Episode 2340 CWSA 01/01/24 2024 Starts With Stories Of Brainwashing, Corruption, Humorous Stupidity
My new book Reframe Your Brain, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/3bwr9fm8
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Content:
Politics, Sodium-Ion Battery Volkswagen, Smartphone Anxiety, Sense Of Purpose, Incentive Driven Behavior, Helen Keller Suspicions, Claudine Gay, Laura Loomer, Contingent Election, Money Laundering 101, FTX Allegations, Tesla Optimus Robot, President Biden, The Atlantic, Tucker Carlson, President Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, NBC News, Lack Of Diversity, Israel-Saudi Relations, IRGC Syria Withdrawal, 2024 Outlook, Scott Adams
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Good morning everybody and welcome to 2024 and also the show that's the most amazing thing you're going to see today because most of the other people are on vacation, but not me.
No, every day.
You're like clockwork.
It's called dependability.
If you'd like to take this experience up to a level that you can barely understand, All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip It Happens.
Let's have a cell phone.
Or as Jill Biden likes to say about Joe, and ice cream.
And ice cream.
Well, let's talk about the news.
Mickey Mouse is officially, well, only the 1928 version of Mickey Mouse, is officially off of copyright protection.
So if you want to use Mickey Mouse, only the black and white original, don't use the modern one.
I guess you can now.
It took approximately 7.6 seconds For somebody to use AI to make themselves their own Mickey Mouse animation.
You can see Brian Ramelli's already tweeting about that.
That didn't take long.
Well, feel bad for Japan.
They had a 7.6 earthquake with some minor tsunamis.
7.6?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that bigger than any earthquake in America ever?
Or at least since we've been keeping track of them?
We've never had anything like that in America, have we?
No?
Somebody says yes?
No?
Oh, in Alaska, somebody says.
Alaska was bigger.
OK.
1906.
Could we really measure it in 1906?
Could we?
Maybe.
Alaska had it at 9.3.
9.3.
Wow.
Wow.
Holy cow.
No, I don't know who that is.
All right.
Well, I saw the videos and I didn't see, did not see damage that looked like 7.6 damage, but it's pretty bad.
But I'm going to scratch that off my list of places to move to.
You know what scares me more than just about anything?
Being on any kind of an island nation that has natural disasters.
That's the problem with Hawaii.
You've got your tsunami risk, and you've got your volcano risk, and you've got your North Korea's going to nuke you risk.
Where the hell do you go?
I know it's more psychological than real, but the thought of being on the island of Japan when there's a tsunami and a 7.6 earthquake, it just feels uncomfortable.
Santorini blew up?
No it didn't.
Did it?
All right.
There's apparently a new car Chinese car company backed by Volkswagen.
There's a new car coming out this month that will not have a lithium-ion battery.
So there's now going to be a real electric car that has a different technology for the battery.
Uh, which is sort of a really big deal.
It's a sodium ion battery.
So it's got some disadvantages.
It's lower density.
So you have fewer miles, but apparently it operates better in the cold.
So I don't think there are any, there are few things that would be more positive going into 2024 than competing battery technology, especially if one of them does not require lithium.
So that's a small story that might be a big story.
Could be a big deal.
Well, let's talk about backwards science.
Backwards science.
A science that we might have the causation backwards.
And this time, I am guilty.
That's right.
I have made the mistake of reversing my causation.
Maybe.
I'm going to give myself partial credit Because I think the causation works both ways, but here's the question.
Do you think that smartphone use makes teenagers more depressed and more anxious?
Yes or no?
Does smartphone use make teenagers more depressed and more anxious?
Well, I've been saying it's obvious that it does.
But I saw a note on X from a doctor, Val Zudons.
Who says there's a sleight of hand in the causality?
You have my attention, doctor.
What are you trying to say?
And the doctor thinks that it's just as likely that the causation goes the other way.
That if you are anxious and depressed, you might reach for your phone as part of your relief for your anxiousness and your depression.
How many of you would accept that that is likely true?
Being depressed and anxious makes you reach for your phone, as opposed to reaching out to human beings to spend time?
Yeah, I think so.
So I'm going to accept this causation direction, but I think it's got to be both.
To me, it's obvious it's both.
Right?
Wouldn't you agree?
But, you know, once you hear this, you say to yourself, yeah, that's probably right.
It probably does reinforce itself.
But I think also it's causing it.
So I would guess it's both.
But it's a little bit backward science, so I'll take that criticism.
I saw one commenter called The Jiggler, just a person on the X platform.
And I won't use his language, but he's suggesting that young men are less attracted to young women.
And they have less to work for and therefore they're not happy because there's nothing to work for.
What do you think of that?
Do you think that young men are saying to themselves, well, I don't really have the goal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When I was a young man, it seemed obvious that everybody needed to grow up and find themselves a good woman and get married.
And, you know, we were, we were all sort of, You know, brainwashed into thinking that was the model.
Now, that also gave a sense of purpose.
I felt that as a male in America, I had a clear purpose.
You are supposed to get a job and contribute.
You are supposed to get married and be a productive part of the society, etc.
But, all of those good intentions How did I compress those good intentions into my teenager mind?
All that stuff about being a good citizen and getting a job.
How did I think about it as a teenager?
Well, what I thought about was, I sure would like to be worthy of having a really good mate.
I probably used more coarse language in my teenage mind, but you know what I'm talking about.
