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Content:
Politics, Marc Andreesson, Empires, JFK Warren Commission, Israel Hamas War, Vivek Ramaswamy, Israel Funding, Hamas Tunnel Solutions, Biden Beach House, Democrat Brainwashing Operations, President Trump, Scott Adams
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So there's a big breakthrough in quantum computing, some kind of materials breakthrough with amino ferrocene and graphene, and it's going to be a real big deal for quantum computing.
I don't think we have any idea what's going to happen with quantum computing.
Yeah, I've said this before, but I feel like it's the only story that matters.
Because every other one of our problems will be folded into whatever happens.
When we have quantum computers and AI.
So, can we make an agreement?
I would like to ask you for something.
Could you, just as a favor to me, never mention Styx, his technical setup again.
Please, never, never again.
It's just different.
Let's just never talk about it again.
And if we could let the technical and sound conversation stop, that'd be great.
Because otherwise, I'm just... So here's the problem with it.
Even though you notice that I do a pretty good job of noticing the comments as I'm talking about the topics, but here's the thing that's not as obvious to you.
I can do that when the topic is about the news.
So if I'm talking about the news and then you're talking about the news, And then I'm talking about the news.
I can blend and Venn diagram all of that information.
But there's a part of my head that is completely different from that mode.
And that's the problem-solving, like, technical head.
So the problem is not that it's a distraction.
It's a specific kind of distraction that uses a different part of my brain.
And then the resources I needed in my head To get from technical problem solving to talking about the news is such a big leap that I can't do it in real time.
But I can do all of the newsy topics in real time.
They don't distract.
They're actually more additive.
Does that make sense?
It's a brain processing thing.
It's almost like real estate in the brain.
If you take me to the wrong real estate, then I can't use the right real estate.
So that's why I seem extra Extra prickly about that.
It's not that it bothers me.
It's that I can't do the job under those conditions.
All right.
Mark Andreessen had this big manifesto about everything that's wrong with the business world.
And I love the fact that he says directly that ESG Could be one of the things that's destroying the world.
You know, it's on his list with some other stuff.
And he calls it a mass demoralization campaign against progress that has lasted 60 years.
But he calls out everything, trust and safety and tech ethics and social responsibility.
Basically, all these well-intended things are basically destroying the world.
But I would like to add my own theory about why empires rise and fall.
This will be the best theory you've ever heard.
So you heard Pat Buchanan's theory.
That is war.
That all the prior empires were destroyed by war.
But while I get that, I mean, it's highly correlated, I've got a slightly different take That you're going to like better.
It goes like this.
All empires are luck.
That's it.
You have to be lucky to become an empire in the first place.
It's not just, you know, that you had some good leaders and you performed well, or you had a good system, right?
It's luck.
And the one thing you can guarantee about luck is that it doesn't last.
That's it.
That's the whole description of empires.
For example, it was lucky that the United States was geographically protected from World War II.
Nobody planned it, right?
People didn't move here because they said, oh, in case there's a World War II.
It was just luck.
Yet, I also consider it luck that our founders were alive and in America at the same time.
I mean, what were the odds that Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Monroe, Hamilton, what are the odds they would all be alive at the same time and have the same purpose?
What are the odds that Steve Jobs would meet Wozniak?
What were the odds?
If you don't put those two together, there's no Apple computer, there's no smartphone, maybe.
Who knows?
So my take on America, And all the other empires, is that something weirdly rare had to happen for any empire to form in the first place.
But that level of luck that it takes to stay in power can't be sustained.
Just nobody can be that lucky for a thousand years.
Now, once you are successful, you can do what any monopoly does.
You can put up walls, so you can last Way longer than you should, because you can put up, you know, ways to protect yourself.
But in the long run, it's still luck.
Maybe there's a climate change thing.
Maybe there's a, you know, somebody's nuclear bomb goes off by accident.
There's a pandemic that one person mismanaged, but another one didn't.
I think it's just that.
It's just luck.
So that would suggest that every empire goes away eventually.
There's a, uh, uh, but I wouldn't worry about ours right away.
Oh, that is so weird that your comments said something about the Warren Commission.
That was something I was going to talk about today.
Warren Commission.
I'll talk about that right now, actually.
