Episode 2216 Scott Adams: Lots Of Rumors, Mind Reading, Laundry List Persuasion & Assigned Opinions
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Politics, Sketchy Science, Beer Goggles, Longevity Strategy, TikTok's Victory, Fake Insurrection, Designated Political Liars, Viktor Orban, President Putin, President Trump, President Biden, Mental Catastrophe, Chris Loesch, Dana Loesch, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis, NewsMax Greg Kelly, Rep. Byron Donalds, RICO Democrats, Dopamine, 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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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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Oh yeah, that was good.
That was so good.
Some good, good stuff.
Well, let's talk about all of the things in the news.
I like that I'm having regular segments now.
I don't know why, it just feels like it's better.
So one of my regular segments is science which is a little bit sketchy.
Sketchy science.
That's just a working title.
Alright, here's sketchy science.
There was a study to see if beer goggles is a real thing.
The studies find out if drinking alcohol makes other people look better.
And they decided at the end of their study that it did not.
That people who drink alcohol, it doesn't change their impression of the sexiness of the other person.
It's just that they're more likely to approach the person.
Now this study was done by, let's see, look at the details.
This study was done by a whole bunch of people who have never had a drink of alcohol.
Now it doesn't actually say that, but you can infer that by the fact that 100% of people who have had alcohol No, this is wrong.
100% of people who have ever tried this thing called alcohol, they're pretty sure the science is not exactly right, if you know what I mean.
So there's that.
All right.
Sketchy science.
That's what that was.
Now, have you ever heard people give their keys to success?
Like, there's usually five of them.
I have my own five.
Which I always forget.
But they're basically, you know, go to school, build a talent stack, stay off drugs, stay out of jail.
I probably forgot one.
But that's basically, if you get the five right, you're probably going to be good.
Right?
Was there one more I had?
I forget what it was.
Maybe exercise or something.
Take care of your body.
Anyway, so Dr. Huberman has some good ones.
And there's some other studies I saw.
So here's some other keys to success.
Here's some keys to success for older people.
There's a study that says that adult education Decreases your risk of dementia tremendously.
In other words, using your brain keeps it healthy, and not using your brain allows it to atrophy.
Now, did you need a study to know that?
Did you need a study to know that if you exercise a muscle, the muscle might get stronger?
If you exercise your brain, the brain might become more capable.
So we probably didn't need a study for that.
But it's good to know You have a lot of control over your dimension.
So do something that keeps you active.
Have I mentioned that I'm retired?
But I also have four jobs.
So I'm retired with four jobs.
If you count my book.
My book, which is screaming up the charts and a huge success and changing lives.
That's actually true.
Every day, people are telling me it changed their life in some substantial way.
Every day, somebody tells me it had a major impact on their life already.
Anyway, so that's one of my jobs.
And of course, I still make the Dilbert comic for subscribers on Locals and on X. And of course, I do this.
Now, the reason I do this, in part, you know, other than keeping myself interested because it's stuff I like, is that I know it keeps me alive longer.
You know, I get up every morning and I have to look through all the news and keep my brain working, you know, connect things.
So I'm basically doing a long-term longevity play, and the two things that I want to get right for longevity, and this would be true for you too, continuous learning in whatever form you want to do it, just continuous learning, but also movement and resistance training.
If you get movement, you move a lot, you walk, You're going to live a long time.
Those are your basic things.
But the other things are, you know, obviously your diet and your sleep.
And Dr. Huberman says, get some sun in the morning and work on your relationships.
You're going to be in good shape.
Pretty basic stuff.
How many of you learned that in school?
Do you remember in school where they said, well, if you get these, you know, half dozen things right, your life will be probably good.
They don't really tell you that directly, do they?
They kind of suggest it maybe indirectly in a number of ways, but they don't really ever say, if you get these eight things right.
See, I would go further.
You can make a chart.
All right, hold this in your mind.
Imagine this as a young person.
Imagine a chart where on the left are all the things you have to get right.
Make sure you take care of your diet, stay in school, get a talent stack right.
So each of those things is on a matrix listed on the left.
And then on the top, for every one that you don't have, let's say one is crossed out, you can see what your annual income would be.
Or better, a photograph of the home you're going to live in.
Right?
So if you're doing all the things on the stack, the picture shows that you live in a nice big house.
If you have one wrong on the stack, it's still a nice house, but it's, you know, it's down at level.
If you get two wrong, You're living in an apartment, a two-bedroom apartment.
If you got three wrong, you're living on the street, or something like that.
But imagine making that visual.
A list of things you have to get right, and then the house you're going to live in, based on how many of the list you actually accomplished.
Now, I would say that I do everything on the list.
So if you were to make a list of the things that you should do, that you would recommend people do, I do every one.
Everyone.
Now the exception would be, I might smoke a little legal substance in California.
So you could argue that's holding me back, but the evidence doesn't seem to suggest that.
So my result, my result in life, should be completely predictable from doing the eight or so things that you should do to succeed.
And I do all eight things.
And I'm pretty, pretty serious about all eight.
I don't just casually do them.
You know, in fitness, for example, I'm pretty serious about.
I can do better in sleep.
But I think everybody's different there.
Alright, here's the key to anti-success.
So now you know all the things you need to do to be successful.
You know, your relationships with your son and your body and all that.
Here's what you don't want to do according to a study that didn't need to be done.
I could have handled this, Hunter.
Sketchy science.
Here's a study that didn't need to be done.
Let's see if you could have known this without the study.
If you talk about your poor mental health on social media, it could have an impact on future employers.
I know!
Surprise, huh?
You probably didn't see that coming.
That if you say online you have mental problems and your employer sees it, they're less likely to hire you than somebody who is smart enough to shut up about it.
Now, it doesn't mean that the person they hired has fewer mental problems.
If there's anything I've taught you, it's that we're all basket cases, but some people hide it a lot better.
You know, once you get to know somebody, you start digging down.
You're like, oh, I didn't know that.
Okay, you got some issues.
I wasn't quite aware of that.
But don't put it online.
Do not put your, don't put your mental condition online.
Now you might say, but Scott, you put your insanity online every single day.
Right.
Cause I can do this for a living and I can get canceled and still make a living.
