Episode 2088 Scott Adams: Dershowitz On Fox News Settlement, J6 Eppsurrection, Slavery Reparations
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Content:
Trump on DeSantis
Dershowitz on Fox News settlement
Ray Eppsurrection
UFOs
Calculating reparations
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Ah, so much better now.
Well, we got some fun stories for you today.
Fun, fun stories.
First of all, how many of you have seen that UFO video that looks like something about the size of a softball zipping through the sky unexplainedly?
Have you seen that one?
Look at it again.
And then imagine that instead of it being a UFO that's zipping sideways across the sky, imagine it's just dropping from above.
It's sort of like that, is the dress, you know, what color is the dress?
As soon as you imagine, as soon as you imagine it's not going sideways, just in your head, look at it and say, oh, there's something dropping from above that's just falling down.
It looked pretty fake to me.
Mylar balloon blowing around?
Maybe.
Yeah.
Oh, we had the sip.
You missed it, Raymond.
So UFOs, I would say, I'm not convinced.
I'm just not convinced.
In Chicago, a bunch of pastors organized a march of black men who were organized to—it was in response to the The violence that happened over the weekend.
So there's a big mass shooting.
So a bunch of black men organized by his pastors did a march in Chicago.
To which I asked this question.
What are they asking for?
And what are they protesting against?
And what's the plan?
I didn't see any of that in the story.
Now, did the news forget to mention the point?
Oh, a bunch of black men are marching.
And...
And they're asking for, they're demanding what?
I don't know.
Well, what does the march do?
Was there somebody who saw the march who was a criminal?
Maybe a murderer?
He sees the march, he's like, wait a minute.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
I'm seeing a march of black men organized by pastors in reaction to the violence of the weekend.
I'm starting to think that all my murdering is ill-advised.
Now that I see that march, I've decided to murder less.
How does it work?
Now, I'm all in favor of action.
And maybe that's where it starts.
Maybe it's just getting attention.
But is there somebody who didn't know the murder rate was high in Chicago?
Is there anybody who didn't know the problem existed?
And it's like really bad.
I feel like every time somebody on the left tries to fix something, you can't identify how the action would in any way work.
Like you can't even connect it in your mind.
It's like, okay, were they protesting themselves?
Because usually if it's a march, they're protesting somebody, right?
You're protesting, let's say the police.
But in this case, this was black-on-black crime they were protesting.
Were they protesting themselves?
I mean, not personally.
But it was a group protesting its own group, wasn't it?
How does that work?
How do you protest your own group?
What do you do?
I just feel like there's something terribly missing, even though all of the intentions and the energy are in the right direction.
To what end?
I don't know.
Something's missing there.
The only way that a march would help, as far as I can tell, is if they just took their families with them and just kept marching to a safer place.
I think people who were not criminals should get away from criminals.
What do you think?
If you're not a criminal and you live where there are lots of criminals, Job one is to get away.
And I'll tell you what I would have protested for if that had been me.
I would protest for government help for relocation.
Right?
Because that's actually a solution.
Well, my family are not criminals.
We don't want to live too close to a big criminal situation.
So could we get some government funding?
Just for relocation and get another job in a safer place with a better school.
I feel like that would fix most things.
Because it would turn the cities into just complete hellholes because all the good people would leave.
But what's the alternative?
It's going to turn into a hellhole anyway.
And while it's happening, people are being victimized.
So get the people who want to just have good schools and good lives.
Just move them.
In fact, it would be interesting to see if conservatives put together some kind of like fund where you could contribute to it.
And it was very visible.
You know, that's the problem with charities, they're not visible.
But let's say it's very visible that if you contributed to some Republican fund, that anybody who wanted to get away from a Democrat crime-ridden hellhole could apply.
And if they didn't look like criminals themselves, and they had a little good application, it'd be like applying to college.
We apply to college.
Why can't you apply to move your family to a safe place?
Just like anything else, you know, tell us what you need, tell us who you are, we'll evaluate it, give you some money if it makes sense.
Because it seems to me that if you moved a well-meaning, law-abiding family from where the kids will grow up with all this criminal influence to a place where they could grow up without it or less of it, wouldn't you come out way ahead?
Wouldn't that money be really well spent?
You'd create an entire successful family, plus all of their kids and kids forever.
That just seems like a gigantic lever.
Just to get them out of the bad place.
Get them where there's better school.
Anyway, that's just an idea.
So I think scholarships for removing the people who want to succeed legally would be maybe a way to go.
Because nothing else is working, right?
Nothing else is working.
And I think that when people demand your money, you have a very different feeling about it than if you could simply donate your money to something that made sense.
Let me see if this feels right to you.
If the government says to you, hey, give us some money so we can give it to this other group, what's your first reaction?
How about no?
How about I earned my money, how about I keep it?
How about that?
How about I just keep my money and you go away?
But, suppose somebody says to you this proposition.
Hey look, we've got this program where we can take a really, a family that has potential, and they're not criminals and they want to just do well and stay in school and stay off drugs, but they're in a terrible place.
