Episode 2195 Scott Adams: Separating The Real News From The Absurd Stuff. With Coffee
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
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Politics, Cranky Scott, Whitehouse Cocaine, Jaime Raskin, Hunter Biden Allegations, Fake News, Mitch McConnell, Election Integrity Allegations, President Biden Allegations, Andy Ngo Civil Lawsuit, Trayon White, DC Crime, Proterra Electric Buses, Failure Driven Economy, Twitter Employee Firings, ESG, Best Buy, President Trump, Trump Mocks Christie, Lia Thomas, Mike Cernovich, Sam Harris Allegations, DeSantis Border Wall Policy, Ukraine War Profits, Scott Adams
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the greatest thing that's ever happened.
A little bit late, but, you know, that's the way the day is going.
So, if you'd like to take your experience up to levels that nobody's ever seen before, all you need is a cupper, mugger, a glass, a tankard, shells, a stein, a canteen jug, or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go.
Have I ever taught you my trick about how to use a bad day?
Does anybody remember that?
It's one of the best techniques you'll ever learn.
It goes like this.
If your day already sucks, you should do the tasks that you don't want to do that would ruin your day.
So I didn't get enough sleep last night.
So I know that I'm in a really crappy mood.
So I'm going to take care of some fucking shit that needs to be taken care of today.
Because I have no patience.
No patience left whatsoever.
I'm at the absolute end of my patience.
So I'm going to get some stuff done today that would be really ugly under normal circumstances, but I'm going to enjoy it.
It's the best tip.
If you need to do some shit and it's really ugly, just match it with a bad day.
You'll actually be fine.
You'll enjoy it.
So I'm going to enjoy my day, but not everybody else will.
Maui's on fire.
Did you ever think about moving to an island?
I think about this all the time.
I think, you know, I could work anywhere.
I could be on an island.
But every time I think about living on an island, There's a hurricane or a wildfire or an alligator attack or something and mentally I can't get past the idea that I could be on an island in the middle of the Pacific or wherever and I couldn't get off the island and my 9-1-1 was down.
That's what's happening in Maui.
So in Maui right now they don't have phone service or 9-1-1 and the island's on fire.
I mean, in terms of square footage, it's not that much, but all right.
I don't know.
I just, I can't, I can't convince myself that it's safe to be on an island more than, you know, two weeks, which is great.
Prisoner Island, a whole different situation.
All right.
So today's theme is everything is corrupt everywhere and everybody's lying.
Although I feel like that's usually the theme.
It's not that different.
So, here's some stories on that.
And we'll try to figure out which ones are true and which ones are false.
Alright?
So, true and false.
Let me ask you on locals.
Can you really not tell when I'm already private?
Do you have no way to tell?
You can't tell?
Alright.
Do me a favor.
After the first two or three times you tell me that you want me to go private, don't do it anymore.
Because I just, I'm looking at them and they're just distractions after that.
I know you're trying to help.
I know you're trying to help.
Remember I'm in a bad mood?
It's not helping.
It's hurting.
Right?
It makes me just want to turn it off.
The first one, fine.
If it looks like I didn't see it, just let it go.
Just let it go.
It's not helping me.
It's hurting me.
Okay?
So the New York Post is reporting that the bag of cocaine that was found in the West Wing belonged to somebody in the Biden family orbit.
And the president apparently knows who it is.
All right, without reading the story, true or false?
Does that sound like real news or fake news?
Without even reading the details of the story, I'm gonna say fake news.
Yeah, if I had to bet on it, I'd say fake news.
Because what does it mean to be in the Biden family orbit?
Seriously?
All right.
Let me take care of this business right now.
I told you.
I'm just going to take care of everything that's...
All right, enough of that.
So, yeah, that's probably fake news.
The problem is that the Biden family orbit is too big of a category.
Don't you think?
Isn't everybody who goes into the White House and would be in a, if you're in a non-normal part of the White House, you're going to have some connection to the Biden family or orbit or something.
So I don't know.
I think that's a, that just doesn't feel real.
All right.
Jamie Raskin, representative, Democrat.
He's saying that Hunter was trying to divert money to accounts of family members, but that didn't involve Joe.
Is that real news or fake news?
That the money coming from Ukraine and China didn't go into Joe's accounts, it went into family members.
Yeah, that's probably technically true, but also intentionally misleading.
I'm going to say that was not true.
Here's a beauty.
How many of you heard this one?
That after Vice President Biden helped pressure the Ukrainians to get rid of the prosecutor, that the new prosecutor that the Ukrainians got was somehow connected to the Bidens.
The next person who got the job had ties to Hunter Biden.
So, yeah, I'm gonna go with true.
But be careful about ties, too.
One of the things the news always does is they can find a tie to anything.
Do you know how many times I've been tied to things?
Just imagine as a public figure, How many times have I been associated with, tied to, connected with, working with, talked to, communicated with, once said something to, included in a tweet, retweeted.
That's what the news does.
So the news likes to slime you by association.
What are the odds that the high-powered Hunter machine didn't also have connections to lots of other high-powered people?
They probably did.
But this one seems so suspicious, I'm going to go probably true.
Anybody agree?
Probably true.
There's a tie.
Now, How important that tie is?
Who knows?
But it's certainly alarming.
Probably true.
Here's a Newsweek headline by Max Abrams.
Does Ukraine have compromat on Joe Biden?
It's an opinion piece.
Does Ukraine have compromat?
So in other words, does Ukraine have some blackmail material on Joe Biden?
Well, I read the article to find out the details of why this would be suggested.
And after several minutes of reading the article talking about Trump, I got bored.
And I never really got to anything about Joe Biden and Compromat.
I don't know if it's in the article.
I only know it's in the title.
And I know I got really, really bored before I got to the part about Biden.
So let's judge this without reading it, because I don't think it made any difference.
It's just an opinion piece.
I would only say it's interesting.
It's only interesting in the sense that it's a Newsweek headline.
There's a headline in Newsweek which suggests that at least it's a worthy question.
It's a worthy enough question to be a headline.
I would say it's probably the most important question right now and there's a weird lack of interest in it.
