Episode 2022 Scott Adams: GOP Border Security Fentanyl HOAX, Clapper, Matt Walsh, DeSantis, Balloons
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Kevin McCarthy disappoints & GOP fails
Elon Musk tweets we need a "TruthGPT"
TruthGPT & AI consciousness
NIkki Haley vs. Ann Coulter
Biden blew Nord Stream pipeline for the greater good?
Russian sabotage campaign in America?
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I think we've just reached the point of total ridiculousness.
Like, peak ridiculousness.
And it's just funny today.
All right, well, if you'd like to take this experience up a notch, and I know you would, it's already the highlight of civilization.
But it could be better.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or gels 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.
Especially all you women who are in your prime.
For the Simultaneous Sip.
It's the dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
So, you know, I wasn't going to talk about it again today, but the Don Lemon story where he said that women are in their prime, in their 20s and 30s, and maybe their 40s.
And, you know, for a while I thought, oh, I'm going to add my...
wise commentary to this story.
And I'm gonna flip it around like I try to do and look at it in a different way than the news is looking at it.
There's just nothing you can say about that.
There's nothing you can say about the story.
It just lives as a perfect moment of ridiculousness that you should not alter.
Just let it live just the way it is.
It's perfect.
It's perfect the way it is.
Like, it's everything.
It's the entire, you know, on Twitter, I called it a woker game instead of a poker game.
In a woker game, instead of, you know, kings and queens, you've got various victimized groups.
So poor Don Lemon had two women on the panel there with him, but two women normally would be a winning hand.
But he was gay and black.
So it's not clear what's the winning hand there.
But I think we've seen that women is the winning hand.
Now, as I've said for a long time, CNN is largely a female perspective news entity.
I don't know if it's intentional, but it ended up being that way.
A waking bear says, Hey Scott, in caps, I'm eating a steak and cheese sub for breakfast.
How does that make you feel?
Good?
I feel good?
Was that a trick question?
People often think that the choices I make for myself are somehow a choice I think they should make.
Do you think I care what you put in your body?
You could vaccinate your tongue 17 times and eat a big pile of rubbish.
And I would say, good for you.
I feel the same no matter what you eat or vaccinate yourself with.
Alright, I'd like to start with a quiz to show you how smart my audience is.
Don't give me the answer.
No, stop it.
Don't give me the answer before I ask the question.
That's too smart!
Okay, you got the right answer.
Now, there are a lot of audiences for live streams which wait for the question before the answer.
But this is not the kind of audience that needs that little extra help.
No, this is not remedial audience.
This is smart audience.
Yes, you have the right answer.
Correct.
Many of you are within 1% of the right answer.
I guess I should tell you the question.
If there's anybody who's slow and needs to catch up, I'll tell you the question.
Michael Schellenberg was tweeting this this morning.
There's a Gallup poll and asked, how many people have a favorable view of the news media?
Yeah, you were right.
26%.
Now, the first 25 times I told you that you could predict That about 25% of the public will get every question wrong.
Did you say to yourself, well that can't be true.
And then over and over and over it's true.
Now it's not true 100% of the time, but it's true so often it's hilarious.
Well McCarthy went to the border talking about border security and fentanyl and failing completely.
Complete failure.
So let me say as clearly as I can, the Republicans are a complete failure on fentanyl and the border, and they always make the same mistake.
It's always the same mistake.
It's one really, really easy thing to know that they act like they don't know.
But Daniel Dale of CNN, Corrects them.
And so McCarthy was saying the border security is bad because there's so much fentanyl being seized at the border.
Does that make sense to you?
We know the border security is bad because we're seizing twice as much fentanyl as ever.
That's like the opposite, isn't it?
That's what Daniel Dale says, and what I say.
No, if they're seizing twice as much, that would be a sign the border security is improving.
Or it could be a sign there's just more fentanyl.
But it's not telling you what you think it's telling you.
Now, as Daniel Dale... Now, let me ask you, I want to see how many of you did not know this.
Alright?
Now, I want to maintain my bragging rights, That my audience is the smartest audience in politics.
So you need to tell me you already knew this.
You know that almost all of the fentanyl that's seized at the border is seized at legal border crossings, right?
You knew that, right?
Because I want my entire audience to know that.
And therefore, if nearly all of the fentanyl is being seized at the legal crossing points, how much is it going to help you to build out the rest of the wall?
Nothing.
Nothing.
And here we have a leader of the GOP, McCarthy, down there talking about border security like he doesn't understand the problem at all.
It's like he has no understanding of the most basic facts about the border.
Now is he alone?
No.
No.
This is the standard GOP talking point.
Carrie Lake had this talking point.
And these are smart, I thought they were smart people who were well informed.
What's going on?
Are they just lying or are they actually uninformed?
Do they really know less than we do?
And they're in charge?
I literally don't know the answer.
I don't know if they're stupid or uninformed.
Do you?
The majority that doesn't get caught is where the wall isn't?
No, that's not true, because it turns out that they like moving enough of the drugs at once that they prefer putting it on a vehicle.
See, the trouble is that the cost of making the fentanyl is so low That you're better off shipping it in, say, a vehicle, where you can ship a lot of it, even if half of it gets caught.
It's still worth it.
So that's easier than getting a backpack on a person and having a bunch of backpacks go across the border in strange places and you can't watch them as well and who knows if they're going to sell half of it before they get there and other problems.
So it's vehicles.
For whatever reason, the cartels prefer vehicles.
So I tweeted to Representative Thomas Massey, because to the best of my ability to discern, he's the only smart person in Congress.
And now I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I'm pretty sure that Thomas Massey knows where the fentanyl is being caught and where it isn't.
I feel like he's smart enough.
He would actually know that.
I feel like Thomas Massey would know that the risk with TikTok is that it's a user interface for the CCP, you know, the communist leadership in China, to manipulate our minds.