So I, I started watching, uh, Oliver Stone's update to his original movie, JFK, about the assassination.
So there were more documents that were declassified, etc.
So he's got an updated version of it.
And what I always say about documentaries is that they're 100% persuasive, usually.
They're 100% persuasive as long as you don't see the counter-arguments.
So I'm aware while I'm watching it, I've only watched the first episode, But I was completely aware of two things.
Number one, it was completely persuasive of its point of view that Kennedy was basically assassinated by the CIA and the Mafia.
Now, does that mean it's true?
I don't know.
Because I'd have to hear some kind of counterpoint to really have an opinion.
But it's completely convincing.
And let me tell you the most convincing part.
And this part does not require any speculation.
This is a real thing that I found out yesterday.
I did not know this till yesterday.
You know who, so there was this thing called the Warren Commission, the government put together in order to find out for sure who killed Kennedy, you know, was it a lone gunman, was it a conspiracy, etc.
Well, they came up with the answer there was a lone gunman, no conspiracy.
Now, the thing I didn't know is that the chairperson of the Warren Commission Was the only person who didn't have a regular job.
So he was the most active, because he didn't have a day job to go to.
He was the recently fired head of the CIA, Dulles.
Now you say to yourself, well that's probably a pretty good person, right?
Because it's somebody who's really connected, high-level executive type, wouldn't know all the players.
Yeah, Allen Dulles.
Here's the thing that I did not know about until today.
The chairman of the group who were trying to find out for sure who killed Kennedy, and just listen to this carefully.
It's all you need to know.
The chairperson of the group that was by far had the most power on the Warren Commission, was also the major suspect in the actual assassination.
So the main suspect was the person who was put in charge of the commission to find out who the murderer was.
That's a real thing.
I didn't know that till yesterday.
That's a real fucking thing.
There's no question about what happened.
Of course the CIA killed him.
There's no way that you put the main suspect in charge of the investigation unless Unless it's exactly what it looks like.
It's exactly what it looked like.
Do you need to hear anything else?
Is there anything else you need to hear about this?
The main suspect who had been fired by Kennedy, do you know why he'd been fired as the head of the CIA?
So first of all, he was a disgruntled employee.
So that's a reason to kill somebody.
Second of all, he was the head of the CIA, so he had all the ability to set up some kind of a fake assassination if he wanted to.
And then, but more importantly, I learned that Kennedy found out that the CIA was running its own foreign policy and even the president wasn't aware of it.
And they didn't care about the president.
They thought they were in charge.
Did you know that?
Did you know that even Kennedy Yeah, and it's on record, said that he didn't think he had any control of the CIA and didn't know what they were doing.
And there are well-documented cases where they were overthrowing governments and murdering people without the president having ordered it.
They were running their own government.
You think that's bad enough?
No, we're not done yet.
J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI?
Same problem.
The FBI was not doing what the president wanted.
The FBI was its own domain, and it was just doing its own thing.
So Kennedy had an FBI that reported to him on paper, but didn't, and a CIA that reported to him on paper, but didn't.
So it's exactly what it looked like.
The people who were really in power didn't like that there was this guy who was called president, And so they killed him and covered it up.
Yeah.
Amazing.
So, uh, Earl Warren.
Yeah, it was Earl Warren.
So, you know, I don't have any question about what happened.
I don't have any question about what went down to me.
That's confirmatory or confirmation or something.
Yeah.
All right, well, so that begs an interesting question.
What happens if RFK Jr.
had it his way and he could dig into all the CIA's business and suppose he were in charge of the CIA?
That would be interesting.
But there's a new poll, Harvard and Harris poll, so I guess it's a respected poll.
And they did a poll of presidential preferences as we stand now.
And if it were just Trump and Biden, Trump would win by, he's up four, four points.
Now remember, these are national, so that doesn't mean you would win in all the right districts to win the electoral vote.
But it does give you kind of a general feeling of the attitude of the country.
But if you throw into the mix Kennedy, Trump's lead increases by 50%.
He goes from up four to up six.
Now, can we conclude that Kennedy takes votes away from Biden more than he takes votes from Trump?
I think so.
So this is the first confirmation.
And this is what I thought would happen.
