Episode 2311 CWSA 12/03/23 Gaslighting, Persuasion, Bribery, Blackmail & Other Government Functions
My new book Reframe Your Brain, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/3bwr9fm8
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Politics, Tesla Cybertruck Event, George Santos, Vivek Ramaswamy, Competence Advantage, Military Suicides, Economy Misinformation, Bidenomics, Gaslighting, Unjailable Trump, Bill Maher, Elon Musk, ADL, TikTok Risk, Soros Hamas Funding, Alex Soros, Jake Tapper, Scott Adams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
And you're probably thinking to yourself, you don't know if you should colonize or gaslight.
Should I colonize?
Should I gaslight?
Well, those questions will be answered and many more.
But if you'd like to take your experience up to levels where gaslighters can't even get you, All you need is a cupper, a mug, or a glass.
A tank of gels, a sign, a canteen jug, or a flask.
A vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
So join me now in the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Save it.
Yeah.
Well, there's some shocking news.
You heard about the big Tesla Cybertruck rollout, big event.
But there's some news that there was some crazy guy who was planning a mass casualty attack on the event.
It didn't happen.
He got picked up by the fuzz, so to speak.
They caught him, so he did not do anything like that.
But I would like you to imagine for a moment What could have been the coolest thing that ever happened?
It didn't happen.
This did not happen.
But it could have.
Imagine this mass shooter showing up at the Tesla truck rollout.
You have a whole bunch of trucks, because it's a rollout, so you're not going to have one, right?
You have lots of Tesla trucks.
And lots of people.
And suddenly somebody yells, gun!
And everybody immediately jumps inside a Tesla truck.
And the gunman starts opening fire.
And then finally, you know, law enforcement takes him down.
Everybody lives.
There's just like bullet holes in all the cars, all the trucks, but everybody got in.
They lived.
Best marketing campaign of all time.
But instead they just caught him before he shot any bullets or did anything.
So that was good too.
That was good too.
Better?
600 people jumping into Cybertrucks and being totally safe from gunfire.
Would have been better.
By the way, I heard a little clip of Elon Musk when he was introducing the Cybertruck.
And he had this great line.
You said, if you're in the Cybertruck and you ever get in an argument with another vehicle, you will win.
If you get in an argument with another vehicle, you will win.
Perfect.
That's just like a perfect...
All right, let's talk about George Santos.
As you know, he's going to be expelled, voted to be expelled by his former colleagues from Congress.
But now he says he's going to drop the dime on four of his colleagues for ethics complaints, and he's got charges, and he's got accusations, and he's got allocations.
I don't know if any of them are good, but he's going scorched earth.
That's fun.
But the thing that caught my attention was he was referred to in the New York Post in the opening line to this story as a disgraced serial liar.
Disgraced serial liar?
I feel like I want to form a club.
Everybody who's disgraced.
Because, you know, I'm a disgraced cartoonist.
And, you know, I didn't really care too much about the George Santos story one way or another, frankly.
I just wasn't interested in it.
But now that I know he's a fellow disgraced person, I feel like we should have some kind of a club or, you know, informal organization, a party, a Christmas party, perhaps.
Wouldn't you love to see me host a Christmas party of everyone who was disgraced during 2023?
Like the class of 2023, all the people got cancelled and disgraced.
It would be a big party.
Well, Vivek Ramaswamy said this in a post, he said, I went to a racially diverse public schools, to public schools until the eighth grade.
I've never met a single black kid who couldn't achieve everything I have if he had the same true, quote, privilege that I enjoyed.
Not being born into money, but having a stable family with two parents who emphasize education.
That's the answer to black empowerment in America, not affirmative action.
Okay.
But as one observer who calls himself free speech is expensive on the X platform, had this to say, that is the ideal situation.
I think we'd all agree.
Don't you think that would be ideal to have two parents who are really strong about education?
And whether they had money or not, they were just really strong about education and probably character and that sort of thing.
Yeah, that would be ideal.
How many people can get that situation?
In a perfect world, Well, as Free Speech is Expensive says, this is the ideal situation.
If you assume 50% odds for having a good versus a bad parent, for any one parent you have about a 50% odds, but you have two parents.
So to get both of them to be capable, pro-education parents, the odds are 25%.
That's just, you know, 50% times 50%.
What system works for the other seven or so?
Now, that has always been the question.
I think Vivek is 100% right.
Everything he said, I agree with.
But, he didn't have any control over that.
So Vivek had no control over his parents.
He just got lucky.
Did his parents have control over it?
Well, I don't know.
A little bit.
I think they had less control than maybe you think.
Because what were the odds that they both had the same, let's say, philosophy.
They had the same philosophy of pro-education.
And they met each other.
And they got along.
And they had a child.
That's a lot of things to go right.
And I'm not sure they controlled all those things.
They might've gotten lucky.
You know, they may have fallen in love and wow, good luck.
How lucky am I that my, my mate has the same philosophy on parenting.
