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Feb. 2, 2024 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:24:00
Episode 2372 CWSA 02/02/24

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Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Rump-pump-pump-pump-pump-pump-pump.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams because, you know, because.
And if you'd like to take this experience, and that's what it is, it's not a show, it's an experience.
If you'd like to take this up to the next level, and I know you do, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank of gel, just tie it in a canteen jug or 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 is called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Go!
I'm going to be colonizing twice as hard now.
Well, today we're going to unravel The mysteries of the government and why it is like it is.
And believe it or not, I actually have some answers to those questions today.
Some of the mysteries I've had for the longest time have been revealed.
And I'm going to reveal them to you.
Exciting, huh?
Yeah, don't go away.
Let's start with the big news first.
Well, not really.
I like to start with palate cleanser.
News, before we get to the hard stuff.
So ABC 7 News, Eyewitness News, reports that cops and bystanders helped to chase down 100 chickens who escaped from a Chinatown LA market.
So cops and bystanders, they had 100 chickens, and they were running around chasing them.
Now, the chickens reportedly crossed the road, but nobody knows why.
Next story.
Apparently today Apple is releasing the Apple Vision Pro, those VR goggle things.
Now, do you think those will be a big hit?
Anybody?
Big hit?
How many of you are dying to get the Apple Vision Pro $3,500 goggles?
Is there anybody here who's gonna buy them?
I got one why.
One yes.
Anybody else?
Is there even a single person?
Yeah, we got some, a few.
You know, when I look at a picture of Tim Cook wearing the Vision Pro goggles, I said to myself, I finally figured out who Tim Cook reminds me of.
You remember Steve Jobs and how cool Steve Jobs was?
He had that charisma and that just magic gift.
Well, if you took Steve Jobs and then you subtracted from him everything that made Steve Jobs amazing, you'd have Tim Cook.
Now, Tim Cook is a very high-functioning person.
You know, I'm sure he's great.
But, you know, there was only one Steve Jobs.
Whoever takes over for Elon Musk someday, it's not gonna be Elon Musk.
I'm just saying.
So, I don't even think that... I don't know this, of course, it can't be known.
I don't think Steve Jobs would have launched this product.
What do you think?
Because when I think of the iPod, you know, you think of the things that Steve Jobs did.
If you used a computer before the Lisa computer came around, you said to yourself, oh my god, who invented this computer?
It's so hard to use.
I sure wish there was some easier way to do this.
And then Steve Jobs and Apple give you an easier way.
And then Steve Jobs says, everybody likes music.
I like music.
It'd be a lot better if I had a little device with all the music on it.
So he makes an iPod.
Solves a problem that all of us sort of had, which is, I wish it were easier to listen to my music.
And then the smartphone comes along, provides all these things that are real-world benefits.
Oh, I've got an app.
I can book my tickets without talking to a person.
And all these solutions for real problems you had.
Like you really wanted to do stuff and it did it.
Now let's talk about the Vision Pro.
Does that solve any problem that you knew you had?
Does it?
How many of you were saying to yourself, you know what I really need is something that takes me out of the world completely.
I don't even want to see the real world.
You know, like you do if you're doing regular gaming.
I just feel like The Apple products that were huge hits solved an obvious problem we all knew we had, or an opportunity, you know, to make something better that we all wanted.
But the Vision Pro seems to be, like, trying to convince us we want this thing we weren't thinking about, and it's not obvious it solves any problem.
Had they launched it purely for training purposes, or education, I would have said, you know what?
That might be the thing.
Because I would definitely rather get training in VR than travel somewhere.
I would definitely rather use VR to show me how to fix an engine or do some physical thing.
But for entertainment?
I don't know.
We'll see.
I'm skeptical on that one.
You probably all saw the clip of Governor Newsom.
He was on some kind of Zoom call.
Somebody recorded it.
And he was telling the story to the other participants how he was at some retail store in San Francisco, I think.
And somewhere in California.
And a shoplifter shoplifted something.
Was it Target Store?
And he was at the checkout stand and he said, hey, aren't you going to do something to stop that?
And the checker said, no, we can't.
And the reason was the governor.
She didn't know she was talking to the governor, which is a funny story.