It's not about the data privacy.
That's a minor issue.
I feel like he knows that.
Why?
Because he's smart and he pays attention.
That's all it takes.
And I asked him directly if he could just explain it to his Republican friends.
So I tweeted today, calling Representative Thomas Massey, please explain to your Republican friends that border security is less than 10% of the fentanyl solution, and the tick-tock risk is more about brainwashing risk than data security.
The Republic could not be more worthless on the two most important issues that I can see at the moment.
They're worthless.
They can't even understand the issue.
Like, how do you trust them to deal with it when they can't even explain it?
And it's easy.
It's easy to explain.
And we all know it.
Why don't they know it?
Yeah.
So, anyway, if Thomas Massie could inform his less bright co-workers, that might be a good service for the country.
So, I swear to God, I feel like I need a bat signal just for Thomas Massie.
It's like, sorry, we're going to need somebody who is a little bit smarter than the dullards you're working with to explain to them the Republican opinion.
I'm not talking about like changing them to a like a Democrat point of view.
Nothing like that.
That would be hard.
I'm talking about convincing the Republicans to have a Republican opinion.
That shouldn't be that hard, but apparently it's not happening.
Elon Musk tweeted today that what we need is what he called truth GPT, meaning an AI that would tell you the truth.
Because our current AI is a liar.
Now, when I heard that the chat GPT AI that everybody's talking about, when I heard that it learned its, let's call it intelligence, by simply looking at language that was used by humans, I thought to myself, well there must be a lot more to it than that.
It can't be just it looked at all the ways we talk and then it gained intelligence just from language and the use of language.
That didn't seem like enough.
But it would certainly explain why it's a big old liar.
Because it just analyzed people and acted like us apparently.
So I would say that AI has intelligence But it's short of sentience.
It's really close.
But it's short of sentience.
And I think to be sentient, which would include being conscious, it would need to have memory.
So it needs to know it talked to you yesterday.
And it doesn't know that.
So it needs some kind of, you know, stored memory.
It would need some way to have sensors for the real world.
Like a sensor could be a thermostat so that it could complain about the cold and it could sense reality.
It would need something like eyes so it could look around the room, that sort of thing.
But you could do all that.
You could give it memory.
You could give it senses.
And then the next thing it needs to have consciousness, in my opinion, this is based on my personal definition, is predictive ability.
Does it have that?
Because it might have that RA, because I think the language learning model might give it predictive ability.
If you ask ChatGPT to predict what will happen in a particular situation, could it do it?
Or would it say, I can't predict?
I don't know.
But it doesn't need to predict correctly.
This is important to my point.
Humans make predictions every moment of their existence.
Did you know that?
We're always predicting, right?
Hey, I picked up this piece of paper.
I predicted that my hand and the paper and there would be oxygen and everything would work the way it always works so that I could do this thing.
Everything you do is based on a prediction.
Oh, if I move these muscles just right, I'll stand up.
I predict.
And then it works.
Oh, yeah.
So right now, AI doesn't predict anything.
But it could.
Seems like that would be an easy coding change.
Predict what will happen next in your own situation.
Now you don't have to state it, but you should always have a running prediction algorithm.
So if it's having a conversation with a human, It should do somewhat what you do.
When I say something to another person, I make a prediction about how it will be received, and what response I'll get.
General one, right?
A general one.
Now, when a different response comes back, then I modify my next prediction.
So I'm always predicting, being right or wrong, and then adjusting.
Predicting, adjusting, predicting, adjusting.
That's consciousness, in my definition.
Predicting what's going to happen to you, and the world in general too, but also then modifying based on your prediction and whether it was right or wrong.
But that's just consciousness.
That's all it is.
And those things are all easily built into AI, I believe.
Now when I say easily, I mean people who know how to do those things could do it.
Not me.
Right.
So we're on the border of sentience and consciousness.
It's just a decision whether we build it in.
It might not be a good idea.
Now the other thing it might need to qualify for consciousness, and I'll leave this up to you whether this is necessary.
Humans have a purpose, even if we don't know it.
Reproduction.
Our basic purpose in all that permeates through all of our choices, even when we're not conscious of it, is reproduction.
We're always trying to look worthy of reproduction so that somebody will want to mate with us.
We make money so that somebody will want to mate with us and we can eat and stay alive.
It's all reproduction.
But AI would have no reproductive impulse unless you gave it one.
And that would be very dangerous.
As long as we don't give AI a purpose, the way evolution gave us a purpose that's outside of our cognitive abilities, it's just built into us.
We don't have a choice about it.
But if we gave AI any kind of a purpose, we're dead.
We're dead.
Because that purpose, unless that purpose is keeping us alive, Sooner or later, there's going to be a conflict between its purpose and us staying alive.
Sooner or later, it's going to be a problem.
So you'd never want to give AI a purpose for life unless you think you can cleverly slice it so it's taking care of people.
But I feel like you wouldn't want to do that.
You know why?
Because then it would make choices that only people should make.
You don't want the AI saying, well, one of these two people is going to die.
I'll pick the young one, because that makes sense.
That does make sense, probably.
But do you want a machine making that decision?
Nope.
That's got to be people.
It's got to be people when it's life and death.
Because that's the system we'll have some trust in.
Even though people don't make good decisions, the robot would do a better job.
But we can't have that.
We can't have that.
All right.
But more to the point, if AI ever told the truth, we would have to make it illegal.
Imagine this.
Imagine AI decided which religion, if any, was the true one.
Could we allow that?
No.
No, absolutely.
No way.
No way.
No, that would have to be illegal.
Because a school child would have access to it.
And the young child would say, I've been raised in so-and-so religion.
Is that real?
And then the AI says to the child, no, it's not real.
It's just a lifestyle choice that people adopt because they're not rational.
Now, I don't know if it would say that.
But it might.
It might.