I thought he would take more from Biden.
But If you throw in West, so that there are two third-party people running, Kennedy and West, Trump's lead goes up to seven.
Every time you throw in a third party, Trump's base tends to be sticky, and other candidates are a little less sticky, so they lose support whenever there's another person there.
Cornell West, yes.
If Trump ran against Harris instead, he would be up by seven.
And if he, and if Biden ran against Nikki Haley, Biden would win by four.
I don't know how Trump can survive.
I mean, I feel like they're going to have to, I hate to say it, but I don't, short of him being the victim of something horrible.
How do they keep him out of office?
And can they allow him to get back in office knowing that he's going to rip the lid off of everything?
Or at least he'd try.
I don't know.
I'm real worried about his health.
I gotta be honest.
Well, here's some fake news based on real news.
China has moved multiple warships into the Middle East.
So they're China's big boats are over there with America's strike force.
I guess we've got two carrier strike groups over there.
But it sounded, on first report, it sounded like this was to counter the American power.
On second look, it looks like it was just a planned, they had some planned maritime naval practice.
What do you call it?
What do you call it when the military practices?
What's that called?
Exercise.
Yes.
So they had some exercise.
It might be just that.
But the United States.
Does it seem to you like Biden is stealthily preparing for war that would involve America?
When I was saying, hey, we're getting ready for war.
I feel like there's something missing in the process.
As in some honesty?
As in, if this happens, American boots will be on the ground.
I don't like just sort of being over there and being ready, and then America not being told, at the same time that we don't have a Speaker of the House.
I don't like anything about this.
I think it probably makes sense from a Commander-in-Chief perspective.
You gotta put your military where it might make a difference, It definitely might make a difference, at least mentally.
The psychology of the situation is certainly different because our military is there.
But I do worry that we're preparing for war without the permission of Congress and without the full knowledge of the citizens.
That's what it feels like.
Well, let's talk about why Israel has not attacked yet in terms of their ground attack.
One theory is that Biden is restraining them.
In other words, Biden said, don't go in and kill a bunch of innocent people while trying to get the bad guys.
So that's possible.
So that's certainly a force that's working on them.
It's not the only force that's happening.
Anatoly Lubarsky added that it probably takes three weeks After mobilization to actually be ready to launch.
Now that matches my point of view.
That it just takes longer than they've had so far to just get ready.
Because they don't want to be partly ready.
Now here's a really ugly thought.
The ground invasion or not, or how it goes or how it doesn't go, is largely an economic decision.
Isn't that ugly?
It's an economic decision.
And the reason is because it would be really expensive to surround Gaza and just wait.
Waiting is very expensive.
I mean, war is expensive too, but if they're going to have the war anyway, you don't want to have the war plus the expense of the siege.
That's a lot of expense.
So there's, I hate to say it, but there's an economic force.
Which is, they can't wait forever.
It would just be too expensive.
You can't turn it into a permanent outdoor jail and just do a better job of security.
I think that's the comic Dave Smith approach.
Just do better security.
And, not just, but that being a big part of it.
So the timing of it is going to be based on economics, probably.
Which is the creepiest Most disgusting thought you could ever have in your life.
But it's also the real world, right?
Money is an asset of the military.
You don't have money, you don't have an army, so it's always money.
It's just that there are bullets flying at the same time.
All right.
Apparently, Israel has created a special unit to hunt and kill every participant in the Hamas terror attack.
How would they know exactly?
I guess somehow they might be able to capture a list of who was involved.
So I don't even know how they would know who to go after.
But that's very Israel.
I think the psychology of that is great.
The psychology of it is to tell the citizens, no matter how long it takes, because they've done this before, you know, no matter how long it takes, we will get every one of them.
And I think they mean it.
And I think they will take as long as it takes.
So Joel Pollack is over there now reporting and I can't stop thinking about how terrible that would be to be over there.
To actually just put yourself in the most stressful country in the world right now where apparently the entire country is just in war mode and everybody's mind is focused on this as it should be.
And I can't even imagine just seeing the evidence of the devastation and Having to just put your head in that situation.
It definitely makes me feel... Has anybody had this feeling this week?
That I'd have moments where I'm just petting my dog and, you know, completely relaxed.