If you can get fully canceled and still make a good living, then do whatever you want.
Then you're me.
If you're not me, and you can't make a living after being completely cancelled worldwide, and still make it work, don't do it.
It's not a good risk.
So, stay low.
Stay low.
Alright, there's a story that I didn't need to read, that the TikTok ban, some people want it, but it looks like nothing's gonna happen.
Now, do you need to know the details?
What do you think are the details of the story about the TikTok ban not being popular enough in Congress to pass?
There's nothing you need to read about that story.
Is it going to be blah, blah, somebody's in favor of it, and blah, blah, somebody isn't, and blah, blah reasons?
There's nothing that you need to know about a story about TikTok, except the only reason it's not banned, there is no other reason, Is that Congress is owned by China.
Or enough of it is.
Not every person, of course.
There's no other reason.
Can we be honest about this?
Nobody's even offered another reason.
TikTok is the one thing you don't see reasons for one side.
Because the reason is obvious.
China must have some major control.
I mean, the fact that Fox News is running TikTok ads?
What does that tell you?
That tells you they won.
That tells you the war has been fought and China won.
If Fox News is running TikTok ads, then that's a complete victory.
That's a complete rout.
We lost.
And they now control our children's minds.
And they don't allow TikTok in China because they wouldn't want their children's minds to be controlled, at least not in that way.
So amazingly, China controls our government in a substantial way, and they control it enough so that the people who are mostly parents themselves, or were at one point, mostly grandparents and great-grandparents, I guess, but these are people who are actually parents who are selling out children for whatever they get from China, I guess.
I don't know what the benefit is.
Well, there's yet more information that China is becoming uninvestable.
That's the code word of the day.
More smart people saying it looks uninvestable.
And you know what?
It is totally uninvestable.
But they're doing a good job destroying our culture and our children and our families via TikTok.
Now, some of you are saying, but, but, but I don't have TikTok.
It doesn't matter.
If TikTok has enough minds, those minds will influence you directly or force you to do what they want.
So you don't all have to have TikTok.
They just have to have enough of the country under their control.
And apparently they do.
Now, I don't know if Congress ever figured out that TikTok is a mind control tool.
I don't even know if they ever figured that out.
There should not be a loud noise in my house right now.
Thank you.
I hope that was the dog.
Anyway, either my dog just sneezed really loudly, or I'm going to be the victim of a home invasion any moment, so watch for that.
Could be a SWAT thing.
So the CNN insurrection hoax now, and I guess the media insurrection hoax, not just CNN, is coming full circle.
So that Jamie Raskin, Democrat, is saying that because of this insurrection, Which they're trying to sell to the country as real.
It's obviously not real.
January 6th as an insurrection.
Is there anybody here, is there even any one person here who thinks that January 6th was an insurrection?
Can you show yourself?
Is there anybody who thinks that was an actual insurrection attempt?
Yeah.
So there's, I don't think there's anybody Who would be watching this live stream who actually believes that?
You have to be pretty deep into the brainwashing before that even makes a little bit of sense.
So that's the one that I wanted to brainwash a Democrat in public.
I want to bring a Democrat in and say the following.
Well, you and I both agree that there were some dangerous people there who probably wanted to overthrow the government.
Would you agree?
Oh, totally, totally.
What percentage of those do you think?
Under 1%?
Definitely under 1% of the people who were there were serious about anything bad.
Would you agree that the 99% of them, if they thought it was an insurrection, they would have brought their weapons because they're Republicans?
And can you explain to me the mechanism by which they would overthrow and control the country via trespassing without weapons?
Like, can you just game that out for me?
Alright, on week two, where are they getting their food?
Where's the food come from?
I mean, just explain how the occupying without weapons, one building, causes them to own the nuclear triad.
Like, where's the connecting stuff?
Just explain how that works.
And just watch somebody fall apart.
Just watch somebody just fall apart.
Because it would be pretty easy to demonstrate that they've been brainwashed, on that topic especially.
So that'd be fun to watch.
Anyway, so the bad guys in the government are trying to do the, well, insurrection has been proven, even though Trump is not even being charged with anything like insurrection.
All that evidence, and the legal system decided there was not enough there to act.
And keep in mind, you can get an indictment for anything.
And they still couldn't get an indictment for any kind of an insurrectionary treason charge.
They tried!
So they can get an indictment for a ham sandwich, as the famous saying goes, but they couldn't get one for insurrection.
Do you know why?
Because you can't convince real people that an unarmed insurrection involving trespassing is actually an insurrection.
Because it obviously isn't.
Alright, here is your tip, and I feel sorry for Democrats because I don't think they know that.
There are some characters that the Democrats trot out when they need to just lie grotesquely.
When they're doing normal spin, you can get anybody to go on CNN.
Would you agree?
If you're just talking, should we lower taxes?
Or, you know, should we shut down the government until we have a budget?
You know, all the ordinary questions.
You can get any senator, any person in Congress, to get in front of a camera and say, oh, our side is smart, that other side is making a big mistake.
As they always do, right?
So you can get anybody to say something that's just a narrative spin.
But you cannot get every Democrat to go on camera and lie through their teeth while you know they're doing it.
That's something that not all the Democrats can do.
So, when you see this small number of Democrats come out on a given topic, that's your signal that all the honest Democrats said, I think I'm on vacation that day.
Yeah, you go take care of that.
I'd love to do it, but busy scheduling.
Couldn't do it today, but sure, I'd love to do it.
I just, busy schedule.
And so the ones they send out, remember these names, Jamie Raskin, Swalwell, Schiff, Nadler, Carl Bernstein, and then Brendan and Clapper used to be the go-to.
Have you seen Brendan and Clapper?
And Goldman, yes, Dan Goldman.
So if you see Goldman, Raskin, Swalwell, Schiff, Nadler, Bernstein, And then John Brennan and Clapper, I think, got retired because their line was on the laptop thing.
It was just too over the top.
People said, all right, that's really over the top.
So they're kind of semi-retired.
But I don't know.
No, Ted Lou's a spinner.
Ted Lou's more of a spinner.
He's just an innocent spinner.
These guys are the professional liars.
So they know they're lying, in my opinion.