What would be more important than knowing if Ukraine owned the U.S.
President in the context of an ongoing war?
What's the second most important thing after that?
In terms of questions that we don't understand the answer to, I feel like that's right at the top.
Right at the top, and total lack of interest.
Have you seen CNN or even, I haven't even seen Fox News say, how do we know there's no blackmail potential going on there?
I suppose there's always blackmail potential, but more than usual in this case.
Well, we'll see.
There's a story about Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elena Chow.
Now, his wife has connections to a big Chinese shipping company.
I think her father owns it.
And there's suggestion that the McConnells have made money with their high-level connections to China.
Now, this one's a tough one.
If you ask me, is anything illegal happening here, I would say, I'm not aware of it.
But I also heard Devin Archer talk about Hunter Daniels' operation, and I couldn't really tell that anything was illegal about that.
It might be, but it's not obviously, drippingly, clearly true.
It looks like Hunter was probably smart enough to set up a structure where there'd be some grey area and if he ever got in trouble he could get out.
So is the Mitch McConnell situation one of those legal but grey areas?
Where there's influence and connections and probably it did help some people, but is it illegal?
Is it illegal to know people?
Is it illegal to give a better deal to somebody that you know?
Well, it might not be ethical.
It might not be ideal.
It might not be what you want your leaders to be involved in.
But it might not be illegal.
So I would say this is in the category of probably true that the McConnells benefited financially.
But if you're married to If you're fully disclosed that you're married to somebody who's got this connection to the Chinese government, I feel like that's about as much disclosure as you need.
Because wouldn't you make every assumption that you needed to make about his marriage and his connection to China?
I mean, you would just assume that there's some influence.
But it is transparent.
And it's not illegal to marry somebody who grew up in China.
So, this one's a real weird one.
Because he's probably legal.
Probably.
But I don't like it.
Right?
It just raises too many questions.
And, you know, maybe it made sense when he was operating at the top of his game.
But now he's just, you know, he's turned Feinstein, Fetterman, you know, he's just a zombie walking around there.
So I'm not sure it makes sense at the moment.
Maybe you were getting enough benefit from his high level of good work, some would say, that, you know, you could ignore that there might be a connection that's a problem.
But if he's completely, you know, out of it, and there's a problem, Maybe it's time to look for a safer situation.
Somebody who doesn't have that connection.
So, but nothing illegal, obviously, as far as I could tell.
But I don't like it.
All right, how about this story most of you saw if you were on Twitter, which I call X. The Gateway Pundit.
Reported this headline, and you're going to tell me if you think it's true or false.
Now we have proof, and it's in capital letters, folks.
Capital letters.
Now we have proof.
It's the Gateway Pundit exclusive.
So the other thing you need to know is that the other entities are not reporting this.
Massive 2020 voter fraud uncovered.
in Michigan, including estimated 800,000 ballot applications sent to non-qualified voters, bags of prepaid gift cards, guns and silencers, burner phones, and a Democrat-funded organization with multiple temporary facilities in several states.
True or false?
Is there really obvious and gigantic voter fraud from 2020 with lots of details and numbers, and it's proved?
True or false?
Is Fox News reporting it?
Did you see a big Fox News story on the same story?
Let's check.
Let's call up the Fox News site.
And so this is one of my techniques.
If something has at least got evidence, Fox News is going to cover it.
Let's see.
More about their... It doesn't look like it.
All right, so I'm looking for Michigan 2020.
2020, nope.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Looks like they don't cover it.
So this would indicate that Fox News is not convinced.
Because I think you would agree, since it's not a story about voting machines, it's a story about an individual and an organization.
So if they thought it was even a little bit true, they'd probably report it, don't you think?
How about Breitbart?
Breitbart.
What do you think?
Actually, can somebody look for that while I'm doing there?
Check Breitbart, see if their reporting is true.
I'll tell you one thing about the story.
The headline, the details in the headline, are not in the body of the story.
The 800,000 ballot applications, it's in the headline.
It's not in the story.
Now that's what CNN said when they fact-checked it.
So Fox News is silent on it.
CNN fact-checked it and said the story doesn't even have the headline.
The headline and the story don't even match.
Now do you think that CNN is good at spotting situations where the story doesn't match the headline?
It's basically their business model.
How many times have I sat here in exactly this place and said, all right, here's the headline on CNN, and it doesn't match the story.
It's a very common thing.
It's not just CNN, by the way.
All right, so I got a confirmation in the story about this alleged proven massive voter fraud is not even on Breitbart.
Just not there.
So the only one that carried it was debunking it.
So CNN mentioned it.
Debunked it.
Fox News, silent.
Breitbart, silent.
All right, so I'll ask this question again.
Now, knowing that the explosive details part is not in the body of the story, what do you say?
True story or fake story?
Fake news or real news?
I'm going to go with probably fake.
I'll give this 80% At least 80% fake.
20%?
Who knows?
Anything is possible.
Now, let me be clear.
Remember my position from the very first day that the 2020 election got some questions.
From day one, I told you that whether or not there was any fraud, which I had no way of knowing, there would be plenty of reports of fraud.
And that at least, at the very least, 95% of the reports would be fake.
The very least.
How'd I do?
How is my estimate that 95% of the reports would be untrue and clearly be easy to prove untrue?
Whereas that says nothing about whether or not it was fraud, right?
So given that I have the smartest audience in all of politics, I think you guys can handle the fact that we don't know if there's any fraud.
We do know that 95% of the attacks were unsuccessful.
All right.
Next story.
This one is weird because I can't tell if it's old or new.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Greene, says that they've got now more evidence Or new evidence that the Bidens got paid $20 million.
They've got new bank statements, show money coming from Russia, Kazakhstan, and of course, Ukraine.
And as MTG points out, the Bidens don't sell any kind of product or service, so that's a pretty sketchy situation.
Now, is anybody having the same issue I am with this story?
I can't tell if this is the same story That just gets retold every few days.
Or are they really finding new evidence of a new and different $20 million?
Which is it?
A whole new $20 million?
Or the same millions that they were looking at before and now they have more evidence?
I can't tell.