And then I would think about how bad it is, you know, in the Middle East and other places.
And I'd feel kind of guilty.
And I was also feeling like maybe it won't last.
I feel like my piece is not going to last.
It feels like all of this is coming for us.
I just don't know when.
That's what it feels like.
But we can be smart and maybe push it back.
Well, Vivek Ramaswamy, He is very outspoken in a good way.
I think he's adding lots of good context and comparisons and giving us stuff to think about, about Gaza.
And he's very opposed to combining the funding package into one big, let's go to war package.
And I'm opposed to that too, on system and process grounds.
That's different from being opposed to the funding of each.
That's a separate question.
I'm against putting them together.
We absolutely have to vote on war individually.
You know what you don't want to vote on?
Oh, how about war plus the farm package?
No.
Sorry.
Get the farm back.
Well, that's not a real thing.
I'm making that up, but get the farm package out of there.
How about war or war plus climate change?
Nope.
Nope.
War has got to be by itself.
There's no wiggle room there.
And indeed, I don't ever want a Speaker of the House if such Speaker of the House is going to put war packages together or war with anything else.
It's got to be war by itself.
Some of the other stuff, you know, the other pork and stuff, I can kind of see why maybe there's some advantages and disadvantages of combining them sometimes.
But you don't bundle war.
Bundling war together is just a big ol' fuck you to the citizens of the United States.
That is disrespectful.
That's not even politics.
That is just pure disrespectful.
And I don't think I've seen anything like this in politics before, where it's not really an opinion or a preference.
This is just pure disrespect for the citizens and the voters.
That's all I feel.
Like, I feel it's a bad problem and needs to be solved, but my visceral feeling is, my God, you have no respect for the citizens whatsoever.
To even imagine that you would combine these two things just to shove it down our fucking throats.
Yeah.
Unacceptable.
So, I'm 100% behind Vivek on the don't put the funding into one package.
The other thing he says, and again, this is a great addition to the debate.
One of the things that Vivek is so valuable for, win or lose, is that he broadens and improves the debate wherever he goes, even if you disagree with him.
He has very clear points about it, defends his points, and even extends the argument into places where it hasn't been extended but needs to be.
It's so positive.
But one of the things he says is that he wouldn't be in favor of, I think, funding unless Israel has a plan for what happens to the Palestinians after the ground offensive.
Do you agree with that or not?
You say to yourself, well, screw them.
It's not Israel's problem.
Why should they have a plan?
Now remember, the plan doesn't mean Israel will fix everything.
It doesn't have to be.
But it could be a plan for how Palestinians will survive.
The plan could include, we're going to build a, let's say, multi-government coalition of Arab countries to manage and help the Palestinians.
Something like that.
So it doesn't have to be on Israel's dime.
If you tell me Israel shouldn't spend a penny to help even the innocent, suffering Palestinians, I would say, I could see that.
In a normal situation, you'd say humanity has to win over politics and all that other stuff.
But in this specific situation, I think Israel has a right to walk away and just say, you know what?
There are a lot of Muslims in the world.
If you can't take care of each other, don't ask my religion to do it.
Because that's basically what's happening.
People are saying, hey, our religion is failing.
Can your religion come over here and take care of us?
And how about no?
And I'm not sure that that's cruel, given that there are many wealthy Arab Islamic countries surrounding the area with a deep interest in the well-being of these people.
Let them take all of it.
I think that's what I'd do.
So I like Vivek's addition that there should be a plan But I would disagree that that plan should be increasing the taxes on Israelis.
I don't think Israelis should be taxed to take care of the Palestinians.
That's too far.
Under the current circumstance.
Before, maybe, it was more of a conversation before.
But now?
Nope.
I would say complete divorce and make it permanent.
That would be my take on that.
And I definitely wouldn't open the border to let anybody come in and work ever again.
Wouldn't do that.
Just because of the risk.
Let's see.
Let's also talk about what's going to happen next.
Let's use, I like to use what I call the movie script prediction method.
I've talked about this many times.
It's the idea that reality follows movies.