So there's a whole lot of luck involved, right?
You'd prefer a system where the luck is removed and the system itself can give you wins.
That's the trouble with the trouble with the parenting situation.
Is that you can't choose them, and it's not a manageable process.
You know, you can hope for it, and you can advise people what to do, but you really just, it's wishful thinking.
And unfortunately, if you ever introduced an alternative, it would be politically impossible.
Because if what you're trying to sell as Republicans is the family unit, Because the family unit works so well, if it's done right.
If you've got a little religious stuff, you've got attention to education, as Vivek says, that's your ideal situation.
But it's just not achievable by probably at least half of the public.
So what about the other half?
Do we just ignore them because the thing we want them to do is unavailable to them?
And then you just let them die?
I feel like we could do better.
And here's what I suggest.
I think we absolutely need to start forming non-family support structures.
Non-government.
Non-government.
That's the important part.
Nothing about the government.
But, you know, individually, privately, finding ways to support each other.
For example, let's say you were two parents who never went to college.
And you had a vague idea that college is good, but you're not really the ones to sell it.
But suppose you had in your social network people who were there all the time, who were very pro-college, and could sell it to your own children better than you could.
I mean, it could be an uncle, it could be a family member, it could be a cousin.
But just somebody in your extended family who could sell to your children what you're not good at selling.
Because not everybody's good at everything.
So you need an extended structure just to cover all your black holes.
All the things that you can't do yourself.
So I think that that's what's coming.
Just take the simplest example.
Childcare.
Childcare is this big nightmare because it's just so hard if you're low income.
How do you afford childcare and also go to a job?
You can't do both.
Too expensive.
But suppose you had a network of people and some of them were like, well, you know what?
You always mow my lawn and I like kids and I'm, you know, I'm retired.
How about, how about I let the kids come over to my house while you're working?
Right, so you can imagine an informal, I don't want to say tribe, because then I think you get other implications, but I think it's some kind of voluntary virtual tribal situation would be what you'd get.
So I think that's where it's going to end up.
Yeah, I don't want to say clan.
That's kind of bad connotation, but I know what you're saying.
All right, so I think there's something the Republicans are missing.
And it's really big.
Because I think the Democrats are seeing that the traditional family unit just doesn't work for enough people.
It's ideal, it just doesn't work for enough people.
So they look to the government.
So now Republicans are offering an impractical solution, and your option, we don't want the government to help you too much either.
That's not really much of an offer.
A good offer would be, we're really, really going to sell this family thing hard, but if that isn't working for you, we suggest that you self-organize in ways you can support each other.
Some version of that.
I don't know.
I don't know what it looks like, but it's not addressed.
Anyway, Wall Street Journal reports, and I quote, the U.S.
companies have lost momentum in promoting black professionals into management.
I wonder if there's an alternative way that headline could have expressed that that would be equally true.
I'll take a stab at it.
Instead of saying U.S.
companies have lost momentum in promoting black professionals into management, would that be identical to anti-white racism has peaked?
Are those the same?
Because what is it that was promoting black applicants into upper management?
If you were working hard on it, who was not being promoted to?
Because it's not like they created more jobs just so they could promote black applicants.
Same number of jobs.
Who was not being promoted while there were a higher percentage of black people being promoted?
I don't know.
It looks like a good sign to me.
I would say the healthiest thing for black professionals and black Americans is that we become honest and practical about what works and what doesn't.
Everybody is better off in a system that's honest.
If you do these things, go to college, stay out of jail, don't do drugs, you'll probably do fine.
That's honest.
If they tell you that the reason you're being held back is systemic racism, well, there is systemic racism.
I very much agree that it exists, but it's not what's holding you back.
Right?
Systemic racism has held back literally zero people because there's such an easy workaround.
Do you know what the workaround is to systemic racism?
It's not really hard.
Look around you.
The people around you are largely, terribly incompetent.
Whoever they are, it doesn't matter.
Forget their race, gender, ethnicity.
The people around you are largely incompetent.
How hard is it to stand out when your competition is largely incompetent?
It's the easiest thing in the world.
Do you know how much I would care about systemic racism if somebody came to me and was clearly a good applicant for a job and that's all I saw?
Am I going to say, you know, you're clearly the best applicant.
You show so much serious attention to learning and character and staying in a jail and you don't do drugs and you're nice, got a nice religious base.
You know, it's not necessary, but it's nice that you've got that structure in your life.
Am I going to say to myself, you know, but you know, a little systemic racism, I can't give you the job.
That just never happens anywhere ever.
There are so few qualified people who do just the basics right.
Just the basics.
Show up on time.
You know, don't be drunk when you go to work.
Basics.
You're not really competing against, you know, the best of the best.
You want to hear the advice I gave one of my step kids recently?
Look around you.
Do you see who you're competing with?
One of my step kids is very dependable, very high character, just naturally, just born that way.
Had nothing to do with, I'd love to say I had an influence, just born with strong character, Tells the truth, just all the basics.