I thought that I had to make myself into a creature that could be worthy of having a family or a spouse.
And so that was like a mission.
I knew what to do every day when I woke up.
I'd wake up and I'd be like, okay, am I learning something today?
Because I'm going to need to learn something.
Am I getting healthier?
Am I exercising?
Am I improving my body?
Did I, you know, work on the things I need to work on?
Did I figure out how to talk to people?
So I always felt like I knew exactly what I needed to do.
But, just to explore this point made by the jiggler, he calls himself, do you think there's something to the point that if you remove the incentive, it changes the behavior of the people?
It always does.
Do you think that the incentive for teenagers is less?
Because when they look at the real world, they're not seeing much that they like.
Compared to what we did as, you know, when I was a kid.
And when they look at porn, they like it a lot.
And they look at their phone, they like it a lot.
But human beings are worth less because they made themselves worth less.
You know, you see a lot of the people on social media.
I'm not sure I agree with this, but it's becoming a common theme.
That the men are saying, and again, this is not my opinion.
I'm describing what men on social media are saying.
So the people who propose that they are experts in relationships, or they act like they are, they say that the women are degrading their value by having lots of what they call body count.
In other words, lots of sexual partners.
How many of the men watching this would agree with the somewhat sexist view that the value of a woman goes down the more sexual partners she has had before you meet with her?
Now, I'm not going to agree with that or disagree with it.
I'm just going to tell you what the comments are.
Almost all yes.
It's a wall of yes with a sprinkling of no's.
So if it's a wall of yes, I'm going to separate from the question of whether that's a valid or fair or, you know, woke opinion.
I'm not going to deal with whether it's true or false.
I will simply note it's a common opinion.
It did not exist, because it didn't need to, when I was a kid.
So if you take the female population and you remove its value to the young men, what would be the effect on the mental health of the young men who basically wake up every day with one purpose in life?
Being valuable to that class of people.
You wake up and there's no point.
What's the point?
What would be the point of exercising and being healthy and making a lot of money?
What are you chasing?
You're not chasing anything.
So I'm just sort of spitballing here.
I don't want to get into the question of whether having a lot of sex partners makes you less valuable.
I feel that's a little creepy and maybe none of my business and I don't know what the science is on that so I'm not going to weigh into that.
But you can see that it's a common opinion.
Now, if men see the value of the potential women they would be chasing as much lower, they see that the value they can add to the woman is much lower than it used to be, because a woman can get a job and buy a gun and protect herself.
And if you see that porn went from being kind of interesting to all men to really addictive, because now they can give you exactly what you want.
It's not this generic stuff of the old days.
These two dumpy people humping it down on a black and white film.
Now you can see exactly what you want.
It's a big difference.
So it makes sense that mating and our entire social structure is being ripped apart by these modern forces.
No big surprise.
But let's talk about Sam Britton.
You know Sam Britton?
He was Biden's He used to be the top nuclear expert in the administration.
But he was accused of stealing luggage from three different airport carousels.
But the news was that apparently he's still free.
So stealing luggage three separate times does not put you in jail, at least right away.
But here's what I feel bad about.
Sam Britton is going to have trouble forming personal relationships in the future.
You know why, right?
Too much baggage.
Yeah, that's your first dad joke of 2024.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Too much baggage.
Well, there's a fake news story about Bill Clinton being unmasked as Doe 36.
He's mentioned more than 50 times in the new Jeffrey Epstein document dump.
So that's bad for Bill Clinton, right?
Because he's named 50 times in the new Epstein document dump.
So, wow, 50 times.
That's a lot.
It's fake news.
You know why it's fake news?
Most of the references are people talking about him.
It's not anything he did.
It makes it sound like he did 50 things that have to do with Epstein.
No.
There were simply people who mentioned him 50 times in various contexts.
That was it.
So do I think that Bill Clinton is totally innocent from all suspicious activity on Steam Island?
No.
No, I don't know one way or the other.
But I will tell you that the news is designed to make you think there's more there than they found.
What's there?
I don't know.
But this document dump added absolutely nothing to our knowledge of Bill Clinton and Epstein.
Everybody agree?
If you've looked at the article, is my take correct?
That there was literally nothing added to our knowledge of Bill Clinton about anything?
I don't think it added anything.
All right, we'll see.
Maybe more.
Would you like to feel better about the future?
You know, we always tell all these stories about the children of this generation are old, destroyed, and bad, and blah, blah, blah.
All right.
Here's something I heard from a young person yesterday.
And I want you to just feel how encouraging this is.
Your first reaction might be, well, that's not very encouraging, Scott.
But let us sink in.
Just let us take care of this from a young person I overheard yesterday.
Quote, that whole Helen Keller story sounds suspicious.
What do you think?
Come on, that's the best thing you've heard all year.
Well, it's early.
How much do you love the fact that we finally got to the point where a young person Who maybe is not completely steeped in what's new in the news, but even a young person is completely aware that just because 100% of the media told you that Helen Keller did these things which sound miraculous and almost impossible, doesn't mean it happened.
That's it.
That's your key to the best future you could live.
I want to hear a young person say, without any prompting, without hearing a story in the media, listen to a story that sounds a little bit incredible, and say out loud, I'm not so sure that's even true.
Now, I have no idea whether the Helen Keller story is 100% true, and I don't care.
What I love is that there's a young person who heard it and said, you know what?