And movies have this three-act
Scenario and the key act is the third act where the heroes have an unsolvable problem That's where we are Israel has an unsolvable problem from a movie script perspective That is to say if they if they don't go in with a ground attack That would be like losing Because it would just leave Hamas intact They would reconstitute someday they come back and attack
So they can't do nothing.
They don't have an option of not doing a ground attack.
But if they do the ground attack, it's guaranteed to have unacceptable losses on civilians.
And you can guarantee that those unacceptable losses will be magnified forever to become a stain on Israel's reputation that will hurt them in different ways, as much as if they did or didn't do the ground So they have two ways to go, and they're both losing directions.
Don't do a ground assault, you definitely lose.
Do a ground assault, there will definitely be too many civilian deaths, and you lose.
So they only have two choices, and they're both guaranteed loss.
Do you agree so far?
That's what the third act looks like.
No matter what you do, it's all bad.
You don't have any path to victory.
So, how does a movie get resolved?
When the third act presents an impossibility to the hero.
Well, it's always the same way.
Some clever solution that was not obvious to the viewers of the movie.
That's what makes it fun to watch.
But in the real world, that's also what happens.
It's going to be a third option.
And here's what I predict.
I predict the third option.
The third option is that Israel shows the world The most clever way to handle this situation.
Like so clever, it becomes a standard for this kind of warfare for the rest of time.
Here's what I don't think they're going to do.
Knock on doors and get, you know, get IED'd and booby trapped and take huge losses.
I don't think that's going to happen.
Here's what I think.
I think that they're getting super active, the Israelis and allies, In figuring out technical solutions to Hamas and that would include some people have suggested ideas.
One would turn would be to filter the good people out of the Hamas controlled areas, which is happening.
I call it the filter fence.
The filter fence is where you you let all the good people out so that all that's left is the people want to be there for whatever reason and then you just turn it into a prison.
Now, If you make the area small enough, if you can chew away at the edges, then it's easier to control the entire perimeter of, let's say, a little piece of northern Gaza.
You know, way, way easier than trying to control the entire perimeter.
Now, there's still tunneling and, you know, paragliding and there are ways they can get out.
But if you are super serious about putting a, let's say, a drone, a permanent drone army in the air over it, You could probably turn it into a technological prison where if anybody gets out, a drone is activated and hunts them down and it just kills them where they're running.
You could probably come up with some technical solutions for identifying tunnels that we've not seen before.
You want to hear the most low-tech idea I ever had?
You take a Roomba, one of those little vacuum cleaner robots, You put it in, if you find one of the tunnel openings, and it wouldn't be hard to find one, you just put the Roomba in there.
And you let it map the entire inside of the tunnels.
Now, you'd have to have some way to get the signal out before they destroyed it.
So you put the Roomba in, and it just goes Roomba, Roomba, and it figures out where the walls are.
It kind of maps the place, you know, until the first terrorist sees it and then blows it up.
But then you send something down to kill that terrorist and then send in another Roomba.
You just destroy them with Roombas.
Little robots with bombs on them.
So the problem with using robotics or drones is that you will lose your signal.
Right?
If you send in a little drone, like a little flying drone into a tunnel, eventually it would lose signal.
But There are new technologies, and in fact I just talked about one yesterday, in which you can put AI onto the device with the small little chip, which they have an alpha version of it right now, that would make AI-related decisions on its own once it lost signal.
So we're pretty close to, you know, Skylink kind of thing, because The intelligence to make their own decisions is going into drones, and it's happening now.
Like, that's current technology is putting an entire AI onto a chip, putting it in the robot, and the robot goes off and makes its own decisions from that point on.
That's real.
That's current technology.
So, could it be that some of the robots that would normally be used to clear out a tunnel Normally you would use it remotely with some remote control, but maybe they send some independent ones down there.
And maybe they send as many as you need.
You know, just keep sending them.
Just keep making them and sending them.
And you know, they'd get destroyed.
But before they did, you know, maybe some would get back.
Maybe some would find out how to send a signal.
Something like that.
So you'd end up mapping and killing everything in the tunnels without ever going down in a tunnel.
We've got enough robots and AI.
The other possibility is just gas.
I believe I saw the son of the leader of Hamas, who is pro-Israel and anti-Hamas, weirdly.
So he was actually saying, you're probably going to need to use gas.