Does anybody know the answer to that?
If you don't, somebody says same and somebody says new.
There's my point.
So the claim is that there's $20 million paid from these three countries, and there are bank statements that show it.
So some are saying new, some are saying it's new and old.
So I think I made my point.
We can't tell when there's a report of new corruption, because there's so much, you know, past and existing stories.
There's so many fake news stories about corruption, but also probably some real ones.
The field of news became so dense in the last week that I can't tell what's true.
I don't know.
Is this an old story or a new story?
I don't know.
They all look the same.
I almost feel like it's intentional.
Because yesterday, last night before I went to bed, I was just scrolling through the news, and it all had the same nature.
Which is, there was a big scandal, it was kind of complicated, has something to do with the Bidens, I'm not sure if I've ever seen it before.
And I was just flooded with them.
Until I was losing my sense of what had already been debunked, what was new, what was old, and what was important.
There's so much of it that all of it seemed unimportant in my brain.
Does anybody have that feeling?
If you had one, like, really powerful story about the Bidens, and only one, your brain would say, well, that's important.
And every time somebody brought up Biden, you'd say, well, but that one thing, that one thing is really big.
Looks like it's true.
But there are now so many Varied stories about Biden bad behavior, you know, and some Biden family member or Biden, that I'm not even sure I can sort them out anymore.
My brain has decided that they can't be important.
Even though my rational brain says, of course they are.
And not only are they important, there's a lot of stuff that looks important there.
But my brain can't handle it.
So my brain is saying, oh, blah, blah, blah, Biden every day.
That's all I need to know.
There's people saying, blah, blah, blah, Biden.
And then my brain says, it's too much to think about.
So I think I'll just think about my own day.
I won't think about that.
Are you having anything like that feeling?
Now, maybe I get more of it because I'm actually looking for the headlines and looking for patterns and stuff.
But I feel overwhelmed.
By the quantity of accusations, such that none of them seem important in my mind.
And I want to be very clear about this nuance.
My rational brain, my rational brain knows it's critically important.
Critically.
Critically important.
I mean, maybe the most important thing is happening.
You don't even know if the Ukraine war is legitimate in the sense that somebody thought it was a good idea.
It might just be a cover-up.
It could be.
I mean, these are really, really big questions.
But they're so big and so many that I'm going to forget about them as soon as we're done here.
If I didn't have them written down, I couldn't even list them in an hour.
It's just too much.
My brain's full.
I don't know if this is intentional.
Do you?
Is it just because it's the political season?
Just a coincidence?
Or is it some kind of op?
Like, are we being played somehow?
To be just exhausted on all these charges until they don't seem important?
I don't know.
Just a question.
There's another one.
Michael Schellenberger is following up.
We already knew the White House was pressuring Facebook to censor the vaccine skeptics.
But apparently they had several ways they did it.
There was something that needed to be negotiated with Europe that Facebook needed, so it was vitally important that they made the government happy.
Facebook thought they might be retaliated against.
That's bad.
Then they have that, what is it, the Rule 230 protection?
That the government could rescind, so that's always an implied threat over the social platforms.
But the newest report is that the White House was under pressure from... And just see if your outraged mind has any room for this.
Your brain is full of outrage.
See if there's even room for it.
The White House was under pressure from the news media.
That's the report.
That the New York Times and maybe others were pressuring Facebook to censor.
Now, I don't know how much that pressure mattered.
But when I hear it, my head wants to explode, but there are so many things in my head that makes it want to explode, I've discounted them all, including this one.
In an hour, I won't remember this.
I will not remember this story in an hour.
But it looks like it's kind of important.
I don't know if it's, you know, if there's any details I don't know about it, but it's too much.
All right, here's one.
Portland jury finds Antifa militants not liable in the Andy Ngo attack.
Now, I wasn't on the jury, but haven't we seen videos that clearly show these people attacking him?
Am I imagining that?
Did I imagine it was clearly on video and there's no question about who the individuals were and there doesn't seem to be any question about what they did?
Does this look like jury nullification to you?
Kind of does, doesn't it?
It looks like the jury just decided to ignore the law.
Do you know that the defense attorney proudly said she was a member of Antifa?
How many of the people in the jury were sympathetic to Antifa or thought they would be hurt if they didn't vote a certain way?
How many of them were just afraid of the defendants or the defendants' organizations?
Don't know.
But we do know it doesn't look like the justice system works.
I would say our justice system is just fundamentally broken at this point.
From top to bottom.
From presidents to... Andy, no.
It looks like it's broken from top to bottom.
I hate to say that.
But the evidence is sort of mounting.
All right.
There's a Democrat politician in DC.
A young black man who looked...
He looked pretty sharp, I'd have to say.
I'm going to give him a good grades for doing what he's doing, which is Trayon White is his name, and he's calling on the National Guard to help address the rampant violent crime in the nation's capital.
Now, I don't know if there's anything else this DC Councilman has done that you don't like, so don't jump on me if there's some other thing in his past that you don't like.
I don't know that there is.
I love the fact that he lives there and he says it's an emergency and we got to treat it like an emergency.
I like it.
But it also tells you that, you know, the defunding the police and the prosecutors that are too liberal and all that have destroyed DC.
I mean, didn't Trump say it's turned into a basically a garbage pit?
So is DC the only city that's dying?
No.
San Francisco reports that Nordstrom has closed their two locations.
Yet Target has locked up all their products, Whole Foods, getting out of town.
So X might be the only company left after a while.
But I would add this to the story.
I think the story might be a little alarmist in the sense that Nordstrom closed in my town a long time ago.
So I live in a high-end suburb of San Francisco, and Art Nordstrom went out of business, I don't know, a year ago?
And I think this is more to do with retail.
I think Nordstrom just wasn't supportable, and I think that Target needs to be an online company.
Why do you go into the store to buy anything at Target?
Well, like what would even be the purpose of going into a store?
Unless you had to pay cash, I guess.
So maybe it's because of San Francisco and the crime, but maybe these businesses were not viable anyway.
I don't think Nordstrom was viable in the long run, but of course the looting had to take a toll.
All right.