I can't read their minds, right?
But given that it's always the same little crew that appears when you need to tell the big lie.
You know, like the really big one, like January 6th was an insurrection.
Or they find people hoax.
You know, the big ones.
You try to help these guys.
The laptop isn't real.
Russia collusion hoax.
So the big, big hoax is the same group.
Same people every time.
Now don't you think I could find a, you know, a normal Democrat in Congress who would just not want to talk about this stuff because they know it's BS?
Of course.
So it's very helpful to know the players because then you know the story is false because they only send these players out when they know the story's false.
All right.
I don't want to talk about masks, except to make sure that everybody is ready to attack the first corporation that requires masks.
Now, it's hard to attack the government for requiring them, or a healthcare organization.
You know, those are tough to attack, because I like our healthcare organizations.
So, I would lay off of them.
Even if you hate it, I would lay off of them.
But if there's a for-profit corporation, especially, and I tweeted that we should make sure that we focus all our hate and protest on the first one that goes forward, I got 2.6 million views on that.
So if you're wondering, are there enough people who would be willing to boycott and attack the first corporation that makes the mistake of going first, 2.6 million people and I only have a million followers.
So that means it left my bubble and got a lot bigger.
A good tweet for me would be 30,000 views.
So if you see 2.6 million, that means you're hitting a chord.
It means people are activated to act.
This is a pretty strong signal of action.
If I say something that's just a real clever idea, or a clever tweet, let's say, I'll get 30,000.
But if I tweet something that would cause people to actually change what they do, that's 2.6 million.
That's the indicator of that.
So I'd be pretty worried if I were the first corporation.
It's going to end up like ESG.
There's another article, I think it was Charles Gasparini in the New York Post, saying that ESG is basically dead.
But then other people say, no, Scott, it's not only the term ESG.
They're still going to try to work that stuff in there.
But I don't think that's 100% true.
I think that's true-ish, meaning that they are in fact trying to work these things into other words and make it look like they're not Gasparino, sorry.
Yeah, try to make it look like it's just natural everywhere.
But I did see some big data Big data.
I saw some data that showed there are big differences in how even BlackRock is investing.
So they used to, you know, make the ESG stuff pretty required.
Now there are a number of investments in which it wasn't, apparently.
So they seem to be backing off of their own requirement, which would allow other people to do the same.
So it does look like ESG is just embarrassed out of business.
But I don't mind if companies try to be good to the environment.
And I don't mind if somebody is trying to get some diversity in their company.
If it's optional and good for them and they want to do it and it's good for the country, they can do that if they like.
I just don't like BlackRock forcing them to do it.
Or any other big entity.
It's the force that's the problem.
All right, how many of you saw Tucker Carlson's interview with The leader of Hungary.
Let me tell you some things I learned.
How many of you knew that Hungary only had 10 million people?
Why did I not know that?
Because Hungary seems like a country that's on everybody's, you know, everybody can name Hungary.
Like there are countries in Africa that I never think about.
Probably a few that I don't even know the names.
Well, Hungary is like, you know, a big, you know, talked about country.
Only 10 million people.
That's amazing.
Anyway, so Viktor Orban, who you should know, is considered a right-winger like Trump.
And he says Trump's the only one who could stop the Ukraine-Russia war.
He says that Russia is 100% going to win that war if we just keep going.
And his argument, I found strong.
And his argument goes like this.
In the end, it's going to depend who runs out of soldiers.
Now, I don't think we usually have wars where people run out of soldiers.
I'm not really used to that.
Right?
In Vietnam, nobody ran out of soldiers.
In the Korean War, nobody ran out of soldiers.
In World War I and II, nobody ran out of soldiers.
The Civil War, nobody ran out of soldiers.
So that's sort of something I've never seen.
And so, well, you say Germany ran out of soldiers, but they were running low, but I don't think that's why they ultimately lost.
We just had more of them.
Wouldn't you say it's more that we just had more?
We had more weapons, more gasoline, more oil, more everything.
We just out-produced them.
I think because America was unmolested by the war, World War II, we could ramp up our production and come into it full force.
Anyway, so if you take his theory, and maybe this is the new world, in the old world we always had too many men.
So you could burn off a bunch of men in a war and you didn't run out.
But we actually have a population bubble problem.
We don't have enough young people like we used to.
There's a lot of old people, but not a lot of young, you know, men.
And especially men who left the country, in both the Ukraine and Russia case.
So they do actually have a human limit.
And Orban says, and I don't know if he's 100% right, but I'll just give you his opinion.
He says he's very close to it.
Anybody who's not close to it probably shouldn't have an opinion.
But he says that Russia is not running out of money.
They seem to be able to get whatever they need to run their operation.
And they're making adjustments to get things from other places, make deals with other people, working around the boycotts or the bans and stuff.
That Ukraine is much closer to running out of soldiers than Russia, because Russia doesn't seem to be protesting or being... The Russians don't seem to be too angry about the fact they're in a war.
Right?
All right, here's what I don't want to hear.
I told you Putin would win.
Why are you saying that to me?
Because you thought I'd say the opposite?
You don't need to say I told you so.
First of all, it hasn't happened.
And second of all, I never ruled it out.
Do you think I told you who was going to win?
I've told you what could happen.
I've considered all the possibilities.
But at this point, when things clarify after the fog of war is lifted, I like Orban's take on it, that it seems like the technology is going to be there for both sides.
It looks like they're not going to run out of weapons.
It looks like they're not going to run out of things to shoot.
It does look like Humans will be the thing they run into first, and Russia doesn't care.
Because they have more humans, and apparently the Russian citizens, like Putin.
One of the things we forget in the United States, is that the Russians don't think like Americans.
They're not thinking, give us freedom, stop that war.
They're just not thinking that.
They're just thinking, oh wouldn't it be good if we had a strong country that stayed together, and unity might be more important than Some notion of your American freedom.
I'm not sure that they care that they can't protest their government.
As long as everything's working, they're like, well, everything's working.
And given that the Russians probably don't have full access to everything that's going on, they don't see all the death and stuff.
By the way, I'm taking this from Viktor Orban.
He knows Russia better than you do.
So I don't know if he's right.
But that's his take.
