Episode 2170 Scott Adams: Find Out Who Ended Their Political Career Yesterday, And Lots More Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
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Coffee time
Politics, Liberal Mental Health, Peer Pressure, Andrew Tate, The Hill, Apple Mood Tracking, Biden European Trip, John Heilemann, President Trump, George Will, Tucker Carlson, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, VP Harris, X-energy Nuclear, Scott Adams
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Well, I saw a tweet from a Twitter account called The Rabbit Hole that showed that white liberals have the worst mental health, at least as judged by people who went to try to get help.
Now, why do you suppose that would be?
What do you think would cause that?
What would possibly cause the white liberals to have the worst mental health?
What would be some possible hypotheses?
I don't know.
I can't think of anything, can you?
Can't think of a thing.
Well, let's speculate, though.
Here are some differences.
Liberal whites believe the news.
Would you agree?
Liberal whites are most likely to believe the news.
Imagine how chilling that would be.
Do any of you, you know, I assume if you watch my live stream, you know not to believe the news, right?
Is there anybody here who is willing to say they believe the news?
Go.
Anybody?
Just one person.
We got a yes.
Somebody said yes.
They believe the news over on YouTube.
Well, I wouldn't admit it.
I mean, it's fine to believe whatever you want, but just my advice, I wouldn't admit that you believe the news.
In 2023, that's not really a good look.
So imagine if you believe the news, you think that the climate is going to fry you, white supremacists are behind the furniture.
There was a coup attempt recently, you would believe, and that Trump is Putin's fluffer.
Trump is Putin's fluffer, if you believe the news.
But conservatives are less likely to believe the news.
They tend to believe in stuff like hard work and family and obeying laws and And if all of that goes wrong, if you're conservative, and you do everything right, you obey the laws, stay off drugs, stay in school, get married to a good mate and have kids, if you do everything right, and it still doesn't work out, you've still got a backup.
Heaven.
Well, at least it'll be better later.
It might be terrible now, but wait till later.
Wow.
I did everything right, so I'm going to heaven.
So you got one group of people who think they're going to, you know, rot in the earth immediately after the climate fries them and the white supremacists murder them and the coup takes over the United States and turns this into whatever.
And one group thinks that they have a perfectly good plan for happiness in this world, but if that didn't work out, they've got a second perfectly good plan for an eternity of happiness.
What would you expect?
What would you expect would be the mental health outcome of those two systems?
Design is destiny.
You have two systems and they're designed for exactly the outcome that they delivered.
The conservatives designed a system that delivers happiness, most of the time.
And the left has designed a system that almost can't.
Almost can't.
I saw a Representative Crenshaw, he was talking in Congress, and he was railing against the trans operations of children.
And he said there was a 45,000% increase in transition surgeries at hospitals that do the surgery, and that Republicans weren't, quote, making it up.
He went on to argue that peer pressure Might be the largest cause of the increase.
Peer pressure.
And I said to myself, what kind of peer pressure do you get on the left versus the right?
You ever thought about that?
Because there's peer pressure everywhere.
But the people on the right get on sort of a different flavor of pressure.
For example, if you're on the political right, the peer pressure, and I hear it all the time, Would be to clean your room, go to the gym, develop skills, find a good mate and have children.
And maybe, you know, go to church.
Wouldn't you agree that's the peer pressure on the right?
Right?
Clean your room, go to the gym, develop skills, find a good mate, work hard, have kids.
Peer pressure.
That's some bad peer pressure right there.
But if you're, that's if you're on the right.
If you're on the left, the peer pressure is a little bit different and it goes like this.
You might be the wrong gender.
And, scene.
So, what do you expect that those two systems would get you the same outcome?
Both peer pressure.
It's both peer pressure.
One wants you to clean your room, go to the gym, get a job, work hard, develop skills, find a good mate, get married.
And the other says, I'm not sure you're the right gender.
You might not be.
So do you think they'd have different outcomes?
I don't know.
Big mystery.
All right.
Well, the publication The Hill had some things to say about Tucker Carlson's interview with Andrew Tate.
And, you know, they talk about how Tate has got a big following for his toxic masculinity and stuff like that.
But they say that they want to make sure that you know The Andrew Tate is not the role model you want.
Right?
That's what the Hill wants you to know.
Somebody said, this is not a husband, father, head of household, leave it to be a revision of masculinity.
Somebody named Dashguard said, this is a new thing.
And that Carlson was trying, presumably they say, the Hill says, he was trying to maybe get that Andrew Tate audience to be his audience as well.
Well, I would argue that everybody who's doing this for a living wants a bigger audience.
I'm not sure that's a revelation.
Yes, they interview people to get an audience.
Surprise, surprise.
All right, but here's some of the things that they said.
Tate's audience, this is also this Dashguard person, Tate's audience is primarily made up of young men who are, quote, kind of confused about their place in society.
Huh.
Young men who are kind of confused about their place in society.
Was that confusion caused by Was it caused by Tucker or Andrew Tate?
Which one of those was confusing the kids about their place in society?
Because I'm pretty sure that both of them had a pretty clear vision of what the place in society of children is.
And boys in particular.
But I wonder who confused these young men?
What would it be that would confuse these young men?
Was it the political right?
I don't think the right confused them.
I've got a feeling that the left confused them.
But it goes further than that.
So there's some kind of narrative being baked that the Andrew Tate's are getting all the young men worked up.