There was a big electric bus company that was going to be changing the world and saving us from climate change, I guess.
And it was touted by Kamala Harris and Biden.
And now they're out of business.
And some are saying it was a pump and dump scheme and was never real.
And all the top Democrats were involved and money is missing.
And it's basically every accusation you imagine.
But the other possibility is startups go out of business.
What do you think?
Do you think that this bus company was always just a play?
It was just a scam from the start?
Or do you think it was a startup and it just didn't work out?
Don't know.
Don't know.
My guess, yeah, there you go.
My guess is both.
Because if you've been involved with any kind of a business startup, there is always that scammy phase.
There's that phase where, you know, the startup is wondering, well, we can't exactly do what we claimed.
But I'm pretty sure we can if we get a little bit more money.
We're like really close.
So I feel like the distinction between scam and optimism is actually too overlapping to call it out.
If we didn't have people over-promising and saying they can do things they can't do, we wouldn't do nearly as many things as we do.
So while you don't like it when people lie to you, it does kind of drive the economy.
The optimism is what formed the company, brought in money.
The optimism is what caused them to pay their vendors and think they were in business.
So it did create a bunch of economic opportunity.
Even in failing.
So weirdly, we have an economy that is mostly failure.
And it works fine.
Because most companies go out of business.
Most, eventually.
So it's a big old failure-driven economy.
And because of the free market, it works.
You don't need too many things to succeed big before the average looks pretty good.
So, I don't know.
I guess I wouldn't assume corruption here, except that we live in a world where everything seems to be corrupt at the moment.
Zuby, I'm sure you all follow Zuby on X. He tweeted, but I call it posting because it's not really Twitter, that what were those other 80% of Twitter staff doing?
Do you remember when all the smart Democrats said that Musk, he must have been just the worst manager?
I mean, Musk must have made such a big management mistake to get rid of 80% of his staff because how could a company possibly function without 80% of its people suddenly?
Turns out the answer is it can innovate faster, Is the innovation at Twitter greater or less?
What would you say?
I believe I've seen more changes on Twitter, now X, than at any time in the past.
It was the greatest innovative surge.
Do you know why there was a great innovative surge?
Well, several reasons.
Elon, of course, is a driver of innovation, so that's automatic.
But I think that getting rid of 80% of the staff was a big, big part of what could make Twitter or X innovate faster.
Have you ever worked at a big company?
Here's a big company.
Engineer comes in, makes a presentation to the boss.
Boss says, why don't you socialize that with marketing and sales and, you know, five other departments, talk to the lawyers.
And then you do that, and what happens?
Every one of those entities tells you you can't do it, and they have a different reason.
Well, that's probably a legal problem.
Well, we can't market that.
Well, we can't sell that.
Well, we're busy with other things.
Well, the budget isn't there for that.
Well, you better submit your budget with all the others.
So basically, 80% would create a bureaucracy that would limit the effectiveness of the 20% who do the real work.
That's every big company.
Now suppose you insert an Elon Musk into the thing, and Elon says, if you've got a big important question, ask me.
Now I'm just imagining that's probably what happens.
Now you're the engineer, you come up with your good idea.
The old way is you have to satisfy the other 80% of the staff that are already gone.
And that wasn't going to work.
By the way, I've been in this situation exactly a number of times.
I can tell you the other parts of the company are only there to stop you from doing what you want to do.
They're only there to stop you.
So now you take that same idea that all of those organizations would have said no or later or get in line to, and you take it to Elon and you say, this is a great idea.
It's got some risk, but what do you think?
Then what does Elon say?
Oh, you better check with marketing that doesn't exist.
No.
He says, yeah, let's try that.
If it doesn't work, we'll reverse it.
Right?
Just try it.
If it doesn't work, we'll say we tried, it didn't work, and then we'll turn it back to the way it was.
Which he's actually done a few times, I believe.
Now compare that level of efficiency, where you get to talk to not only one of the smartest business people in the world, But he gives you an answer right while you're talking to him.
And then you go off and do it.
There's no way that old Twitter could have competed with a model where the engineer can talk to the smartest business person in the world and get an answer and then go off and implement.
That probably just doesn't exist almost anywhere except at X. All right.
So that's Elon for the win on that.
ESG continues to die.
So there's a group called S&P Global.
They used to give out scores, ESG scores.
And they've decided, they're a debt rating agency, but in addition to the debt rating, they would give these ESG scores.
And they decided not to do it anymore.
Because it was bullshit.
That's right.
A big ratings agency, one of the main ones that rated you for ESG, decided it was all bullshit and they're not going to do it anymore.
It's just not part of their business now.
Now, they didn't use the word bullshit, but did they need to?
I think the essence of it was the ESG rating was not correlating to performance or anything useful.
Just wasn't correlated with anything.
And the scores seemed to be maybe political or stupid or, I don't know, subjective or something.
So the whole thing just seemed stupid, I guess, and they decided not to be part of it.
Well, let's look on the other side of that.
Best Buy is implementing a management program, training program, that is not available to white people.
And says so, in direct writing.
Yeah, you can apply for this if you're, you know, this, this, this, or this.
But white people?
Not on the list.
It took about a minute and a half before somebody tweeted me a picture of the CEO, who is a woman.
A woman.
So Best Buy is run by a woman.
And they implemented a no white people program for management.
If you're a white person, would you ever shop at Best Buy again?
If you could avoid it.
I won't.
I'm not gonna shop there again.
I'm totally done with them.
Because there's nothing... I don't believe Best Buy has a single thing I can't buy somewhere else.
Can you think of anything?
Name one thing I can't order from Amazon.
I can't think of anything.
So, does Amazon have a program where they exclude white people?
Do they?
Do you think Jeff Bezos has a program that excludes white people?
I don't know.
But I'd put a... Somebody says yes.
Maybe.
But I haven't heard about it.
So... Yeah.
They're dead to me.
I would avoid them like the plague.
And there has to be a penalty for this.
Am I right?
I'm completely against boycotts for sort of ordinary political reasons, but this isn't an ordinary political reason.
This is straight-up racism.
I'm not gonna give my money to a company that's overtly racist against me.