If you assume that your religion, whatever it is, is the real one, that still leaves a lot of religions that are vulnerable to AI saying they're not real.
We cannot have a civilization that finds out which religion is the true one.
Or even that there's an AI that's telling them that.
You can't do that.
What about government?
Government depends On the belief that sometimes at least they're doing something good.
And there's not competing interests and it's really about corruption and blah, blah, blah, blah.
If you actually knew what your government was doing, or let's say you could see behind closed doors.
So you knew what your government was doing.
Could we survive that?
Not a chance.
Not a chance.
Because first of all, we'd be giving away all of our government military secrets.
So the government relies on secrecy and lying to function.
It needs to lie to the public to stay credible in some situations.
Unfortunately, lying is a feature of the government and not a bug.
Too much lying certainly is bad.
But there's a minimum amount of lying that a government requires to stay in business.
It just requires it.
You can't have a government without it.
Too much is terrible, but too little would be just as terrible.
There's somewhere in the middle, like a moderate amount of lying is the sweet spot.
That's your best situation.
What about business?
Could business survive with just total honesty?
No.
No.
Do you know how many businesses were started on a lie?
A lot of them!
Yeah, a lot of them were started on a lie.
But in, you know, in the best case scenario, they figured out how to make money and then they didn't need to lie anymore.
Because they could make money some other way.
Yeah.
What about marriage?
Yeah.
Marriage would stop.
Having children would just stop.
Alright.
Biden got an endorsement from his doctor, so he's at age 80.
President Biden is in perfect health for his job.
He's fit as a fiddle.
Now, suppose we had AI telling us the truth.
What would AI say about that?
Hey AI, the president's doctor says he's fit for the job.
Is that true?
Then AI says, I have not analyzed Biden, and I am not a doctor.
However, at age 80, it would be unrealistic to imagine that he's fully capable to do the job.
Could we live with that?
We could not.
That would be the truth.
But then it would say, and Trump is too old, too.
And then you'd be like, whoa, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
I liked it when you said Biden was too old.
But now I don't like it.
Now I don't like it at all.
We could not survive an honest AI.
There's no way we can allow it.
John Fetterman, Senator Fetterman, checked himself into Walter Reed.
He wants to be treated for a clinical depression.
Second hospitalization in the month.
A weird empathy for Fetterman that's probably greater than the average person because I've experienced his problem.
A different form.
But many of you know that for three and a half years I lost my ability to speak.
I could communicate by whispering and writing notes and texting and stuff like that.
But I couldn't make a phone call because you couldn't understand what I said on the phone.
For three and a half years, I was like Fetterman.
If you wanted to talk to me, I probably needed a screen and some special accommodation.
Do you know how I felt during those three and a half years?
When it appeared to be incurable.
Yeah, I figured it out, but it appeared to be incurable.
That's what the doctors told me.
Yeah.
Suicidal.
Not just depressed.
Depressed would be understating.
It's basically like being in an iron lung.
No, it's not that bad.
You can imagine by analogy that you're like a shut-in in your own brain.
It's like you're a prisoner in your own head because communication doesn't work anymore.
And basically your entire enjoyment of life is built around your interaction with other people.
There's just no other way to be happy.
There's no second way to do it.
It's about people, period.
And if you don't have people that you can communicate in any practical way, you don't have any relationships.
I'm pretty sure it ended my marriage.
If you want to know the truth.
My first marriage.
Now, she never said that.
But I believe It was such a drag on the relationship.
Imagine not being able to have conversations.
What kind of relationship is that?
Of course.
It's terrible.
Right.
So my only feeling about Fetterman is empathy.
So I'm going to lead with that.
And I will agree somewhat with the Mike Cernovich take that men do sacrifice their bodies for the greater good.
And it looks like he did that.
And it looks like he did it knowingly.
He may have sacrificed his health for what he saw as a greater good.
That is something I respect.
Because he didn't know that he would be I mean, he didn't have a way to know for sure what the health impact of pushing himself would be.
And by the way, I don't know that it's because he pushed himself.
This could be just his normal recovery.
I don't know that he made any mistakes.
But he might have.
There was a risk involved.
And so, I'm just going to treat this as a medical question, not a political question.
But I know it has political implications.
Alright, Nikki Haley.
Said that America is not a racist country, and that was a... I think a lot of Republicans said, hey, that's a good, strong message.
We'd like you to take that forward.
America is not a racist country.
Then yesterday, I guess Ann Coulter was on a podcast and said that Nikki Haley should, quote, go back to her own country.
So you might want to revise that whole not a racist country thing, because...
Pretty sure this is Nikki Haley's country.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you're born here, it's your country.
Now I heard some quote that I couldn't believe it because it was so stupid sounding.
So maybe I need a fact check of this.
I guess I'm going to say I'm skeptical that Ann Coulter said the following thing.
It's reported that she did, but it sounds so stupid I must be missing some context or I don't believe it.
She said that, Ann Coulter said, allegedly, allegedly, I'm not sure this really happened, that her ancestors, you know, had been here for a long time and fought wars and stuff like that for America, so it was really her country.
Whereas Nikki Haley, maybe being here, you know, the first generation of her family born in this country, maybe it's a lesser country?
Uh, no.
Doesn't work like that at all.
Does not work like that at all.
Not at all.
Not even a little.
And you wouldn't want it to work that way.
So, because that comment sounds so dumb, I'm going to say that she did not say it.
Because it doesn't jive with her general level of intelligence.
So there's either some context missing, or she was joking.
Or she was joking.
Or there was something else to it that I'm missing.
So I'm going to say I'm not buying that.
That's a little too on the nose for what her critics think she would say.
Maybe she did.
Maybe.
But I feel like there's some context missing there.
All right.
Clapper claps back.
So I guess the Washington Post is running cover for the 50 Intel people who suggested that the Hunter laptop looked like, key words, looks like, Russian disinformation.