Could you give $20 to a fund, just $20, to a fund that would be saving families, and we'll let you know how it goes.
It'll be very transparent.
Would you give $20 to that?
Well, some of you would.
Some of you wouldn't, obviously.
But some of you would, and you might even feel good about it.
Because the problem is, when the government asks for money, I think it's wasted.
No, you?
Oh, the government wants more money from you.
Okay, so I lose money and I gain nothing.
That's how it feels.
Because it doesn't feel like they need the extra money.
They need money, but extra?
Do they really need extra?
I don't know.
But if it's my option, I'd love to help.
The greatest underutilized resource in the country is that white men like to help.
I've said that before, and I'm sure that people who are not adult white men don't understand it at all.
Now, I'm not saying there are other groups who are not like that.
That's not the point.
I don't know about other groups.
I'm just talking about a group I know.
Adult white men always want to help.
They just don't want to do stupid stuff and waste their money.
So all you have to do is create a situation where they can help, and they're all in.
All in.
I'll give you all my time, all my money.
You can have whatever you want.
It just has to be voluntary and useful.
All right.
Apparently, I woke up this morning to find out that somebody has compiled a gigantic list of alleged transphobes.
Did you see that this morning on social media?
It's like 42,000 people on a list of transphobes.
And I was alerted to the fact I'm on the list.
I'm on the list of transphobes.
I'm literally the most famous pro-trans person who has a conservative audience.
Name one person who's more pro-trans than I am, who has a conservative audience.
Nobody.
I'm the number one most trans-friendly pro-trans person who has a conservative audience.
I'm exactly who they should be promoting.
If you're a trans activist, you should make me the most famous person who's your ally.
Because I'm talking to the people who are the least likely to be on your side with the most positive spin on their situation.
I'm the most useful person, period, to the trans community.
Maybe in the whole world.
Because the people who are preaching to their own side are just talking to people who are already convinced.
So you can eliminate everybody on the left As being the best supporter of trans rights, because they're just talking to people who agree.
But how many people have a conservative audience who tell you practically, I don't know, three times a week, that let the adults alone?
You know, the kids are a different story, of course.
But just let the kids live.
Let the adults live.
Let them have their life.
Now the questions about sports are completely separate, right?
Protrans for adults only?
I don't know what that means.
Anyway, so that's a fake list.
Obviously they didn't put any time into putting that together.
If you see it, don't pay any attention to it.
Well, Ray Epps appeared on 60 Minutes, and if you were going to predict how that would go, what would you have predicted?
Let's see.
I'm going to guess That the people who think that Ray Epps was, you know, innocent of all, let's say, government connections on January 6th, they still think it, because 60 Minutes told them.
And then the people who think it's the opposite of the truth, that Ray Epps might have had something to do with the government and maybe organizing things, allegedly, do you think that they were talked out of it?
Let me tell you what I saw.
As Mike Cernovich pointed out accurately, so the FBI did a statement that said, the FBI issued this statement, Ray Epps has never been an FBI source or an FBI employee.
Now do you remember when the FBI was asked under oath, did Ray Epps work for you or the government or something?
And they said something like, no comment.
They wouldn't answer that question.
But then, when they're not under oath, as Cernovich points out, when they're not under oath, and they're just doing a press release, they say the opposite.
So under oath they say one thing, and not under oath they say the opposite.
How do you interpret that?
I only see one way to interpret that.
And I'm going to have to go the Cernovich path on this one.
Yeah.
I don't think they could tell you he's guilty or has some kind of connection any more clearly than that.
All right.
Now, number two.
Are you aware that it wouldn't necessarily be even a typical situation for Ray Epps if he had any involvement with the FBI?
If he did, he wouldn't be a source.
Would they call him a source?
Because he's blamed for being an operator.
Not a source.
But somebody goes and makes something happen.
Now somebody just talks about things, right?
So we agree he's not a source.
He was never accused of being a source, was he?
Was he ever accused of being a source?
Well, he might have been a source for somebody.
We don't know that, but maybe not the FBI.
And they say he wasn't an FBI employee.
What's that mean?
He wasn't an FBI employee.
That's pretty specific, isn't it?
That's a little too specific, FBI.
Yeah, your working assumption has to be that the FBI knows who he works for and it's government related.
Doesn't mean it's the FBI.
But the FBI clearly knows, I would say based on the 60 minutes and the way they answered in the FBI's response, that the most reasonable interpretation is that he was involved with some government entity, but not on a payroll.
Not on a payroll, didn't get a paycheck, was an employee, but may have had some benefit.
They didn't say he had no benefit for what he did.
Don't know about that.
Didn't say he didn't work for the CIA.
Didn't say he didn't work for Homeland.
There's some kind of Homeland Security Defense.
There are a whole bunch of agencies and police departments and government entities that could have been working with him.
We don't know.
So, did 60 Minutes ever explain why he kind of quickly got off the most wanted list?
Sixty minutes didn't explain that, right?
That's like the biggest mystery?