Immediately went off and got herself a job without any prompting, as soon as she was old enough to do it, to help pay her expenses because she doesn't get everything for free.
And just total high character individual, high initiative, the whole package.
And of course being a certain age, You're worried about how you'll do in the world?
And about once every two weeks I have to have this conversation.
Look around you.
Just look around.
There are very few people who have anything you have in terms of character.
You have good education.
The whole package.
So that's the story I'd be telling a black teenager If there was one in my life that needed some advice, just look around you.
You're not competing with much.
It has nothing to do with black or white or male or female.
There's just not much competition in 2013.
So if you want to be the best one in whatever category, your odds are basically 100%.
All you have to do is want it.
Well, you have to decide.
Not wanting it is not enough.
You have to decide that you'll do the things that put you in that top 20%, but it's not hard.
All right.
I saw there's some data out.
There's a very clever and persuasive Moving video of the percentage of military suicides.
And it starts out as a pie graph, and then it's animated over time.
So you see, as the years go by, the part of the pie that's the suicides seems to keep getting bigger.
And you're like, what?
Why are suicides in the military so high?
And worse, why are they getting bigger?
And Unfortunately, I couldn't let that stay.
I couldn't let that go.
Because nowhere on the pie chart did I have the raw numbers.
It was just percentages.
Now, do you remember the rule?
Here's the data rule.
If you're looking at data in the news, if they show you the percentage of something without the raw numbers, it's propaganda.
And the reverse.
If they show you raw numbers, but they very clearly leave out percentages of how important this is as a percentage, that's propaganda.
So if you see either one of them without the other, percentages without raw, or raw data without the percentages, that's propaganda.
That's brainwashing.
And that's what this was.
Now, Was it also telling you that there's a problem?
Absolutely.
I'm not arguing with the general statement that suicides are alarmingly high in the military.
That's a given.
But whether or not they've moved into alarming territory is hard to say.
Now, I don't want to mock a specific person, so I'll only tell you their job title.
So in response to me saying this, that either the percentages or the raw data, if you leave it out, it's propaganda, somebody who is a medical doctor, according to their profile, suggested that maybe the reason that the suicides go up after a period of battle is that because the PTSD is high.
So that, you know, you've got a battle, you expect maybe there's high suicides when there's a war going on, but when a war winds down, suicides are high, and the doctor speculated that maybe PTSD is part of it.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Do you know what the other reason that there would be higher percentage of suicides when the war is over?
What would be another reason that to be a higher percentage of deaths and suicide, not raw numbers, but percentage, when the fighting is over?
Okay, am I really gonna have to explain this to you?
Oh my God.
I'm sorry.
Oh God.
I really have to explain this, don't I?
No, it's my math.
When the war is over, something like zero people die from getting shot.
So that part of the pie shrinks to zero.
But the suicides are relatively constant no matter what's going on, because it has more to do with individuals than what they're doing.
So your percentage of suicides looks like it's high only because the number of people getting shot went to zero.
Now, are there other things going on, such as PTSD?
Probably.
Probably.
Guilt from the war?
Maybe.
There's all kinds of things going on.
But if you don't understand the most basic math, that if you take out a whole bunch of data from the pie, the pie will change, even if the data on the thing that looks like it's now a big part of the pie was exactly the same.
I shouldn't Now, here's the lesson from this.
Look at the comments that you saw from your fellow citizens, and how many of them immediately knew, oh, it's just because fewer people are shot.
How many of you knew that immediately?
And how many of you missed it?
Do you see how easy it is to fool the public?
Yeah.
A lot of people are fooled, and we're talking about the most well-informed In my opinion, my live stream crowd is the most well-informed about spotting bullshit in the news, because it's all we do.
We talk about how to spot it every day.
If you miss this one, just keep in your mind, it's not because you're dumb.
This is intentionally misleading because it works.
I mean, they know it works.
So it's easy to fool people.
Even people who are well informed and fairly savvy about how they get fooled.
So this one should be shocking to you if it fooled you.
Because it's such a basic trick.
Always look for percentages without raw data and vice versa.
All right.
But that said, are there not a hundred reasons why military suicides should be higher than the average?
You'd expect it, right?
Here's some obvious reasons.
There's more suicide in general everywhere.
So it's just a subset of everywhere.
There is more fentanyl, maybe.
Fentanyl, maybe it looks like suicide sometimes.
I don't know.
Could be in the numbers.
What about the selection process?
It's a volunteer army.
Volunteer military.
If you have a volunteer military, what would you expect about the mix of people who are joining?
Number one, males have more suicide than women.
That's correct, right?
Men have, like, way more suicide than women.
So to the extent that the military is mostly men, The percentage of suicide in the military should be five times the average.
Or whatever it is, but it's a lot.
Men are way more suicidal than women.
What else?
As you said, PTSD.
PTSD.
I can tell you for sure that although I consider myself mentally tough, I don't consider myself mentally tough for something that would happen in an actual military conflict.