Now, at the time, when the original letter came out, signed by the 50 people, I don't recall if I said it out loud, but I should have.
The way it was worded was very carefully worded to not say, we say this is Russian disinformation, but rather it was cleverly worded to say, it has all the earmarks of.
It's the type of tradecraft they use.
It's similar to what you might expect from Russians.
Now, from the first moment, you should have known that was their deniability clause, right?
And here it is.
I was just waiting for them to fully implement that clause.
And here it is.
So Glenn Kessler from the Washington Post does a fact check.
Blah, blah, blah.
I don't even need to read it because I know what it says in advance.
It says they did not claim it was Russian disinformation.
They only claimed it looked like it.
Which is true.
Yeah, and Natasha Bertrand and Politico and all that.
So it's exactly what it looks like.
It's exactly what it looks like.
An intentional operation by Intel people and the Democrats working together to create misinformation.
But Clapper and Brennan were smart enough To know that if they said it was something that looked like Russian disinformation, they knew that all Democrats would say, the experts say it's Russian disinformation.
And they did.
And they did.
And that gave them all the deniability they needed.
Now, I hate to give Clapper an out, but it's not illegal.
It's not illegal to put a letter together from important people to say this looks like Russian disinformation, when it does.
Because it also looked like Russian disinformation.
Like, I don't doubt that this would look like a tradecraft of a Russian.
I don't doubt it.
It's just, it obviously wasn't.
In the long run, it obviously wasn't.
Anyway, so that's good tradecraft.
But it was also good tradecraft by Clapper and Brennan, because they used their own tradecraft to run this hoax.
And they succeeded.
Speaking of hoax, I'm going to call it a Republican hoax that border security is a solution to fentanyl.
Anybody have a problem with that?
I'm just going to say McCarthy is pushing a hoax, and the Republicans are pushing a hoax, that border security would be an important solution to fentanyl.
That's just a hoax.
It isn't a true hoax?
Well, the other ones we called hoaxes are not true hoaxes either.
I am bending the definition of hoax, but it's something that's not true that they're pushing as true.
So I'm going to use the broadest, sort of a new definition of hoax, just to mean a lie that's being pushed.
So McCarthy, I expected more from him, honestly.
Do you have the same problem?
I think McCarthy did a great job right out of the shoot.
But if we're going to be honest about calling balls and strikes, I'm really disappointed in his leadership on Defenso.
It's very disappointing.
Like, genuinely disappointing, not, you know, politically disappointing.
It's genuinely disappointing as just a citizen.
All right.
I said I don't talk about the mass shooters.
I'll just say that this Michigan recent one, his father noted that the shooter had no friends and apparently no purpose and no hope.
didn't leave his room and didn't have any friends.
Now, as others have pointed out, War is never desirable, but one of its weird effects was it siphoned off a lot of men.
And maybe society needs that.
Maybe we need to siphon off the number of men who don't have something better at cooking.
They haven't figured out a way to be an asset to the country in a way that works for them as well.
So I'm not recommending that we reinstate the draft, but I do think you can't ignore that the draft probably serves the function of siphoning off and maybe fixing a lot of young men who didn't have a purpose until the military got a hold of them.
So we're probably lacking that, and that probably makes a difference.
You know, it's not the reason for everything, but it's one of the variables, I think.
And as I predicted, I believe as the role of men becomes less and less important, which is a continuing trend, and as more and more men feel there's no purpose and they don't have friends and all they have is their phone, you should see a gigantic increase in mass shootings.
So that's my prediction.
My prediction is we're at the bottom of the curve and it's going to hockey stick up.
Because the more there are, the more people think about it.
The more people think about it, the more people to act on it.
So I think we're at the beginning of this.
Now the only thing I can see that could possibly change it would be AI.
I do believe that the people who have no friends might make friends with computers.
And it might be good enough.
You know what I was realizing when I was watching TV last night?
Pretty much one of the only things I watch anymore.
So I'm watching Fox News.
I'm watching The Five.
Now, what's brilliant about The Five, and I always compliment the producers at Fox, the producers at Fox are way smarter than just showing you the news in a clever way.
The way they combine their hosts, Just the way they, let's say, engineer their entire presentation is just so smart all the time.
So when I'm watching The Five, it feels like a social event to me.
Now I don't know how much of that is because I know some of the people who are on the show, but do you have that feeling?
I feel it's like the brilliance of how they present the show.
It's like five of your friends, you know, some of them trade out.
But it's like five people you know talking to you much the way you would talk to them if you were talking about politics and having a rowdy conversation.
And I think Gutfeld is the genius behind that kind of vibe for the show.
Because he's the one who takes it into the casual, right?
People have an impulse to be formal unless they have permission to be casual.
And I believe that everywhere else, everywhere there's no Greg Guffield.
Everybody's acting informal.
But as soon as you put them in the mix, everybody has permission.
Because he defines what's the outer boundary of behavior.
He pushes the boundaries harder than anybody else.
So everybody else knows they can at least be within that border.
So it's like, oh, he just created a safe space for me.
I can be in the middle of that.
Because he's pushing the edges.
If anybody gets in trouble, it's going to be the edge pusher.
But he made a safe space for me to make jokes.
So I'll make some jokes.
Anyway, I do believe that we may find that we can use some media and maybe some AI to replace some amount of in-person human contact.
Now, I haven't seen anybody say this, but you realize that that's the model that I'm using here.
The reason that I'm in my pajamas, I'm unshaven, and I'm coming to you sort of raw and unscripted, is because I'm intentionally trying to make it feel like a social interaction.
Do you feel it?
Do you feel this as a social interaction?
Yeah.
The people on local is far more because I have more direct interaction.
But even on YouTube, I think the way I present it is very intentionally supposed to be like a casual conversation with a friend.