But when she recognized him, then, you know, I guess it turned into something else.
But here's the bigger part of the story.
It's kind of a funny story that she didn't recognize the governor and he was in the store when they were shoplifting.
But the amazing story is he seemed to think that the store could stop the shoplifting.
And it wasn't anything that the government of California did that's causing this wave of shoplifting.
And that he believed that the California laws were comparable to other states.
Now it turns out, and I didn't know this, I don't think there was anything that changed recently.
I kept hearing about this $950 limit where you could shoplift up to $950 and you wouldn't go to jail.
But apparently that changed a long time ago.
Do I have that right?
Give me a fact check on that.
I kept hearing the story as if it were a recent change.
But I think it changed over 10 years ago, right?
Maybe 10 years ago?
Two years ago?
Now, do a fact check on this.
So, I thought the reporting said it was a recent change.
But I saw some other news that said, oh, this happened a long time ago, but for some reason now it's becoming a problem.
So there's a... Oh, maybe something about the DA's charging it.
Yeah, so it might be that the law was the same, but how the DAs are treating it is different?
Is that what's happening?
So I don't, there's some uncertainty there.
I would say that the news is not doing its job of informing us on that.
However, the fact that the governor didn't understand the situation, much the way I don't right now.
There's something about it I don't understand.
But the governor of California didn't understand the shoplifting problem that is causing these big chains to move out and cause food and healthcare deserts in underserved communities.
How do you not know what's going on in that situation?
I mean, I understand how I don't know.
I'm a citizen.
But how does the governor not know?
That's very embarrassing for my state and for my governor.
Rasmussen has a poll on race relations.
Let's see if you can guess.
What percent of American adults believe race relations in the nation today are good or excellent?
Wow, you're good!
You're so good, you guessed within one percentage.
Yeah, the answer is 26% of American adults believe racial relations in the United States are good or excellent.
If you're new to the show, we always mock the fact that 25% of the people in the country get every poll question wrong.
That's not just an opinion.
That's just wrong.
You're just wrong.
All right.
I think I mentioned this before, but there's a new update.
So Dr. Drew is on the Dave Rubin Show, and I'm going to read the exact quote because it's just so well stated.
And apparently Dr. Drew credited RFK Jr.
for his personal awakening about how fake everything is.
And so Dr. Drew said, I'm open to everything now.
I've realized that everything in the news is BS.
Everything.
There is nothing I can consume on legacy media that I can trust, and that is shocking.
It makes you wonder, how long has it been going on for?
I didn't realize how much speech was being suppressed.
Now, you heard that before.
It's well stated.
But Elon Musk retweeted Dr. Drew's comments there and said, Dr. Drew gets it.
Now, here's the frame I want to put on this.
There are some things that you can hear a million times, and you can understand it intellectually, and it won't help.
It's the weirdest thing.
And here's the thing I've been telling you forever, but until you experience it, it's not true.
It goes like this.
Everything is fake, and always has been.
That's not something your brain can even handle.
Because your brain has to believe something is true.
It just can't go through the day without it.
Now, there is something true, of course, underlying all the BS.
But, what you need to know is that all information is motivated.
All data, all studies, all government statements, all politicians, all public figures, are motivated by something.
And usually it's not your best interest.
Even if it is your best interest, they're still going to spin it the way that gets you to whatever it is that they want to do, even if it's your best interest.
So even things that are not bad are also BS.
It might be BS on your side.
It might be BS in your best interest.
But it's all BS.
Top to bottom, everything in the news is fake.
At least in terms of its context.
At least in terms of what they decided to put in your head and what they decided to leave out.
Because that's news too.
What did they decide wasn't news?
That's news.
So once you get to the point, and I've described the levels of awareness, you know, the awakening, when you're a little kid, you learn that Santa Claus isn't real, and you're like, oh man, apparently an adult can tell me something that isn't true.
I didn't realize that.
And then you think, but at least, you know, at least I can use my own judgment and my own research and find out what's true.
Even though people are not telling me the truth, I can deduce it with my own research.
No, you can't.
You can't.
If you could do that, then people wouldn't get away with lying to you 100% of the time.
I mean, you could try, and you can get some right.
But the illusion is that if you do your own research and you get one right, here's the illusion.