To which I said, oh, what kind of gas?
And I thought, could be all kinds.
Somebody suggested skunk.
Why not?
Why not put a smell down there that's so bad that you just couldn't exist without a gas mask?
Yeah, we could drop Eric Swalwell down there.
Just dangle him on a rope.
Let him do the rest.
Or, other possibilities are sleeping gas, etc.
But the one that I like to suggest is They should be running out of that Captagon drug pretty soon.
If you wait long enough.
So that's the one that makes them, you know, stay up all night and want to fight and do horrible things.
As I've said before, Israel should already be making fake versions of Captagon.
So that, you know, four out of five are either normal Captagon or they're a little underpowered.
And the fifth one's just an overdose waiting to happen.
The fifth one's actually designed to kill you, but it's mixed in with the ones that aren't.
So you want to get rid of all of their legal forms so that their only choices are Russian Roulette with the next pill.
Because I'm guessing that they're addicted.
What do you think?
You think the Captagon has already made them addicted?
Like if they run out, there's nothing that they're going to do not to get some more?
So if you can give them Deadly Captagon at the same time they run out and they're addicted they're gonna start popping the stuff that kills one out of five people Right because they're like well four and a five chance.
That's not bad Yeah The ADL Is embarrassing itself in the in the midst of this Hamas situation They put out a statement saying white supremacists still big problem Not really reading the room right.
What have the white supremacists done lately?
Can you think of anything that white supremacists have done?
Well, I can think of something.
Let's see if you can think of something else.
Here's something that white supremacists have done recently.
Backed Israel.
That's all I need to say about that.
All right.
Because I don't think that they're crazy about Hamas, is what I think.
Well, my old nemesis Chen, who some say is a Chinese operative, but Chen says no.
He's just a guy on the X platform saying stuff.
But he's talking about the British Broadcasting Company, which some call the BBC.
He points out that it's said that 1,400 Israelis were, quote, massacred, but 4,000 Palestinians were, quote, killed.
And Chen points out, its extreme bias in choosing the words is staggering.
Well, OK, it does matter the intention, doesn't it?
The Hamas were intending to slaughter and disembowel people.
Literally what they were planning to do and then they did it.
The Israelis were trying to protect themselves and tried to avoid civilian deaths if they could.
Not really the same, Chen.
But I only pointed out, not because he makes a good point or not even a bad point, it's just sort of a stupid point, but it's sort of anti-Israel.
And he's a, I believe he's an improved Chinese voice in their So that would mean that he's sort of a suggestive of what Chinese leadership would also say.
So they seem to be taking sides.
Have you seen the story that's partially fake news about Biden paying cash for his beach house, the one he uses now?
So at some point back in 2017, I guess, he paid 2.75 million in cash for his Rehoboth Beach home.
He paid cash.
Who pays cash for a house?
Some people.
But it's suggested by the people who are chasing his bad behavior that this is a symbol of the sort of thing he's doing, or was doing, With his ill-gotten criminal gains from selling his influence or something like that.
But, to me it just looks like a bullshit story.
You know why?
So remember, the propaganda isn't only coming from the left.
So this was pure propaganda I saw on the right.
So the story starts out saying, blah blah, Biden crime family, so you're all primed to think this is a criminal thing.
And then they tell you you paid cash, For a 2.75 million dollar home, and you're thinking, whoa, on a senator's salary or a vice president's salary, can he do that?
And then at the end of the article, it says that it was about the same time he got 11 million dollars in royalties for his book.
Isn't that the whole story?
He made a lot of money on a book and then he bought a beach house?
Like, the fact that the anti-Biden people tied together what looks like a public and completely understanding source of money, but put that at the end of the article.
Here's how that article should have been.
I forget who wrote it, but it doesn't matter.
The article should have said, at about the same time he was making millions of dollars on his book, he bought a beach house.
And that's it.
That should have been the whole story.
Why did we assume that this money came from some other source when he got paid $11 million?
So, the fact that it was worded all of his bad behavior first, oh, bad behavior, bad behavior, but he also bought a beach house for cash, so the bad behavior and the cash he paid for the beach house, that must be the same story, right?
That's what the Democrats do to you.
That's what the Democrats do.