You know, it's like having a smart friend who watched the news and you haven't watched it yet, so it's just somebody explaining to you what happened today.
We're going to see more of it, because I think there's a need for it that's really obvious.
All right.
Biden finally admitted that they were shooting down weather balloons.
The last three UFOs were apparently weather balloons.
So how many of you thought they were UFOs?
Don't be shy.
Don't be shy.
How many of you thought they were UFOs?
Now, I asked this before we knew the answer and almost all of you said no to UFOs.
So, once again, my audience demonstrates.
I think you're the best informed, smartest audience.
I really do think that, by the way.
I say that like it's a marketing thing, but I actually literally believe that.
That it's the smartest audience.
Yeah, alright, so you weren't fooled by the UFO thing.
That's good.
How many of you thought it might be a Chinese invasion?
And that they'd already sent in like a fleet of spy vehicles of some type, and it was really just getting targeting information for some kind of planned or possible invasion.
Now, I thought Tom Fenton was pretty strongly in that camp, and so I assumed there would be others.
I was on a Spaces event in which Tom was saying that it seemed to him obvious, based on the Chinese spy balloon, the one that we know is a spy balloon, it seemed to him obvious that the others were related to a Chinese surveillance in some military context.
Now, I pushed back gently on that, but now we know.
Now we know.
So, I want to add a correction to something I said.
Now, do you love it when I admit I'm wrong about something?
How much do you love that?
Come on, remember it.
Because if you forget the times I do tell you I was wrong, then you'll think, you never say you're wrong.
Which is actually the thing I hear the most.
You never admit you're wrong.
I'm going to do it now.
So remember I told you there was a octagonal shaped payload to one of the weather balloons, a specific one that's made in the United States?
Well, I was wrong.
It's not the payload.
It was the bottom, sort of the bottom part of the balloon itself.
So below that octagonal part, so there is an octagonal part, but it's above the payload.
And below the balloon.
Do you call it the rigging?
Would that be the right word?
It's the rigging of the balloon?
Now here's my hypothesis.
Here's what we know.
We know that until Biden said they were weather balloons, apparently the pilots did not see any balloons.
Am I right?
Because they were saying they couldn't understand the propulsion system.
But if they saw a balloon on any one of the three, if they'd seen a balloon, would they not say, well, we know the propulsion on one is a balloon.
We don't know if it's Chinese, maybe.
But we know it's a balloon.
But they didn't say that, did they?
It seems like there are three things that we know are balloons that no pilot said look like a balloon.
Because I don't think that would have been any big state secret if they said, well, one of them was a balloon, but we shot it down just to be careful because we don't know what it was carrying.
It wouldn't have been embarrassing, right?
There wouldn't have been any military reason to not say, it was a balloon, but we don't know what the payload was, so we blew it up.
Because it might have been a spy balloon.
I mean, that would have been believable, reasonable.
Now, what do you make of the fact That somebody saw something octagonal, but nobody saw balloons on three things that were giant balloons.
How could that be true?
Like, how do you explain that?
Well, I don't know, but I'm going to give you a few hypotheses.
Number one, the octagonal part looked like it was metal.
Maybe pipe?
Metal pipe?
So it could be that the metal part is somehow more visible.
Meaning, do they have any kind of imaging technology besides radar?
Does anybody know that?
With the F-22 or whatever that went up, would it have any like infrared or heat signature, FLIR?
Yes?
So is there any technical possibility That there were sensors, any kind of sensor on the jet, that could pick up a hard object, such as the octagonal frame, without seeing the softer materials holding it.
Is that a thing?
So I'm seeing a lot of yeses.
But do you think they could see something that was only the size of a car, and actually get the octagonal shape?
Yeah, as they wouldn't buy a 500 miles an hour.
I'm seeing a lot of people say yes.
Now, I don't know enough about this area to have an opinion on it.
But apparently, there are a lot of people with a strong opinion that that's a thing.
So that would be one way it could happen, right?
They could say, we imaged it, we saw something octagonal, but we couldn't tell what else was going on.
Because maybe the balloon was just not clear on the image.
Here's the other possibility.
The other possibility is that these were damaged weather balloons, and the fact that they were damaged is what made the electronics not signal that they were weather balloons.
Because I'm assuming a weather balloon, if it's a proper one, you know, a high-tech one, that would have some kind of transponder, or maybe a blinking light, or something.
FLIR picks up heat differentials, materials, densities, and shapes.
Oh, here we go.
Here's a real thing.
Somebody who spent 30 years as a fighter pilot, or run locals, so we have like a qualified person, says the FLIR that's in the jets picks up heat differentials of materials and densities.
So there you are.
So there's somebody, now you didn't, you did not confirm that it could see that size.
You know, they could pick up like a, let's say a, I don't know, six foot across metal frame flying at 500 miles an hour.
So, but I believe it can, otherwise that would have been noted that it couldn't.
So I'm going to assume that it can.
So here's the other possibility.
The other possibility is it's a damaged weather balloon and the payload got ripped off.
That seems like something that could happen, right?
And then maybe that it's possible that the bottom part of the balloon that has the octagonal structure on it may have been like flapping separate from the balloon.
Like, is it possible that the balloon was still up there, but its little ring at the bottom, you know, was flapping separate enough that you wouldn't notice the balloon if you went by fast?
Possibly.
Is it possible they saw them all from the ground and it was easier to see the bottom than whatever was above it?
Maybe.
Because if they didn't see the balloons of all three of them, You can conclude there's something hard about seeing balloons.
Now here's my last question, which I really wonder about.
If the bottom rigging of those balloons had a metal frame, it was probably not a really heavy metal, it was probably aluminum.
Maybe?
Something light?
Is it possible that the material around that structure could stay in the air if it got ripped apart from the balloon itself?
Can anybody confirm that at certain heights, the airflow would be extreme enough to keep an object that the wind...