That there's nothing that's bothering Russia right now except they're just waiting.
And that Putin can wait as long as he wants because there's nothing to stop him from waiting.
And Ukraine will just run out of people.
And then he can do whatever he wants.
It's not mind reading.
Oh man.
It's not mind-reading if I tell you that my opinion doesn't depend on what anybody else is thinking.
If I told you I knew what somebody's thinking, that's mind-reading.
If I don't do that, not mind-reading.
Just keep that in mind.
Trump's got a new video out saying that Biden is a, quote, mental catastrophe.
He's leading us into World War III.
A mental catastrophe.
He has a way with words.
That's so much better than dementia, or he's not all there.
You know, we're all using these words like this.
And then Trump goes in, he's a mental catastrophe.
And I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, he's a mental catastrophe.
That's actually a pretty good choice of words.
Who's a better writer, Shakespeare or Trump?
Who's a better writer, Shakespeare or Trump?
Well, if you're writing what we used to call a tweet, it's Trump.
If you're doing something that people really want to wrestle with and try to figure out what it means and go to a play and stuff, well, maybe it's Shakespeare.
So it depends what you're writing for.
But I would say that Trump's writing for political messaging is as strong or stronger than Shakespeare.
They're just different domains.
But he's as strong in his domain as Shakespeare is in his domain.
Or was.
All right, so I finally figured out what was going on with my online experience lately.
Because I was getting a lot of critics that were clearly suffering some kind of cognitive dissonance situation about Vivec.
And I wasn't quite figuring out what was going on there, and I finally figured out it's DeSantis supporters who are really unhappy right now.
And they're having trouble coping with Vivek's rise.
And they're coming after me in droves to... And every one of them has a different take on some rumored thing that they think Vivek did.
They're all ridiculous.
Now, I saw that Dana... How do you pronounce her last name?
Lash?
L-O-E-S-H, Lash.
Is that the?
That's the correct, you're right, Lash.
So I saw her, and I believe it's her husband, who were giving me a little pushback because they're making claims that he's changing his position.
He's a flip-flopper.
So I've challenged them for the best example of it, and Mr. Lash, I forget his first name, pointed me to Dana Lash's sub-stack in which she was talking about a bunch of cases.
The first one I read was that Vivek claimed he hadn't voted since some year, but there was evidence that he had voted as an independent in a year.
That's a flip-flop.
Somebody said he didn't vote, but there was that one year he voted.
Does anybody care about that?
I literally can't remember if I voted or registered in the past.
Because there were a lot of years that I thought I was going to do it and then I didn't.
And then, you know, 20 years later, I can't remember, did I think about it or did I do it?
Like, I couldn't even tell you if I was registered Democrat or Republican in the past or Independent.
I actually don't know.
Because it didn't matter when I did it.
When you're 20, And you pick a party.
If it's not just the party of your parents or something, maybe you care about it.
But it felt random to me.
I just randomly picked a party and I don't remember which one I picked.
So do you care if a young man forgets that he voted a certain way?
Does that matter in any way?
And that was like number one on the list.
So I started to read the second one and I thought, no, I'm not going to do the laundry list.
So I asked, is it Chris?
Chris Lash?
Is that his first name?
I hope I got his name right.
Anyway, I think it's Chris.
But anyway, I asked him to give me his best one example.
And that's how you handle the laundry list.
Say, give me your best example.
If that's persuasive, I'll engage on the rest of the examples.
Does that seem fair?
If your best one sells me, well then maybe the other ones are pretty good too.
I'll take a look.
So I think that's a fair, you know, ticket to the play.
So I haven't seen if he's answered that yet, because it just happened this morning before I got on.
But here's one of the examples of Vivek being a flip-flopper.
And this comes from Dana Lash.
So one example is, I think I have this right, That the claim is that at one point, Vivek said that the plan was, until 2028, No, I'm sorry.
Until we get our chips back, which he wants to do by around 2028, and we can manufacture chips in America, he says, until then, we would tell China, we're definitely going to defend Taiwan.
But then after we get the chips back, he would consider that more of a, let's say, what do you call it?
China's problem, basically.
He is now describing it as he would say we would definitely defend Taiwan while we need their chips.
So what seems like a modification, the first part's the same.
So he hasn't ever changed the fact that he would say definitively, we will militarily defend Taiwan until we can make our own chips.
So in both of his stories, he's always said that.
So that's not the part he's being accused of flip-flopping.
So until we get our chips, we defend them.
It's the after that.
So after he said, well, after that, he used to say something like, then it's more of a China internal problem.
At the moment, he's saying, we would return to strategic ambiguity, which is China doesn't know what we're going to do.
And then I believe, if I've got her argument right, that Dana Lash's argument is that that's a flip-flop.
A flip-flop from, you know, we're not going to be their defender once we get our chips back, to strategic ambiguity, which is our current situation.
Is that a flip-flop?
Does that sound like a flip-flop to you?
To me it sounds exactly the same.
I feel like if your filter is a flip-flopper, then you imagine you saw it.
If your filter is not a flip-flop, those things sound exactly the same.
Here's why they sound exactly the same.
Strategic ambiguity should be just assumed.
So he didn't say it the first time, but I assumed it.
And then when he did say it, I said, oh, well, of course.
Why would you give up strategic ambiguity when it's free?
You just have to not tell China what you're going to do and let them wonder about it.
And maybe that keeps them from attacking your ally.
But by no means Would anybody drop strategic ambiguity when it's free, and it's worked so far, and we're talking about an ally?
So of course we would use it.
To imagine that he ever thought we were going to say... So in order for him to be a flip-flopper, you would have to imagine that he said, and this would be a lot of imagining, that we're going to be really, you know, clear about defending Taiwan, but as soon as we're done, we're going to tell China, hey, it's all yours.
Free pass, you got it.
That's where the really test comes in.
Really?
Really.
You really think that a presidential candidate of his capabilities went in front of the public and said that after we get our chips back, we're going to just give our ally to China, despite how unhappy they would be about that.
Really?
Nobody would ever say that.
So you don't have to wonder if Vivek said it.
You can know with some certainty that no one would say that, because it would just be dumb.
And at the very least, none of the candidates are that dumb.