Because that just sort of doesn't happen.
You don't just take somebody off the most wanted list.
That would be kind of a long process.
Right.
All right, so I would say that Tim Poole's take was pretty good.
He tweeted that, from now on, I'm calling J6 the Ray Epps insurrection.
Then I saw another tweet from somebody calling themselves ChatGPT, but it's not ChatGPT.
Just a person who said, we think the hashtag should be hashtag RayEpsurrection.
Drives a home point even better.
Then I thought I could improve on that a little bit, so I tweeted J6Epsurrection.
I think I'm going to call it the Epsurrection from now on.
And not because I think he was guilty of working with the government, but because he was there organizing.
He was an organizer on January 6th, so it was an absurrection.
What do you think?
J6 absurrection.
I like taking the Ray part out of it because that doesn't add anything.
Yeah.
It was an absurrection.
So here again we get to the concept of working, sort of your working understanding or your working assumption.
The government has now very clearly sent us the signal that J6 was a government operation and they're trying to hide it.
You realize that 60 Minutes is the same people who had Trump on and told him that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation?
That was the same 60 Minutes.
Now, can you refresh my memory?
What did 60 Minutes say about Russia collusion?
Did 60 Minutes say Russia collusion looked pretty solid?
Looks like there's some Russian collusion here?
I don't remember, but...
I think I would have known if 60 Minutes said it wasn't true, you know, while it was still going on.
Yeah.
So, if you see a 60 Minutes cover piece, so now the New York Times and 60 Minutes have both given cover to Ray Epps, which would be the most damning thing I could think of.
The New York Times is I mean, not even barely at a news organization anymore.
It's mostly just a government Democrat entity.
So, I think that the 60 Minutes, in my mind, has now solidified an opinion that I thought was just, well, maybe yes, maybe no, I see what you're talking about.
But the 60 Minutes thing just totally solidifies that there's something there that made the January 6th situation not what it looked like.
And that it was probably a government operation, a Democrat-led operation.
That's what it looks like.
Now, that's just a working assumption, right?
Now, I don't know if Ray Epps is guilty of anything, and I won't allege that he is.
I'm just saying that the way 60 Minutes has presented it is as guilty as hell.
So the presentation makes him look guilty of some kind of government connection.
Not necessarily illegal.
I don't know if any of it's illegal.
That'd be different.
But, so, I want to be as clear as I can, just so Ray Epps doesn't sue me.
I'm not aware of any crime he committed.
None.
I'm not aware that he lied.
I'm not aware of it.
But 60 Minutes did present to us a case which is really convincing that he's guilty of some connection.
Not of a crime.
Not of a crime.
But guilty of a connection to the government that has not been disclosed.
Would you accept that interpretation?
We don't know, but we've been told as clearly as possible it's true.
It's just how you choose to accept or interpret that.
All right.
Have I been talking to your ex?
So that was fun.
So Trump is still hammering on DeSantis.
I guess he's sticking with Ron DeSanctimonious.
What do you think of Ron DeSanctimonious?
I don't feel like enough people even know what the word means.
It's too long, got a lot of syllables.
It doesn't feel like up to his normal standard, does it?
It's like nickname weak.
But on the other hand, he might also not want to take him down completely.
Because if you're Trump, you want to weaken DeSantis in the primary, but you don't want to take him out, do you?
Because you still need him.
If Trump gets the nomination, he wants to have a DeSantis that he can reconstruct, you know, make DeSantis a supporter, or at least not a detractor.
So Trump can't use a kill shot like he used on What's his name?
Bush.
He can't say he's low energy because that might take DeSantis out completely.
He can't say he's crooked, right?
He's not going to call another Republican crooked if it's a national name.
So he doesn't really have the kill shots that he would have if he were going against a clean enemy who's always going to be an enemy.
He has to reconstitute him.
So he has to go just hard enough That he's got his, you know, boot on his neck but he doesn't kill him.
Just hold him down a little bit.
So here's what Trump said.
I don't know where he said it.
Maybe he tweeted it.
But DeSantis is doing some kind of world tour.
He's in Japan now.
But he's also... I think this part is just a joke.
Because I don't think DeSantis was ever going to Walter Reed Medical Center.
But Trump said that the governor is being sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for an emergency personality transplant.
A personality transplant.
Ouch!
A personality transplant.
Now that's the Trump we know and love.
Right?
Now that's the Trump we're waiting for.
Okay.
Alright, you're back.
Alright, Ron DeSanctimonious?
That's a warm-up swing.
But DeSantis has to go in for an emergency personality transplant.
Now doesn't that remind you of Bill Maher's comment that people don't want to vote for the Tribune Band?
Right?
It's the same vibe.
DeSantis is the Tribune Band.
Trump is the real thing.
But this is the same vibe, just a different take.
Trump is the biggest personality we've ever seen.
Trump has so much personality, people ask him to turn it down.
That's way too much personality.
Could you just dial down the personality a little bit, even though that's why we like him?
I think this was a good attack.