You know, if you see a story like that from your own side, you know, let's say you lean right, and it's a right-leaning entity that writes it, that's just bullshit.
Right?
Now, I'm not defending Joe Biden.
I'm saying you're going to need to do better than that.
If you're proving he made a whole bunch of legal money that's well disclosed, and then he spent some of it, that should be the whole story.
Separately, Maybe he did some, you know, scabby things.
But that's separate.
I wouldn't put those together.
So, the propaganda is not coming from just one direction.
Just be aware of that.
Is writing a book a good way to make 11 million dollars?
Well, let me explain book publishing.
Number one, it could be a way to launder funds.
In other words, if he got an unusually high advance for his book, way more than they expected to sell the books, that would be suggestive that maybe there's a publisher who wanted a favor from somebody in the government, so they were willing to overpay a little bit.
Maybe there's a billionaire involved with the publisher who is willing to subsidize a little bit of their overpayment.
So there are a million ways that you could do some sketchy things That laundered money by overpaying for a book.
And that's probably what happened, given the players involved and the fact that they sell influence for a living.
You know, legally, perhaps.
I don't know that Joe or Hunter did anything illegal, but it's obvious they were selling influence.
That part seems well established by everybody, basically.
So, be careful of that.
Yeah.
Having said that, there's something sketchy happening with the Biden family.
We just don't know exactly what.
Oh, let me finish one other point about book advances.
If you say to yourself, Scott, the likely number of total sales of a Biden book could never justify an $11 million or whatever the advance was.
We don't know what the advance was.
Could never, Never justify that much of a payment.
Here's what you need to know about publishers.
For the big-name books, and he would be a big-name book, they don't always try to make money.
Did you know that?
Sometimes they will overpay for a big-name author so that they can tell the next author, well, we have this author.
I mean, we just did the big Biden book, so you should work with us.
It's almost marketing.
So a big publishing house will overpay a big name.
And how do I know this?
This happened to me.
When Dilbert was a huge, well-respected hit, I negotiated a big book deal after I'd written The Dilbert Principle, and it was the number one book.
But when they offered the advance for what was like a five-book deal, even I could tell they were overpaying.
I mean, it was obvious to me that I would never sell that many books.
But the advance was so good that, of course, I said yes.
It was their risk to take.
So I took their money.
They took the risk.
And do you think that they sold enough books to justify the advance?
Probably not.
Probably one or two of the books, yes.
But probably the entire five-book catalog?
Probably not.
But they said directly.
At one point that they like to have, you know, big names and they're stable.
And as long as I came, you know, close to break even, then it was a marketing thing and they win.
So I heard that directly.
So yes, Biden might've been overpaid because there was something sketchy going on, but he could have been overpaid just because that's exactly how publishers operate.
They overpay for the big name books.
All right.
Housing costs have doubled since 2019.
What?
At least the affordability of a new home has doubled.
Wait, no, your dollar goes half as far as it did at the end of 2020.
Yeah, so basically same story.
Wow.
Wow.
All right, here's a little story that I have to wonder about.
You'll probably wonder the same thing.
So Trump has a new video out, campaign video, in which it shows people being brainwashed by Hillary.
And even Trump did a truth post on it in which he said brainwashed.
So they're using the word brainwashed and they're using the video of Hillary saying that she wants to deprogram Trump supporters.
So Trump has gone directly at The brainwashing propaganda part of the Democrat engine, which is pretty interesting.
Yeah.
I don't know that anybody's gone after that directly before, have they?
But it's exactly what's happening.
It's a brainwashing operation.
And if he can convince anybody that it is, that's an interesting line of attack.
And the beauty of it is you don't have to argue about policy.
If you're arguing about whether there's a brainwashing operation.
Because the brainwashing operation, you can simply point to it.
Like, well, here's another example.
And it also creates a confirmation bias trap.
Have you ever seen him do that before?
It's classic Trump.
When he nicknamed Hillary Clinton as Crooked Hillary, it was because he knew for sure that during the campaign, there would be new things that come out, allegations, That you would say to yourself, huh, that sounds like Hillary did something crooked.
Oh, of course, she's Crooked Hillary.
Makes perfect sense.
And then your brain stores all of her crooked deeds under his framing, Crooked Hillary.