And here are the men that they lumped in the same bucket, the manosphere.
So now there's something called the Manosphere.
Well, it's been around for a while.
But according to this article, they're lumping together in the Manosphere all the misogynist people who would follow Tate and want to be the head of the household and the strong men and exercise and do all that and have plenty of women because they're high value men.
They put them in the same category as the incels.
Does that make sense?
The Incels are literally people who have taken themselves out of the man-woman fight.
They've decided they're just not going to have women in their life.
They're still hetero.
They just have failed and don't want to be part of it.
They're literally the opposite.
The Manosphere does not include Andrew Tate and Incels.
They're not on the same team.
I mean, they might watch his stuff, but they're clearly not on the same team.
Well, I thought that was kind of silly, and maybe it feels like the political left needs to defend itself from these ideas.
And so I saw a lot about trad wives on TikTok, and there's this whole pushback about the idea.
Here's something that somebody named Whitney Phillips said, a professor of digital platforms and ethics at the University of Oregon.
He said, discourses, there's a punchline to this, so wait till the end, discourses around gender and around gender roles, that's just baked into the cake of a lot of conservatism.
Is that not baked into the cake of literally everything?
Genders?
Is the left not, are they ignoring gender?
I thought the left was obsessed with it.
But sure, it's something about conservatives.
And then the professor goes on.
So it isn't a surprise at all that you see some foothold for beliefs such as Tate's, even though they're on the extreme end.
Are they?
Are Andrew Tait's beliefs extreme?
Would you define them that way?
I don't know.
I think they seem extreme to some people who would prefer that they not exist.
But it seemed to me that the entire point of what he was doing, I should not try to speak for him, I guess, but my interpretation of Tait's point Is that it was the opposite of extreme.
Literally conservative.
Now, I'm not saying I support him or agree with what he's saying.
That's a different conversation.
I'm just saying he's presenting something which is literally more like a conservative, traditional, time-tested, tested through all of civilization, sort of an ordinary It only seems extreme because of where things went.
It's not extreme because of where it is.
It's extreme because of where everybody else went.
He's right in the middle of ordinary civilization, as far as I can tell.
Which civilization thought men should be weak?
Do you remember some civilization that said, you know what we'd like?
We'd like the men to be weak.
I've never heard of that.
He's literally right in the middle of the most ordinary human biological philosophy that's ever existed in the history of human civilization.
Oh no, he's extreme, he's extreme.
Although I admit, he's provocative, so you can say he's extreme in the sense that he causes people to get all worked up.
But here's the part that just blew me away from Professor Phillips.
He says that these beliefs exist within the same kind of spectrum that is really emphasizing that men and women are different.
Now, that might have been a little bit out of context.
It feels like it might have been out of context.
But still, The Hill published it.
So The Hill... I'm guessing that The Hill is more responsible for this quote than the person they attributed it to.
You know that's the thing, right?
Do you all know that quotes are sometimes made up even by legitimate media?
Did you know that?
Did you all know that quotes are... Even when they put quotes on it, it's actually routine.
Just ordinary.
That they make up the quote.
I don't know if everybody knows that.
Even in traditional, you know, well-established publications, the quotes are manufactured.
Now what they try to do, if it's, say, the New York Times, they're going to try to make their manufactured quote close to what the person said, you know, in effect.
But not always.
You know, they might shorten it, might edit it, might take two thoughts and merge them together, might take their own opinion, And attribute it to the other person, which you also see.
But who would actually say this?
Even if it was the hill who said it, or the person they're attributing it to, it doesn't matter.
Who would ever say that it's weird that there's people trying to assume that, or emphasize that men and women are different?
Is that really, that's your extreme?
Some of the extreme stuff is that men and women are different.
All right.
All right.
We'll just let that lay there.
All right.
Here's something I've been advising you forever, since at least 2013, when I wrote my book, Catafilled, Almost Everything and Still One Big, which will be republished and available in a few weeks, and I'll let you know about that.
But apparently Apple is going further into the tracking your mood business.
So with their devices and the new Apple Watch, you can keep track of things like how many steps you took and how much sun you got and then what your mood is.
So basically, if you compare your mood with what you're doing with your body and your mind, you can get a better idea of what to do better.
Now, in 2013, in my book How to Fail, I told you that one of my habits, a lifetime habit, that I strongly recommend to all of you, it was a big theme of the book, is you should track how you feel and your energy based on what you did recently.
You should do it every day and you should never stop.
It should be a continuous mental loop that you go through.
What did I do recently?
How do I feel?
What did I do recently?
How do I feel?
And the reason this is so important is that I recommend using your body as your solution to your brain.
In other words, your brain has all these little voices in it.
Some of your brain is just taking care of your bodily functions.
Some is memory.
It's like your brain is a whole bunch of stuff in one place.
But you do have an executive function.
An executive function.
It's the one that can actually tell you to move your arms and legs.
Okay, move your arm, Scott.
Do it.
Get up.
Do the thing.
That's your executive function.
Your executive function can look at what's happening to you and say, hey, I feel bad today.
And then your executive function can say, what have I done recently?
Didn't go outside.
Didn't eat the right food.
Didn't get enough sleep.
And then you know what to do.
And then your executive function says, all right, get up.
Walk to bed.
Cancel those meetings.
You need sleep.
Or go eat something healthy.
Or go for a long walk.
Right.
Those things work almost every time.
That's the weird thing about mood-altering activities.