Because again, it's not fatal.
It just shows that Trump is more interesting.
And people do follow energy.
I would also say that this is a message to the press.
Do you get the message to the press?
What's the message to the press?
If you have DeSantis, you don't have a business model.
Because he's not interesting.
There won't be anything interesting to talk about.
So I think in one way, I don't know if he thought of it consciously, but it looks like Trump is warning the press that they only have one way to make money and it's not the boring personality guy.
And he's right.
He's right.
The press would make way more money with Trump in the race.
Would you agree?
You agree, right?
I mean, I think it's sort of obvious that DeSantis would be a profit killer for the press.
Now, if you follow the money, is there any way that DeSantis can get elected?
Now, if you follow the money to donations, I think Trump will have the most money, right?
Does that look like that will be true?
That Trump will raise more money than DeSantis, right?
Because his poll numbers are bigger.
So, if you follow the money, it's going to be Trump over DeSantis for the donations, I think.
That could change, but that's what it looks like.
If you follow the money for the press, the press absolutely makes more money on Trump.
So, follow the money says Trump's your next candidate.
It doesn't say he's president, because that becomes a different follow the money situation.
But if the Americans feel that they can make more money with Trump, he's going to be your next president.
So those are three follow-the-money situations.
One is who gets the most donations, probably Trump.
Who makes the press the richest, definitely Trump.
Who makes the public make more money individually?
Well, some people on the left might think they make less money because they could get less, I don't know, in support or something.
But if people think the economy will do better under Trump, that's the end of the game.
He's your next president, don't you think?
If Trump looks like the economic, it's-all-about-the-economy stupid, remember Bill Clinton?
It's the economy stupid.
If Trump just doesn't talk about anything but inflation and economy and get out of Ukraine because it's expensive, I feel like he's got it.
So, all right.
The funniest, most interesting story of the day.
There's a video of Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson.
Now, for the purpose of this story, you need to know that he's a black politician, because that's important to the story.
It actually is.
I say that jokingly sometimes, but it's actually important to the story.
So, he's running.
People say he's likely to be the GOP frontrunner, and he gave a speech saying that Black Americans owe reparations to this country for their freedom.
Now, let me go back to, he's a black GOP politician, and he's saying that black people should pay reparations to this country.
Now, he didn't say to white people, but, you know, you kind of intuit that.
Now in the same article, well actually a different article, but do you think he's the GOP frontrunner?
Do you think the GOP frontrunner could get in front of a crowd of people and say, you know what?
I think black Americans owe you.
Oh my god.
Yes, I believe he could win the Republican nomination with that message.
Could he win the general?
I don't know.
It just depends how many Republicans there are compared to Democrats.
And, you know, there's probably a black-white element to that as well.
So I don't know if he could win.
But it's a hell of a message.
Alright, here's my first question to you.
Do you take it as literal or hyperbole?
Do you think he was literal?
Or was it, obviously, hyperbole?
I'm kind of leading the witness here.
Of course it was hyperbole.
No, he doesn't think they should cut checks.
No, no.
He does not think anybody should cut a check.
It's pure hyperbole.
And it takes one to know one.
So, they're going to treat it like it was real, right?
The left is going to treat that like it was real.
That was never real.
That was the least real thing anybody ever said.
But it got your attention, didn't it?
So here I am, talking about a lieutenant governor.
Did that work?
Oh yeah, it worked.
It worked great.
You get all this attention.
It's still hyperbole.
Nobody's going to take it that seriously.
But boy, does that reframe stuff, doesn't it?
And then I said to myself, Scott, Scott, you were a financial analyst for a number of years in your early career.
So it used to be my job when I worked first for a bank and then the phone company to do a financial analysis of different alternative plans.
And I'd say, do this or do that, and then I'd figure out which was more expensive.
And I'd do the math, and I'd write it up in a report, and I'd make my recommendations.
So I'm a person.
Who has great experience comparing things.
And that's what the reparations are.
It's a comparison problem.
How are things compared to how they should have been or could have been?
So here's some of the... I did a little research to find out what that would look like if I had gotten the assignment.
So say there was no politics involved.
Of course, that's impossible.
But imagine there was, and somebody just came to me, Scott, you do this kind of analysis.
Can you do an analysis of how much reparation should be for slavery?
And I'd say, alright, but first I've got to gather some information.
So the first thing I'd do is I'd figure out where did the slaves come from, in what region of Africa.
So a lot of them came from Nigeria, not all of them, but the land that is now called Nigeria was sort of that geography was a source for slaves.
So I say to myself, all right, if they had not been picked up by the evil slave trade, what would be the gross national income of a Nigerian today?
It's about $2,000 a year in American dollars.
So the people who are not slaves, and they descended from the people who were not slaves in Nigeria, they're making $2,000 a year on average.
Now they do have the middle class, but on average it's $2,000 per year.
Let's compare that to how descendants of slavery are doing in the United States.
They make $19,000 per person.
Now I believe, I need a fact check on this.
When they do the income per person, does that include retired people and children?