I'm a little bit skeptical.
Thank you.
Thank you, young people.
Maybe there's some hope.
All right.
Wall Street Journal was giving some scores to Joe Biden for his promises and how he kept them.
And they rated him on economy, immigration, foreign policy, climate, and criminal justice.
Which of those five things do you think he got the highest score on?
Well, the answer is climate.
So he only got two out of five for economy, immigration, foreign policy, and criminal justice.
But on climate, he got three stars out of five.
That's right.
On the topic that probably isn't even real, he did a little better than average.
The topics which we're pretty sure are completely real, didn't do much at all.
So there seems to be a pattern that he does really well, well, really, really well.
On topics that are completely fake.
Or could be.
Don't know.
Here's a little context from Michael Schellenberger on Harvard's president, President Gay.
So as you know, she's embattled.
Is that a good word?
Embattled.
So she said some inelegant things about Hamas and Israel and people asked her to resign.
And of course, she's hanging on.
Trying not to lose her job.
And then separately she came in under fire for what people said was plagiarism, but other people said was maybe a little bit too much duplicative work.
No, no, not any kind of plagiarism, but a little bit, maybe a little bit too duplicative, sort of, sort of thing.
But here's some background.
Harvard's president, this is from Michael Schellenberger, Harvard's president rose to power after attempting to force a black economist, Roland Fryer, out of the university on the basis of weak and poorly substantiated sexual harassment charges, when her real motivation appeared to be Fryer's research finding on racial inequality and policing, which were antithetical to woke ideology.
Oh!
Did you know that?
Now there's a little bit of A little bit of mind reading of this, to be fair, because we don't know what she was thinking.
But the interpretation based on her actions is that her real problem with this black economist, Roland Fryer, was that his work was not supporting her opinion of racial situation in the country.
So she forced him out, took the job, and made diversity hiring look like a really bad idea.
So that wasn't a good year for her.
But I didn't know about that background, that she'd been one of the factors in forcing out Roland Fryer.
But I do believe that he was forced out because his work was not popular.
That does seem fair.
So, you know, I'm saying Michael Schellenberger's doing some mind reading, but so am I. Because I think in this case, it's kind of obvious.
Could be wrong.
You don't know what people are thinking for sure, but it looks like it.
All right, Laura Loomer had a fascinating post about something called contingent elections, which I'd never heard of.
Do you know what that is?
The contingent election in the United States?
So listen to this, and I will ask you if I've got this wrong.
So there might be something I have wrong about this.
Now the trigger for even talking about this is RFK Jr.' 's campaign, which could have the effect, if he does well, of at the end of the election nobody has 270 electoral votes.
Now you need that to be president.
So what do you do if you have an election in the United States and nobody, after a few rounds, can get enough to be President, according to the Constitution.
Well, it turns out that triggers a different process called a contingent election.
And apparently, whoever is in control of the House can just sort of pick whoever they want for president.
So if the Republicans have a majority, they could, as long as they all agree, they could just sort of pick a president.
I'm not entirely sure the president has to be running for office.
Is that even a requirement?
Can the Congress pick somebody who was not even in the election?
Just randomly pick somebody from among their own ranks?
Yeah.
Well, each state gets one vote.
But it's going to depend who controls the party as well.
Well, what do you think?
So I don't know if I understand the constitutional ins and outs of this completely, but there does seem to be some non-zero chance that the election won't be what picks the president.
Maybe it's bigger than non-zero, huh?
What do you think?
Is this real?
And why are we hearing about it for the first time under Laura Loomer's account?
I feel like this would be an article in The Hill or something.
I don't know.
I feel like there's more to know about this.
So I'm going to put a tack in this story, put a tack in this one, and just assume you don't know exactly the details of this thing.
But there's something out there floating around about maybe our process could be thwarted under a certain specific set of circumstances.
Anyway.
Here's Bruce Bain, who's on the X-Platform, who gives us a lesson in what he calls Money Laundering 101.
This might be stuff you already know, but every now and then I like to remind you how it's all connected.
So it's not new news, it's just connecting old news.
Here are the things that Bruce reminds us of.
The CIA led a Ukrainian coup in 2014.
I think we know that to be true, right?
2014, the U.S.
was behind it.
So then the CIA and the U.S.
create a proxy war with Russia.
That sounds about right.
Then the U.S.
sends a huge amount of money to Zelensky.
True.
And then this next part, I need a fact check on this.
Is this true?
That Zelensky then donated Well, not donated, but invested in FDX, the big crypto scamming thing.
Did that really happen?
Did Zelensky take American money and put it into FDX as an investment?
That's true?
Well, let me read the rest.
I need a fact check on that.
I have not seen that credibly reported.
I've seen it on social media.
But if there's a credible report, Does Zelensky put money into FTX?
Can you send me that link on X?
It probably is.
I'm not saying it's not true.
I'm just saying I haven't seen that credibly reported.
Anyway, so then FTX files... FTX gives a bunch of money to politicians, and then they file for bankruptcy, and then the U.S.
dropped at least some of the charges against SPF.
Not all of them.
I don't know.
Does that whole thing look dirty to you, like it was all connected and part of a plan, or does it look like just a bunch of things that happened?
It doesn't look like a plan.
It looks like an opportunistic situation that was corrupt.
Anyway.
Some time ago, we believed that the Tesla robot called Optimus would be launched in December that just passed.