Like, why would I do that?
Under what circumstance would I ever give them money again?
Well, if they fire their CEO and reverse the program, I will be there tomorrow.
So Best Buy, if you want my money, it's available, but you're gonna have to fire your CEO and you're gonna have to get rid of this program.
That would be my minimum requirement.
Not that you need to do anything for me, but I don't need to do anything for you as well, so we can agree on that.
Well Trump made what I would consider a rare campaign mistake.
Say what you will about Trump's management of the country, but as a campaigner most people agree that He's sort of in a category of his own.
He can get attention and he can move the needle, he can persuade.
I mean, he's got the whole set of tools.
But here's one you're not going to agree with me until I give you my reasons and you will all agree with me immediately.
So he quite humorously made fun of Chris Christie's weight at a rally.
So he said, I'm not going to call him a fat slob or something, fat pig, fat pig.
So he was pretending like somebody in the audience said it.
And he was pointing to the audience member.
But we don't know if anybody really was in the audience saying that.
He might have been just acting it out.
But he did the, I'm not going to say it.
But you're saying he's a fat pig.
I'm not going to say it.
All right, here's my take.
Number one, was it funny?
Answer?
Was it funny?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
A lot of people laughed.
So if you say no, it means it wasn't funny to you.
Which is valid, because it's subjective, right?
So humor is not objective.
So those of you saying it was funny, you're right.
Those of you saying it wasn't funny, you're right too.
Because there's no standard for funny.
If it was funny to you, it's funny.
If it's not funny to you, it's not funny.
That's the whole story.
However, strategically, you should never say something, if you're running for office, that would have the following quality.
Nobody's going to vote for you because of it, but some people might change their vote because of it.
Two-thirds of Trump's voters are overweight.
Two-thirds.
Two-thirds of Trump's voters are pretty overweight.
And he just made fun of being overweight in public.
Now, others would point out that he's got a weight problem of his own.
I get it.
I get it.
But that's not going to be really where people focus.
So I'm going to teach you something that I learned as a cartoonist.
I would often think, you know, here's a joke that's really, my audience is going to love this joke.
It is a little mean to some group and because I used to make fun of people who had extra weight.
I've changed that opinion because I don't believe in free will and I don't believe that people I think it's just their brain can't handle sugar, basically.
I think that's basically the whole thing.
Because I don't love sugar.
I'm just not addicted to it.
If I were, I'd weigh 400 pounds.
And I wouldn't hate myself, I'd just say, I'm addicted.
What can I do?
So, I don't do fat shaming, but here's what I learned.
Never do a joke that 99% of the people will love if 1% will stop following you.
That never makes sense.
And this is probably a 95 to 5 situation.
I would bet you 5% of the people who heard the news about Trump making fun of Christie's weight just said to themselves, I did like you, and I was going to get up and I was going to vote for you.
I still kind of like your politics, but you know what?
I'm going to eat breakfast instead of voting.
I would say that this is clearly a mistake.
Because there's, would you agree with the following statement?
Zero people decided to vote for Trump because he mocked somebody for their weight.
Do you agree with that part?
Just the first part, that he gained no new voters.
Agree.
Now, would you agree with the second part?
That there might be some sliver of people Who were turned off enough by that, because it's personal.
It's very personal.
Very personal.
Let me give you my take on it.
If he had made fun of some other immutable characteristic, and I happened to have it, I wouldn't be too happy about it.
I wouldn't say, well, it was really funny.
I'd probably say, you know, I think I need somebody with better judgment.
And I would talk myself out of it.
Yeah, weight is not immutable if you believe in free will.
So if you believe in superstition, it's not immutable.
If you believe that free will is an illusion, then whatever nature your brain is, guarantees that you will act a certain way.
Luckily, my brain seems to be different.
So I'm not attracted to massive eating.
But I could easily imagine I would be.
It's easy to imagine.
Scott, you said a bit to PC.
Really?
No.
PC would... My entire opinion is based on science.
I don't even think it's an opinion.
And math.
So the math of it is that you don't gain anybody, but you might lose somebody.
There's no part of my opinion in that.
Which part of that is an opinion?
That's just math.
And it's obvious, and it's observable.
Now, the part where I'm not giving people a hard time for weight is because I don't believe in free will, which is a longer discussion.
But it's not based on PC.
It's based on science.
Either there's free will or there's not.
If science showed me there is free will, then I would change my opinion.
Is that PC?
Or is that just kind of going where the argument seems to go?
All right.
That's such an NPC comment to say that somebody's like, to this or to that.
Sometimes we have a variety of opinions.
Well, Bill Maher continues to make news almost every single day, at least in the political right, for bashing the team that you imagine he used to be on, or is on, for being too woke.
But I guess on his, what's it called?
His little podcast where he talks to one person?
What's that called?
Bill Maher's Club Random.
On Club Random, he had Riley Gaines, the woman who competed against Leah Thomas.
And finally, all the news there's been about Leah Thomas, all the news about Riley Gaines, I mean, at least if you're following right-leaning news, it's just been the news continuously.
And it took all of that for Bill Maher to ask the only question I was actually interested in.
Now, under normal conditions, that question would not have a news-related element.
It would just be kind of gratuitous.
But part of the complaint, and here I'm going to describe the complaint, If you imagine I'm taking sides, then you're probably imagining it.
I'm just describing it, right?
These are people's opinions, and they get to have their opinions.
So the women who are in the changing room with trans athlete Leah Thomas said the report is that many of them were uncomfortable because Leah Thomas is, what they would say, an intact male body.
Meaning that there's a penis there.
Now, if you were a woman and you were uncomfortable with that situation, completely normal and understandable, would it matter to you how big the penis is?
Because it was actually part of the story.
I think it was Riley Gaines who was saying that Leah Thomas was 6'4 and proportional.
So, impressive, I guess.
And I actually think it's part of the story.
Does anybody disagree?
Because the story is about how people feel.
It's a story about how people feel.
You don't think that the women would feel different if Leah had a micropenis versus a big old sausage.
You don't think it makes a difference how people feel about it.
Yeah.