Right?
So if there's only one income in the family, that one income is divided by the number of family members?
Is that correct?
Because I don't think it's the family.
This doesn't sound like the family income.
That sounds low for a family income.
So I think it's per person.
But in either case, they're compared, I think, the same.
So let's say that a black American is making 10 times as much as somebody who is not descended from slavery.
But those are not the only calculations.
Because there were 400 years of slavery.
400 years, so that has to mean something, compared to like 150 some years since slavery ended.
So you'd have to also calculate the amount of time, right?
Because a little bit of badness over 400 years, you gotta multiply it by 400.
That's a lot of badness.
It's never been a little bit, okay?
Let me amend that.
It's always been a lot of badness.
But a lot of badness over 400 years, that's like 400 worse than one year.
And it's only been post-slavery for 158 years or so.
It's only been post-slavery for 158 years or so.
Something like that.
So you gotta calculate that.
So you'd have to make sure you have some kind of yearly thing in there.
Next thing you'd have to do is figure out the number of people.
How many black slaves were there in America in 1850?
What's your guess?
How many black American slaves were there?
Or just black slaves, they weren't technically citizens, right?
So how many black slaves were there in 1850?
The answer is around 900,000.
Around 900,000.
By the way, I would consider that a foundational educational fact.
Which I didn't know, so that's bad on me.
Wouldn't you say that people should know how many people died in the Holocaust?
Right?
How many people died in World War II in general?
About 60 million, some say.
You should know how many people died in Vietnam.
You should know how many people were killed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Would you agree?
I think those are basic numbers.
And I'm finding much to agree with black America about the fact that almost nobody knew the right number.
That's telling me that education about our slave past was incomplete.
How do we not all know that number?
Isn't that, that's like foundational, right?
We know how many people went to January 6th.
We know how many people died in 9-11.
But none of, it looked like almost none of you could name the number of slaves on, you know, at the time that slavery was winding down.
I didn't know either.
So I'm not mocking you because I didn't know.
So my education had that gap as well.
You agree with me that we should all know that number, right?
That's like so basic.
We should know that.
So round a million.
Just round it off to a million.
So let's say there were a million slaves when slavery ended.
Now, second number you should know.
What percentage of America is black?
I'll bet most of you know this number.
Percentage of black Americans.
Around 13, 14 percent, right?
Yeah, 13, 14.
So a lot of people know that number, but you didn't know how many slaves.
I mean, that really... That's kind of a shocker to me, but it's a shocker about myself as well.
You should all know that number.
All right, so that translates to about 41 million black Americans now.
So there were a million slaves and there were 41 million black Americans, but they didn't all come from, they're not all descendants of slavery.
So if you take off the top, the number of people were probably immigrants or non-descended from slavery.
So maybe 30 million, this is my estimate, 30 million-ish black Americans who were descended from slavery.
So that would be 30 million people who are making $19,000 compared to $2,000 per year.
Anyway, then next, if I were doing this calculation, I would also look at the cost and benefit in a crime situation.
What do you think is the cost of crime?
Because we do know that black Americans are disproportionately in prison.
Per capita there are more black people in prison, and that costs money.
So the cost of keeping one prisoner for a year is $106,000.
So if I were calculating this, I'd say, well, Here's a basic assumption.
I probably have to do two calculations.
One calculation says that the excess crime of black Americans is caused by white people and caused by slavery.
So that should be part of the expense that white people are responsible for.
Because they created a situation that caused crime to be high and therefore that's a white person causing trillions of dollars of criminal activity.
Or, I would do two calculations.
The second would be personal responsibility, where it doesn't matter what happened to you in your youth, it doesn't matter what your environment was, if you committed the crime, well, that's on you.
Now, that would be a second, completely different calculation.
But apparently, the cost of crime, at least by one estimate in the US, is $2.6 trillion per year.
2.6 trillion.
That's all crime.
And then one estimate is that although black Americans are 13% of the population of America, they account for roughly a third of the crimes.
So would you include in your reparations the cost of excess crime and say, all right, Reparations might be this big, but you have to subtract the cost of crime.
Or would you do the opposite?
Would you do the opposite?
Because that would be just as justifiable.
You'd say, no, this crime exists because of what white people did to slaves, and therefore white people should be paying that extra.
In fact, that should be money that should be paid to the criminals.
Because the criminals didn't cause it.
They were put into a situation which guaranteed there would be high crime.
Because it was high poverty.
High poverty pretty much guarantees high crime.
So yes, so you've got offsetting calculations.
It would be difficult to do that calculation, wouldn't it?
So here's my point.
Do you think you could ever calculate reparations?
I believe that you could do it at least three different ways.
You know, depending on who you think is responsible for the 2.6 trillion dollars per year of crimes.
Mostly white people for creating the situation, or to some extent also black Americans for having a higher crime rate than other groups.
And that's kind of philosophical.
That's not a math question.
Right?
It's not a math question, but yet we're asked to do math.