Which means it could be imminent.
Does anybody have an estimate?
I haven't seen one.
I looked for it.
Of when Tesla will launch his robot.
That's going to be this year, right?
If they were planning at the end of this last year, probably we're looking at the middle of this year if they didn't hit that target.
Tomorrow?
Maybe.
Well, Here's what's interesting.
I don't think we can understand how much that might change the world.
How quickly... Let me do a poll of the viewers here.
How many of you would buy... I'm going to put a price on it.
Does everybody know what the price of Optimus will be?
It's going to be crazy expensive, the first ones, right?
Will it be like $100,000 or $20,000?
Does anybody have any idea?
I can't imagine it would be less than $20,000.
But I don't think you can sell many if it's over 100.
Somebody says 2025.
Unquote.
Elon said 20.
Did I literally just guess the price that Elon said?
Did that just happen?
Because I don't think the first ones will be priced based on their cost.
The first ones will have to be priced based on what people will buy.
And then if they can make enough of them, maybe they can lower their cost structure.
But the first ones will just be money losers for, I don't know, a few years.
20 is the target, 20,000.
All right, let's say you could get a Optimus for $20,000, a robot.
You could use it at home for whatever you want, and you could teach it things like doing your ironing and emptying the dishwasher.
How many of you would get one in version 1.0, knowing that the software will keep improving, so it'll keep getting better?
How many would get one?
I feel like I might be version 1.1.
Maybe not 1.0?
Maybe not 1.0.
But 1.1?
If 1.0 looks good for the people who got it?
Ah, 1.1.
I might wade into that.
I would definitely want a robot walking around my house for 20k.
If it could really do chores.
You know, the other thing I would want it to do is make notes for me.
If I could just have my robot hanging around and make notes, here's what I'd love to do.
Hey robot, there's like three things I need to do today.
Can you remind me?
And it'd be nice if you just send it to the printer.
And I walk over and I take from my printer a perfectly formatted list just because I talked to my robot and then the robot sends it to the printer.
That'd be cool.
I'd want that right away.
You already have that ability?
Not perfectly formatted.
I guess that's the difference.
All right.
Did you see Joe Biden's New Year's Eve interview with Ryan Seacrest?
Oh my God.
That was cringy.
So somehow it looks like it was live, so that means that they made Biden stay up till midnight.
Do you know what Biden at midnight looks like?
The first question was something about what he's eating.
Because that's why you ask the President of the United States, hey, how about the food?
What are you eating tonight?
And it appeared that he had to read the answer from the teleprompter.
I believe that the President of the United States had to read notes To tell us what food he likes and what he eats.
And then Jill had to lean over after he said he likes pasta.
And, you know, because it's funny.
She mentioned he liked ice cream.
Oh, that's so funny.
Oh, you're so friendly and just like regular people.
That's what I thought.
I was like, you're just like regular people.
You talk like you joke.
You kid around.
Just like regular people.
How about your ice cream?
So that was pretty sad.
One of the things he said though was that he's brought a lot of jobs back from China.
Because we sent our manufacturing over to China and lost our jobs.
But Joe says he's brought back those jobs.
Have you seen any indication that anything like that has happened?
Now, I do believe he is succeeding.
And I will give him full credit for this.
Full credit.
For Certainly making some movement about, you know, reshoring some of the companies and moving them to other countries, basically getting at it from China.
I do think he's done a non-trivial job in that direction, but I feel like all of that has turned into maybe they're trying to build a factory, but they haven't hired anybody yet, right?
What kind of jobs did it create?
I don't believe he's brought back even one manufacturing job to America.
Now, I know that Vietnam is spinning up and Mexico is spinning up, but that's not American workers.
And I know that some chip companies are in advanced planning and even construction to build a plant, but it's not built yet.
Isn't the number of manufacturing jobs he took back to America zero?
Am I wrong about that?
I feel like it's actually literally zero.
Now, again, I will compliment him.
He seems to be putting the right amount of energy into making sure that we can reclaim some of that manufacturing.
But it's going to take a while.
I think he might be getting ahead of his good work.
Yeah.
You know what's going to be strange about 2024?
It's going to look like everything's going well.
Are you ready for that?
Because it's an election year, and because the news wants things to look good when Biden's president, there will be a narrative forming.
It's already formed.
But 2024 is going to look like the year everything went right.
Unless it happens in another country, which they can't control.
But it's going to look like everything went right in 2023.
You're going to see that inflation goes down, the stock market looks pretty good.
You're going to see customer optimism, because the news will tell them to be optimistic.
You're going to see employment will probably stay good enough.
You're going to see us winding down two wars, probably, or at least we won't be getting more involved in the Middle East.
You'll probably see Saudi Arabia And Israel, I'll talk about this in a minute, do something constructive.
You're probably going to see some manufacturing, as Joe said, come back to this country.
Good work on that, Joe Biden.
You're probably going to see just a whole bunch of things that look like good news.
Is that real?
Well, we'll believe it's real.
I also believe that immigration will start to substantially decrease as we get close to the election.
It won't be real, but it'll be a story they can tell that they're on the way to solving it.
So they'll tell the story that it's working, even if it's not.
So the thing you should watch out for is if you feel all confident that the Republicans have, you know, good polling, substantial lead.
They've created 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I've taken office.
Oh, and he got fact-checked on it?
The figure is 175 higher than the February peak.