They don't work sometimes.
It's not like, well, I don't know if this is gonna work.
I don't know if taking a long walk on a sunny day is gonna cheer me up or not.
Yeah, it will.
It will.
Works pretty much every time.
But it's hard for your executive function to tell your body to do something when your brain is unhappy.
Because the unhappiness is telling you to sit there and be unhappy.
So you've got to tell your executive function literally to move your body.
This is some of the best advice you'll ever get, by the way.
Your whole life could change by this advice.
Think of your executive function as like a little voice that can control your body and it tells it to move.
Because when you're feeling bad, the executive function has to tell you to move your body to make you happy again.
Take a walk, exercise, get out of the town, take a drive, go see a friend, go eat something that's good, do whatever relaxes you.
Everybody's got their own method.
But that's the trick.
Executive function, tell your body to move to fix your brain.
And that's what these new devices are really going to make easy.
Because it's kind of hard To remember what you did and remember to connect it to how you feel.
For example, here's a perfect example.
Last night I had a massage.
It's basically my one primary rich guy indulgence.
So once a week I have a professional massage.
And I noticed that the day after the massage I always feel terrible.
So now I know That my mood when I wake up has nothing to do with anything.
I can disconnect my current mood from anything that's happening.
Like it's not caused by the environment.
It's just, there's something about it that just takes you to another, I don't know, energy level or something.
Now I think some of it is dehydration.
You know, maybe I forget to hydrate.
So I tell myself, literally, I had my executive function this morning saying, alright, have determined that day after massage, always feel bad.
Probably dehydration.
Move your hand over there to that bottle of water.
Pick it up.
Put it in your mouth.
Solution.
I know, as weird and simple as dumb as this sounds, how many people do you know who actually live their life this way?
They actually pay attention to what they did and then immediately experiment with the opposite.
It's a really good habit to get into.
I recommend it.
These devices might help.
Well, MSNBC was fawning over Biden's foreign trip.
As they said, it's a win-win-win.
They're getting exhausted with winning.
Making fun of Trump's saying.
But here was the fawning thing that I loved the most.
One of the hosts, a woman I didn't recognize on MSNBC, said, who was it?
Who decided that the last trip on Biden's European jaunt there, who decided that the last trip would be Helsinki?
Because that's, that's genius.
I mean, that's just genius.
That the last stop was Helsinki.
I mean, that's genius.
Do you know why?
Do you know why that was genius?
I mean, that was genius.
Wow.
Wow.
Do you know why?
I don't either.
I have no idea.
I think it's because where Putin and Trump had a meeting that didn't go so well according to the media.
Was that it?
Just because it would remind you of that, that the left thinks was bad for Trump?
Maybe?
Or Trump?
I don't know.
Oh.
Finland and NATO?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
No idea.
But apparently that was some big deal on MSNBC.
And when I hear it, I go, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Like, the worlds are so different.
Like, I don't even know what that is about.
And yet that's some big deal.
Genius.
He's a genius.
He's a statesman.
He showed himself to be a statesman in the world state.
But the part that, oh my God, it was cringey.
Who is the bald guy on MSNBC?
He's usually on the panel there.
What's his name?
I can't remember.
Is it Mike something?
Was it John Hellman?
Okay, that sounds right.
I think it was John, who was saying that Biden showed at this trip, he ended the absurd notion that Biden's age or infirmity are catching up with him.
It's an absurd notion.
He actually got on TV and said on camera while people were recording him and actually like people were listening.
He said it's a, quote, absurd notion that Biden's having any kind of cognitive problems or age- it's kind of absurd.
And not only that, but he showed at that table with the other leaders in some short video, he showed that he's doing better than any of us at this table.
He wanted you to know that Joe Biden is not just killing it.
He's better than all the younger people who do this for a living professionally.
He's that good.
That's how good he is.
And watching his face when he said it was the best.
Let's see if I can call this up.
Before I do, I want to show you this face of Kamala Harris.
Does that look like a sober person to you?
Do you read that as sober?
That's in public.
All right, let me see if I can quickly...
Fine then.
I wasn't planning to show it to you, but it's so cringey that it's like really good entertainment.
I like cringey entertainment.
Alright, I have it in a second here.
Bear with me.
Look at his face.
Look at his face.
Wait.
Wait, hold on.
Watch his face when he gets back.
- Look at his face when he gets back.
- Come on, show up.
- That's a pretty good double.
- Win, win, win, Jen, and-- - I want you to see his face.
- Tough schedule, tough traffic, he gets in there, does a long press conference.
- Where's the contrast with what Trump did five years ago?
Amazing.
guys up there handling questions on the world stage and without really missing the beat, if I want to run a tape to refute the absurd notions of Joe Biden's senility or his infirmity, I run this tape from the White House and say, that guy is doing better.
Amazing.
Did you see how tortured his face was when he was saying that?
So this is my impression of somebody telling you the truth.
You know, Joe Biden really did a great job in Europe.
Honestly, he surprised us all.
His energy was high, and I thought he was quite a statesman.
That's what a face looks like when you're saying your actual opinion.
Now let me show you my face when I know I'm lying, and I know everybody knows I'm lying.
Oh, he was a great statesman.
He was so good.
I mean energy.
Win, win, win.
He was winning.
Oh, somebody take the camera off of me.
Oh God, I have to move my face.
Somebody take the camera off of my face, please.