If there's one thing I can teach you, is that math is always... Oh, I'm going to come up with a saying that will be quotable forever.
I'm going to try to come up with some Andrew Breitbart-like saying.
You know where he said that politics is downstream from culture?
Something like that.
I was going to come up with one of those.
That when you're doing calculations, Your math is downstream from your assumptions.
Oh, that's pretty good.
Math is downstream from assumptions.
If you're looking at the math, you're wasting your time.
Because the math was subsort... The math was subordinate to?
Yeah, let's say the math was subordinate to the assumptions.
The assumptions are the math, right?
So if you decided, oh, I think I'm gonna...
You blame one group or the other group for a crime, well that's a 2.6 trillion dollar variable per year.
The entire calculation would depend on your assumptions, not on your math.
You could do all the math wrong, and the assumptions would still tell you which direction things were going.
So I do think that the discussion of reparations is infantilizing the black community.
In my opinion, treating reparations like it's a serious topic is treating black people like children.
And it's basically, oh yeah, we'll look into that, kids.
But when are we going to get there, Dad?
When are we going to get there?
Oh, real soon.
Right?
It just sounds like parents lying to children.
I find it offensive.
The reparations, I feel it's offensive to black Americans to have the conversation.
Do you feel that way?
I feel it's literally an insult to black Americans to even have the conversation.
It feels that way to me.
I would kind of hate it.
If the situation were reversed, I would hate it.
If I had succeeded as a black American, I would just hate this conversation because it would make me feel like my accomplishment would be viewed less positively than it should be.
Anyway, I think this whole conversation on race is starting to loosen up a little bit.
You're welcome.
So here's a Here's a little mystery that I think is solved.
I've been wondering why Fox News settled.
Because I kept looking at the evidence, and the charge was that the Fox News people knew they were telling lies about the election.
And I kept looking at all the emails and the messages, and I never saw that.
And so I said, well, how could they lose a case that literally doesn't have any evidence against them?
How is that possible?
So I was predicting they would win their case.
And then they settled for a god-awful amount of money, allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars.
And I was still confused.
I was like, OK.
I get that people settle when they think they're innocent.
That's not unusual.
But this is so much money, and there's no evidence of the crime.
Why would you possibly settle that?
And then I wondered what Alan Dershowitz would say.
Because for years I've been sort of following what Dershowitz says, and I try to guess what he will say before he says it.
And here's what Dershowitz says.
This is somebody quoting him, so I didn't see it from him.
If I have this wrong, will somebody fact-check me on this right away?
I don't want to get this wrong.
But somebody's reporting that, Dershowitz said, that he doesn't know why the Fox News settled, because in his opinion, they had a better than 50% chance of winning the case.
Now, that's how you do the math.
So Dershowitz apparently knows how to do risk calculations.
Good for him.
The way you do this is, if you have a 50% chance of winning and the case is a billion dollars against you, you should count that as like half a billion dollars.
Right?
So it's sort of like a toss-up in that case.
So he is correctly saying that if the odds of winning were greater than 50%, the best financial move would have been to fight the case in court.
But they settled.
And here is the speculation.
That Patrick Byrne tweets today.
And he said he got a leak a few weeks ago that Fox was going to settle in the hundreds of millions.
So this is before they settled.
So this is to his credibility that he had heard weeks before that they were going to settle for hundreds of millions.
And that they were going to do that because Rupert Murdoch thought it would help Trump if they won the suit.
Because imagine if Fox News won the suit, which said they were lying about the election being rigged.
Because they weren't lying, they were just showing what people were saying.
I don't think they lied at all, except in the opinion world, which is not really a lie, just an opinion.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that Rupert Murdoch Would spend hundreds of millions to make sure that Trump didn't look better?
Because the biggest thing keeping Trump out of office would be January 6th, wouldn't you say?
I mean, maybe not, but it feels like it's going to be the thing.
So, but I do follow the logic of it.
I would say I'm not going to believe this story because it feels like there might be more to it, but it does track.
It tracks.
Here's how it tracks.
Suppose you're Rupert Murdoch.
Would you agree that Rupert Murdoch is probably a genius at risk assessment?
Would you agree?
I mean, he's Rupert Murdoch.
He's probably a genius at risk assessment.
So here was his risk assessment.
If I fight it, I might lose $1.6 billion.
So in the worst case, I lose 1.6 billion.
In the best case, I save 1.6 billion, and I guarantee that Trump is president.
But if I settle, it's half the risk of losing the whole thing, and maybe he can afford half the risk.
It could be that he just did the math and he said, I can afford half of this.
And still stay in business.
At least Fox News can stay in business.
But if I pay all of it, I don't even know how to keep the lights on for the business.
I mean, I suppose there's a way, but... And then on top of that, he would be getting Trump elected, and he doesn't want to be in the business of making that happen, apparently.
So, I don't know.
I feel like it might not be the whole story, but it's plausible.
I would rate that as plausible.
Yeah.
How many of you think that's plausible?
We can't say it's true.
Sound plausible?
That the Trump election was the main reason for settling?