It's more accurate to say 589 jobs were recovered.
Okay.
So he's exaggerating about the number of jobs recovered, which is the same thing all the presidents do.
So here's what you should be ready for.
You should assume that no matter how badly Trump is beating Biden in the polls for the next several months, that by spring, it's going to tighten up and Biden should pull ahead.
You know why?
Because everything will be going well.
That's what the news will tell you.
That doesn't mean it's true, but the news is going to tell you everything is trending well.
So, and people will be completely brainwashed by the news, as they always are.
And they're going to say to themselves, why should we take a risk on this provocative Trump guy when everything's going in the right direction?
See the problem?
If you don't see the size of that risk, it's enormous.
The biggest risk for 2024 is that everything looks like it's going well.
Because that's how you get another four years of Biden.
And the news is absolutely going to tell you it's going well.
Absolutely.
Now, at the moment, it seems that the news is trying to push Joe out of the job.
But at some point, if they start to think that's not going to happen around the spring, they're going to completely line up behind him, because it's their best shot, and they're going to say he got everything right and everything's going well.
So, do not assume That Trump becomes president, or Vivek, or anybody else, if everything looks like it's going well, according to the news.
And that's where we're headed.
And by the way, I think actually 2024 will be a good year.
You know why?
It's just time.
It's simply time for a good year.
Because we do have a cyclical economy, and always have.
It always goes up and down, and it's never going to go straight up.
It's never going to, I hope, never going to go straight down to nothing.
It's just going to always be this bumpy ride that we hope goes up on average.
So we've been, you know, we got our teeth kicked in with the pandemic.
And so it was just sort of time, given the natural energy of economics in the country.
It was time.
We were going to pull out of it.
Here we are.
We reinvent, we fix, we tweak, we adjust, and I'll say it again, and this is totally, this is obnoxious sounding if you're not an American, so I'm going to apologize to all the non-Americans listening, because you could probably say the same thing about your own country, but I'm going to speak just as sort of a proud American for a moment.
We're really good at fixing shit.
Really, really good at it.
Like, if everything goes wrong, we step up.
And so I think 2024 is going to look like a correcting year.
In a lot of ways.
Economically, militarily, maybe a lot of ways.
Climate-wise, information-wise, free speech-wise.
It's going to be a lot of change.
I think that America has done what it always does, which is have found a way.
We're just really good at finding a way.
So I think that'll keep happening.
All right.
Here's a few things you should know about the publication called The Atlantic.
Now, you know that Steve Jobs' widow took that Apple money and bought The Atlantic and turned it into a largely, I'd say it's a Let's say it's power in the world is political.
So the political stories tend to be the ones you talk about from it.
And this Democrat is eccentric.
But you've seen a bunch of stories from the Atlantic, right?
You know, you read social media, and they'll be, oh, the Atlantic says this about Trump, and the Atlantic says that about Trump, and the Atlantic says this about MAGA.
And they're always doing a hit job on Either some friendly Republican or Trump or something.
So, the hijabs.
Here's some background you should know about the Atlantic.
Their entire readership is about 80% as large as the audience for any one of my posts on X. So, I have a million followers on the X platform and the Atlantic's entire readership is a little over 800,000.
So just so you know its size, it's a little bit smaller than my account on X. Just so you know its size.
Now, they of course are left-leaning, and so the first thing I'm going to check, what's the first thing I'm going to check?
Well, I want to see a picture of their staff.
Don't you?
Because if there's one thing I know about the Atlantic, they very much want to have a diverse Staff.
And in fact they do a report every year.
They do a report on their own efforts for diversity.
So I looked at the report for 2023.
Their staff is 62% white.
Now I assume they're mostly white supremacists.
Because I've been told that you put that many white people in one place.
Mostly white supremacists.
Am I right?
Mostly.
So, mostly the Atlantic is white supremacists.
And they're very proud of their hiring.
So this year, 72% of new hires were women.
Now, I take that back.
72% of new hires this past year identified as women.
They say that specifically.
Identified as women.
Now, if I were trying to get a job as the Atlantic, I'd probably identify as a woman.
I wouldn't change what I wore.
But if I knew that 72% of the new hires were women, I don't think I would go in there and lead with my penis.
Here's what I wouldn't do.
Don't go into an interview at the Atlantic, unzip your pants, slap your piece on the desk, and say, I'm a man, and I'm here for a job.
That won't work.
That's not going to work.
No.
No, you need to identify as a woman that 72% of the new hires were women.
Now, here's what I think.
I think they need a lot more diversity.
Does anybody think they don't have enough diversity?
Because what they didn't say is what percentage of men work there already.
72% of new hires are women, but what?
It seems like they left out the most important thing, which is how many of the staff are men, especially in senior management.
Seems like there's none there.
So I found a new way to destroy all the publications that do hit pieces on me.
Do you know what it is?
I'm going to insist that they improve their diversity.
Until they're out of business.
Now, let me be very clear.
Why do I say that increasing diversity will put them out of business?
Is it because I think the diverse people would do a worse job?
Nope.
Nope.
It is not because of that.
It's not because of anything racial.
It's not because of anything gender-wise.
It is math.
If everybody is chasing the same small pool of qualified people, because every big company wants to be diverse, the math suggests there won't be enough.
What will they do?
Will they hire white people and make things worse?
Or will they hire lesser qualified diverse folks so that they can improve their diversity?
