Twitter mention that his mother gave him two rules.
I hope I wrote those down.
I'd be so mad if I didn't. And the two rules were, one was life isn't fair, Oh, shit.
What was that one? Life isn't fair and nothing's free.
Thank you. Thank you for money.
Yeah. So he said his mother taught him life isn't fair and nothing's free.
That's exactly what my mother taught me.
Exactly. Life isn't fair and if you didn't work for it, you didn't deserve it.
Basically, nothing's free.
If you unpack that, That's the entire theory of economics.
I didn't even realize that until this morning.
It's the entire theory of economics.
Life isn't fair.
Nothing's free. If you just took that little seed and just say, all right, what does that mean?
Like, what does that imply?
Free markets. Capitalism.
It's all there. The entire thing is there with just life isn't fair, nothing's free.
Because what that told me to do in life is what?
Find my advantage that other people didn't have.
Why? Because life isn't fair.
And my mother told me that specifically.
Life isn't fair. Go where it's unfair in your favor.
So I went exactly where it was unfair in my favor.
To college. Because I knew as a young white man in America during those years, if I went to college...
I could pretty much own the world.
And so I did. I just found my unfair advantage and I took it.
Now, if you're black in America, what are you going to do?
What's your unfair advantage?
Do you have any? Yes, you do.
Yeah, you have plenty. Unfair advantage, number one.
You could get more funding to go to college.
Now, I'm not ignoring all the disadvantages.
We will stipulate That being black in America comes with a bag of disadvantages.
But life is unfair.
So find where you have an advantage.
Go to any, you know, get your college education that's more likely paid for than not.
Go to any Fortune 500 company and apply for a job with your college education, and they will favor you over pretty much everybody.
That's your advantage. You can just walk into any company and they'll hire you, if you're qualified.
I can't do that. Pretty much only black people in America can get any job they want if they're qualified.
White people can't get any job they want if they're qualified.
They can work in their field pretty much every time, right?
Like if you've got some skills, you can work in that field.
But if you're a black American, you can get close to 100% of jobs you apply for if you're qualified.
Because there's a preference.
It's an unfair advantage at the moment that they should take advantage of.
And have you ever heard me bitching that black people have that little narrow advantage?
Opposite. I recommend they take advantage of it.
Because I'm doing it.
If I find an advantage for myself, I'm going to be all over it.
That's how the system works.
If you find an advantage for yourself that I don't have, please exploit it.
That's how my system works better.
You exploit your advantage, I exploit my advantage.
If it's legal, we exploit our advantages, and then the whole thing rises.
That's how it works. Let me give you an example of how the participants did not understand economics.
One proponent of reparations said people don't understand that when you do something That helps black Americans that everybody else does well too.
So it's almost like it's free.
Have you ever heard me say that?
Have you ever heard me say that if you did reparations it actually might be good for everybody?
I have. I have.
So I've made that same point.
That anything that helps black America helps everybody.
Right? Now what's wrong with that?
You see what's wrong with it?
In the context of reparations, it's not yes or no reparations.
That's not how you do economics.
That's not how you do decision-making.
Here's how you do it, and this is something I learned, but maybe black Americans don't have access to the same mentoring or something.
But here's what I learned.
You have to make the right comparison.
The comparison is not reparations, yes or no.
It's not like there's a bucket of money that sits there unspent if we don't do reparations.
Reparations have to be compared to all other uses for money.
You all knew that, right?
The money is not earmarked.
You know, the government collects taxes and they raise debt to pay for things, but they get to decide on all those things, and all of those things have to be weighed against all the other things.
So if you're going to say reparations, yes or no, that just shows you don't understand how anything works, because it's not even the right question.
You can't get the right answer to the wrong question.
That doesn't move you forward.
Here's the right question.
If you had, let's say reparations were going to cost, I don't know, What, trillion dollars or something?
Just pick a number.
The question is, what else could you use the trillion dollars for?
And if the answer is giving money to everybody who is poor, or fixing all the schools for everybody, which would be better for the economy?