It was probably pretty hard.
All right.
Let's talk about how the candidates did yesterday.
So there was some event.
Tucker Carlson was interviewing a bunch of people.
Was it Blaze TV or somebody had some political Republican event?
I don't know where it was.
But anyway, some news before we get to that.
So Trump's new pitch, according to ABC, is elect me to get revenge on the government.
Now ABC News is reporting it like He blew it again.
There's another outrageous gaffe.
Who would vote for a guy like this?
Crazy, right?
Crazy.
Vote for Trump to get revenge on the government.
My God!
My God!
To which I say, exactly.
Let me tell you something about Trump.
I'm going to say something that you can all agree with, okay?
You could like him or you could dislike him, but I'm just going to say something.
You should all agree with this.
That motherfucker can read a room, can't he?
Can he read a room?
He can read a room like nobody's ever read a room.
And I'm going to give you an example of somebody who can't read a room in a minute.
Somebody who just can't read the room at all.
We'll get to that.
But, my God.
ABC actually thought that, I mean I'm mind-reading a little bit, I don't know what they thought, but the way it was presented was as if there was some negative that they had discovered about Trump, right?
Do you think they presented it as an insightful political, you know, aha!
That Trump was successfully using to take him into the mountain.
No, no, it wasn't that.
It was more like, oh, there's that crazy guy again saying wild, provocative things that'll destroy the world.
Except that revenge on the government is exactly why I supported him the first time.
That's exactly what I wanted.
I wanted revenge on the government.
Now, you could call it, you know, cleaning the swamp.
You could call it, you know, maybe making the FBI more accountable.
I mean, you could put other words on it, but it feels like I just want revenge, honestly.
Because I feel like I've been so abused, and all of you have, not me personally, but I feel like we've all been so abused by our own government that it feels like you have to push back.
So Trump, of course, just feels that perfectly and then he expresses it in the simplest way so we all get it.
He's just so good at this.
Rich Lowry did a long article in The Hill.
The Hill or Politico?
I think it was one of those.
Anyway, Rich Lowry wrote that you shouldn't be surprised that Trump is doing so well for the third primary in a row.
And the reason that Trump is doing so well?
Do you know what Rich Lowry gives as the reason that Trump is doing so well?
That he's really, really good at this.
That's it.
I'm summarizing his more detailed story.
But the basic of it is, if you don't think Trump is good at being a politician, what have you been watching?
What have you been watching?
He's just really good at it.
And that's the whole explanation.
Some people are going for the cult effect, and the Republicans are crazy, and all that.
Maybe.
Maybe no more crazy than any other group.
How do you ignore the fact that this one person is just really, really skilled at this thing called politics?
You know, you might not want him to be your president, but you can't deny the skill of the politics.
All right, who else did well or poorly?
So when DeSantis was asked about Ukraine, he doesn't say he would end the war, but he would rather make Europe pay for the money and the weapons.
Doesn't that sound like he's trying to find the way not to talk about it, or just sort of get out of the blast zone?
It's more like he is Yeah, weasel.
It feels like a weasel answer.
Now, it might not be a terrible answer compared to the United States funding it.
It's better than that.
But it still does allow that you're okay with Ukraine and Russia having a land war in Europe.
Like, how could that be okay?
Now, compare that to Trump.
I would stop it in one day.
Well, who do you back?
I back people not dying.
I'll stop it in one day.
Well, how will you do that?
Economics.
I'll just put an economic boot on and I'll make them both stop in one day.
I mean, you can't even compare those answers.
One is just a politician weaseling.
The other one is a dealmaker who says, there's an obvious deal here.
I'll show you how to make the deal.
They're not even in the same world.
Who else did poorly?
So George Will had this long, or was it maybe the Wall Street Journal?
I forget.
I think it was the Wall Street Journal.
George Will, political pundit, observer, associated with Republicans on the right.
He says that neither Trump nor DeSantis will win the nomination.
Neither Trump nor DeSantis will win the nomination.
And he goes through the reasons why they won't.
And I recommended when I retweeted his article that the best way to read it would be from the bottom up.
If you read it from the top to the bottom, you're going to be really angry.
Let me tell you why.
Do you know what the last thing on the article said?
It was something that the editors added.
It was at the end.
After you read this long, long article, At the end, it says that George Will's wife is working for the Tim Scott campaign.
That was not mentioned in the article.
That was mentioned only by the editors, it looked like, as an editor's note.
I read all the way through here this argument why neither Trump nor DeSantis would get nominated when it's perfectly obvious that one of them will be.
I mean, in all likelihood.
Yeah, I think Vivek has a path.
He has a real path.
But, you know, it was just a ridiculous opinion.
It was just ridiculous.
The fact that this was published, no publication should have allowed that to be published.
Unless, the first line is, you should know that George Will's wife works for the Tim Scott campaign.
And then fine.
If you say it first, say it first, and then I will decide if I want to read that bullshit.
Because if you say it first, I'll know it's bullshit.
Right?
I look at the title.
Neither Trump nor DeSantis can win.
The very first line after that is, but you should know the writer of this, his wife works for the other campaign.
And then I would just skip the rest of it, because I would know it would just be bullshit.
So that was a black eye for the publication as well as the writer, in my opinion.
But let's talk about Tim Scott.
He had a good run, which I believe ended yesterday.
He said a couple of things that I think are disqualifying for the presidency.
One of them is, he said, and I quote, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Did he really say that?