I think I know myself well enough to know I would be permanently damaged by that, even if I survived physically.
Very much like the October 7th attacks.
The people who were near the violence but maybe didn't personally get hurt.
There's still PTSD forever, right?
So I know it would affect me, so that's no surprise.
And then how about the more obvious thing?
Military members have ready access to weapons.
Right?
Even after being in the military, there's a pretty high gun ownership rate because they're comfortable around guns.
So if you have guns readily available and you're having that bad day, that's a pretty bad combination.
So you would expect them to be higher.
And let me be very careful about what I say next.
So I want to make sure this part doesn't get lost.
I do think it's a crisis.
It's super alarming.
I'm just saying that when you're looking at it, make sure that you have all the moving parts in your head.
All right.
Bidenomics.
So we're watching as the latest attack on the country, I guess, from the Democrats, is that misinformation about the economy is the latest threat to democracy.
And so the Democrats, the Biden supporters specifically, are trying to tell us that the economy is good, we just don't realize it because we're poorly informed.
And once we're well informed, we would understand that we're not paying more.
Oh, I guess we are paying more at the store.
So I guess it looks like Bidenomics is trying to make a distinction between, do you have a job?
Yes.
That's good.
Got a job.
Now, to be fair, I've told you for a long time that as long as employment is good, you're going to be okay.
And I stand by that.
But everybody can see that the prices are way higher.
100% of human beings eat food.
We all eat food.
And food is wildly higher, and it's obvious.
You could not miss it.
We all use gas.
Yeah, maybe it came down a little bit, not as much as it could have been.
So I'm pretty sure everybody feels it.
Pretty sure everybody does.
But the Bidenomics is, no, you don't see it.
It's fine.
So now we have at least three different things that Democrats are gaslighting us with.
Now, remember I used to complain all the time when people said that they would complain about gaslighting from Republicans or Trump.
And I would say, that's not gaslighting.
You know, that's just persuasion.
Persuasion is not gaslighting.
And propaganda is not gaslighting.
Not necessarily one-to-one.
Yeah, they can be connected.
But gaslighting is very specific.
Gaslighting is telling you that you can't believe your own eyes and your own experience.
That's completely different.
It's a subset, but it's different than persuasion, which is you know people are persuading you and you understand the concept.
But telling you that you don't see something you see It's gaslighting.
It's not just persuasion.
It's persuasion with almost the intention of making you insane and not believe what you see about anything.
So now we're seeing that Biden and his gang are making us believe the economy is better than it is.
Gaslighting.
That the border is secure.
We're literally watching people streaming across the border of the cities and they're like, border secure, yep, all good, no problems at all.
Now, some of that is based on a trick of language.
Here's how my Mayorkas can say the border is secure.
There is an argument for it.
It's just a bullshit argument.
Here's the argument.
The people who come in and then we process them, And then we say, come back for your court hearing, and then we release them into the country, that is a secure system.
Do you know why?
Because it's operating exactly as designed.
He's operating within the existing rules of the country, that if you say you're here for asylum, we don't know how to check it right away, so we give you this court date, this way in the future, And then you get in the country, and you probably stay.
Now, to most ordinary people, we would call that an insecure border.
But if you're a bureaucrat, you say, well, wait a minute.
Congress gave me the rules of how to secure a border, and then I followed the rules for securing the border.
I didn't make the rules.
Congress told me what to do to secure the border.
And then I secured the border exactly as I was asked to do.
So it's a secure border.
But if you say, are millions of people getting across the border that you wish would not?
Well, that's a different question.
Oh yes, millions of people are coming into the border who are not citizens and they do stay and we can't get them out.
But it's a secure border because the process by which they come in is the actual process the country is approved.
I feel like that's what they're trying to do.
Now, suppose you say, but Scott, Scott, Scott, you're only talking about the ones who apply for asylum.
We still have video of people streaming across the border in the insecure places.
How can you say that's secure?
Here's how.
If you're a bureaucrat, oh, the illegal part is about the same as it has always been, even under Trump.
And under Trump, You said you had a secure border, didn't you?
Didn't you?
I mean, Trump keeps saying that when he was in charge, he secured the border.
So, if we have the same situation, you know, there's a bunch of, there's a legal part, that's not insecure because that's legally following the law.
And then there's this other part that's completely illegal, we agree, it's completely illegal, but no more than when Trump was in charge and you called it a secure border.
So, So, I guess that's secure.
Now, I think that's the argument.
But they don't even give you the respect of explaining why they say it's secure.
They just say it's secure when you're watching people scream across the border, and it obviously isn't.
And then the third area, besides the economy and the border, is Biden's age.
His age.
They're actually telling us he's fine.
Who was it?
Newsom said he would take Biden at age 100 over Trump or something.
Right?
Now that's clearly, that's the most clear gaslighting you'll ever see.
Him?
What do you mean?
He's fine.
I don't really see the problem.
His brain is working like a well-oiled clock.
Okay.
Now, I ask the following question.