You got it right, Because you did your own research.
That's not happening.
You got it right often because it's a binary question.
Is something true or false?
You did your research and you picked one of those.
And then later you found out you were right.
So you're like, ah, that research sure works.
No, it doesn't.
Because there were a whole bunch of people who were right coin flip wise, yeah.
Somebody was going to say yes, somebody was going to say no.
Whoever gets it right thinks they were a genius and the process that they used to get there was completely rational.
Probably not.
So Dr. Drew and Elon Musk are largely on the same page of understanding that all data, All studies, all science, all economic information, everything your government tells you is motivated by something.
And if you don't know what it is, you don't really understand what's happening.
There's a new poll released that says Trump's leading in every swing state by apparently more than the margin of error.
Do you believe that that's true?
It's in the news and it's in a poll.
So that's true, right?
No.
No.
It's not true.
It's not true.
And we're going to talk about another poll in a minute that'll be a little more obvious.
Now, that doesn't mean that it's incorrect.
It might be scientifically correct.
They asked the question, they got an answer, they did the statistics.
That might be all valid.
The way they ask the question always matters.
And the samples they choose always matters.
And you have to ask yourself, I guess this was a Bloomberg Morning Consult poll.
What would Bloomberg want you to think in February of 2024?
So that's the question you should ask yourself.
If it's Bloomberg the company and they have anything in common with Bloomberg the person, what would they want you to think Is about to happen.
They might want you to think Trump's on the way to win.
Because it could be that people like Bloomberg.
And this is just pure speculation.
I can't read any minds.
But they might want you to think that Trump will win unless you do something now to change something in a big way.
So it might be simply communication to Biden.
It's just a way for a billionaire to tell Biden, hey, you either need to get out of the race, because you're going to lose, or you better close the border tomorrow, because you're going to lose if it stays open.
So sometimes a poll is just telling you some information, and sometimes it's a way to change the outcome of things, and it might be a little tricky.
I'm not saying that's what's happening with this one, because that would be mind-reading, but Just ask yourself, who is behind the poll, and what would they like you to think?
And did the poll show you exactly what the people who make the poll would like you to think?
That would be a problem.
It'd be more believable if the outcome was exactly the opposite of what you knew they wanted you to think.
That might have some credibility.
And even then, I'd think there was money behind it.
All right, as you know, God hates mobile home parks.
That's why when there's any kind of a hurricane or twister, he goes right for the mobile home parks first.
This is well known.
This is not the first time you're hearing it.
God hates mobile home parks.
He's sort of a I don't know, sort of an elitist in that way, in a sense.
But apparently there's an airplane that just crashed in Clearwater, Florida and took out a mobile home park and killed some people.
Tragically.
Now, if you've ever known a pilot, as I have, used to be married to one, there's a question, there's something you look for in every story.
When you hear that a small aircraft crashed and it's the make and model of the aircraft.
Because I don't want to get sued so I'm not going to say this is my opinion because it's not.
I will tell you that there is one type of small aircraft that pilots call the doctor killer.
The Doctor Killer.
That's all I'm going to say about it.
I'm looking in the comments and you already know which one it is.
Now you don't all know, but everybody who's a pilot knows.
No.
So let me tell you what it's not.
It's not a Cessna.
It's not a Cessna.
But the people who are pilots, they're all saying the name of the aircraft in the comments.
So I'm not making it up.
It's a general statement that the pilots believe there's one type of aircraft that is harder to control.
So I believe it's a combination of a strong engine and maybe delicate, relatively delicate controls.
Yeah, you all knew what I was talking about.
So I'm not going to say the name of it because I don't have any data that would suggest that's a real problem.
It's just what the pilots say.
That's what I know for sure.
Nikki Haley, there's a weird thing that happened, I don't know what the story is, but Nikki Haley's ex-account printed two messages as support from her supporters.
They were two personal messages.
But both of them were obviously fake.
And nobody's quite sure what's going on.
Because they're so obviously fake, you can't even believe that anybody thought you would believe them.
One of them is handwritten, but it's a computer font.
Do you think the person who wrote that note used the handwriting font?
No.
I mean, it's just fake.