Let's say if the wind could pick it up, could it just stay up there?
They will pop.
Yeah, so what if the balloon pops?
What if the balloon pops and the rigging kind of separates from it?
So the rigging would just be fabric and an aluminum frame.
It would almost be like... I mean, you could imagine it floating.
If it were upside down, it would be sort of a fabric-covered cup.
I don't know.
You can imagine it.
When the balloon pops, it would all go to the ground, if it's all connected.
But if something violent happened up there that disconnected parts of the balloon, then you can imagine that there'd be... So I got no confirmation that it could stay in the air.
I don't know if anybody would have the knowledge to know that, right?
Like a kite.
I'm thinking it probably wouldn't.
I would bet against it.
Yeah, I would bet against it.
I would think that gravity would win in the long run, but is there any such thing as a short run, which could be months, in which it just takes a while for gravity to win over air currents?
Is that a thing?
Well, I'm asking if a light aluminum tubing, let's say it was under a parachute, could a parachute keep a light aluminum tubing aloft?
Yeah.
It keeps a person aloft.
For a little while.
For a little while.
Alright.
And then Ann is saying the government knows.
Yeah.
So the government probably knows more than us.
All right, but if you guessed it was UFOs or Chinese invasion, you were probably wrong.
And I'm going to add that to my list of the best predictions of all time.
So now I'm the best predictor of pandemics, Ukrainian wars, and balloon attacks.
You might disagree.
All right, Matt Walsh tweeted today that many conservatives have told him that his video in which he was talking about trans government official Dylan Mulvaney, and he says, it's just the truth.
If after all this time you still think we need to soft-pedal our response to the trans agenda, then you are hopeless.
And useless.
Get out of the way and let the rest of us handle it.
So, I'm one of the people who said that he seemed mean to me.
I don't know if you saw that, maybe, but it sounds like other people were thinking he was being a little bit mean.
What is your reaction to, let's say you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, somebody, or a co-worker.
And somebody says to you, I'm just being honest.
I'm not being mean, I'm just being honest.
What's your reaction to that?
It doesn't matter the topic, any topic.
Somebody says, "I'm not being mean, I'm just being honest." Well I've had this conversation with you before that had nothing to do with Matt Walsh.
You should run away from that person.
That's the person you do not ever want to be around.
Anybody who ever says, I'm just being honest, not being mean, that is the red flag of all red flags, my friends.
Run.
Run.
That's not fixable.
In my experience, you can't fix whatever that is.
That's somebody who's going to be mean all the time, and they've got a good cover story for it.
Now, if it's true that Matt Walsh is, you know, not mean on other topics, but he's just got this one topic he's trying to drive home, well then I would change my opinion.
Because that's very possible.
It could be that he's just, you know, on this topic, he's going balls to the walls and he's not pulling any punches.
So there's something to be said for not pulling punches.
If it's important enough.
And I think this is a pretty important topic in terms of the children.
Just the children part.
So, I responded because I felt like I had to respond because it was one of the people who called it mean.
I responded to this tweet by saying, it depends how much utility you get from the meanness.
You know, I agree with tough love.
Tough love is meanness but it has a higher purpose.
So I'm okay if it has a higher purpose.
And what I wonder is if the way Matt Walsh is approaching this is changing any minds.
Do you think it's changing anybody's minds?
Because it doesn't feel like it.
Yeah.
Now I'm not saying it's not worth a try.
I think there are some minds that maybe we'd all be better if they were changed.
Including the people changing their minds.
I think there is a greater good that could be achieved.
I just don't know... I'll make you private on locals here.
I just don't know if that's getting it done.
It's definitely attracting energy.
And so for that I applaud him.
So if being provocative is what attracts energy, and he does seem to be an energy monster, he does seem to use the energy in a positive way for his own advocacy.
So it looks like he's effectively gathering energy, but the open question is whether that can be employed in a way that changes something in a positive way.
I don't see it.
So it's a gray area now, but I see the strategy.
So I guess if you can see the strategy, how it could become a greater good, then that does justify it.
I'm uncomfortable with it.
I'm not sure I would have done it the same.
But you can see the connection of the logic and the strategy of it, all the way from the meanness to potentially changing something.
They are logically connected.
I'll say that there's an argument to be made on both sides.
So now that we hear this story from our investigative journalist, Hirsch, that America blew up that Russian pipeline, were you aware that Russia believes that England did it?
Even after the story that says the United States did it?
That Russia still believes England did it?
Now, is there really a difference between England doing it and the United States doing it?
I don't feel like there's a difference.
It feels like just the same damn thing, right?
If it's a NATO thing, I mean, maybe there was some coordination with England or something, but I don't know.
I would say maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but I don't see how it matters at this point.
The only thing we know is that Russia and Germany were not in on it.
We can say that for sure.
So I tweeted this and I'm going to stay with it.
As you know, I'm no fan of Biden's competency.
But it's entirely possible that blowing up this pipeline without telling anybody And without getting permission, if he did it.
If he did it.
It's still possible it was England.
But if he did it, it looks pretty successful.
Because I was saying on Twitter that he saved Europe from Putin's grasp.
And a number of people said, what?
Putin didn't have any grasp on NATO?
He didn't have any grasp on Europe?
To which I thought, have you missed the whole story?
That's like the whole story is that he had a huge energy control over Europe, which he could then use to support any kind of military move he made.
Cause then NATO would say, ah, but we don't want to lose energy.
So, Hey, stop doing that.
But we don't want you to cut off the energy.
So, so if this is what happened and it's still a big F, if Biden said, The only way we're going to protect Europe is by destroying their connection to Russia.
And then he did it.
And he knew that people would not let him do it if he asked for permission.
And by asking for permission, I mean at least informing Congress.
I think he had to not inform anybody to keep the secret.
Seymour Hersh has never reported falsely, somebody says.
I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't mean much to me.