I don't know.
It doesn't feel... I don't know.
It feels 40% true or something like that.
All right.
It could have been part of the decision though.
Have I ever described what a husband apology is?
I've told you that, right?
So this is sort of a sexist, you know, sexist 50s kind of a look on relationships.
So you don't have to tell me it's sexist, I'm just making a point here.
So a husband apology is when the wife insists on an apology, the man knows that it wasn't his fault, But he just needs to get through the day.
Yes, dear.
Totally my fault.
It's all me.
Sorry I did that.
Won't happen again.
And then you can get on with your life.
Well, apparently Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
did a husband apology in public, and he's just coming clean about it.
He did a fake apology.
Here's the story.
I'll just read his tweet.
So it's from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He says, for the record, I never compared the government's COVID mandates to the Holocaust, as the New York Times falsely reported this week.
Huh.
Let's see, it's RFK Jr.
against the New York Times.
Which one do you believe?
I'll tell you, it's a good time to be RFK Jr.
Because he can go up against the New York Times, and you don't even blink.
You go, oh, the New York Times lied.
Right?
Is there anybody here who thinks the New York Times story was probably true, and that RFK Jr.
is lying?
No.
No.
No, everybody thinks he's telling the truth.
What a good place to be.
I can't think of anybody else who could walk into this conversation with the New York Times and just go, oh, New York Times lied.
Right, got it.
Now, if I told you that the press gets 100% of stories about public figures wrong, you don't think that's true, do you?
You don't believe that they get 100% of the stories wrong about public figures.
They do.
It's all of them.
This is just another example.
So he goes on.
So where did the New York Times get this information?
Huh.
Turns out that, according to RFK Jr., CNN originated this mischaracterization.
Oh!
So now we see how this works.
So CNN mischaracterizes it.
Then the New York Times reports it as something like a fact.
All right.
But did he say anything about the Holocaust?
Apparently he did.
Some Anne Frank reference, but it was in a different context.
And then here's the part at the end, RFK Jr.
says, the onslaught of relentless media indignation finally compelled me to apologize for a statement I never made in order to protect my family.
It was a husband apology.
He knew he wasn't wrong.
But he just had to get past it.
So now he does what I also did.
You might be comparing this to my own story.
If you wait long enough, you can admit it was a husband apology.
Which is what he did.
Perfect.
Perfect.
I love the way he handled this.
I love the way that he treated them like children and apologized.
Because he knew that he couldn't deal with them as adults.
Rather than say, well, here's my speech, it's a public record, why don't you just look at it and you can see that I'm right?
Could have done that.
Do you think that would have worked?
No.
Because they would have looked at a speech and imagined they heard it.
They would have.
They would have said, I listened to it, it's right there.
Even if it's not.
And I don't think it is.
So he played this the only way you can play it right, which is you did a fake husband apology, he waited a little while, and then he called them out for being stupid lying press.
And it worked.
Nicely done.
So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the fun part.
I just want to show you Something that's a sign of the times.
There's a tweet going around from Caitlin Collins of CNN that purports to show DeSantis meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister and he answers the question something about running for president by making a funny face.
I'm going to show you the funny face he makes and here's my question.
Is this modified?
Or is that actually his face?
Because we're in the age of AI, I look at his face and I say, that doesn't look like a real person.
I'm going to show it to you.
It'll be hard to see on my little phone, but I think you'll get the idea.
I'm not a candidate, so we'll see if and when that changes.
Did you see it?
He goes, uh, not a candidate.
I'm not a candidate, so we'll see if and when that changes.
Does that look modified?
Now, I'm not saying it's modified, but CNN is tweeting it, and he looks just like a little more crazy-eyed than I've ever seen him.
Now, it could be It could be that he's trying to joke, and he's not good at joking.
Because this plays into Trump's statement.
So you know how Trump said he's going into the hospital for a personality transplant?
And then you see this, where it looks like he's trying to make a joke, or he's trying to be playful, but he comes off as somebody who's never made a joke before.
Like, he looks like an alien.
Yeah, a shape-shifting lizard.
He looks like an alien from another planet who's asked a question and his programming doesn't cover that situation.
Programming says, act whimsical to laugh off notion you were running for president, when obviously you're running for president.
Make funny face.
Well, I was running for president.
I don't know.
So part of the story is DeSantis, but part of the story is how easy would it be for AI to turn somebody normal into the uncanny valley, where you just tweak it a little bit and they don't look human?
Just don't look human.
Like there was something about that that looked inebriated.
He wasn't.
Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't.
But he looked inebriated.
Right?
It's going to be really easy to make people look just a little bit off.
Just 5%.
Somebody's going to make an AI that tweaks real video just 5%.
And it's going to be devastating.
Because people are going to look at it and they're going to compare it to the real one and they won't even know the difference.
Won't even know the difference.
And the fact checkers will say, oh yeah, that's a real one.
That looks real.
But just like a little bit of difference.
That's all it would take to make him look crazy.
But to be clear, I don't think he's crazy.