No, no, no.
Tim Scott!
Tim!
Tim!
We had so much hope for you.
We had so much hope.
He seemed like such a, like a good, strong, solid, Republican, conservative candidate.
Don't ever say that.
That's what Democrats say.
I mean, basically, that's my, so I have two problems with that saying.
One is the most hackneyed, unoriginal saying.
And it's so unoriginal, it makes you look dumb.
May I say that directly?
It's so unoriginal that when you say it you look slow, honestly.
Do you think you have ever heard or will ever heard Trump say this sentence, we can walk and chew gum at the same time?
Will that ever come out of Trump's mouth?
Nope.
Guarantee it.
I guarantee it he will never say it.
Do you know why?
Because he can read the room.
The room doesn't want to hear that.
No.
The room wants to hear an interesting, new, innovative take.
Something that moves the dial.
They don't want to hear you repeating a Democrat campaign slogan.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
They've literally said it like 15 times this year.
Terrible.
Oh my God.
Now, I'm a writer by profession, of course.
So if you're a professional writer and you see somebody do something like this, it's like fingernails on the blackboard.
It just makes you crazy.
So I have to admit, I don't think anybody else is going to be bothered by this.
This won't change the campaign that he used that phrase, but I'll give you another one.
I'm going to give you two candidates, and you tell me which one would, and which one would not, use the phrase, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Alright?
I want you to look at your answers.
The two candidates are Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.
You tell me, before I look up and see your answers, you tell me which of those might say, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and which one would never say that.
Go.
Yeah, you all got the right answer.
DeSantis might say that.
I'm not saying he will, because again, that would be unfair and it would be mind-reading.
And DeSantis is a solid politician, right?
But Vivek would never say it.
Did Vivek say that?
Oh my god, I hope not.
Somebody says that he said that.
Please don't tell me he said that.
Please don't.
I don't want to ruin my fantasy.
Alright, well, maybe he did say that.
But if he did, he should stop saying it.
But here's my bigger point about Tim Scott.
He was asked by Tucker Carlson about Ukraine, and he says the U.S.
needs to continue funding the Ukraine war in order to, quote, defend the world order.
And, wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
He had a good run.
I think that takes a man of vice-president contention.
Does it?
Because, you know, we were thinking he would be, you know, in maybe a top three obvious vice-presidential pick for whoever wins.
But I feel like that is such a disqualifier on the right.
Oh my God.
Why would he even think that that's okay to say?
Like, what advisor told them to say that, of all things?
It's just totally disqualifying.
On the right.
I mean, maybe it'd work on the left, but there's no way it works for the primary.
And then, Tucker, God bless him.
I don't know anyone who's been killed by Russia.
I know people personally who have been killed by Mexico.
said, quote, all measures are relative.
Russia's bad, Putin's evil.
Got it.
I don't know anyone who's been killed by Russia.
I know people personally who have been killed by Mexico, as do I.
The government of Mexico allows fentanyl to come over our border.
The The Mexican government is party to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Why is Mexico less of a threat than Russia?
Now, the better answer would be Russia has nuclear weapons.
The good answer would be the Mexico problem is like a gigantic bleeding wound that has to be dealt with immediately.
That's the right answer.
You're not going to rank those risks.
If you're running for president, you don't rank the risks.
You just say, both of those must be handled.
And I would do it without the walking and chewing gum thing.
So I don't think that Tim Sky handled that well at all, and that could be the end of him.
Compare that to Vivek Ramaswamy being asked by also Tucker Carlson at the same event.
About January 6th.
So he wanted to get Vivek on record about January 6th.
And Vivek did something that I've been in awe of since I heard it yesterday.
It's just jaw-dropping.
It's hard to understand how smart he is.
I feel that's one of his challenges.
And I always say that my dog doesn't know how smart I am.
Would you agree?
The dog might know I'm smarter than the dog.
Might.
I don't know.
Maybe does, maybe doesn't.
But there's no way that the dog actually knows how smart I am.
It can't be known.
If you're the smart one in the room, you might know.
How unsmart the other people are.
Because you're smart, so you can judge what they know and what they don't.
But from the bottom, you can't judge how smart somebody is.
You can only tell they're smarter than you.
You don't know if they're a hundred times smarter.
There's no way.
You don't have the capacity to know that.
And I think Vivek is closer to 10 times smarter than the average person.
People are imagining he's 20% smarter.
I'm exaggerating, totally, but you get the point.
If you think he's just a little bit smarter than you are because he does some things that maybe you didn't think of, you're really missing the story.
He's not just a little bit smarter than you.
And he's not just a little bit smarter than me, right?
I put myself in the same category right now.
He's crazy smart.
And I don't know that we've had that before, since maybe Thomas Jefferson.
He actually reminds me of Thomas Jefferson, weirdly.
Because he's a Renaissance type.
His skills cross a number of domains.
Trump's new too, but he's a singular character.
Alright, so here's Ramaswamy's answer to January 6th.
The best political answer you might ever see on any topic, ever.
Here's his take.
You want to know what caused J6?
Pervasive censorship in this country in the lead up to J6.
We were told that we could not question where the virus came from.
We were told that we could not send a blah blah blah blah.
And he goes on to tell you all the things that the system, you know, the media and the government and the FBI have lied to you.
That we know they lied.
These are confirmed lies from the people who are supposed to be taking care of you and being on your side.