Well, almost certainly, it would be better to give two poor people extra help Then it would be to give one poor black person some extra reparations and one rich black person some reparations.
Am I wrong? If you found a poor, you know, Chinese American and a poor black American, and they're both really poor, and you helped those two people, don't you get more bang for your buck than if you helped one poor black person, poor black American, and one well-off black American?
There's no question, right? So the people who are saying that helping black Americans helps everybody, therefore, that's my analysis, that's just somebody who doesn't understand really basic economics.
Here's something else that one of the speakers said.
People are worried that it would cause inflation, but they don't understand that it won't.
That printing money we don't have, a trillion dollars, and giving it to black Americans won't cause inflation.
Why? Because it would help the economic activity.
So that would not hurt inflation.
It would boost the economic activity.
So you don't have to worry about inflation.
Does anybody see a problem with that?
Do you know where inflation comes from?
It comes from every boost of economic activity.
It comes from printing money and throwing it into the system no matter where.
It doesn't matter where you put the money.
It's all inflationary.
And so a gentleman argued that it wasn't inflationary by its nature.
By its nature, it wasn't inflationary because it was good for, you know, the economy.
Now, that is the least understanding of economics you could ever have.
Now, it's not a reason not to do it.
I'm not saying that you should not do it because of inflation.
I'm saying you should at least understand it, you know, understand the interplay between putting money into the system and inflation.
So, my experience was, and by the way, nobody pushed back.
That I heard. I didn't hear anybody raise their hand and say, oh, just a correction, any money you put into the system is inflationary.
There's no exception to that.
Is there? Is there any exception to that?
I mean, this wouldn't be one, but maybe there is.
So, there's part of me who believes that we don't have a racial and philosophical divide We have a knowledge problem.
And that people who have similar knowledge end up in the same place where economics is involved.
And you have this weird situation where black America is practically screaming that they know they need personal finance and economic And they're asking for it to be included in schools and stuff.
I'm totally on board with that.
But don't you think that's one place where the Republicans can not only agree with black Americans completely, but the more aggressively they help them get what they're asking for in that domain, the better off everybody's going to be.
Am I wrong? What Republican is going to be worse off because black Americans are, you know, brought up to speed on finance?
That's just all good.
There's nothing bad about that in any way.
Teachers unions are the problem.
Once again, you were correct. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of my exciting show.
Was there anything I missed today?
I feel like there was a story I missed.
Milton Friedman? Yeah, Milton Friedman's sort of a challenging place to start.
I wouldn't start anybody with Milton Friedman.
I'm a fan, but I wouldn't start there.
I'd start simpler.
Handing out money to people for nothing never works.
Well, here's the problem with never.
Never makes sense when the environment is similar.
But as we enter the AI singularity and the age of robots, we might have to rethink that giving money to somebody for nothing doesn't work.
It might always be true.
I'm open to the fact that there's nothing that could change that.
But there might be no other alternative.
There might just not be enough jobs.
We'll see. Subtract BLM riots from reparation debt.
Well, yeah. And here's the other thing.
I've said this before. If you were going to calculate how much the reparations should be, how would you do that?
Well, if you understood economics, And here's the problem again.
Yeah, you would compare to Nigeria or you would compare to wherever in Africa the slaves were originally taken from, you would say, how is that local population doing compared to the people who had the misfortune of being slaves?
And I think you would find that the descendants of the slaves are doing better than the descendants of the people who captured them.
Probably the people who captured the slaves and sold them, but stayed in Africa themselves.
Probably not doing so well.
I don't know. Probably not.
A sip-premacist.
Somebody just called me a white sip-premacist.
Okay, that's pretty clever. See, that's why I accept my inaccurate name, Claw Adams, because it's funny.
As long as it's funny, I'm okay with it.
Humorous is good.
All right, start with Hayek.
Have you been to a school in Baltimore?
How can you genuinely blame that situation on the teachers or the schools or the NEA? Easily.