So a lot of these things that people are seeing as flip-flops are either completely trivial about whether he remembered that time he voted, Or ones that, and I've told you this, there's this weird thing where people are pointing to a source that disagrees with them and telling you it says the opposite.
And actually, I think they believe it.
I don't think they're lying.
I think they believe they're reading something that's actually the opposite of what it says.
So there's a lot of motivated reasoning.
So once you start seeing that what's happening is people are just having a reaction, To the fact that they thought DeSantis was going to be their candidate, and they'd feel good about it.
And now they're watching him fail to Vivek.
I think he still had the polls, but not every poll.
So Nathan, he's still arguing, obviously a DeSantis supporter.
So let me read Nathan's comment.
He says, he literally said, quote, as soon as we're done with them, it's your problem, China.
Do you believe that's an actual quote?
Because you put quotes around it.
Do you believe that there's somewhere that the actual quote is?
Because this is the trick you also see.
People are putting in quotes things he never said and never would say.
He might say it's their problem.
So I'm going to accept your characterization.
Your characterization is that he said after that it's China's problem.
Well, that's true.
He's always said that.
But that doesn't say that we wouldn't employ strategic ambiguity, because it's free.
Right?
Why wouldn't we?
It's still their problem.
That's just a fact.
And he's never backed off of that.
But it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be involved.
It's just their problem.
Yeah.
So I think you're trying really hard to make this some kind of a flip-flop.
And then my other comment is, whenever somebody is accused of being a flip-flopper, it's always because they can't find the angle of attack.
It's always.
Because flip-flopper is the weakest of all.
It's the hypocrite thing.
Oh, you said this, but now you said this.
Usually people are just misinterpreting something he said or taking it out of context, or the situation changed and he changed his mind.
For example, on January 6th, he was one of the many people, left and right, who said they didn't like the way Trump handled January 6th.
But today, he says he would pardon him.
Is that a flip-flop?
He didn't like anything Trump did on January 6, and he would pardon him today.
So is that a change?
No.
Those are different topics.
One is, would he have handled it the same way?
No.
And the other is, should he go to jail forever for free speech?
No.
So, I mean, it's pure imagination that he's flip-flopping on these things.
But I think the DeSantis people are just having a moment.
I feel sorry for Jake Tapper on CNN.
Didn't you used to think that being a host on a big news program would be like a, you know, a real fun job and a lot of, you know, you get a lot of credit and The public would love you and stuff.
And I watched him interviewing Corinne Jean-Pierre.
And she was talking about Biden's, you know, energy level.
And she said, quote, it is hard for us to keep up with this president who is constantly, constantly working every day to get things done.
Two constantly's.
Two constantly's, as you're tell for Lie.
That's a little too many constantly's in one sentence.
But imagine, and then they do a wide shot, so you see Jake Tapper listening to her, and he's just sort of looking at her like a clown.
Now, in politics, we often call people clowns.
Oh, it's a clown, clown, clown.
But she's the only one who actually reminds me of a clown physically, while I'm actually talking like a clown.
It's the first time it's ever really worked, you know, that clown thing.
Because everybody gets called a clown, but they don't look like it and literally talk like it.
She actually talks like a clown while having clown hair.
Which is weird, because I love her look.
If you took her out of that job, You know, I just ran into her in the corporate world.
I know some of you, you don't like her look.
I just think she's really stylish.
I think she has a great look.
I like looking at her, actually.
When she's on, I'll actually pause and say, damn, she's well put together.
I just like the style of her whole approach.
But if you take that style and put it in front of the country, and then talk like a clown, that's the wrong mix.
Right?
I like her look.
But don't talk like a clown in front of the country, and then they're gonna say you look like a clown.
Like I did.
All right.
Here are two things that only people who don't understand anything about business believe are good points.
Number one, and one will be on the left and one is on the right.
One is that Hunter Biden needed experience to be a board member of a major corporation.
Now, how many of you know that board members are not even chosen for experience?
That's not a thing.
You don't choose board members for experience in the industry that you're not even trying.
Now, there might be board members who do have experience, and wouldn't it be nice to have at least one of those?
Having one or two would be great.
But generally, you're picking them specifically from other industries, sometimes because that gives you, let's say, a connection to the other industry that might be useful, or some eyes onto something happening in another industry that might be useful to you, or they're just powerful people who are prestigious to have on your board, or they're just really smart.
Who wouldn't want Warren Buffett on their board?
Right?
I mean, if you had the option.
Maybe a younger Warren Buffett.
But everybody would take him.
You would not say, oh, I can't have Warren Buffett because he doesn't have experience in the oil industry or something.
So no.
The charges, and every time I see somebody on Fox News usually say, and Hunter was on this board, and you know it's crooked because he didn't have any experience.
That's not a thing.
That is pure Lack of understanding of what a board is?
It looks intentional, but I'm going to give them the benefit of a doubt that they don't know what a board is or how it works.
Somebody says the director should have experience.
That's probably true.
The director of the board of directors.
So here's the other one.
You hear this from the left.
That China gave Ivanka a bunch of trademarks.
And like, oh, wow.
I guess she's been bought off with her bunch of trademarks.
Because China just gave them to her.
These valuable trademarks.
Wow.
Wow.
I guess that's proof that the Trumps were working with China all along, huh?
All right, let me explain to you, if you've never applied for a trademark, how to get a trademark in China.
You ready?
I'm going to show you the entire process, from beginning to end.
Email.
Hello, my lawyer.
This is Scott.
I would like to get a trademark on the following thing in the attachment of my email.
Can you let me know when that's done?
Trademark in China, please.
And then I send it.
And then months later, I'll get an email back from my lawyer, and he'll say, uh, here's your trademark.
That's it.
The only thing the process does is they look to see if somebody already uses your trademark.
And I don't even think they look that hard for that.
I'm not even sure they look too hard, because they'll let you battle it down if you took somebody's trademark.
Registering a trademark is just like a few bucks and a little paperwork.
In all likelihood, the person who actually registered it in China does not know who Ivanka Trump is, and has no idea that they even registered a Trump trademark.
It's just, you know, they're just stamping papers and putting it through, you know, stamp, stamp, uh-huh, stamp.