And then the other one was purported to be an email that they received, except they did a screenshot, and the screenshot indicates that it's from the sender.
In other words, they wrote a message to themselves Forgot to hit send, so it would end up in their own inbox.
And they just took the screenshot before they sent it, so you can see that the send button was still highlighted, meaning it hadn't been sent.
Meaning it was their own message.
Now, I don't know what the real story is.
I mean, on the surface, it would look like they made up two fake messages and tried to sell them as real.
But I doubt that's the full story.
Yeah.
I feel like it might be closer to a staffer had an idea, somewhere along the lines somebody lost the fact that they were fake.
I don't know.
There's more to the story, but it's just a stupid little story of incompetence.
Bill Maher is talking about Trump's legal woes, and he's been warning for a while that it'll make Trump more popular, not less.
And he used a word that I thought was interesting.
He said that people, if Trump gets convicted, his supporters will start to see him as a, quote, revolutionary leader.
Now, that actually hits you, doesn't it?
The choice of those words.
Yeah, martyr, not quite.
But it's in the right area.
But revolutionary leader?
Because all, as Mar points out, all Trump has to do is say that the process was corrupt, and he'll become more popular.
Because how hard will it be to convince people that the process was corrupt, when it's obviously corrupt?
It's not even gonna take any work.
Yeah, let me say it directly.
If Trump gets convicted on any of these felonies, And it's as obviously corrupt as it looks.
I'm going to do everything I can to make him your next president, because you just can't sit for that.
That's too far.
You know what I mean?
There's some things you can just be a bitch about, but there are some things you have to act on.
If you put Trump in jail, That's action time.
I don't know what that action would be.
But you don't just talk about that.
That's when you get physical.
In some way.
Not violence, necessarily, but physical.
It turns physical at that point, for sure.
One hopes it's just protests.
I finally figured out why weed is illegal at the federal level.
I can't believe it took me so long.
Now, do any of you know why the states are more open to decriminalizing what the federal government said no?
Let's see if you can piece it together.
So the Health and Human Services in the federal government did a study and they recommended that it was time to take the marijuana schedule from out of the heroin category and move it into a lesser controlled substance category that would make it easier to make it not illegal.
So what they said was, Health and Human Services, that marijuana possesses therapeutic efficacy and its harms are not on par with those of heroin or even alcohol.
They're not saying it's perfectly safe.
That's not the point.
They're saying that the relative harm is somewhere in the less than alcohol level and therefore the government should reflect it.
So now ask yourself, if Health and Human Services does a deep study and decides that it should be rescheduled to a lesser harm area, what would stop that from happening?
How many of you are aware of what the process is next?
So after the Health and Human Services says this should be de-scheduled, what happens next in the American political process?
Here's the part I didn't know.
They take that recommendation to the DEA.
And then the DEA has final say.
Do you see it yet?
The DEA has final say over whether it gets rescheduled.
Do you see it?
Let me explain it.
So you go to the DEA and you say, we'd like you to consider rescheduling this.
What does the DEA think would happen to the DEA?
The DEA says, huh, a quarter of my budget goes to this issue.
If this becomes descheduled, then a quarter of my power, a quarter of my budget, no longer need to exist.
And we're done.
That's it.
In no corporation in America would this department approve that recommendation.
Under no situation in humankind would the head of the DEA in this setup approve it.
Because you're asking them to decrease their own career.
Have you ever worked in a big company when... Let me tell you how a big company works.
It's the end of the year and you haven't spent all of your budget and it looks like you won't be able to spend it all by the end of the year.
What do you do?
You go on a buying spree, and you spend all of your money, and maybe even a little extra, so that when you ask for more next year, you can say, look, I spent everything in a little extra last year.
Don't put me in that position.
You're going to need to give me another big budget.
Because they know that if you don't spend it all next year, there's no way you're going to get more.
And if you're a shrinking manager, you're not going to get promoted compared to the growing managers, the ones whose departments grew that year because they were more important.
So in a corporate bureaucratic place, you cannot ask anybody to decrease their own power.
They will find a reason.
That it's not time or you should go study it some more.
Now there might be other forces.
There might be cartels doing this or that.
There might be the alcohol lobbyists maybe doing this or that because of competition.