Choice. That's how it's done.
Yeah. The teachers unions make it impossible to have an option.
If they had more of a free market of school in Baltimore, you don't think it would be better?
If the kids who went to the school that totally doesn't work, the public one, had an option of going to some kind of a private one that did work, you don't think anybody would make that choice?
Now, I know what you're saying.
You're saying that Baltimore, it looks like the people are the problem.
Is that what you're going to say? Like, if you're actually there, it just looks like it's just a tough neighborhood and nothing's going to work.
But there's always somebody in any group who can get out, and they don't have an option now.
All right. Here's a question.
Somebody asked me, it says, you, Trump, meaning me, me, Trump, Cernovich, DeSantis, Carrie Lake, Tulsi, and Georgi Malani on a desert island for a year.
Who's the boss? All right, let me think.
Me, Trump, Cernovich, DeSantis, Carrie Lake, Tulsi, Gabbard, Georgia, Malani on a desert island.
Who's the boss? No, no, no.
That's a tough one. That's a tough one.
It's a tough one because I always say me.
No, it'd be me. Yeah, it'd be me.
It would be me. Now, I wouldn't necessarily be in charge.
So I wouldn't necessarily be the leader, but I'm pretty sure I would get what I wanted.
So here's one of the tricks in my book that I'm just finishing.
So I've got a chapter on knowing who has the power.
And lots of times we mistakenly think that the person has the title of boss has the power.
But there's so many times that's not true.
And the primary time that's not true is if somebody has a better idea.
In my experience, the person with the best ideas is always in charge.
Whoever the boss is is almost irrelevant.
If the boss sits in a meeting and there's one person who comes up with an idea that's just clearly, obviously, the right thing to do, what's the boss going to say?
Don't do that? Now, whoever has the best idea is always in charge.
So when you asked me about the island, You were probably thinking, all right, who's the alpha?
Like, who would be the most, let's say, power-centric person who would become the natural leader?
And I think that would either be Trump or Cernovich or DeSantis, probably.
Because I think on an island, it would end up being male.
Because if you're on an island, there's no social anything.
The men are in charge.
I mean, maybe Cary Lake rises to the top, but not really.
I think the men are in charge if it's just no law.
So then you'd say, who's the most alpha?
You know, and you'd look at, okay, who could win a fight?
Cernovich, from that group.
Like, if it turned into a cage match, like, he would win the fight.
So does that make him the leader of the island?
Well... I still say that how the island is run for the benefit of all is a question of having the best ideas.
So regardless of whether the strongest or the, you know, if it's Trump or whoever, whoever has the best ideas is still going to get the biggest influence.
So who has the power?
The person with the title, the best ideas.
What would you say? In your way of viewing, Does the boss have the power, because they have the ability, I guess, to fire somebody, or does the employee who is indispensable and has all the good ideas?
To me, it's easy.
The employee has all the power.
Now, you could argue it, but as a way of living and going through my life, I walk into every environment thinking I'm in control.
It's not true.
Right? It's not true.
But I never walk into a room that I don't think I control.
Because I have enough skill that if I needed to, I could.
It's just usually you don't need to.
Who would eat first?
Carrie Lake's lawsuit.
She has a lawsuit against Maricopa.
Is that the one you're talking about? Yeah.
So, I don't know if there are any lawsuits...
Does a lawsuit have to find standing?
It does, right? I don't know enough about the law.
But won't the courts say the same things they always say, which is the election's already over, or something like that?
It's like, we don't listen to cases where our ruling would have no, there's no point to it, because we're not going to go back in time and change it, right?
But maybe if they're just suing some individuals or something, maybe it's different.
I don't know. Yeah, Carrie Lake says she has evidence of malfeasance.
Now, here's what you need to do.
Remember when the initial claims of election malfeasance came up in 2020?
You remember I said early and often, I said that most, 95% of all the claims you hear will be bullshit.
And that I didn't know if 5% would be true, but I could guarantee that at least 90% would not be true.