Do Republicans do something like that?
Now, I know Republicans will lie.
I know Republicans can be incorrect.
I know that they can be, you know, sometimes crazy.
I know that sometimes they can be George Santos.
I'm not defending Republican politicians.
But do they do this?
Do they ever say the thing you can obviously see doesn't exist?
I don't know.
I suppose if you're a Democrat, you'd say, well, what about January 6th?
They say that wasn't an insurrection.
Because it wasn't!
Because it wasn't.
Yeah.
All right.
All right, I'm just going to say something out loud because I think I can now say it.
There's something I've been holding back, because you don't want to say things that would incite violence.
Because I never want to do that.
I do not want to incite violence.
So I'm going to simply observe a situation.
There's nothing in what I'm going to say that's a recommendation or encouragement.
You can note that something is dangerous, Without encouraging it.
So I'm not going to encourage it.
Just going to note it.
And it's just three words.
Trump is unjailable.
Just let that sink in.
Regardless of what the legal system decides on, Trump is Unjailable.
Now, can we all agree on something?
I don't need to fucking explain that.
Agreed?
Nothing else needs to be said, right?
Nothing else needs to be said.
That glitched.
YouTube just glitched.
Wow.
Now let me say it again, because I don't want to be kicked off of any social media.
I don't encourage violence under any conditions.
You know, short of immediate self-defense.
So I don't recommend anything.
I'm just describing a situation.
He is un-jailable.
That's done.
Unless they find something on him that doesn't look like absolute political bullshit, Now, could they cripple his business?
Probably.
I don't know that the public would have the same reaction to a business issue, but if you put his physical body in jail, not gonna happen.
Just not gonna happen.
That's all I'm gonna say.
Just not gonna happen.
All right.
That had to be said.
Bill Maher, talking about Elon, said this.
He said, what was his, he said, he said that Elon Musk was testing his patience he said that Elon Musk was testing his patience because he may not be an anti-Semite, but when someone tweets what they tweeted, and he tweets, quote, "You've spoken the actual truth," it looks really anti-Semitic.
I mean, come on.
Says Bill Maher saying that he might not be anti-Semitic, but what he said looks anti-Semitic, so come on.
What's going on here?
Now my take on this is that you've got two people in this situation, Elon Musk and Bill Maher, and I'd like to point out that one of those two people is a fucking idiot and the other one is building rockets to Mars, just in case you want to get the lay of the land.
Kind of a useful distinction.
But literally no one, and by the way Dave Rubin tried to correct Maher on this on the show, but literally no one, including Bill Maher, believes that Musk was talking about all Jewish people.
When he was complaining.
And he later clarified it was about the ADL.
And the ADL has been the subject of much of his criticisms.
It's obvious that he was talking about the ADL and maybe some other folks who were like-minded.
In no way was he making a sweeping statement about Jewish Americans or Jewish people in general.
100% of everybody knows that.
We all know it.
Why pretend something else is happening?
What is the point of pretending when you know it's not true?
It's just the weirdest thing.
And we don't really expect Bill Maher of all people to complain about something that was, wait for it, politically incorrect.
What Elon Musk said Was not technically untrue.
There are groups within the Jewish community who have a certain point of view, just as there are groups within the Jewish community who have the opposite point of view.
Everybody understands what he meant.
It was just politically incorrect because he said it in a way that could be interpreted in the worst possible way.
So of all people, Bill Maher essentially complaining about political incorrectness.
What's up with that?
What is up with that?
It's amazing.
Well, a Gallup poll finds that although Americans in general approve of Israel's action in Gaza, that there is much disagreement among the younger Americans.
So there's a big difference between older and younger Americans on Israel.
And you know that's TikTok, right?
What else would it be?
It could be also college education, but I don't think this effect is limited to college.
You're saying young people, so it's probably pre-college as well.
So do you think TikTok is the main reason for this?
I do.
Where do young people get their news?
It's not from ABC News.
It must be TikTok.
So I'm pretty sure this is a TikTok effect, but you know what's the great thing?
I finally figured out why they named it TikTok.
Hey America, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok.
Do you get it yet?
Yeah.
TikTok is a fucking time bomb.
It's since they're destroying your country and you don't know it until it's too late and it all blows up in your face.
TikTok is named exactly right.
It looks like the comments stopped on locals.
Might be a bug.
Can't tell.
Anyway.
Yeah.
So Bill Ackman was noting that, on the X platform, that one of the most respected technology investors in the world, he calls him, a guy named David Frankel, is talking about the TikTok risk.
And he's basically saying, if David Frankel thinks there's a TikTok risk, then you should take that seriously.
And I say, in addition, if Bill Ackman says there's a risk, you should take that seriously.
Because now you have two non-political people, they have no contact with politics directly, Bill Ackman and David Frankel, who would be two of the most respected business minds, who are saying pretty directly, I think, TikTok's an inappropriate, outsized risk.
So I use a little persuasion of my own, here's a little persuasion lesson for you.