Now, logically, you shouldn't be making any laws based on the size of a penis.
So, you know, there's nothing you can do about it.
But I think it's actually a legitimate question.
So, weirdly, I'm just going to give Bill Maher credit for asking an actually useful question that tells us a little bit more about the situation.
Now, again, did I express an opinion?
Did anybody hear an opinion in that?
Because I was trying to do it without an opinion coming through.
Because my take on all this is that my opinion should be worthless.
It's clearly bad for the women who are competing against the trans athletes.
Nobody's questioning that.
And it's clearly good for the trans athletes who are benefiting from this access.
So you've got one group that's benefiting, one group that feels injured, and they both have their arguments.
They live in a free country.
They get to press their arguments.
These things get settled by power.
So to imagine that the argument about what's right or wrong coming from me should have any weight on this I think not.
I think that women as a group are going to collectively reverse this.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't there been a number of notable reverses?
Are the women not winning at this point?
Because it seems to me that I've heard more about trans athletes being banned lately, just last few weeks, than being included.
Am I wrong about that?
Haven't there been some high-level bans but not any new high-level new access?
So to me it looks like a power struggle which both sides always put in terms of what's right or wrong.
I don't feel like I'm the judge of what's right or wrong.
I can tell you that there's a victim in this case or a victim in that case but since there's always something that's imperfect Is it my job to tell you what should and should not be?
I don't know.
I did see there was, what league was it?
If you want the real person answer, the real person, if it were my daughter, I would back my daughter.
Are you okay with that?
If it were my daughter, of course, I'd say, get that Leah Thompson or Leah Thomas out of there.
I would just say, if it's bothering my daughter, I don't like it.
It'd be as simple as that.
So don't worry that I don't have opinions.
I was just trying to tell the story without it, because I don't think my opinion should be in this story.
I feel like I don't add anything.
Right?
If you put me in the story, I could very easily have an opinion.
But I'm not in the story.
All right.
I was questioning whether I was going to talk about this, but I've decided to do it.
I saw a Mike Cernovich tweet about Sam Harris, and it included a clip in which he was talking about Trump in January 6 and the insurrection, I guess he imagined he saw.
And Cernovich asked this.
And I spent a long time deciding whether I'd retweet it.
Or whether it was too far.
Like, is this unfair?
And here's what, you decide.
So this is Mike Cernovich.
He said, is Sam Harris in early stage of dementia?
Did he have a concussion?
Or maybe his alcoholism caught up with him.
What?
And then Mike says, anyone familiar with alcoholics sees the red flags here.
So I watched the video, and I thought to myself, really?
Am I going to see that in the video?
And here's the problem.
If you're primed for it, you can definitely see it.
But don't let that influence you.
If you're primed for it, as in you just read the tweet, and then you listen to him, you can very easily tell yourself, wait a minute, there is something wrong.
Right?
But don't let that fool you.
Because that's because of the priming.
So I do not make the accusation.
So I'm removing myself from the accusation.
However, is it an unfair question?
Is it unfair if somebody acts in a way that should be identified with maybe not reason but some other mechanism?
Is it unfair to call that out?
That's why I couldn't decide whether to tweet it.
Because subjectively and in my biased way, because I was very biased by the tweet itself, I felt like I could see it.
And when I listened to him talk, I thought to myself, you couldn't possibly be that smart and think that there was not a orderly transfer of power on January 6th, or a peaceful transfer.
There was, in fact.
I mean, the worst case scenario, the biggest risk is it might have been a few days later.
There was never any risk that it wouldn't be a largely peaceful transfer of power like every other time.
But he seems to be in this world in which that was a real thing.
And so the question is, am I crazy?
And could I rule it out?
No.
So I cannot rule out that he's the only sane person in the world.
You can't rule it out.
Sam Harris might be the only one who makes sense, and all the rest of us are in a weird bias situation.
Totally possible, which is weird.
But if you don't acknowledge that that's possible, you'll get in trouble later.
Maybe this time it's about Sam.
Maybe next time it's about us.
I don't know.
We're not going to know the difference.
But, so I'm not going to back the speculations about his mental decline, but I'll tell you I see it.
My impression, and from what I can tell from other people online, it looks like mental decline.
It does actually look like it.
I wouldn't put it on any one cause.
If I had to, gun to head, if I had to put a cause on it, I would just say standard Trump derangement syndrome.
It's just that he got more attention about his Trump opinions than other people.
So in theory, if you were an independent thinker and you got a lot of pushback on something you thought was a good take, you'd probably triple down because you were confident you had the right take on it.
So it would look to us like mental decline.
It would look like he's drunk.
It would actually look like he's drunk.
And it does.
But it could be The things you can't rule out are just standard Trump derangement syndrome, because it affects everybody at every intelligence level.
Intelligence won't help you a bit.
And it could be that you and I are the ones with the problems.
Maybe he's not the one with the problem.
Maybe he's the only one with the right take.
Absolutely possible.
Can't be ruled out.
All right.
DeSantis.
He was tweeting that today drug cartels are responsible for killing more Americans than any other group or country.
Yet we sit back and do nothing.
All right.
All right.
DeSantis.
You're talking my language now.
Let's see what else you got here.
As president.
All right.
Here it comes.
I will authorize use of deadly force.
I like it.
Against drug smugglers.
Yes.
Yes.
Cutting through the border wall.
What?
Deadly force against drug smugglers cutting through the border wall.
That's it?
That's it?
The biggest problem in the United States, and he's only going to use force against the ones he catches cutting through the wall?
Just the cutters?
This is so weak that it's embarrassing.
It's actually embarrassing.
What's wrong with him?
What is wrong with DeSantis?
I don't understand this.
Because here's... Let me give you a hypothesis.
Alright, I have a hypothesis.
You might remember that, let's say a year ago, Every time DeSantis made news as a governor, I said something that sounded the same every time.
Oh my God, that's a good idea.
Oh my God, he's good at getting the headlines in a productive way.
Oh my God, it's like one right move after another for his base, right?
You could argue whether they were good moves or bad, but politically and for his base, they were all genius.
They were just right on, right on, right on every time.