How have I done? Wouldn't you say that 95% of the claims were definitely not true so far?
Which has nothing to do with whether it was fair or not.
Separate question. I'm just saying there will always be 10 to 1 untrue statements, at least.
If not all, right?
At least ten to one. So now you say Carrie Lake is now one of the ten, and she has claims.
And she even has a whistleblower, right?
So it doesn't even matter how strong the claim sounds, right?
But... So would you say that the existence of the whistleblower Plus, whatever you think about Carrie Lake's own reputation and credibility, do you think that those two suggest that this will be in the 5% or will it be in the 95% that turn out to be bullshit almost every time?
2,000 mules hasn't panned out, has it?
In my opinion, 2,000 mules has not been demonstrated whatsoever.
To some level of certainty.
I would say that's another one that hasn't panned out.
Which doesn't mean it's not true.
It just hasn't panned out.
Yeah. So I would say that I don't have an opinion of whether Carrie Lake's claims are accurate or enough that they would have changed the election.
So I don't have an opinion on that.
I do have an opinion that if I were looking at it from space, I would say there's a 95% chance it either can't be proven or it will be shown to be irrelevant to the courts because of what the courts consider their domain and what isn't.
Is that fair? Is it a fair position?
I genuinely don't have any way to know if her claims are good, and I also don't have any sense of whether she could be fooled by false claims, because I think we all can.
I mean, you remember me thinking that the Kraken was real, right?
I consider myself a sophisticated consumer of news, and when somebody with a good reputation stands in front of the world and says, I'm going to show you the Kraken tomorrow...
I believed it. I mean, I just took it on face value.
It's like, oh, good reputation.
You wouldn't make that kind of claim unless you had the goods.
And then it turns out, I think, she was bamboozled.
I think she believed it, but she was bamboozled.
So, do you think, is there anything that you know about Carrie Lake that would tell you that she would be less gullible than Sidney Powell?
What is it you know about the two of them?
You'd say, oh, Sidney Powell was gullible in that case, but Cary Lake would never fall for that trick.
I know. Because I've seen even myself fall for that trick, right?
How many of you fell for it?
How many of you thought the Kraken was coming?
Didn't we all fall for it?
I'll bet you 80% of the people watching this livestream fell for the kraken because you thought Sidney Powell was a credible person because the news told you she was.
I watched Fox News and Fox News kept saying, oh, yeah, Sidney Powell, she's the real deal.
Been around forever, good reputation.
I believed it. Now, I also believe Carrie Lake is smart and capable and has a good reputation.
Exactly what I thought about Sidney Powell.
So, having made the exact mistake before of listening to what I thought was a credible, high-powered, successful woman telling me something, and the woman part's unimportant, a high-powered, successful person telling me something was true and I was going to see it tomorrow, I don't know, you kind of believe that for at least a day until it doesn't happen.
All right. So here's the other thing you need to know about Carrie Lake and her situation.
So this is independent from the personality.
This would be true of anybody in her situation.
They would be in cognitive dissonance.
You could take Carrie Lake out of this situation, just take her out, and plop in anybody you choose.
The smartest, wisest person you know.
Just put them in her exact situation.
How would they feel? Exactly the way she feels.
The evidence and what we all watched would make anyone feel the way she feels.
But does that mean she's right?
No. It means she had a perfect situation for cognitive dissonance.
She had the trigger.
Look for the trigger. The trigger is there.
The trigger is she was positive she won.
That was her worldview, or that she would.
At some point she was probably sure.
And then it didn't happen.
That's a trigger for cognitive dissonance.
Anybody you put there would think it was rigged.
Anybody. And I think the same for Trump.
Trump is different because he'll say out loud it was rigged as many times as he wants, no matter how many times you tell him not to.
So that's different about Trump.
But you don't think that everybody who loses an election that's close and sketchy looking thinks it's rigged?
They all do, of course.
Of course they do.
Trump believes what anybody would believe in his situation.
Carrie Lake believes what anybody would believe in that situation, including me, right?