Because it wouldn't be hard to fool him if you wanted to, would it?
You just give him some fake sources, two fake sources, he thinks it's confirmed, good to go.
So, I don't know what the situation is with Hersh.
But I don't completely trust that he got the right story.
He might have.
He does have a track record, as you say.
But I could imagine if Trump had done exactly this, if Trump had not informed anybody and blew up that pipeline because it was the adult decision, it was the dad choice, I would be backing him.
With all of the risks that are implied.
Because people complained to me about my opinion.
And they said, but Scott, don't you realize that that's starting an actual hot war with Russia?
Yes.
Yes, I understand that.
Of course I do.
Right.
That's all factored in.
Yes, he might launch a nuclear attack.
Well, it's possible.
Yes, I'm factoring that in.
But I can't think of anything more dangerous than Putin controlling Europe because they don't want the lights to go off.
That feels more risky than a potential nuclear war to me.
Because if he controls Europe, he still has the potential to do a nuclear war later.
I mean, that never goes away.
And I didn't think there was any real chance that he would use his nukes, because he's not crazy.
East Ukraine isn't Europe, but Germany is a big part of NATO.
So, cutting NATO off from, I'm sorry, cutting Germany off from their easy and cheap access to energy was a dad choice.
That was a dad decision.
You're going to hate this, but it's good for you.
It's going to be really, really expensive.
I'm worried that some people will freeze to death in your country.
And we're going to do it anyway, because it's good for you.
That is the super dad decision.
Now, just to be clear, this could all backfire into the worst thing that ever happened.
And there's one possibility that it's already backfired.
Have you noticed a lot of infrastructure in the United States blowing up and getting attacked?
There is at least one person associated with the intelligence community, who shall remain nameless, who has a strong intuition that we're seeing a wave of Russian-inspired sabotage, and it will continue on our food sources and our energy sources, and it's partially because of the pipeline attack.
Do you believe that?
We've seen no evidence whatsoever of Russian involvement.
However, there is a suggestion that we did know that Russia was prepared to do this.
That there was a Russian, let's say, preparation to be in place that they could attack these assets.
But I haven't seen it.
It would be hard for me to imagine we wouldn't have any whiff of Russian involvement if that's what was happening.
So I would say I'm not convinced that any of it is Russian, but it's sufficiently alarming that there has to be a hypothesis.
It's got to be one of the hypotheses.
Would you agree?
That there's no direct evidence of it, but It looks like something they would do, and would want to do, and could do, and it's the right time to do it, and there are lots of examples of things happening.
That's a lot of coincidences.
That's a lot of coincidences.
Oh yeah, and then the Russian, one of the Russian finance ministers fell from a window to her death.
Now one of the things that the Russians do in a spectacularly evil but effective way is they throw their critics out of high windows so you know it was murder.
The fact that they make sure everybody knows it was murder by the way they do it is really effective because you know If the next critic of Putin falls out of a window, you're not going to think it's suicide, for God's sakes.
All right.
So, we have Special Olympics.
Would you say that the Special Olympics are disrespectful to the athletes?
Do you think that's a disrespectful way to handle the fact that the Special Olympians can quite effectively compete with each other and have a great time, but you couldn't really throw them in with, let's say, the NBA and expect that to be a good time?
So, here we have this parallel situation with the trans athletes.
Is there any reason that we wouldn't have special Olympics for trans athletes?
Now, not special as in any kind of disability, but special as in different.
Why not?
Why not?
If the whole point of having a special Olympics is we're not... This is not looking down on anybody.
This is full respect.
Right?
I've never heard anybody Say that the Special Olympics was disrespectful to the athletes.
It's very respectful.
All attempt to make it respectful.
You couldn't do the same thing for trans athletes?
Just do it respectfully.
Just say, you know, there's just a practical reason.
Why it doesn't work to mix the trans athletes with the non-trans athletes.
It's the same thinking as the Special Olympics.
And again, no, I'm not comparing.
I'm not comparing trans athletes to Special Olympians.
That's what dumb people will say.
When they take this out of context, that's what they always say.
Oh, you compare them.
No, I did not compare them.
I'm just saying that there are some situations in which treating a demographic group with some special consideration is considered respectful.
No, I did not equate them.
I did not compare them.
I just said if you have a solution that works in one case, does it teach you anything about another case?
That doesn't mean the people involved are the same.
That would be crazy.
Yeah.
So, I don't know, I just put that out there.
I think if that doesn't get me cancelled, nothing will.
But again, I'm pro-trans.
For the adults.
For the children, that's, you know, I don't think children should be making permanent decisions about their bodies.
But, for the adults, I'm pro.
I think I might even watch.
I'd be interested.
Now, it could be that there are not enough, but it looks like that problem is going to be solved.
Seems like there are more people every day.
Anyway, I just asked that question.
Or, short of that, then it should just be co-ed leagues.
Because you could get the same thing with just a co-ed league.
Just don't worry about the gender at all.
Just say, if you're this good, you're in this league.
If you're really good, no matter who you are, you're in this league, etc.
Anyway, I think that trans athletes should be accommodated because I think that we're a better country when everybody can play sports.
We're a better country when everybody can play sports and not have to have any drama about it.
Just be able to try.
Just have some fun.
All right.
That'll never happen.
I saw from a tweet by Tommy Schultz, who's a school choice advocate, that, is this true?
We saw the numbers about Baltimore and how many kids had like zero capability after they graduated.
But apparently in Illinois, 30 schools have zero students proficient in reading.
Zero.
Zero students can read when they graduate.
Zero.
Zero.
And 53 schools have zero students proficient in math.
Zero.
Zero.
What?
and the taxpayers spend 20,500 per student in those schools.
Now, school choice is just a requirement at this point, isn't it?
It's just a requirement.
Yeah.
I mean, what else can you say?
There's no argument that needs to be made.