What do you think they'll do?
Well, I think they're quite committed to diversity, more so than competence and capability.
Now, I'm sure they like both of those things.
They want competence and capability.
They want diversity.
But if you're in a hurry, you can't have both.
If you're willing to take your time, Well, you got a good shot at it.
Because then you don't have to rush and hire people that maybe you wouldn't have hired under normal circumstances.
You take your time.
Make sure if you get a black candidate, really qualified, good.
Female candidate, really qualified, good.
Good job.
And then eventually, maybe you can reach some kind of situation that looks like the country, and I'm in favor of that.
By the way, I say this all the time.
I don't know if you really believe it, but it's true.
I do think companies are better off All things being equal, if you can get the same level of capability, if the company roughly resembles the public.
That's a good thing.
As long as you're not giving something up to get that.
If you have to give something up, then it's a different story.
And the problem is just the pool of candidates.
It has nothing to do with anything racial, has nothing to do with anything gender.
It's just math.
So that's how I'm going to put my critics out of business in 2024.
I'm just going to highlight their lack of diversity and insist that they fix it.
And here's the important part.
Really quickly.
Do it quickly.
I'd like to see this taken care of by the end of the year.
You'll be out of business in two years, but I'd like to plan for the long run.
All right.
Tucker is saying out loud the thing that is so scary.
Uh, that Trump might be assassinated, and let me give you his reasoning, which is, I hate to say it, rock solid, but it is.
All right, here's, in Tucker's words, quote, I mean, just chart it out.
In the case of Trump, they started with protests.
They moved to impeachment.
Now they're at indictment.
None of it has worked.
What's next?
What could possibly be next?
If you felt and you really believed, and a lot of them do, that the worst thing that could happen to the country, and more specifically to you in the professional class, is to have Donald Trump as president.
And they've been accelerating and what's left in their quiver.
And he said, and I think you should be prepared, at least psychologically, for them to do anything.
And I don't think I've ever agreed with Tucker this much.
You need to be mentally prepared that they could take him out.
You really do.
Now, I don't want to talk it into existence, because I think talking about it makes it more likely.
I feel very uncomfortable talking about it.
But it is now moved from, you know, something that, you know, trolls will talk about, to something that seems like the most likely case.
So unless the news can destroy him before election day, and they'll try pretty hard, what else are they going to do?
Now the trouble is, if you picked a strong enough vice president, they wouldn't be able to kill him.
Do you agree?
You know what Vivek is?
Vivek is assassination insurance for Trump.
I've said this before, but let me say it again.
If they take down Trump, we're going to shove Vivek down their fucking throats, and he's going to disavow.
And they don't want to do that.
You think Trump's a risk?
You have no idea.
Trump is not nearly the risk that Vivek is, in a good way.
The bank would be good for the country, not bad.
But just imagine your point of view, all right?
Put yourself in this situation just mentally.
Let's say something terrible happens that takes Trump out of the race.
It doesn't have to be assassination.
Just something that you recognize as a dirty trick.
Something you recognize as unfair.
And they take your candidate out, if your candidate was Trump.
Let's say they take him out on the last hour before the election.
Not the last hour but, you know, long enough that the Republicans would have to scramble.
So let's say the Republicans scramble and they put in another candidate.
Let's say it's Vivek.
Are they going to be happy about that?
See, if Vivek is not in the race at all by that point, it wouldn't make sense to put him in.
But, In the unlikely event that Vivek said he would accept a VP running mate position, in the unlikely event, because he's running for president, I like to say that out of respect.
Out of respect for Vivek and the job that he's doing, he's running for president.
He's not running for second place.
And I think he has a legitimate chance of first place.
Because a lot could happen in the next year.
But in the situation that he had, Trump had a strong vice president.
It doesn't have to be Vivek.
He's just the, he would be the scariest to the other side.
Scariest because he's the most capable.
Not scary because he's a dangerous person.
He would be the scariest because he's the most capable at getting what he says he wants to do.
And a great persuader, yes.
So here's the thing.
The thing that protects Trump Is a backup plan that's the same?
Or better?
So here's what you need to do if you're trying to persuade yourself into a winning position.
And, you know, I think Trump definitely listens to the base.
So if the base says, this time, Donald Trump, you can't pick a weak, weaker vice president.
Pence was a weak vice president compared to Trump.
We'd all agree with that, right?
I like Pence as Vice President, but he's weak.
And it's tradition that the President, the candidate for President, picks a weaker Vice President so that you don't spend your entire time saying, oh, maybe you should be the other way around, turn it upside down.
But this one time, Trump needs to save his life and protect the country at the same time.
By making sure that his vice president looks like the destroyer of worlds.
You want the vice president to look like the destroyer of worlds, from a Democrat perspective, not somebody who would actually do any damage.
But somebody who would scare them more, or at least as much, as Trump.
And that can be done.
That could definitely be done.
All right.
NBC News posted today on X said a new study outlines how white people's migration during and after the Civil War bolstered white supremacy and institutional racism in non-slave states, contributing to the vast racial disparities that exist today nationwide.
My commentary on that story is fuck you and fuck you and fuck you some more.
Because I don't care about ancient history if the only reason you're going to bring it up is to call me a white supremacist and make me feel guilty about shit.
Fuck you NBC.
Fuck you NBC.
Fuck your eyes.
Fuck your head.