But once I heard that the DEA has to approve it, that answered all of my questions.
So you have a structural problem in which the DEA has approval.
Now let me ask you this.
Who's the boss of the DEA?
Who's the boss of the DEA?
Ultimately, it's Biden, isn't it?
Are you telling me Biden can't just order them to do what they need to do?
Yeah.
So, I think it has more to do with the president being unwilling to overrule them.
We have to wait.
Maybe I'll be wrong and the DEA will say yes.
But I think the DEA's been looking at it for a while and they haven't said yes yet.
And it doesn't seem like it's a difficult question.
Health and Human Services did the research, so they don't have to re-research it.
Just the leadership has to talk to some people in the group and say, what do you think?
And then they make a decision.
Why is it taking so long?
Probably exactly the reason you think, because they don't have the right structure that this can ever happen.
And they'll have to come up with some reason why they can't do it.
So I would predict, if money predicts, follow the money.
It should predict the DEA will reject it, and I further predict that the reasons they reject it will look absurd to you.
Anybody want to take the other side of that bet?
Follow the money, and it should suggest that the DEA turns it down.
We'll see.
So Mike Lee, Senator from Utah, sometimes referred to as Based Mike Lee.
That's actually his ex-handle.
He explained to us why Congress is so broken.
And he did such a good job.
I'm going to read it, even though it's a little long.
It's a thread from X. But have you ever wondered, why is it that our leaders are voting on bills that they haven't read?
Haven't you wondered that?
I'm not the only one, right?
What's wrong with the process that they have these giant bills and nobody even has time to read it before they have to vote?
How in the world does that even make sense?
Well, Mike Lee explains it to us.
And I'm going to read his explanation word for word because it's so good.
All right, he said, earlier today, a reporter standing outside the Senate chamber told me that after four months of secrecy, the firm, which, and I'm going to define what he means by the firm, plans to release the text of the 106 billion supplemental aid border security package, possibly as soon as tomorrow.
Remember, I'll tell you what the firm means in a minute.
Wasting no time, she then asks, if you get the bill by tomorrow, will you be ready to vote on it by Tuesday?
The words, quote, hell no, escaped from my mouth before I could stop them.
Those are strong words where I come from.
Sorry, mom.
The reporter immediately understood that my frustration was not directed at her.
Rather, I was directed at the law firm, and he's using this in a creative way, not actually a law firm.
He goes, the law firm of Schumer and McConnell, you know, the leaders of the Senate and the House.
No, actually, the Senate.
Sorry.
Majority and minority leaders of the Senate.
And so that's what he calls the firm.
So, you know, that that's a term like, you know, lawyers from some movie or something.
But so imagine that Schumer and McConnell, a Republican and a Democrat, But they're the leaders, and they're perpetually trying to normalize a corrupt approach to legislating.
Now, what is that corrupt approach?
Now, here's the fun part of his message.
He's going to describe the process that is used for legislation.
Now, you ask yourself if this process could ever produce a good outcome.
It can't.
And this is the actual process they use.
Number one, spend months drafting legislation in complete secrecy.
Alright, you're already in trouble.
Number two, aggressively market that legislation based not on its details and practical implications, good or bad, but only on its broadest and least controversial objectives.
There it is.
That they'll give the legislation some name that is the opposite of what it does, and then they'll talk about the least important part of it, which might even be positive, so that they can ignore all the rest of it, because all the rest of it you wouldn't vote for.
Number three, let's members see Bill text, for the first time, only a few days, sometimes a few hours, before an arbitrary deadline imposed by the firm.
In other words, Schumer and McConnell.
Have you watched that happen?
Yes, you have.
Did you ever wonder why they do that?
Why don't they give them enough time to consider the legislation?
They've been working on it for months.
Why don't the people who have to vote on it have time to look at it?
Well, apparently it's not an accident.
I'll read on.
They have a contrived sense of urgency, Mike says.
Number four, forces a vote on the legislation on or before that deadline, denying senators any real opportunity to read, digest, and debate the measure on its merits, much less introduce, consider, and vote on amendments.
Whenever the firm engages in this practice, it largely excludes nearly every senator from the constitutionally prescribed process in which all senators are supposed to participate.
That doesn't sound good.