And he also said, I forget if this was before or after that statement, he said, quote, you tell people in this country they cannot speak, that is when they scream.
You tell people they cannot scream, that is when they tear things down.
He mentioned Biden's laptop being covered up, Russia collusion, the COVID pandemic, you know, BS.
And when he's done, you say to yourself, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard in politics.
That's the smartest thing I've ever heard.
There's absolutely nothing that would have happened on January 6th the way it did.
Unless the public had been lied to and censored until they thought that physical action was the logical next step.
What made Republicans get physical, like actually show up on the Capitol?
It was this.
It was the feeling that your words didn't matter.
Right?
That you could talk all day long and it was just going into the ether and being absorbed by the deep state and just dissipated.
The deep state made talking no longer work by censorship.
They made the news no longer work by making it fake.
They made trust in the government go away by having the DOJ and the FBI act against our interests.
All of that stuff is what caused January 6th far more than anything that Trump said or didn't say.
Far more.
And the amazing thing is, even before he got to his reasons, I had this moment.
The moment he said it was massive censorship that led us to that date, every little goose bump on my arm stood up.
And I said, my God, that's it.
That's not just brilliant political framing.
It's bigger than that.
That's the guy you want as your president.
You want somebody who can at least see the complexity of the situation and can take it from its immediate form, which is, what did Trump say ten minutes before it happened?
To looking at the entire system.
What was the entire system and all of its parts that got you to today?
And not only did he look at it in far greater complexity than anybody in the news or politics had looked at it, but when he added the complexity, he simplified it at the same time.
Do you know how hard that is?
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make the topic way more complicated and then simplify it?
It was massive censorship that got us to this point.
Wow.
It's fucking amazing.
It's amazing.
Did he criticize Trump?
Somebody came up with some tweets where he did criticize Trump, it looks like if they're real, around January 6th when it happened.
Would you have a problem with Vivek if his opinion on January 6th had evolved after we'd all learned more about it?
Would that bother you?
If his opinion evolved with the knowledge, right?
Because if the only thing you knew is what you watched on TV that day, you would have a different opinion.
But you can see that his understanding of the whole situation has evolved.
He's extended it into the environment that made it possible in the first place.
And that's exactly the right take on that.
Exactly.
So impressive.
Now, I've said, you know, RFK Jr.
has similar skills of persuasion, and of course I've talked endlessly about Trump's persuasion.
You have three people in the race right now who are extraordinary.
No, Trump has his baggage, so he's an extraordinary plus.
He's carrying some baggage.
But you could even throw DeSantis in there as a capable executive.
I'd be happy to have him as a leader.
I think he'd do a good job.
But he's not campaigning well.
You can say that for sure.
He's not killing it on the campaign.
But we have the best group of potential presidents that I've ever seen.
Does anybody want to take the other side of that bet that's not yet a bet?
I say that even if you include both sides, the Republicans and the Democrats, if you include both sides, it's the best group of candidates we've ever seen, maybe ever, I think.
Maybe back in the day of Thomas Jefferson, everybody was awesome.
So maybe they actually did have better candidates back then, I don't know.
But the ones we have now you should be proud of.
You should be proud that you live in a country that could field this set of candidates.
Now if they elect Joe Biden, and this is not even a political comment, I think you should be disappointed in your country.
Because we all know that's not the right play.
It's not like the Democrats think that's the right play.
They just think that's maybe the play they have.
Nobody thinks it's a good idea.
Just might be, in their opinion, better than the alternatives.
But yeah, don't be proud of that if that happens.
All right, there's another drunk Kamala.
Meaning that she acts like she's inebriated.
We don't know.
But every time she's in public, she does act exactly like an inebriated person.
And we're just ignoring that, right?
So we've all decided, collectively, that the Vice President can get up looking just drunk or, I don't know, stoned or on some kind of drug.
In my opinion, obviously.
How many would agree with the statement, obviously?
That she's obviously inebriated?
Like, you can't miss it.
Yeah.
I feel like it's obvious.
Why does the news completely ignore it?
Is it because they don't have proof, so it's just too far?
But nobody can say she obviously looks inebriated.
It's just obvious.
Nobody's ever going to bring that up?
Heaven.
I'm more provocative.
All right.
So here's what she said.
She said, when we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population.
What?
When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.
Now, as others have pointed out, she probably meant pollution.
She probably just, you know, said population instead of pollution.
I'd like to tell you what my hypnosis instructor taught me many years ago.
That these accidental gaffes are never accidents.
Now, I don't know if it's true.
I'll just tell you what I was taught.
I was taught that these are never accidents.
You know, you could call it a Freudian slip if you want, but that they're never accidents.
Let me tell you where you see this the most clearly.
I think I've told maybe the people who subscribe and locals, I've probably told you this before.
But people, when people are in a dating and romance situation, Their choice of words almost always reveal their point of view.
Because your sexual urge is so strong that it just comes out in your language when you don't mean it.
So the classic example my hypnosis instructor gave, and some of you've heard it, is if somebody's hungry, and they're just your friend, and they want to be your friend, and they're not thinking of anything, they would say, I tell you, I'm famished.
I'm famished.
If somebody wants to have sex with you, and they're hungry, The odds of them saying, you know, I'm ravished.
I'm ravished.
I actually had that happen to me.
That was actually an example given by the instructor that if somebody confuses ravished with famished, they won't have sex with you.
And that actually happened to me one day.