Yeah.
So the left has this idea that it's obvious that Trump's been bribed because she got a trademark.
She filed some paperwork.
I have trademarks in China.
I'm not guessing.
That's how I got them.
So I sent an email to my lawyer and then I have a trademark in China.
Just like you could do.
Exactly like you could do.
Then the other one is that the Saudis gave Jared Kushner $2 billion.
Like the people on the left believe that they just gave him a check for $2 billion.
That didn't happen.
No.
Jared created an investment fund.
That would use his expertise that he had developed of, you know, knowing everybody in the world and especially knowing the Middle East.
And I believe it was a Middle East investment fund, right?
So it was specific to the area.
The Saudis, being good friends, personal friends with Jared, right?
They're actually personal friends.
They know each other.
They've been very successful.
Working together.
They know that Jared is a high-end investor guy.
I mean, that's his background.
And that he knows everybody now.
So if you know everybody and you're an investment guy, you can get lots of people to do investments and you can find good deals.
Now, every bit of this was announced publicly.
There's a press release from the Jared Kushner people and probably Saudi Arabia announcing the deal.
Jared doesn't keep the money.
It's still Saudi Arabia's money.
He would just be one of the people managing it.
So is it a sweetheart deal?
Yeah, probably.
Probably.
Is there a political consideration to it?
Like Saudi Arabia thinks, you know, every time we put a little money towards somebody who has some influence in America, In an indirect way, that's probably going to come back to benefit us.
Yes, absolutely.
But, here's why I'm not bothered by it.
It's fully transparent.
They announced it.
They told you exactly what they're doing.
You know, and it's legal.
It's legal and it's transparent.
Those are the highest standards of appropriate behavior.
Legal and transparent.
Now, what the Bidens did Maybe they found a way to make it legal.
I'm not an expert on the fair part of that, but it wasn't transparent.
That's for sure.
So that's very different.
All right.
All right.
It does look like everybody's trying to get rid of Joe Biden.
Newsmax host Greg Kelly has teased that he has heard from people who have heard it, but he hasn't heard it directly.
There's some audio tape that has incontrovertible evidence of Joe Biden's corruption and that Biden would have to leave the office immediately if it were released.
And it's going to be released in several weeks.
Does that sound real?
Does that sound like something that's going to happen just the way it sounds like it's going to happen?
Now, I'm not going to make any negative comments about Newsmax or Greg Kelly, because I don't know anything about either one of them.
I'm just saying this falls into the category of things that always disappoint.
Well, mostly.
I mean, we could be surprised.
But it has a Kraken feel to it, doesn't it?
It's very Kraken-ish.
It's like a big claim that somebody who knows somebody is going to do something sometime in the future.
Yeah, that has every tell for something that's not going to pan out.
But, maybe.
It's certainly not impossible.
So, recreationally, let's keep an eye on it.
I would call this recreational news.
The odds of it panning out and being true, pretty low, but the entertainment factor, pretty high.
Pretty high.
So, there's that.
And that would, there is, it does look as though the Democrats themselves are starting to put pressure on Biden to get him to change his mind if that's the problem.
Doesn't it look like the Democrats are pressuring Biden to leave?
That's what it looks like to me.
They're putting a little bit more pressure.
And if there's some secret audio tape, that would kind of seal the deal that they're trying to get rid of him.
All right.
Remind me.
I already forgot.
I was going to tell you to remind me of something.
And as I was forming the sentence, I forgot what it was.
Oh, dopamine.
Remind me when I'm done with my notes to talk about dopamine.
All right.
A lot of people have been criticizing Vivek's candidacy because they say experience counts.
You know, he's never held a job in government.
And although sure, he's got this experience in the private sector, he has no government experience and people want to see somebody with government experience run for president.
So I have some, I have eight questions for people who think that government experience, specifically, is essential for a president.
Question number one.
How's that working out so far?
Joe Biden's got a lot of experience.
How's that work?
Okay.
Question number two.
Which major changes in our world were created by people with prior experience in their own industry?
Apple computer?
Steve Jobs?
SpaceX?
Google?
Are there any big changes, let's say in the technology area, in which the founder actually had experience in that domain?
Turns out you don't really need experience in that domain.
Yeah, IBM was a salesperson, so it was somebody who had computer experience, but also Ross Perot.
He had experience as a salesperson, so that carried over.
All right, number three.
Why does collecting a paycheck for one government job make you qualified for a government job with different duties?
How does that work?
I'm trying to understand that.
How does, let's say, let's say you were a mayor.
How does that make you a good commander-in-chief?
There's nothing, everything about the presidency is its own thing.
Nobody has experience as a president.
And they have plenty of advisors who have experience giving them opposite advice.
So what happens when all the people who do have experience are sitting in the room with you and their advice is opposite?
That's what experience gets you, opposite advices.
Yeah, well I got experience, I say X. I got experience, I say not X.
So experience has an advantage, but it's pretty limited.
Who is more likely to be corrupt?
An outsider who's never worked in government, or a career politician?
Who's more likely to be corrupt?
The guy with $600 million, whatever he is, he's independently rich, or the person who's worked in the corrupt place for their career?
Because Congress is basically corrupt.
I'm not saying every politician.
I like Thomas Massey.
There are a number of them I like who, as far as I can tell, don't have a tinge of corruption whatsoever.
But as a body, it's a pretty corrupt body.
So career politicians seem the least trustable people in terms of bribery and corruption.
Who's more likely to make big changes in the world, if you think we need big changes?
An entrepreneur or a career politician?
Who's more likely to not know what can't be done?
I'd rather have somebody who doesn't know what can't be done.
That's how anything gets done.
Let's see.
Who's more likely to feed the military-industrial beast?
An outsider or a career politician?
Well, the career politician is probably tied to the military-industrial complex and always has been, right?
But somebody coming from the outside, if you were to win, which would be tough, He has no beholden to that industry.
So somebody like a Trump who is not invested in that industry would be, or a Vivek, would be a good choice for that.
And then here's my favorite one, number eight.
How long does it take someone like Vivek to learn everything a president needs about a complicated topic?
One day?
See, I don't think that the average person understands how smart smart can be.