If you say TikTok is super dangerous, do people get excited enough to act on it?
No.
No.
Because something's dangerous never gets us to move.
You need more than it's dangerous, because we're in a world where everything's dangerous, so it's hard to differentiate.
You know, what do you work on?
You've got limited time.
So just being dangerous according to smart people isn't going to make anybody do anything.
It's not enough.
But I ramped it up a little bit, and this won't be enough either, but it's in the right direction.
And I said that Congress must be owned by China to some degree, because the case for banning TikTok is both obvious and critical to the survival of the United States.
So the first thing I'm doing is ramping up the perceived risk, because TikTok is an existential risk.
It's not a risk of, oh, some people will get the wrong idea.
No, we're not talking about that.
We're talking about the end of the republic.
It is absolutely that much of a risk.
And so I said, TikTok is a bigger risk to America than Russia, climate change, Iran, and the next pandemic combined.
Now, if there's an actual nuclear war, That could be worse.
But the actual risk or the chances of a nuclear war are really low.
The odds that TikTok will destroy America are 100%.
Let me say that again.
The odds of us starting a nuclear war are really, really low.
But I would agree, if it ever happened, that would be the worst outcome.
It's just that the odds of it are almost vanishingly small.
There's no way Russia wants to nuke us when the end of the Ukraine conflict is kind of obvious.
At this point, everybody knows how that ends.
So if you know how the war ends, the risk of nuclear conflict is completely off the table.
And it's obvious that the Middle East is not heading toward a nuclear confrontation.
It's obvious that the next pandemic will probably be bullshit.
Right?
And what else did I say?
Oh, climate change.
And climate change is likely something we'll mitigate and figure out how to handle just fine.
But TikTok is in motion.
It's not like a potential thing.
It's in motion.
It's got a pit bull grip on America, and it's fucking killing us.
It's slow.
It's a time bomb.
TikTok, TikTok.
But it's ticking.
You can't say it's not ticking.
It's literally TikTok.
So if you don't understand that it's worse, Then climate change, Russia, Iran, and the next pandemic, then you don't understand what's going on.
And the only reason Congress hasn't banned it, that I can think of, is that too many members are bought off by China money.
There's no other explanation.
Not only is there no other explanation, but nobody's offered one.
Think about that.
It's not that there's no other explanation.
Nobody's even tried.
Because they say things like, oh, data security is not such a big problem.
That's not an explanation.
Because the influence is the big problem, not the data security.
So if you're arguing about the data security, you're avoiding the problem.
You're not arguing it.
That's what avoiding the problem looks like.
So there's not even anybody who actually addresses the problem.
And says we should keep it anyway.
The closest you can get to that is Vivek, who says, all right, I'm going to use it because, you know, it's the only way to reach young people.
But he also thinks, you know, I believe he thinks we might be better off without it.
I assume that's true, right?
Like he's going to use it because he can't kill it, which actually does make sense.
But he should kill it as soon as he's president, if he gets a chance.
I think you would, by the way.
Just a guess.
There's some information now that says that Google was serving up brand search ads through porn sites and other racist and everything.
So apparently Google search is doing a worse job than X for keeping their brands away from bad content.
What's going on?
It's exactly what you think it is.
It's exactly what you think it is.
There was never a problem with content and ads being matched on X. It was always an attack on free speech.
It was always an attack on free speech.
It was never about... It's not even about Elon Musk, except that he's, you know, a powerful force for free speech.
But it's about free speech.
They just can't stand it.
All right.
A user on X called Maze, M-A-Z-E, a good account to follow by the way, tells us that the ADL once had no problem with Twitter, back when it was Twitter.
So in 2018, just five years ago, a little bit more, The ADL analyzed a year of Twitter, when it was Twitter, for anti-Semitic tweets.
And they found a lot.
They found a lot.
They found 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets by 3 million unique handles in the English language.
But they said this report is not about bashing Twitter.
They suggested no boycotts.
They just wanted you to know it's out there.
Yeah.
Just want you to know about it.
Does that seem a little different?
Now, in 2018, what did we know about Twitter?
We knew that it was a cesspool of FBI and Democrat finger on the scale, and that it was the opposite of free speech.
It was the opposite of free speech.
It was literally controlled speech, and one group was being highly censored.
But under that conditions, you know, a little bit of anti-Semitism?
Ah, there's a little bit everywhere, really.
I mean, who doesn't have a little bit of anti-Semitism?
That's the ADL.
So the ADL trying to pretend to be a credible organization, as opposed to obviously just an attack dog for the Democrats, who also do some good stuff.
By the way, you know, the ADL's main mission?
Excellent.
Yeah.
Protect Jewish people from unfair discrimination.
Good job.
But it's obviously more than that as well.
All right.
Speaking of Israel, Israel's UN ambassador is slamming Soros for donating to pro-Hamas groups.
Huh.
The UN ambassador from Israel is slamming Soros for being anti-Israel.