So if it turns out she's wrong, Trust me, I would have been wrong in that same situation, and so would you.
So would you. She's in an impossible situation.
It's basically a cognitive dissonance vice grip.
She could be totally right.
I don't even have an opinion of what's likely, honestly.
She could be totally right.
But she is in the grip of cognitive dissonance where, whether she's right or wrong, she's only going to see one side.
Now, if that side is the correct side, well, good for her.
But her level of certainty and the amount of evidence she says she has, which sounds pretty important, you can't really trust it at this point in the process.
Are you kidding me that Trump made a major announcement?
It was super...
Stupid digital trading cards?
Oh, please tell me that wasn't it.
Oh, oh, really?
Oh, God.
Yeah, do you see the analytical problem that I made here?
Where I was speculating that he might be announcing, you know, Carrie Lake as VP. Carrie Lake as VP is what old Trump might have done.
2015 Trump might have done that, like if he had been in this situation in 2015.
I think past Trump would have made a bigger play.
I don't think past Trump would have said it's a big announcement about digital trading cards.
Now, is it a fundraiser?
Is he using it as his fundraiser?
Is that what it is? Yeah.
Oh, it's a Trump card.
Or is it a Trump card?
Yeah, it's like he quit, huh?
Doesn't it look like he's just playing it for business purposes?
I mean, that's what we thought the first time he ran.
He surprised us. All right.
I just have to see on Twitter what people are saying about this.
Actually, I'm going to look on Truth Social because it's probably on there, right?
Let's find the actual announcement.
Trump, Trump, Trump.
Trump, Trump, Trump. You've probably already found it.
You're telling me right now. But I'm looking down.
I don't see it. All right.
My official Donald Trump digital trading card collection is here.
These limited edition cards feature amazing art of my life and career.
Get your cars now, $99 each.
All right. I think I know who the artist is, but I have to confirm that.
If the artist is who I think it is, it's somebody you're going to like.
Somebody you've seen on Twitter.
So, trading cards for $99.
Wait, is this for the campaign?
Or for himself?
It's just a Christmas gift.
Trump digital cards are NFTs.
Well, So, you may not know this about NFTs.
So, an NFT is a digital, it's usually art, digital art, that because of the blockchain you can know who the real owner is.
And if anybody has a copy, they're not the real owner, because only the blockchain tells you who the real owner is.
But one of the things that a NFT does that's different from regular art is that if you create it with a feature that would give you a percentage every time it's resold to anybody any time in the future, because you can do that because everything goes back to the blockchain, you could make a huge amount of money selling something for a dollar.
Let me make the case.
Let's say that Trump sold one card for $1, and that's it.
But he said, anybody who resells this, I get 10%.
So the dollar resells it for $2, and he gets 10% of that.
The $2 sells it for $4, and Trump gets 10% of that.
He could make a billion dollars.
All that matters is people sell it and resell it.
That's all that matters.
If they do, if they like trading and trying to build a full set and stuff, then they'll be buying and selling, and he would get 10%, or whatever he specified, of every trade.
Well, you say nobody would buy it at $99?
Would you buy it at $99 if you knew you could sell it for $120?
Because it's almost guaranteed that you can.
It's like free money.
The first people who buy it are just going to be flipping it over for free money.
That's how NFTs work.
So you'd have to think that nobody would buy one.
For you not to buy one.
If you thought people would buy them, this would be the day to buy it.
Because it should be more expensive every day after this.
That's why people get in fast.
Yeah. You know, it'd be weird if this is...
This could easily turn out to be the main thing that happens.
Like, it could be bigger than the election.
Like, you could actually make a billion dollars.
Like, that's within the realm of possibility.
You could make a billion dollars.
All right, well...
I think you'd agree it doesn't look like he's running for president, really, does it?
Do you remember when Trump first got elected in 2016, that he and Pence immediately went on this tour as if they were already in office?
Like, months before they were in office, they were traveling around acting like they were already on the job.
And I kept saying how brilliant that was, because that's your first impression.