Do you think we had sex?
Yes, we did.
She became my girlfriend for 15 years.
Yeah.
And when it came out, I was actually, I think I was just done with hypnosis.
And when I heard it, I said to myself, oh, there it is.
And then I removed all doubt.
Now, one of the things I realized, you know, these many decades since I learned this trick is that I've never once Wondered if somebody was interested in me, like romantically or sexually.
I've never once.
Because their language just tells you exactly what they're thinking.
And if you're not looking for it, you'd never see it.
You would never see it if you weren't looking for it.
If you didn't know it was there, it would just be talking.
You'd never even notice.
But does she think that the population is too big in the country?
She might.
I think she just misspoke.
But it might, there's a very good likelihood, that it reveals her actual thinking about the population, that there's too many people.
Might.
Yeah, I'd bet on it.
If you told me to put a bet on it, I would bet on it.
But maybe 60-40.
Can't guarantee it.
It's more of a statistical thing.
Of course, the bigger problem is population collapse.
As Elon Musk and all the smart people tell you, our big problem is not population increase, it's collapse.
That's the big problem.
So, drunk Kamala.
Nuclear Energy Department of the government.
As an exciting announcement.
So there's a company called X Energy Nuclear, which we don't think is related to Elon Musk.
He's naming his stuff X this and X that.
But I think there's no indication that it's connected to Musk.
But it's developing a high temperature gas reactor that they say can't melt down.
It's one of two advanced reactor designs that is looking to demonstrate this within the decade.
So within the next 10 years, There are two startups that the Department of Energy is backing, at least with their words, and probably with funding, that would make nuclear reactors that can't melt down.
Now, that's the so-called Generation 4.
I've talked about it forever.
But when you see it's actually being implemented, and there's a real company and real money, and there's more than one of them, you can see that this is going to happen.
So it does look like the next generation of nuclear reactors will be smaller, modular, and can't melt down.
And they might even use the, in some cases they'll use the spent fuel and the waste from other reactors as their fuel.
I don't know if this one does that, but that's a feature of some Generation 4.
So that's all good news.
Some would say great news.
So if I were to look at the state of the election, in my opinion, if something happened to take Trump out of the primary, and of course it's Trump, so you've got to say anything could happen, right?
Where Trump is involved, prediction just goes out the door because his enemies will do nearly anything.
You know, rush a collusion, hide the laptop.
They'll do anything to keep him out.
So you can't predict anything that's going to happen.
Because the other side will do anything to stop him.
But on his side, he's also really hard to predict.
Because he'll do just about what he needs to do or say to get the job done.
So, here's my take.
If Trump, for any reason, left the race, I think Vivek would overtake DeSantis.
Tell me I'm wrong.
It wouldn't happen right away.
I think, because once you agree that they need to debate, it's over.
It's over.
As good as DeSantis is, and he's totally solid, I actually don't, I'm not sure I have any criticisms of DeSantis whatsoever.
Have I ever criticized DeSantis?
Maybe a decision or something.
But he's a solid, solid citizen and professional.
He's just not exciting.
And I think Vivek can excite us.
I think he can tell you, he can tell a better story.
But he would, he would just, I think he would just turn DeSantis into dust.
On a debate stage.
But I don't think there is necessarily going to be a debate if Trump is still in the primary, right?
I have mixed feelings about Trump debating.
On one hand, as long as he has a commanding lead in the primary, debating is stupid.
That would be stupid because it would be a bad strategy.
And, you know, if Trump did something that was like obviously stupid, I wouldn't be cool with it.
On the other hand, Wouldn't you love to know that the guy who's way ahead is so confident that he would debate anybody?
It would be bad strategy, it would just be dumb, because Trump could find a way to lose without getting any advantage from a debate.
Like the advantage wouldn't boost him, it could only take him down.
But at the same time, wouldn't you love to see it?
Wouldn't you love to see it?
And the reason I'd love to see it is that it would feel like a free market, free speech, tell the public what you got, don't hide anything, full disclosure, full transparency.
Here's the problem.
Okay, maybe I just came upon it myself as I was talking.
The problem is that the package that Trump is selling Requires him also to debate, to be consistent, right?
Because Trump would be, you know, free speech, free markets, transparency, right?
These are all sort of conservative Republican things.
Those things all lead you, and even competition.
What do Republicans like more than anything?
Competition.
So if the guy who is the leader of your party who primarily thinks that merit and competition and the free market should be the driving forces of our civilization, and then he's telling you he's not going to give it to you?
Because he's not going to debate because it would be a bad strategy for him personally?
Is that cool?
Is it cool that he's running for a set of standards that he's modeling the opposite of because they're not good for him personally?
Not cool.
It's not cool.
Now, I think that that applies to the right in a way it doesn't apply to the left.
Right?
Biden is an incumbent, and I don't hate the fact that an incumbent refuses to debate in a primary.
I prefer it, but because it makes sense, I don't oppose it.
It makes sense because the incumbent has a record that is effectively their debate.
Am I right?
You just look at Biden's record, and that's the debate.
And then you listen to what the alternative person says, and that's their debate.
So it's not as good as a debate, but debates are sort of gotcha opportunities.
It's an opportunity for somebody to have a moment or to fail, but there's not much information.
You're not getting a lot of information, right?
So, it would be such a baller... Oh, you know what Trump could do?
Oh, this would be diabolical.
I'm just going to brainstorm this.