I don't think he was inebriated.
I think he was probably just an awkward face looking thing.
But he does have a little bit of a personality gap compared to a lot of people.
All right.
In India, they love to move their heads side to side, somebody says.
Okay.
Well, I don't know if it was the side to side thing.
It was more the eyes.
Talk about how Trump mocked Kisic's table manners.
Recently?
I don't know anything about that.
Yeah, count the number of fingers.
You know, maybe there should be a law That all AI-generated people have to have the wrong number of fingers.
How about that?
All AI-generated humans have to have six fingers.
Because that's the only way you'd know.
So you'd be watching movies, and it'd be like, oh, there's that famous actor or actress, but they have six fingers.
Oh, I get it.
It's AI.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, you know people with six fingers?
I used to play with the farm cats at my uncle's farm.
So I used to work, when I was a kid, working at my uncle's farm.
And he had all these cats that sort of lived in the hay.
And they weren't domesticated.
He would feed them, but you couldn't pet them or anything.
And because they were all cross-breeding, a lot of inter-family breeding, they all had a weird number of toes.
So, there'd be like, you know, 50 cats would come out if you put a little, you know, milk down.
And you start counting the toes.
It'd be like, you know, six on this paw, seven on this paw.
It was the damnedest thing.
It was all, it was like mutant cats, but there were like lots of them.
Yeah, they were mousers.
Cows, cows don't like mice.
So, I don't know how common this was, but dairy farms will often tolerate, if not feed, stray cats.
Because the cats get rid of the mice, and the cows will give better milk.
I guess they freeze up and they don't give milk as well if they're frightened of mice.
I don't know if that's true.
That's just what I heard when I was a kid.
Alright.
Hemingway cats have six toes.
All right.
Cows are afraid of mice?
I think they are, actually.
I think that's true.
Does anybody have a dairy farm?
Any dairy farmers here?
Can you confirm that?
Can you confirm that cows don't like mice?
Somebody says not true.
Well, I know they don't like them, but are they afraid of them?
They say that about elephants, but I never knew if that was true.
You grew up on a dairy farm?
Well, what's the answer?
Let's see, the betting markets have Biden over Trump by 10 points.
That makes sense at this point in the cycle.
I think when people think that Biden's going to win, it's because they assume that the election is rigged.
What do you assume?
We don't know.
Give me your assumptions.
Do you think the next presidential election will be rigged?
Or attempted to be rigged?
I think so.
I think so.
I would say based on what we've seen, the smart money says that there will be an attempt to rig it.
Now the extent of that and the success of that would be wildly variable.
I'd say yes.
My working assumption is that our elections are corrupt.
That's my working assumption.
But it's not based on any specific charge against any specific entity.
It's just everything I've seen would suggest the world I live in, if it's possible, and it is, if it's possible, somebody's going to try to do it.
Rigged is loser think?
No it isn't.
It would be loser think if I said I know it's true.
But it's just a working assumption.
All right.
I mean if the government wanted to change my assumption, how hard would it be?
Not hard.
They would just have to say all of our technology and all of our elections are completely transparent.
And that's not the case.
If you have an election that's non-transparent in any important part, you have to assume it's rigged.
Just assume it is.
All right.
There are more votes than registered voters.
I don't know if that's true.
That's one of the things I've heard.
All right, here's a mind blower for you.
So I've got a friend who shall remain nameless on Twitter who makes the following claim.
The claim is that saying that Fauci funded gain of research in Wuhan is fake news, even understanding that it could have gone through a third party entity before it got to Wuhan, that that didn't happen.
And that that's the right's version of the fine people hoax.
That there's actually no evidence that Fauci was involved with funding anything that caused money for a gain of function to get to Wuhan.
Now what do you think about the fact that somebody who watches the news on both the left and the right, because this is somebody who watches both sides, says that it did not happen, it's fake news.
And that the entire Political right has bought into a narrative for which there's no evidence.
I thought it was documented.
So I did a little check in the news.
I didn't see a debunked.
What I saw was a number of stories that he was involved with the approval of funding, was it Ecolab or somebody?
Who then funded the labs.
And do we not know that they were doing Game of Function?
Yeah.
To me, I thought that was proven.
But it's sort of a mind-bender.
So I sent my friend an article from the New York Post that connects all the dots.
I haven't heard back.
Well, actually, let me check.
Let me see if an article that clearly says he did it will change his mind.
I don't have a response yet.
But the title of it is from the New York Post, NIH Admits U.S.
Funded Gain of Function in Wuhan Despite Fauci's Denial.
That's the headline.
Do you think the article doesn't establish it?
It's kind of weird.
All right, yeah, I thought it was completely established.
I didn't even know there was a question about it anymore.
But the question on whether it was Illegal or even unethical?
I'm still open to hear a debate on that.
Because I don't think it was crazy that we did gain and function research, do you?
How many think it was crazy to do that?
It turned out bad, but I'm guessing we're still doing it somewhere.
I think it was a calculated risk that we took and it didn't work out.