Because we kind of, you know, start with our own intelligence and go, well, I can sort of imagine what 10% smarter would feel like.
But you can't really imagine what twice as smart feels like.
Right?
You can't really imagine twice as smart.
So he's in that so much smarter, I don't know if it's twice, but he's so much smarter than just average people.
I don't think that they have a concept of how quickly he could not only pick up a complicated topic, but here's the fun part, how quickly he could integrate it with his knowledge of other fields, from pharma to law to politics to, you know, a lot of things he follows.
So anyway, Byron Donalds, you know Congressman Byron Donalds, good associate, what's the best word, supporter of President Trump, who the New York Times calls an ex-president, but they call Obama a former president.
Did you know that?
New York Times in the same day will call Trump an ex-president and Obama a former president.
So, anyway, Byron Donalds, Congressman Donalds, who is getting a lot of positive attention lately, and I would echo that.
He seems really charismatic, and he talks really well in public in terms of being persuasive.
So he's super persuasive, super charismatic, he looks smart, he just says a lot of smart stuff.
He's saying if there's one real charge coming, it's RICO against Joe.
So now he's using RICO and saying it out loud, RICO.
Is RICO a law that allows law enforcement to treat an enterprise as a coordinated criminal entity?
So it's a coordinated criminal, ongoing coordinated criminal entity.
So he's saying that that could be a charge against Joe Biden, but I think it's way bigger than that.
It's obvious to me that the media has colluded with the Democrats, the intelligence operatives have, probably the FBI, the DOJ in some ways.
So To me, the Ricoh case is obvious.
And I don't know that you could prove it, because it's going to look like somebody had a meeting, nobody took notes.
So it's going to be a lot of meetings we know about with people who maybe shouldn't have been talking.
And they're just going to say, well, you know, we just thought we'd get together.
So it might be hard to prove.
But have you heard any other prominent Republican Say that a RICO investigation against the Democrats would make sense.
Is he the first prominent person to say RICO?
Who's actually an elected official?
Give me a fact check on that.
Have you heard anybody say RICO about the Democrats before?
No?
Yeah, you've heard me say it.
All right, so here's a question I'm asking that will make more sense to people who've been following me for a while.
Do you think that the fact that I said it on Twitter and I got a good response to it, like nobody said I was crazy, do you think that allowed somebody who's more respectable to say it?
Did it make it easier?
Yeah.
Because I know, for example, Newt follows me.
I follow him too.
Yeah, Newt's one of the smartest people in the game.
I don't know if, actually, well I can't check.
I don't know if Congressman Donalds follows me, but I follow him.
I follow him, so generally if you're in that business, and somebody who has a million followers and a good opinion of you follows you, usually you follow them back.
That would just be sort of routine.
So I don't know if he's seen me say it, and I'm not making that claim.
I'll make a general claim.
People like me have a unique place in the ecosystem of information because I'm not embarrassed.
And at the moment, I'm so totally canceled that I can say anything.
So I can float an idea just because it sounds like a good idea to me.
And then other people can say, oh, he survived that idea.
Nobody mocked him.
Now I can say it.
So I think people like me, and I'm not the only one.
You can name 10 other people.
Pretty quickly.
You know, the Mike Cernoviches.
I use him for every example.
If they test out a message and it works, somebody picks it up.
All right.
I want to toss out an explanation for the division in the country.
All right.
And it's one you haven't heard before.
I tested it out on my Man Cave livestream last night.
Got a good response, so I'm going to try it again.
And it goes like this.
If you talk to somebody in person, how likely are you in 2023 to want to get into a political conversation?
I'm gonna answer the question for you while I watch your answers.
Probably close to zero.
Because you know that in 2023, if you get into a political conversation with somebody whose views you don't already know.
Now, if it's somebody who's really close to you, and you already know their views, and you're just saying something you know they're gonna agree with, that's fine.
But you would not enter a, let's say, a cocktail party without knowing the people.
And launch into a political conversation.
Because your odds of, you know, they're being on your side are, you know, 25% or something.
So people will stay away from the person.
All right, now let me turn that into a mechanical process.
So I described it on a social, conceptual level.
Now I'm going to turn it into a machine.
What would be your experience if you got into a political conversation and it turned ugly?
You would produce cortisol.
Your body would produce cortisol.
And that makes you feel bad.
Because it'd be tense.
So tension makes you feel bad and trains you not to do it.
So that's why we don't do it in person.
Now let's go to social media.
When I see a tweet from Rob Reiner, and I think, you know, I bet I could make my followers laugh with this clever cutting rejoinder.
And then I'll send my little post, and I'll get a bunch of positive reinforcement retweets and hearts, and I'll get a bump of dopamine.
So, when I'm in person, I don't cause division, I just get along with everybody, because I don't want cortisol, and that's my only option.
Well, the risk, right?
I mean, maybe I could find somebody like-minded, but I'm not going to take the risk of a cortisol cluster bomb that I created for myself.
But online, it's nothing but dopamine.
So I'm like, don't be addicted.
It's just an addiction.
So the division in the country is not an in-person division.
We all know that.
We all know the division is fake.
Because we only do it online.
If you put me in person with anybody, you could drop me into a crowd of the most rabid, you know, Democrat anti-Trumpers, and if they didn't ask me any political questions, and let's say they didn't recognize me, I could get along fine.
I wouldn't have the slightest problem in an event where every single person was a progressive.
I wouldn't have any problem.
I could easily get along with them, Make permanent friends.
But as soon as you put me online, I'm just a dopamine fiend.
So when we're talking about the division, if you want to talk about the division Conceptually, who said what?
You get nowhere.
You don't get any understanding what's happening.
You know, if you ask most people what's causing the division, what would they say?
Oh, the other side.
Duh!
I'll tell you who's causing the division.
It's those people I'm getting my dopamine hit insulting.
The people that I'm getting my rocks off from insulting, they are the cause.
But I might as well enjoy mocking them, because I didn't cause it.
It's not me.
But of course it's you.
You're getting your dopamine hit, they're getting their dopamine hit.
It's dopamine.
So as long as there's a dopamine reward for division, you get more of it, but as soon as you walk out the door to the real world, you can't get that hit.