You know, when people say that George Soros is doing bad things, Don't we usually call that anti-Semitic?
If you criticize George Soros, you're sort of automatically anti-Semitic, aren't you?
I've been told that for a long time.
So I'm wondering if MSNBC will cover this story, and will they accuse Israel of being anti-Semitic?
Because they just accused... Now, I'm sure it wasn't long ago That if you criticize the ADL or George Soros, you are automatically anti-Semitic.
Do you know who else criticizes the ADL and George Soros?
Israel.
Israel.
Now, Israel doesn't criticize everything the ADL does, but there are members in Israel who have been quite critical of the organization.
So, are they anti-Semitic?
Against themselves?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Now I ask you this question.
When the UN ambassador to Israel criticizes George Soros for funding pro-Hamas entities, what should that trigger in the news?
That should trigger a story, right?
Because I saw the story.
But do you think MSNBC We'll get Alex Soros on to explain why his money is going to pro-Hamas organizations?
Let me take a fucking guess.
How about no?
How about he will not be invited on?
To explain why his money is going toward prosecutors who are letting people out of jail for the minor crimes, and destroying the cities, and pro-immigration beyond what we want, and pro-Hamas organizations.
Here's my prediction.
There will not be one news entity that successfully gets him on air to ask him tough questions.
And he's the most important person in the country.
Because his funding has the most impact.
Because they're really good at funding things that make a difference.
They're very capable.
Whatever it is they're doing.
Yeah.
So that's all you need to do.
That's the dog not barking.
If you never see the press interview Alex Soros, you don't have a free press.
And if they interview him and they don't ask him any important questions, it's going to be more like, so what do you think about the Ukraine war?
And he'll be like, I think they should settle it.
It's going to be something like that.
You know, just complete bullshit.
But now I understand why Fox News or Breitbart can't get Alex Oros to sit down for an interview.
Presumably you would just say no because it would feel like a hippies.
But why can't the left get him to sit down?
Why can't CNN get him to sit down for an interview and ask real questions?
So here's a good Jake Tapper question.
Jake Tapper?
I'm pretty sure Jake Tapper is not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.
Say what you will about your Jake Tappers.
He's not anti-Semitic.
I'm pretty sure of that.
Don't you think he would have a personal interest, which would match the national interest, which is ideal, to get Alex Soros to explain why he's acting in a way that even Israel doesn't like?
You don't think Jake Tapper should do that?
Do you think he would be allowed, even if he had the instinct to do that, do you think he'd be allowed to put that on TV?
And actually ask the really hard questions?
I think not allowed.
I don't know.
I mean, this would be a baseless accusation I'm making, because it's just pure speculation.
But the fact that we've never seen it, and it's been the most obvious thing that should be on the news for, now, years.
For years, it's the most obvious thing you should do.
Get the soroses on the air, ask them what the hell's going on.
So, we'll see.
And then we have a report that Israel has destroyed 500 of an estimated 800 tunnels in Gaza.
Let me ask you this.
How do we know how many people were in those 800 tunnels or the 500?
So they blew up 500 tunnels.
How many of them were empty?
And do they make sure there's no, let's say, hostages in them first?
Is it possible they've already killed most or all of the remaining hostages?
Because that's the obvious risk of war.
Yeah, there's no way to know.
Because the Hamas would still say they were alive, you know, to use them as a bargaining chip even if they weren't.
But how do you do a death estimate in Hamas if you're blowing up tunnels?
If you don't know who's in the tunnel, or do they clear them all before they blow them up and all they're doing is making sure the tunnel can't be used?
Or are they blowing them up with people inside them?
Because that's the safest way to kill them.
I don't know.
But if they blew up 500 tunnels, I would say that there's no way we'll ever have anything like an accurate death count.
How could you?
I mean, I'm not even sure the Hamas knows who was underground and who escaped and, you know, who's hiding in southern Gaza and who dressed as a woman and got out.
How would they know?
I can imagine the Hamas does not have good communication among its various parts at this point because the communication would be too easily discovered.
They're chopping up and burying cars.
Yeah, I saw that.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, are there any stories I have not covered in my amazing one hour of the tour of the news and everything you needed to see?
Persuasion and propaganda.
Yeah.
You know, I do have a lot of curiosity about how Israel always agrees to give up like ten of their people for one of their people.
Because there are lots of hostage negotiations that happen.
Why does Israel always do that?
I have a hypothesis.
One is that it works.
One is that maybe they arrest far more people than they really needed to just so they have some people to bargain with.
That would be terrible.
But value signaling, it might be that.
It might be that they legitimately think their people are worth, certainly their people are worth more to them than their enemies are worth.
Yeah.
Hamas leader is called Sin War.
The leader of Hamas, his name is literally Sin War.
Really?
Tucker on Gottfeld.
Yeah, I did notice that Greg is pushing the envelope a little bit lately.
I hope that works out for him.
Conor McGregor, we've talked about him.
Have we done it all?
Give us more of the lay of the land, like with Bill Maher and Musk.