Fuck your stupid brains.
I'm not even going to talk about this story.
I don't care if it's true.
I wasn't alive.
So fuck them and fuck their racist divisive bullshit.
If you've got an idea for improving things, NPC, I'm all ears.
Got an idea for improving things?
Or you just want us to be mad at each other with your bullshit stories?
Fuck you.
All right.
Speaking of the media, ABC this week had three women on who worked for President Trump in the White House the first term.
And Jonathan Karl over there was to discuss their experiences.
And they said bad things, and if Trump's re-elected, it's the end of the world.
Now, why do you think it had to be three women?
Was it a complete coincidence that the only people they could get from Trump's prior administration happened to be female?
And they were the ones who were available and willing to talk about it.
Do you think that's it?
Do you think that they were the three that were available and willing to say this stuff?
Nobody else.
Just these three?
But why did ABC decide there had to be three women?
Clearly, they're talking to the Democrat base, and they're saying, look, even the Republican women are on your side.
Don't you get it, women?
Trump is bad.
The women can see it.
It's only the men who have been brainwashed, but the women can clearly see.
So it's crazy bitches.
Two words.
Let's talk about the Saudis and Israel.
I saw an article in American Thinker by John Levin.
And it's a large article.
I reposted it so you can see it.
But his point is that Saudi Arabia and Israel probably need to be good friends because they both want to.
I mean, the direction is that way.
And this business with Hamas and Iran seems to be to try to drive a wedge between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
But it doesn't look like that wedge worked, because they seem to both be willing to keep going once this ugliness has passed.
But John Levin's point is that, well, let me read it.
He says, for Saudi Arabia, Normalization with Israel and midwifing Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation would accelerate its own integration into the modern order while dislodging its greatest rival's outpost, its rival being Iran.
The Sunni Saudis and the Shiite Ayatollahs in Iran are champions of competing Islamic factions.
They've been waging war against each other.
So the basic idea is that Saudi Arabia If it allowed Iran to get its way and to, let's say, minimize or destroy Israel, that it would be a small matter of time before Saudi Arabia was a little bit surrounded.
So it would be an enormous benefit for Iran if the Israeli influence disappeared.
And apparently it would be an enormous benefit to Saudi Arabia To be economically at least tied to Israel.
And so I've been saying for months, since October 7th, that the most logical solver for what looks like a permanent problem between the Palestinians and Israel would be a Saudi administration of the, some kind of administration of the areas that are Palestinian majority.
So I don't see any way around it at this point.
I feel like, you know, maybe Israel's plan is that Israel just forever controls the West Bank and Gaza, but I feel like that would just make Iran matter.
Whereas, if you went the other direction, and you pushed Saudi and Israel closer together, even if it's only on paper, it's going to look like it didn't work.
So you want Iran to think that trying to drive Saudi and Israel apart We'll cause them to be closer together.
And one way to do that would be to say to Saudi Arabia, you know what would make you go from the country that we suspect because 9-11 has some Saudi ties.
We're not so sure about our past with Saudi Arabia.
We don't know about that bone saw situation, right?
But you don't think Saudi wants to get out of that and into the top of the stage You know, a credible major superpower.
I think they do.
And the way to get there is to be on the same side with the United States and at least economically with Israel.
And that seems to be the direction we're going.
So I would say that what's going to come out of this is Saudi taking a bigger role to try to put some order in the West Bank.
Now, I don't know what they can do.
Given that you've got some Sunni and Shiite problems there.
I don't know how much the Palestinians would want Saudi involvement, but at least it wouldn't be Israel.
So my prediction is that Saudi Arabia will be a productive partner and they'll get closer to Israel as a result.
There was some news just before I came on that maybe there's an update on this.
I guess the Iranian National Guard, or no, the IRGC, That's the Iranian... What are those initials?
The IRGC?
Is that the normal army of Iran?
Or is that their special forces of some kind?
Wait, Palestinians or Sunni?
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Are the Palestinians Sunni?
Somebody said in the comments.
And Gaza too?
Is Gaza all Sunni?
Really?
So why am I finding this?
I was making an assumption.
I was making an assumption that Iran would only be helping Shiites.
So you're telling me that Iran has been funding Sunnis?
I'll be damned.
I'll be damned.
And a lot of you knew that.
Well, don't I feel dumb?
You know, have I ever told you that one of my superpowers, I think I tell you this all the time, one of my superpowers is complete freedom from embarrassment.
I just don't get embarrassed.
I used to, but I just learned not to.
So imagine having a show in which you talk about politics and you talk about the Middle East and you're finding out in real time, in front of a live audience, that your most basic assumption about the region was wrong.
That's what I'm experiencing right now.
But am I unhappy?
No, I'm kind of happy about it because I just found out like a very useful fact.
There's a thing that I was worried about was that Saudi Arabia wouldn't be credible as a helper.
But if you're telling me that they're all Sunnis, well then suddenly that does make looks like it would work.
I would rather be dumb in public Like I am now, then not have the situation resolved.
So to me, this is an upgrade.
All right, cool.
Thank you.
But anyway, the IRGC, whatever military force of Iran that is, has reportedly issued orders and they're withdrawing from their positions in Syria, near the Iraq border.
Maybe not all their positions in Syria, but the ones near the Iraq border.
So they're evacuating all their bases.
And it coincides with the intensification of military action over there.
So what do you think is happening?