By so doing, the firm effectively disenfranchises hundreds of millions of Americans, that's how I feel, at least for the purposes relevant to the legislation at hand, and it's tragic.
It's also un-American, uncivil, uncollegial, and really uncool.
So why does the firm do it?
Every time.
Why do they do it?
Why do they do it every time?
And it uses this process nearly every time.
And they've become adept at, A, enlisting the help of the freakishly cooperative news media.
So one of the reasons they can get away with this is that the media isn't hitting them on it.
And exerting pressure in a way that makes what you experience in middle school look mild by comparison.
So they bully people behind the scenes, the senators.
The senators are getting bullied behind the scenes by their own leadership.
And they reward those who consistently vote with them.
Okay, that's pretty creepy.
And they get, you know, various privileges, etc.
So.
And they're uniquely the leaders can give you the committee assignments and all the good stuff that you want.
So basically, the leaders are just forcing people to vote the way they want.
They're keeping them in the dark so they don't complain about it.
And then they're bullying and punishing and rewarding them to do what they want.
Effectively, here's an actual senator elected by his state who is telling the rest of us and Utah I can't do the job you elected me to do, because my leadership is preventing me from being an honest broker of your preferences.
That's a hell of a patriotic thing to say.
So, Mike Lee, you earned your based reputation, and now he talks about this big bill, it's still secret, they still don't know what's in it, they're gonna go through this rushed process, because if you knew what's in it, you certainly would not vote for it.
So they actually are creating legislation so bad that they have to keep their own members in the dark to get them to vote for it, bully them, you know, I don't know, probably threaten them and everything else.
And then Mike Lee says, under no circumstances should this bill, which would fund military operations in three distinct parts of the world and make massive permanent changes to immigration law, be passed this week.
Or next week, he says.
Nor should it be passed until we have had adequate time to read it.
Duh.
And he says there's no universe in which those things will happen by next week.
Please share if you agree.
Yes, Mike Lee.
Thank you.
So as an American citizen, as a voter, as a taxpayer, there's some work I appreciate.
There's an elected senator, not from my state, but still works for the benefit of the country, and he's done a real good service here.
He's explained to us, in a way I can understand, why nothing works.
It's because two people who have power are using their power to get what's good for those two people, and maybe whoever is their supporters.
And we have a puppet Congress.
So it turns out there are only two people in Congress who matter, and they've been there a very long time, and you know what happens when you're there a long time?
Presumably, you become somebody's puppet, eventually.
Somebody's gonna bribe you.
Somebody's gonna get some blackmail on you.
Somebody's gonna befriend you and start taking you on luxury vacations.
Somebody's gonna start giving you stock tips that are kind of amazing.
So, there's no way this system could work, even on paper.
If you were to draw this up and say, hey, how about a system like this?
Nobody would approve that.
So we don't even have a system that operates anything like the Constitution imagined.
It's constitutional, because it's not breaking the Constitution, but nobody contemplated that it was two people keeping a secret and bullying other people into agreeing.
So we actually have a government of bullying and blackmailing and secrecy and two people making the decisions on behalf of the rest.
Perfect!
All right.
Trump's insurrection case has been taken off the schedule, not because they don't want to pursue it, but because there are appeals that are going forward that have to be resolved first.
And the appeals would be on the question of whether a president could be even charged or prosecuted for something done in office.
Now, Trump was still in office, tactically, when the things on January 6th were occurring.
Because it was before the new president was sworn in.
So, is this the kind of situation where you think it makes sense for the president not to get prosecuted?
Does it fall into that category where you say, man, you wouldn't want to handcuff a president?
Let's say something like, did a military response to something, and there wasn't much time, and it was a fog of war, and they got it wrong.
You kind of want them still to have that ability to get it wrong if they're legitimately trying to help the country and they're doing their best.
You know, sometimes you might have to, you know, step on a toe or do something wrong just to protect the country.
So you do want the president to have the widest possible range of options without being handcuffed, especially if it's an emergency.
And to me, this does fit into the category.
To me, this very neatly fits into the category of something you would want the president to have the power to do, even if it didn't work out.
And the even if it didn't work out part's the important part.
Because if the president's doing something everybody wants and it works out, you know, it's less of a problem.