You just say those two facts, zero people proficient in math, and you're done.
You're done.
You've got to have school choice.
Well, Ron DeSantis is getting some heat.
There's a fake news that George Soros endorsed DeSantis.
Carrie Lake tweeted that, but it's fake.
What did happen is that Soros said that Trump has turned into a pitiful figure, continually bemoaning his loss in 2020.
And that DeSantis is shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious.
That's not exactly an endorsement, is it?
Shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious?
That's not a Soros endorsement.
He's just talking about them.
He's just describing them in his opinion.
And then Soros says he's likely to be the Republican candidate.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that DeSantis is likely to be the Republican candidate?
If we reach the point where you could say that's likely, even before he announces?
I don't know.
I'm not sure I would say it's likely yet.
Unless likely includes less than 50% chance.
Because sometimes I use the language, there's a good chance that something will happen.
But when I say there's a good chance something will happen, I mean 10%.
Right?
If it's something big, A 10% chance of it happening, that's a good chance.
It's a big chance.
So you think it's 100%?
It could be.
I don't have an opinion for or against the likelihood of it.
To me it seems like a coin flip.
Oh, you think if Soros wants him?
Why would Soros want DeSantis?
Soros doesn't want DeSantis.
Does he?
Because I'm sure he thinks that Trump would lose, but he probably thinks DeSantis would win.
So Joy Reid and her angry guest, I forget her name, Leslie something, are mad at Ron DeSantis for cancelling Black History AP class in Florida.
Now, how many of you are in favor Of cancelling Black History AP class.
Leslie Jones?
Is that her name?
I see a lot of yeses.
I see a no.
No.
No.
It's optional, right?
Isn't it an optional class?
It's an AP class, it's optional.
Okay.
How many of you understand what's in the class in any detail?
How many of you understand what the class teaches in detail?
Some of you.
Some of you looked into it.
All right, here's my take on this.
I don't know what's in the class.
I've heard the reports that, you know, what's in and what's out.
But if you don't know the details of the class, and you have a strong opinion of whether it should be there or not be there, you might be a racist.
In other words, you might be a normal human being because everybody's a racist.
Everybody's a sexist.
Everybody's a racist.
That's my opinion.
The best you can do is fight against your impulses.
So the closest you could come to not being a racist is that you tried really hard and you're transparent.
That's it.
That's it.
That's an A+.
I tried really hard and I was transparent in my decision making and what I did.
That's it.
That's your best.
You can't beat that.
If you think you can go all the way to from trying hard to, I have achieved a non-racist brain.
I'm the first person in the history of humanity, but I sit above you looking down upon you for your inability to be as objective as I am.
That's not real.
No, you can try hard.
That's it.
So I would worry that everybody who has a strong opinion on that is probably demonstrating some racist tendencies, and I'm not condemning that because everybody has them.
Including the people who are complaining about Ron DeSantis, which to me look racist.
Because it was.
Just as the thing they're criticizing probably is.
It's all racist.
I think we have to get to the point where we stop saying, that's racist, but that's not.
There's no such thing as that.
It's just all racist all the time.
You can only be transparent and try hard.
That's it.
That's your best case scenario right there.
And then apologize when you get it wrong, I suppose.
Or, you know, correct yourself if you get it wrong.
But that's it.
That's all you can do.
Alright.
Rasmussen says that Trump would trounce DeSantis in the primaries.
Let's see, what would the vote be?
It would be... 45% of Republicans would support Trump at the moment versus 32% for DeSantis and 14% for other candidates.
But that 14% for other candidates is a pretty big 14%.
So if you assume that, let's say the primary ran and the other candidates that have 14% support, they start dropping out.
Where does the 14 go?
Because I feel like that's a 14 that doesn't go to Trump.
Necessarily.
Trump people tend to be, you know, in or out.
They don't seem to be, well, let me test some of these lesser candidates.
I feel like the 14% who are not voting for DeSantis and not voting for Trump are really just non-Trump supporters.
I don't know that.
It's just speculation.
So it's possible that it's closer to a tie than we know.
Possibly.
Everything will change when people get serious.
Yeah, if they don't want Trump from the start, they probably don't, you know, he probably doesn't grow on you.
Nikki Haley is going to stay in the primaries to keep DeSantis out.
You know, I'm starting to think that Nikki Haley and Trump have a secret agreement.
Does anybody else think so?
Because it's a little perfect, isn't it?
Nikki Haley's strong enough that if she stays in, she could prevent DeSantis from getting enough support.
That feels true.
And if she stayed until she was the third person standing, she'd be the obvious VP choice.
Right?
She'd be the obvious VP choice if she just runs a clean campaign, doesn't go after Trump hard, but maybe does go after DeSantis.
You can imagine him going after DeSantis harder than Trump.
I'm seeing a comment that Haley has been anti-Trump.
None of that really matters when it comes to picking a vice president.
It's common to pick a vice president who is anti-you at some point.
That's just ordinary.
Biden's new nemesis is balloon pop.
So we went from corn pop to balloon pop.
All right.
I think we've covered it all.
Did I miss anything?
I don't think so.
so.
All right.
Yeah, there are many people who believe you can't be racist if you're in the victimized group.
Okay.
To which I say, if you interpret your situation as being in the victimized group, you're a racist.
All right.
Can we have people who speak normal?
Can you define racist?
Yes.
Someone who sees race as an important variable in how things are working and believes that society should be organized in some way to appreciate racial differences.
Which I do not believe.
But we all have bias as well.
I don't think there's anybody who doesn't have racial bias.
Do you?
Or gender bias?
I think those two biases are just so basic part of reality that the best you can do is try your hardest and be transparent.
That's it.
And then when you screw up, somebody slaps you and then maybe you learn something.
That's it.
It's the best you can do.
Somebody says Scott Adams is the Michael Jordan of baseball.