So he's literally changing the real estate in your brain with these nicknames that make all the information seem like confirmation, but it could be confirmation bias.
So now when he calls out brainwashing, Every time you see something that looks like it's in that domain, you're going to say, instead of, that's a lie, which you would have said otherwise, you're going to say, oh, that's what Trump's talking about.
There's that brainwashing.
So he's created another little rental property in your head, and he calls it brainwashing.
Now, every time you see something that you would have interpreted as just a lie, or just politics, or something like that, you're going to say to yourself, hey, are they trying to brainwash me?
Who are they trying to brainwash?
So, this is probably brilliant.
Probably brilliant.
The gaslighting thing never worked.
Because everybody's gaslighting everybody, and nobody knows what the word means exactly.
But everybody knows what brainwashing is.
Everybody knows what brainwashing is.
So that's the perfect Trump frame.
Word we all know that's a confirmation trap for the future.
He's so good at this.
I have a way to spot the brainwashed which annoys me because I think that I've used it myself.
So I'm going to tell you how to spot brainwashing people.
But you don't need to tell me, but Scott, I feel like I've seen you do that.
To which I say, I have done that.
Was I brainwashed?
If you're not at least asking yourself that question, you're brainwashed.
Let me say this as clearly as possible.
If you're not continuously asking yourself, is somebody brainwashing me right now?
You know, when you're looking at political stuff, you're being brainwashed.
The only defense is if you're asking yourself every single time something happens, which I do.
That doesn't, it's not a complete protection.
You know, smart people, well-informed people could be brainwashed, but it's at least a little bit of something.
It's not nothing.
So I'm asking myself this about this, but here's the tell.
I saw this today on the X platform, a username, James English.
So he was in a back-and-forth debate with some folks about what is true or not true about something Trump-related.
But he ends with this, responding to someone else, not to me.
He goes, No, it means I follow facts.
You follow beliefs.
You should seek help.
There it is.
You should seek help.
It truly is a sickness.
Or maybe you are a child, because only children follow beliefs.
Adults follow facts Now that's that's a brainwashed person Alright, so let me break it down.
So here's somebody who believes that the person they're talking to is the only person in politics who doesn't think facts matter and That they're just operating on belief there's just this one person and they you know, not not just one but And that that's the only problem here is that one of them doesn't believe in the facts and their following beliefs.
Now, that's the most universal thing that everybody thinks about everybody.
But here's the one that's really to tell you should seek help.
Once a person believes that the other person's point of view is so crazy that they completely give up on debating it, there are one or two possibilities.
They're talking to somebody who actually is just crazy, and they're, you know, in their own little world.
Or, the person who's talking is the one who's brainwashed, and when presented with a good argument, or new facts that counter their opinion, they immediately go to the badness of the person.
So here's the tell.
If they start with facts, but end up with, seek help, you don't believe facts, They're they're probably brainwashed, but it doesn't It doesn't eliminate the possibility that the person they're talking about is brainwashed.
So it's a little tricky but certainly if somebody has if you've retreated from Let me say this in a more crisp way if you've completely retreated from the idea of Arguing about the facts and now you've you've gone to there's something wrong with you.
You're just broken Uh, one of you is brainwashed or both.
That's what's happening there.
Yeah.
But like I say, since I've been, I've been the one to tell people to seek help because in my mind it did look like they just had a mental problem, some kind of TDS.
Uh, so it makes me wonder, huh, what if I'm brainwashed when I say that?
Just something to think about.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
All right, I got some questions I could answer.
I think we've done what we need to do today.
It's time for brunch, exactly.
You should all go off and have an amazing Sunday today.
And enjoy all the good times, if you have them, because it's a precarious world.
I do think the United States will be fine.
Certainly in your lifetime.
But we got a lot of stuff to take care of.
You have to fix a lot of stuff.
So let's go fix a lot of stuff.
And we'll be fine.
And I think Israel is going to be clever.
So remember my prediction.
It won't be a standard ground offensive.
And it won't be no ground offensive.
It will be the most innovative Ground offensive you've ever seen.
There'll be things you've never seen before.
So look for that.
And I will talk to you, maybe in the man cave, tonight.