Trump could agree to debates and then frame it in public as him searching for his vice presidential pick.
Oh my God.
That would be such a baller thing to do.
to agree to a debate that you're so confident about that you frame it as your search for a vice president.
Wow.
Suppose he said, I'm going to choose from one of these candidates.
I don't think he'll say that, because Trump doesn't like to limit his options.
So he won't say this.
But just for fun, imagine if he said, yeah, I'd like to do a debate, because I'm looking for a vice presidential pick, and I want it to be one of these characters.
Probably not Pence.
Probably not Pence.
But we'll invite him anyway, because, you know, it's part of the process.
That would be so strong.
It would force the public to only talk about which one is the right vice presidential pick, and you would make them think totally past the sale.
And as often as the article said, but, but, but, you have to understand.
You know, he hasn't been nominated, so it's really not up to him to pick a vice president.
You have to understand, he's getting ahead of himself.
It doesn't matter.
It would be brilliant.
It would be hilarious.
It would also be funny if Trump recommended a debate for the other candidates for the purpose of picking his vice president, and then don't go.
Don't be on the stage, because he doesn't need to.
Remember, Trump also Has his, you know, his record in office.
That's his debate.
His debate is, look what I did.
I want to do more of that.
That's the whole debate.
Right?
What else do you need to know about Trump?
Is there some information about Trump you don't know?
And that he would reveal in a, somehow he would reveal this new information for you in a debate?
That's not going to happen.
So actually, as I'm talking, Here's Trump's best play.
Trump's best play is to strongly recommend a debate, even- oh my god.
I was going to say he should host it, but then they wouldn't go.
So he should strongly recommend a debate so that he can pick a vice presidential candidate.
And just say it right out loud.
Because everybody's thinking it, right?
I told you, the thing that Trump does is he says what you're thinking, and he says it, you know, better than you're thinking it.
And you're thinking those other candidates are running for vice president, aren't you?
That's what you're thinking.
Not Pence, of course.
Pence is not.
But you're thinking it.
So why not just say it?
If you said it, everybody would go, all right, yeah, okay.
Let's get rid of that illusion.
Let's get rid of the illusion.
Now, the truth is that I'm sure that DeSantis is running for president.
I don't think he wants to be Vice President.
And I don't think Pence does.
But Tim Scott, Vivek.
You know, Vivek wants to be President, as does Tim Scott, I'm sure.
But maybe because they're younger, you know, they would go through the Vice President step to have a better chance at the big office.
So they're a little different.
They're all running for President, for sure.
But in your mind, you're thinking, well, really, it's a two-step process for at least two of them.
Maybe Nikki Haley as well.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the best live stream you're going to see today.
I like to think I put all the podcasters to shame with my insights and coffee sipping.
It's a package that you're not going to get anywhere else.
And by the way, if you count the hour or so I do most nights from a man cave, just for subscribers of the Locals platform, I give you something like Sixty hours of commercial free programming on your interest in politics every day.
Seven days a week.
So if you don't think that's worth a few bucks to get it commercial free, two ways to get it commercial free by the way.
One on YouTube you can Just buy whatever YouTube's package is that gets rid of the commercials.
I forget what it's called.
But the second way you could do it is you could subscribe to Locals, scottadams.locals.com.
And if you're over there, you get my second comic, Robots Read News, which is a little edgier than even Dilbert Reborn.
So you get Dilbert Reborn, 60 hours of This?
That would include all the Man Cave episodes, which are for adults only.
The Man Cave episodes are not for children.
All right.
I never went private on this, but I don't think it mattered.
What about the Secret Service bailing on the cocaine they found?
Well, I think we've told that story.
The story of the Secret Service and the White House cocaine Is that they're obviously hiding, it's obviously a miscarriage of justice.
What else could it be?
I mean, realistically, there's no chance they're telling you the truth.
You know that, right?
There's nobody, literally nobody, who believes that that's true.
That they can't find the, that they can't find him and there's nothing else to know.
Nobody believes that.
Yeah.
All right.
So ladies and gentlemen, why Dilbert's tie is always flying right and left?
Well, he doesn't wear a tie anymore.
He hasn't worn a tie.
When did Dilbert stop wearing a tie?
Ten years ago?
It's been a long time since he had a tie, but you remember him with a tie.
2010?
Do you actually remember that?
When did he lose weight?
Yeah, he did.
The characters did lose a little weight.
Just happened over time.
They got a person to lie and tell us the cameras were down.
Oh, let me give you an update on my 1 million followers on Twitter.
That's coming close.
We're at 998.7.
So 1.3 thousand to go.
You took magnesium and overslept?
Sorry.
Sorry.
Oh, it's premium?
Is that what the YouTube service?
Is it premium?
Do you think the Coke was a distraction now?
No?
Don't think so.
I don't think you would plant cocaine in your own house as a distraction.
Is that how you do it?
If you're trying to... Who plants drugs in their own house as a distraction?
That might be the worst take of the entire political history.
Did they plant drugs on themselves to distract from their other problems?
Strategic incompetence.
Okay.
I'm going to be laughing about that today.
I do like your instinct though.
I like your instinct that everything's a diversion from something else.
Because you're usually going to be right.
80% of the time you're going to be right that the news is managed to, the new news is to get rid of the old news.
There is a timing element to a lot of this stuff, that's true.
But I don't think they plant drugs on themselves to just divert the story.