Now, he moves from governor, making one political home run after another for his base.
Others don't like it.
And then he moves into the campaign, and it feels like he lost all that magic.
Now, do you think that one person can go from, you know, the governor domain to the presidential domain and lose their skill?
How do you lose your skill?
Just changing that domain.
I don't think the presidential race is that different.
Because in both cases, you say things that your base would like, and you try to say it first or best.
You try to do something about it.
It's all the same game, politically.
But why did he suddenly become bad at it, when he was not just only good, he was about the best I've ever seen.
I mean, he was crazy.
What would be a good hypothesis for that change?
And don't say alcoholism or Trump derangement syndrome.
There you go.
Key staff exit.
My hypothesis is this.
Whoever was advising him in the governor's race was way above average.
Way above average.
As in, you haven't even seen that kind of operation before.
I have some suspicions who it might have been.
Because there aren't that many people in the country who are that capable.
And I'm not going to tell you because I don't have any proof.
I have no proof at all.
So based just on the capability, There's probably one person, and I'm not going to tell you ever who it is, but there is one person who has that capability, who could have been advising him in the governorship, and would have quite potentially switched to Trump.
So, no, not Cialdini.
Nothing to do with any academics, right?
Nothing with an academic.
But does anybody see that same effect?
No, Matt Gaetz would have been Trump from the start.
Matt Gaetz was always pro-Trump.
So that's not a case of him leaving and going anywhere.
But does anybody see that the skill level just fell off as if a major advisor, like the best one, switched?
Doesn't it seem like that?
That's what I think.
So, now this is pure speculation.
It's just based on observation of the skill level dropping off suddenly.
I feel like that was... had to be a key advisor.
Yeah.
Alright.
Oh, you think he's playing to the donors instead of the bass?
No, it doesn't look like that to me.
It looks like a capability fall-off.
All right.
How about the Ukraine counteroffensive, huh?
Huh?
Ukraine counteroffensive.
It's just tearing up the Russian lines.
Getting a little quiet about that, aren't they?
Can we stop pretending there's a war?
Because there isn't a war.
It is a negotiation.
And it's waiting for Trump.
If you see it any other way, what evidence would there be to support your point?
How do you support your point if you think this is a war?
Because you think Ukraine's going to break down the Russian lines and defeat the Russian army?
And Putin's going to surrender?
Or you think the Russians have only been joking around, and as soon as they get serious, they're going to run through those Ukrainian lines and take Kiev?
That's all ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
The situation there is only for the benefit of people selling arms and other goods.
And it's just a holding pattern.
We're just waiting for Trump.
And nothing should change this situation because the Democrats apparently are benefiting from it.
There's somebody making money, a lot of money.
The money that's going to Ukraine isn't all going into bullets.
A lot of it's being siphoned off, because it always is.
That's an easy statement to say.
So you've got the Democrats and their siphoning off group.
They don't want to wrap up the war.
And you've got the Russians that can't possibly end the war, because it would look like a defeat.
So there isn't anything, there's nothing happening that could change this from a bloody negotiation into an actual war.
This is not a war.
The war is fucking over.
And every time that the news refuses to report that the war has been over for a while, it's bloody, but it's a negotiation.
Now you could get real conceptual and say every war is a negotiation, but no it isn't.
No it isn't.
Not like this.
This is pure negotiation.
This is not a little bit of war.
This is just a negotiation.
Because there is no reasonable chance that the situation is going to change before Trump gets in office.
That's my take.
What do you think?
Is my take useful and/or...
So if we reframe this as a negotiation, that's our best situation.
The U.S.
should reframe it as a negotiation, which also is very positive for a Republican candidate.
Am I right?
Because I don't hear the Democrats saying, hey, let's negotiate this war.
Have you heard any?
Maybe some have.
But Biden doesn't talk like that, does he?
When was the last time Biden said negotiate?
I don't believe I've heard that.
So the Democrats aren't even on that wavelength.
So if you define it as a negotiation, Then you could see the mismatch between the Biden, you know, unwilling to even consider that, and several, I think several Republicans, do me a fact check on this, aren't there several Republicans besides Trump, Ramaswamy, who are saying they can wrap this up pretty quickly with a negotiation?
Am I wrong that, so Trump and Vivek, Give me a fact check of this.
They're both clear about we'll wind this down right away.
This is a negotiation.
I think so.
There might be other... Did RFK say the same?
I think RFK Jr.
is pretty close to that as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, it looks like Russia will keep some of that territory.
I don't see any way around it.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, is there any topic I have not covered?
Marin County armed car break-in.
Haven't seen that.
So I don't know what's going on in Niger.
I guess the rebels have taken over.
But since I have no opinion about whether the rebels are better or worse than the government they took over, I don't have an opinion on Niger.
And I don't believe it's the sort of thing where I would ever get a good opinion.
It sounds like something we'll never know.
All right.
Victoria Newland.
You know, I've been avoiding the Victoria Newland stuff because there's a whole lot of mind reading you have to do.
Somebody's disagreeing with me.
Sorry, Scott, it's a bloody stalemate.
Russia doesn't want to escalate to NATO involvement and recreationism.
A bloody stalemate?
Is that disagreeing with me?
So when you agree with me completely, this is just a writing tip, don't start it with, sorry, Scott, when you're completely agreeing.
Better, that would be better left for when there's a disagreement that follows the, sorry, Scott.
But when you're agreeing with me completely, maybe, yes, Scott.
Do that.
Yes, Scott.
And then agree with me.
It's just better form.
The Alabama fight.
All right.
So there's a big fight on the dock in Alabama.
I don't care.
Why do I care about that?
You're trying to make me care because there were black participants in a fight in a state I don't live in.
I don't care.
Why is that news?
Some people got in a fight.
Apparently there was a reason for the fight.
Something about a boat dock or something dispute.
But why do we care about that?
Why is that news?
Be careful of trying to make news the anecdotes.
Take Vivek as your guide.
Vivek said on an interview recently, you would mock us if we used anecdotes for science.
Don't use your anecdotes about a fight to make some policy decision.
It was a fight.
No big deal.