That's a big question.
I don't know if I can do that on demand.
How long before Greg gets the boot at Fox?
I don't think he will.
Because here's the thing.
Tucker knew that he was saying things that could get him fired and so he wasn't surprised what happens.
When I observe Greg, I think he chooses his spots better.
He says provocative things, but they don't seem to cross the line.
And also you can tell when he's just pushing buttons.
That's part of his job.
Tweaking people, pushing buttons.
And that looks different than what Tucker was doing.
Asked me if I'd buy a Cybertruck.
Well, here's the thing.
One of the things that I keep hearing is that the Cybertruck looks way more amazing in person than it does in pictures.
You've heard that too, right?
That you can't appreciate it in a picture?
Now if that's the case, I haven't been close to one in person.
So I don't yet have an opinion because I'd want to be close to one and I'd want to drive one.
My external opinion goes like this.
To me it feels, this is a terrible analogy, but it feels a little like the Hummer used to be, you know, before gas prices were too high, if somebody would get a Hummer.
It was because it was just so cool!
And I think the Cybertruck is that.
It's like, if you're a vehicle person, you know, if you're really a car person, this would be the one to have.
I mean, if you were going to add one vehicle to your, you know, three sport car collection, you would have to add this.
Because it'd be the Porsche.
It'd be the 911, or 911, what do you call the Porsche?
It beat it in a test.
So if you're a car person, you just have to own this vehicle, I think.
But I'm not a car person.
I want one vehicle that does what I need to do.
Now when I look at it, it looks like there's poor visibility.
And that's number one on my list.
My number one things are easy to park, And good visibility with at least cameras and ideally through windows.
Because those tend to be the things that bother you most in the day-to-day.
Can you park it?
Is it too wide?
I don't know how wide it is.
So, I generally would not buy the first production run of a car that radical.
But, if I were a collector, I would.
I mean, if I had the money and I really cared about cars, I probably would.
I'd strongly be biased toward getting one.
But for me, it would be a little too showy.
So let me tell you what public figures have to worry about.
When I first made money doing Dilbert,
I'd been driving used cars for a while, but when I got my first good car, like an expensive car, it was a BMW M3, and it was brand new, and in the first day, somebody keyed the entire side of the car, fuck you, from the back bumper across both doors and the front fender.
Now, at the time that happened, I was working like three jobs.
I was writing a book, doing Dilbert, doing my day job.
I couldn't get it fixed.
So imagine this experience.
I'd waited all my life.
For the first time to be able to buy a car that I really wanted.
I'd never done that before.
Yeah, I did what everybody else does.
I bought the car I could afford that was good enough, and that was usually a used car.
So the first time I could buy a car that like, you know, you could feel it.
It's like, ah, you sit in the car.
You're like, oh man, like this is good.
The experience was completely ruined because for the first Two months, that's how long it took me to find time to take it to the shop.
For two months, everywhere I went, feeling good about my car, people would pull up to me on the other lane, and they'd be pointing like I didn't know.
And I'd be like, I know, I know.
I'm sad about it, but I can't do anything about it right now.
I know.
As I'm driving my expensive sport car.
more.
But time goes by and a number of years later I got a new car.
It was also an M3 and so I got a redo.
I finally got a redo so I could experience You know, the first week of owning a car that really means something to you.
That really speaks to your whole body.
So I finally get my new M3.
I'm still like, I got PTSD from getting keyed on my very first day.
And I take it to the gas station.
Park it at the gas station.
Go to fill it.
And I got rear-ended.
At the gas station.
Parked.
In front of a pump.
Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever been rear-ended at a gas station?
It's only happened to me once.
It was the first day I had that car.
First fucking day.
So that's two BMW M3s in a row.
They were effectively, physically destroyed the first day.
So, I never really got that sports car.
Anyway, the point of it was, you asked would I get a Cybertruck.
If you're a public figure, you don't want to get a Cybertruck unless you're going to drive it around your neighborhood and hide it in your garage.
You don't want to take the Cybertruck to buy groceries.
It's it basically unless you just want people to hate you and to think about how they can destroy your stuff Yeah, it's just basically it paints a target on your back so my criteria For buying a car is it has to be safe.
You know safety first has to have function but on top of safety and function I Don't go for thrill Safety function and nondescript.
Those are the three things.
Safety, function, nondescript.
I want to park in the parking lot and nobody notices.
So my X5 does that because where I live there's a lot of cars in that category.
Your car has to align with your neighborhood.
Correct.
Your car should align with your neighborhood.
But I can't imagine taking a Cybertruck and parking it at an airport.
I don't know.
And I get that it's hard to key it, but there must be something you can do to it that's bad.
All right.
By the time you get your Cybertruck, there will be many on the road.
I wouldn't rule it out.
I'd say it's on my short list, but I'd have to know a lot more about it.
And I'll have to see how people like it the first year.
I'm just assuming there will be a number of minor recalls and stuff, because it's a new vehicle.