But if you take the Democrats' illegitimate frame that what Trump was doing was trying to overthrow the country, Well, no.
No, I don't think a president should have immunity from overthrowing the country, even if he's still in office.
No, I don't think that that's reasonable, right?
But suppose the president was trying to disrupt a process In order to make sure that the country got the right answer on the election.
Because that's what people were saying.
And I do believe that Trump legitimately believed there was something wrong with the election.
And that maybe delaying to check could matter.
So under those conditions, if the president does something that's quasi-legal, or in the gray area, or maybe even just frankly illegal, If he's doing it with a stated and obvious purpose of fixing the country, not hurting it, I'm okay with it.
That's exactly the situation I want my president not to have to worry about legal jeopardy.
If you are trying to save the country, yes, you should have total presidential immunity.
If you're trying to overthrow the country, not so much.
So everything depends on the framing.
The question has nothing to do with whether a president does or does not have immunity.
It really has to do with whether it was an insurrection or whether he was trying to help the country.
Because I would definitely treat it as an exception if he was trying to overthrow the country and become a dictator.
I don't think anybody would be in favor of immunity if that was what was happening.
But if what was happening was trying to fix a broken election process, Even if it was to his benefit.
Because, you know, the lawyers will tell you, it doesn't matter that it's also to his benefit.
It only matters that, at the same time, it's good for the country.
And that would be the case.
It would be in his benefit, but good for the country, unambiguously, if there was a real problem that he could correct.
So that's speculative.
All right, let's talk about Biden getting swift voted.
Swift boated.
Has anybody used that one yet?
You know how John Kerry, when Kerry ran for president, and they made up some story about he was in a swift boat and did something, I don't know, unbrave.
I forget what the story was.
I don't think the story was real.
It was just a political attack.
But it was something called a swift boat in Vietnam.
That was the name of the boat.
But now we've got the Taylor Swift situation, who might be endorsing Biden, etc.
Now, she hasn't endorsed Biden specifically, right?
I don't believe she came out and endorsed Biden.
What if she does?
I think that the Republicans will reframe Taylor Swift as the leader of the Awfuls.
You know what the Awfuls are?
A-W-F-L-S.
It would be Affluent White Female Liberals.
Affluent White Female Liberals.
That's Michael Malice's brilliant acronym, Awfuls.
Now that I think that's gonna catch on because a lot of people believe that that's the segment of the country that's ruining the country the affluent white female liberals that they're mostly Signaling their awesomeness and in so doing destroying the fabric of the United States and maybe civilization itself so if Taylor Swift ...decides to go full-out endorsing Biden, then you can expect the Republicans to go full-out trying to destroy her.
I'm not saying they should.
It's just the way it works, right?
The same way the Democrats went full-out trying to destroy me for my political opinions.
It's just how it works.
You don't have to like it or not like it.
It's just gonna happen.
So your opinion of it doesn't matter.
And I think that the risk for Taylor, if she hasn't already figured this out, I think she has, is first of all she could lose 40% of her potential viewers, if they haven't already.
And secondly, am I wrong that a huge portion of her fans are affluent white female liberals?
I mean, there are plenty of conservatives, but wouldn't the bulk of her fans be affluent white female liberals?
Well, they're children, but also they're moms.
I think it's actually not children who are her main fans.
I read just recently that you think children are her main fans, but they're not.
They're over 20.
I think the 20 to 30 are actually her main fans, according to a recent report I saw.
So, if that's true, and I would need a fact check on that, if it's true that her main fans would seem to us And the important part is, does it seem true?
Even if it's not true, if it seems that she becomes the face of the awfuls, that's not good for her.
And it's not going to help her.
It's not going to help Biden at all.
So it could go terribly wrong.
So I think that Biden could get a swift voted.
I think he's going to get swift about it.
The moment she, if she does, I think it would be a terrible mistake if she does.
It would be a terrible career mistake to endorse Biden.
Because it's not a regular election, you know, because Trump's on the other side.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.
Mayorkas impeachment thing.
It doesn't look like Mayorkas will actually get impeached.
Republican Ken Buck.