All right.
And may I suggest?
That if you lived near a place where such fights might break out, you should consider relocating.
I feel like location is 80% of success.
What is this?
I'm looking at the screen.
A pedophile was shot and killed.
Two FBI agents haven't seen this covered at all.
Yeah, because I don't care.
I don't care.
There are some things that are not covered.
Because we don't care.
Now, I'm not saying I don't care about the tragic deaths of two law officers.
Of course.
Of course I care.
But, you know, a million people died yesterday.
I'm not doing a wake for all of them.
So, a pedophile shoots some FBI people, that sounds like a horrible, tragic thing, but it's not really a story of the country, is it?
Is there any bigger message there?
I don't think so.
Bad person shot some good people.
That's the story.
All right.
I'm seeing prods.
I'm being prompted to talk about black-on-black crime.
Why?
Why would I talk about that?
I would get away from it.
If you live near it, you should move.
That's the only thing I'm going to say about it.
Because if you haven't figured out, what are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do about black-on-black crime?
The Democrats want fewer police.
Let them live in the city the way that they want to.
If they'd like to live in the city under those conditions, it's a free country.
And, you know, here's what I think.
I think we should take all of our attention that we're putting on, you know, the average of this group versus this group.
Oh, this group has bad stats.
Forget about all of that.
Forget about all of it.
And just create a system that allows everybody to move easily.
If you lived in an inner city and it was full of crime, it doesn't matter what your color or ethnicity is.
You might want to get out of there.
But it might not be easy, because if you're in an inner city, there's a reason.
And it may be that there's no jobs, you don't know where to go, you wouldn't be comfortable someplace else, etc.
I feel like the best thing you could do is create a way that people who just want to stay out of trouble and go to school, that those families can be moved out of any environment that would stop that from happening.
But once you move the good people who want to succeed from the bad people who want to be criminals, if you're not going to arrest the criminals, you just have to get out of there.
You just have to get away.
Rogan said that Obama is the greatest president.
I'd have to see the context of that.
Would we be able to...
Oh, so what's the latest on LK99?
I saw some mocking references to it as if it's been proven not to be real.
Did that happen?
Because I was sort of looking for the story and couldn't find it.
Lots of uncertainty.
So the current feeling of superconductivity is not real?
Is it leaning not real?
Damn it.
Yeah, you could feel it, couldn't you?
You know, I went at this with maximum optimism, because I just like to be optimistic, you know, whenever you have a chance.
Rather than worrying about bad things that never happen, I'd rather talk about good things that aren't going to happen.
At least your brain is with the good things.
So, well, who's surprised?
Is anybody surprised?
I thought it went further than it should have before the questions were raised.
It has strange magnetic properties.
Are they useful?
Are the strange magnetic properties useful, Franklin?
Is it some other kind of?
Potentially.
All right, well, I'm going to be completely... I'm going to go negative on LK99.
So I'm going to adjust my current thinking, just based on this, to probably not.
Probably not.
Which is very disappointing, because I had some optimism there.
All right, what else?
Am I missing anything else?
Yeah.
So it means cold fusion won't be so easy, et cetera.
If you report about leotipers, to hear about yours as well.
All right.
Pedophile is a thought crime?
Not if they do it.
It's the zero resistance.
But does it have zero resistance?
Is it not superconductive but has zero resistance?
I think that's not possible, right?
No.
Am I positive or negative about magnetism?
Good one!
Dad joke.
It has small resistance.
Does it have less resistance than normal?
Maybe that would be useful.
I don't know.
Frictionless is possible, somebody says.
You know, I would say that my journey into denying reality started with magnets.
When I was a little kid, I could not understand how a magnet could be possible.
And it was the first thing that suggested that I don't understand reality itself.
Like, you know, what I'm looking at right in front of me may not be real.
Now that's my current view as an older adult, but I think it was the weirdness of magnets that made me lose all trust that what I'm seeing could be understood by my brain.
Whatever magnets are doing, your brain is not capable of understanding it.
Likewise with gravity.
So gravity is folded or bent space.
And time is not real, but space-time is?
How does your brain handle that?
And non-locality?
You know, spooky action at a distance?
How does your brain handle that?
The only way my brain can understand those things?
Wrong, just study physics.
I'm going to challenge you on that.
Somebody said wrong, just study physics.
And once you study physics, then all these spooky things are explained, right?
So, if you believe that, you've really been brainwashed.
Physics replaces understanding with words and formulas.
Sometimes those words and formulas work, in the sense that they're predictive, and they're useful, but there's nothing like understanding of physics.
Physics is 100% not understood.
100%.
There's not even 1% understood.
They only know what works.
There's not even 1% understood.
They only know what works.
That's it.
And they only know that because they can repeat it.
That's it.
There's nothing like understanding of physics.
Do you believe there is?
Just because somebody can put words around it?
All right, let me prove to you that I'm as smart as Einstein.
Watch, watch.
There's no time, there's only space-time, and gravity is really about the bent space.
How about that?
There, I put words on physics, so therefore I understand physics, right?
As well as Einstein.
He used the same words.
Oh, I'll do it again.
Watch this.
E equals MC squared.
Boom.
Boom.
I know that those letters, when you put an equal, and then you put things on either side, I know how to pronounce it.
So therefore I understand some physics!
No.
Nobody understands any physics.
But they do know sometimes what works and what doesn't.
That's all they know.
We don't know the why of anything.
All of the why questions are sort of imaginary.
All right.
What would define understanding?
Well, That's a good question, but let me answer it indirectly because it's the best I can do.
What are the odds that your brain evolved to understand reality?
So it's not that there's something to understand and your brain isn't keeping up.
I think that your brain was never meant to give you a picture of reality in the first place.
So your question is sort of like Why can't a toothbrush be a rocket ship or something?
It's not meant for that.
I could give you a long explanation of why an astronaut would not fit inside a toothbrush.
Or I could just say, it's the wrong question.
I don't need to get into the details.
All right.
That is not physics.
Boy, if there's one thing you can guarantee that the people who are under the illusion that they understand physics, they will be quite, quite prickly when I tell them that they don't.