You don't think that if he were seriously trying to get re-elected, you don't think he'd be out there every day?
Already? You think that announcing the digital greeting cards is what he does if he's really running for president?
He still sells out in stadiums because he's entertaining.
Yeah. But wouldn't he be selling them out today?
Wouldn't there be a rally this weekend and the one after?
I mean, I think you'd have to be...
At least a rally-a-week mode, you know, a year before the serious campaigning goes on, if you're serious.
Maybe it'll kick into it pretty soon.
All right, we'll see. Yeah, I think the DeSantis poll kicked his butt a little bit.
Maybe 0.02% of people have heard of NFTs.
Yeah, but that didn't really hurt the NFT market.
The NFT market is probably FTX and just the collapse of crypto in general.
general.
Yeah, he might need the money just for his legal battles.
What's the Dilbert NFT going for?
Good question. Want me to check?
I don't have my password with me, so never mind.
I don't think anybody's buying it.
I think whoever owns it is just sitting on it.
His announcement when he said he was running was terrible too, yes.
Yes.
Crypto crash coming big time?
You can do the math.
Happy IDOC. Everything's public.
You know how many subscribers I have, and you know what you pay for it.
He's being ruthlessly mocked on Twitter about it, even on the right.
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
If I had to make a prediction, and I will, the destruction of the crypto market reminds me of the early personal computer the destruction of the crypto market reminds me of the early Do you remember when personal computers were sort of a big thing, and there were a whole bunch of little companies that made personal computers?
But you knew it was going to be, you thought it was going to be, you know, IBM and Apple in the end.
IBM didn't make it to the end.
But I think crypto is going to go the way computers did, which is there's no way crypto goes away.
I think there's just no way it goes away.
But all the shitcoins, so-called, will go away.
So all of the weak competitors will go away.
I think Bitcoin will still be standing.
Don't make any investments based on anything I say about crypto.
It's my weakest category, right?
If you thought I said something smart in some other category, that does not extend to crypto.
I'm just treading water with everybody else on crypto.
But it does seem to be that the likely thing, the likely thing is that there'll be maybe too standing in the end.
Maybe it's Ethereum for its functional purposes.
Maybe it's Bitcoin because it's the one everybody knows.
I don't know. But I think there'll be at least two in the end.
But I don't think that it's going away.
Looks like 23, the rates are going to persist in real estate.
Correction? Yeah. Did you find out who Satoshi is yet?
Well, I didn't.
Now, you know, it's interesting.
So you know that, associated with my startup that is no more, we created a token called the WHEN, W-H-E-N. Now, the interesting thing about a token is that once you create it, it never goes away, right?
Like, it doesn't wear out or You know, it doesn't time out.
It's just there forever.
So, some day in the future, if anybody wanted to create a business around the WEN token, they could go to the one exchange where you buy them.
I think there's probably one left.
And you just buy them all, you know, for some, you know, almost nothing.
And then you'd have a crypto.
You would, I think HotBit is, HotBit.io is the only place.
If it's still there. I'm not even sure if it's still there.
No, I didn't finish the Ed Kelter interview.
Anyway. Yeah, the Senate banned TikTok on government devices.
Now, how in the world can they ban it on government devices and then not ban it on the public's devices?
When was that? Now, also, the reason that the when is likely to have future value, do you know why?
Do you know why the when crypto that currently has basically no value, do you know why I think it will have a value in the future?
Because of the name.
The name. Someday, somewhere, for some function, somebody is going to need a token That says something about time.
Because somebody's going to build a company or an app that they have a time-related element to it, and they're going to say, why would we invent a token when the WAN is almost free?
We'll just grab it and incorporate it.
So if you want one that has a perfect name and is already created and you don't have to worry about it being wrong, because it's already there, Somebody can just adopt it, put it in their own company, and then, you know, whatever few shares I have might have some tiny value.
It's W-H-E-N. Yeah, W-H-E-N. All right, that's all for now.
I'm going to go do something else. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