This is something I would expect to see if Trump were president.
You know why?
It looks like Biden just said, you better leave because we're going to kill all of you.
Why else would they leave?
You know, we've been wondering why Biden has been going soft on some of the proxies, the Iranian proxies.
You know, people were complaining, oh yeah, he gives them a little bee sting once in a while, but you know, why doesn't he get tough?
We say the same thing about Yemen.
I feel like the Biden administration just told Iran what they're going to do.
Meaning, hey Iran, you're going to withdraw your forces from this area.
What?
We're not going to withdraw our forces from this area.
Yeah, you actually are.
You're going to withdraw all your forces from this area.
No, we're not.
Well, okay, you have a choice.
We are going to withdraw all your forces from that area, but they're going to be in bags.
So they can walk out or they can leave in bags.
But now that's your only choices.
So do what you need to do.
And by the way, if they don't leave, we're going to pave Yemen or something.
We're going to take out all of your proxies.
All of them.
Would Iran believe that was a fair threat?
I don't know.
It looks good to me.
It looks like a good threat to me.
Because I do think that our military-industrial complex would be itching to take out the proxies.
And if they want to do it, they could probably get their way.
Yeah.
Here's what I would love to know.
Wouldn't you love to know who has made what threats?
To whom?
Lately, in the Middle East?
I'll bet the real story is the threats, the credible threats, that people have made to each other, at the government level, that we don't exactly know about.
Because here's the thing.
If America said to Iran, You know what?
The proxy thing doesn't work anymore for us.
And we're going to get rid of them.
And that's the decision.
There's not going to be any proxies in this area anymore.
So we're just going to get rid of them.
If you'd like, we'll give you time to withdraw.
But they're not going to be there when we're done.
We're going to get rid of all of them.
That feels like that conversation happened, doesn't it?
Now, it could be that I'm wrong about everything and they're withdrawing their forces to You know, maybe reinforce somewhere else.
So it could be completely a fake out.
Anyway, all right.
Here's a 2023 afterthought, just for me personally.
I realized, you know, I was thinking back of the people who canceled me in 2023.
Now, of course, there are corporate entities that I don't care too much about.
Didn't make that much difference in my life.
But there were also individuals.
There were actually specific individuals that canceled me and told me in person.
And here's what I realized about the ones who canceled me.
Three of the people who canceled me in person, you know, not economically, professionally, are people that I had mentored.
or helped professionally and asked nothing in return.
Now I'm just going to put that out there.
There are three people who were in my life in a fairly substantial way, meaning that I had helped them professionally in a not a trivial way.
All three of them.
And all three of them decided to cancel without asking the context.
Without ever, like, digging into, like, what was the point of it or what I really thought.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
Yep.
So there's that.
Let me give you some advice about giving.
This will be the most important thing you ever heard.
If you decide to do a kindness to somebody without asking anything in return, it usually won't work out.
Did you know that?
Doing things for other people almost never works out.
It's like an 80% failure rate.
Like lending somebody money, doing them a big favor, helping them get a job.
Ever helped somebody get a job?
About 80% it doesn't work.
So that's the first thing you need to know.
Here's the second part.
Do it anyway.
Do it anyway.
The do it anyway is the important part.
80% of the time it's not going to work, and really you're going to wish you hadn't.
Do it anyway.
Just do it anyway.
Because that's the world you want to live in, and it's about you.
So some of the best advice you'll ever get is make your actions about you.
You're allowed.
You can be who you are, so you can make yourself the person you want to be.
How people react to you, well, that's a separate question.
But you can be the person who will help.
It doesn't have to work.
It's about who you are.
Now, you can say to me, but Scott, I'm being wise and knowledgeable, and I'm not going to help because 80% of the time it backfires and hits me in the face.
To which I say, but it worked 20% of the time.
20% of the time at work.
Do it anyway.
Do it anyway.
That's all.
Just because that's who you want to be, and it's also the world you want to live in.
You want to live in the world where somebody says, 80% failure rate?
I'll do it anyway.
Yeah.
So that is your message for 2024, and I think it's going to be a good year.
If you didn't see Breitbart by Joel Pollack did a nice article Quoting some of my optimism for 2024, which I will repeat.
I think the economy is going to do relatively well I think our wars will wind down and I think our Manufacturing is moving back from China.
I think We will have a new president.
I think immigration will have to be solved.
I think crime in the cities will have to be solved.
And I think you'll see movement on all of it.
So I feel like things are heading in the right direction.
And freedom of speech, at least on the X platform, seems to be fully operating.
So we're going to have robots.
We're going to have AI.
We're going to have a good economy.
We're going to have fewer wars.
We're going to move our manufacturing back.
And I think that wokeness and ESG and DEI are now at least things we can talk about honestly, which will get us to a good place.
In my opinion, what went wrong with ESG and DEI is that white men were afraid to talk.
And that's it.
There just wasn't, you didn't have a balance of opinions to get where we are.
You had bullies and you had people who were just hiding in their foxhole until it all blew over.
But that didn't work.
80% of the time, 80% of the time, giving people what they ask for doesn't work.
And that's certainly true with the DEI and ESG stuff.
Now, it might be that we'll all be better off for the fact that those existed, meaning that our awareness is higher.
Maybe we'll try a little harder to make places look diverse, but without giving up too much in return.
All right.
And ladies and gentlemen, that's all I've got for you today.