It's simply not available to you.
So you go into a different chemical cost-benefit analysis, you go, well I don't want any cortisol, and that's the only thing available because I get in some stupid fight that I don't need.
So every time you fall into the trap that the people on the other side of you politically are broken, problem, you know, monsters and they must be defeated, just remember that's your addiction talking.
That's your addiction talking.
It's just like if you were on fentanyl and you had an opinion that the fentanyl had given you.
Like, oh, it doesn't really hurt me.
You know, whatever the fentanyl tells you to think.
So it's just the dopamine that's making you talk.
Once you realize this is a reframe, by the way.
By the way, if you didn't know, I wrote an amazing bestselling book that you can buy right now in all its forms.
Pretty soon we'll have the hardcover in days.
So here's the reform.
The reframe is you're addicted to dopamine.
There is no division in the country.
And you know when I said that the DeSantis people are coming after me with like weird you know just flailing claims about Vivek that don't pan out in my opinion.
I don't feel bad about them and I don't feel that they're my enemies because you know I would be perfectly happy with a President DeSantis.
They're definitely not on the other team for me, but at the moment they're acting out, and the acting out to me looks like they're desperately searching for dopamine, because they're having a negative, probably a dopamine disadvantage, because their candidate's not killing it right now, and Vivek is.
So if you see it as some people having a dopamine emergency, that they were all happy that, oh, I picked the right one this time, Imagine, I mean, I guess I have to imagine it because I didn't do it.
Imagine if I thought DeSantis was going to carry me over the line to victory, and then it just all fell apart, or it looks like it's falling apart.
You wouldn't feel good, and you'd probably act out, and that's what we're seeing.
So, just remember, You're an addict.
You're not somebody who has division with anybody in your country.
And here's the second thing.
Every time you fall into the trap of talking about the average black person or the average white person or the average anything else, you're falling into somebody else's trap.
If you treat everybody as an individual, you'll be fine.
So don't buy into the narrative that anything matters about our averages.
But Scott, it's true.
I know.
But in the real world, there's discrimination.
I know.
I'm just not interested.
Because you know what?
Everybody's got a fucking problem.
You don't have the special one.
Are you a victim of discrimination in some context?
Probably.
Probably.
Do you think it's as much as I am at 5'8 and bald?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Yeah, I don't care about your problem.
I don't care at all.
I do care about your progress.
I do care about if you need to build some skills.
I do care that if I can help you defeat your problem through any kind of personal help, I do care about that.
But I don't care that the average of the people that you decided to relate with is lower than the average of people who, frankly, are not fucking me.
Don't involve me In the average of my group.
I'm not an average person.
You're not either.
Nobody is.
That's how averages work.
Nobody's the average person.
So as soon as you say I'm an average, you know, I'm somehow representing white people.
No.
Nope.
White people are on their own.
All you white people, not only are you on your own, everybody else is too.
And I won't take credit for the 1% of white people who are killing it.
Right?
Have you ever seen me take credit for inventing the light bulb because I'm also white?
Nope.
Nope.
I do not take credit for the light bulb.
How about, you know, the white people who built big companies that are worth billions?
Do I take credit because I'm also white?
Nope.
I didn't do anything to make Google a success.
I didn't do anything to make Apple or Microsoft a success.
I didn't do anything.
I had no involvement whatsoever.
So no, I don't get any credit for what the average white person does.
But I'm not going to take any fucking blame.
If I'm not taking credit, I'm definitely not going to take the blame.
So don't tell me what the average person did.
Don't tell me about a black person attacking a white person.
Don't tell me about a white person attacking a black person.
Don't care.
Now, of course I care on an individual level, right?
It's not a lack of empathy.
It's a, where do you put your attention?
And do you let yourself be hypnotized into thinking that the average of one group should be compared to the other, and then you act?
No.
If researchers want to look at the average, cool.
Right?
If researchers want to look at the averages, maybe they learn something.
But keep it away from me.
I don't want to hear about it.
Because if you have discrimination that's affecting you, that's probably true, but it's also not my problem.
I have my own problems.
You know, everybody's getting discriminated against for something.
Would you rather be an educated black man in America or fat?
Right?
By the way, I don't.
I do not do fat shaming.
I'm just giving you a real world example.
Seriously?
There are people who say they'd rather be overweight than black.
I don't think you thought this through.
If you had a college education and you're black, let's say, but not having a college education and you're obese, and you would pick obese?
I want to hear you say that again.
Yeah, there are people who would pick it.
That's amazing.
I don't think you understand what America is in 2023.
The black man with a college education can get anything.
The person who's obese is going to have trouble getting a date, much less a job.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I guess maybe this is a deeper conversation, but I don't really get that choice.
So my point is, Is there systemic racism?
Yes.
I would say it's obvious.
Mostly in the education field.
So I'm willing to fix education because it needs to be fixed.
But not because the average of one group is doing worse than the other.
And I do think you have to let the cities fail.
Just let them go.
Until they hit bottom.
Once they hit bottom, then you can get involved.
But until they hit bottom, they're not going to accept the kind of help they need.
So why waste your energy doing that?
But if anybody wants to get out, that's a possibility.
All right.
Don't speak for the other side.
They are out to get you.
Well, did I deny that?
I don't think I denied that people are out to get me or maybe out to get you.
There are certainly people around to get us.
That would be probably true of everybody.
Everybody who speaks in public.
There's always somebody out to get them.
And it's also true that every group wants their group to be the successful one.
So what surprises are there?
there.
All right.
Where energy luck is the idea that we should leave the cities or let Oh, how do you make compatible these two concepts?
When I said leave the cities, But in other times, this is a good question actually, in other contexts I've said you should go where the energy is, which is where there's a concentration of people usually.
And the answer is, when I say leave the cities, I mean the ones that are falling apart.
I believe there's still plenty of Republican run cities that look just like they always did.
Am I wrong?
You know, when I say get out of cities, the implied, assumed part is mostly the Democrat-run cities.
Mostly.
There might be some exceptions.
So.
He said pink.
All right.
It's not assumed?
Well, it should be.
All right, that's all I got for now.
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining.
YouTubers, I appreciate your time, and I'll see you tomorrow.