Has already come out and said he doesn't think it rises He doesn't love Mayorkas so he's not happy with Mayorkas but doesn't think that Mayorkas is lack of doing his job rises to any kind of impeachable offense I Don't hate that opinion.
I Think Mayorkas needs to be removed but if he didn't do an impeachable offense I I hate it, but I'm gonna have to agree with Ken Bach.
We can't live in a world where you just make up the rules as you go.
If it's not impeachable, it's just gotta be non-impeachable.
You just gotta stick with it.
So, I hate it, but I suspect he's right.
I also like the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed it.
I like the fact that he's being questioned about it.
I like the fact that it's on the table, because that sends the right message.
But in the end, if he's not impeached, I could get over that.
I think he needs to go, but if this doesn't work, well, I'd rather keep the integrity of the impeachment process if there's any left.
Well, I saw a post by ALX, one of your better followers on X, and he's talking about Governor of New York, Democrat Kathy Hochul, who is on video talking about how much she loves immigration before she decided to hate it recently.
And she's on video saying that, you know, the Statue of Liberty has this little poem on it about, you know, welcoming people, the immigrants, with open arms He says, we will house you and protect you, whatever it says on that poem on the Statue of Liberty.
Very welcoming to the migrants.
Well, time goes by.
And now Kathy Ockel thinks that all the migrants are an emergency and a crisis and there are way too many and they can't possibly take any more.
But the best part of this story was not the hypocrisy or the fact that obviously it was a terrible idea from the start.
I loved ALX's comments.
He says, it's a bad idea to base your policy on a poem.
And that's exactly what happened.
She literally based her policy on a poem.
And then it didn't work out.
Well, now there's a big surprise.
It didn't work out.
So how often do we see this same pattern, that Democrats can't calculate risks and rewards, and they can't distinguish the long term from the short term?
Very consistently.
They can't determine the long term from the short term.
Short term, is it good to welcome the immigrants?
Sure.
Small rate of flow?
Properly vetted?
Absolutely.
Come on in.
But once the flow and the amount of it becomes a crisis... Well, there you go.
You might wonder about the value of the legacy media, but I'm here to tell you that they still have a value.
The LA Times, who recently laid off a lot of their workforce, they're running an opinion piece now, and the title of the opinion piece is, How Throwing Soup at the Mona Lisa Can Help Fight Climate Change.
No, I didn't read that wrong.
I didn't read it wrong.
How throwing soup at the Mona Lisa, which recently happened, it didn't hurt it because it's behind glass, can help fight climate change.
I'm not going to read the rest of that article, but that's where the LA Times is at.
There's your hard news right there.
Now, I assume the article says, you know, you got to keep the pressure on and, you know, keep protesting.
But did we need to read that?
I don't think that was news.
I don't think we need or it's not even a barely it's opinion.
So if the LA Times was doing that, what weren't they doing?
Was there anything that maybe they should have been doing?
that was a big, gaping hole that had to be filled by a concerned citizen, because we've all realized that we don't have a functional news entity, and we all have to become the news ourselves.
Well, did you see a video in which Brett Weinstein talks to Tucker Carlson, and apparently Brett took it upon himself In his role as a researcher and citizen, which is good enough.
Patriot.
Good enough.
I'll take that.
Traveled down to what's called the Darien Gap in South America to find the source of the immigration.
So here's what we learned.
Here's something I didn't know from the LA Times or any legitimate press.
Legitimate?
Did you know that the way that people are getting in from far away countries is they go into Ecuador, because Ecuador doesn't require a visa, to come in and then they work their way through Colombia and up through the rest of Central America and up through the border?
Oh, some of you knew that.
Okay.
So, well, I didn't know it.
I didn't know that Ecuador was the weak spot.
Maybe I heard it somewhere, but it wasn't at the top of my mind.
So we learned that, and we learned that there are a growing number of Chinese men coming through, etc.
And is it an invasion or something else?
And Brett concluded it's maybe both.
There's an invasion quality to it, but that might be More of an outcome than a clever plan by somebody.
And there are all these organized entities that are there just to help people get onto this path and all the way through.
Now, I didn't get to watch the entire video.
I recommend the video because it's one of the few times you'll hear from a human being Who you can believe, because I don't think there's any, doesn't have any interest in lying to you.
You know, there's no financial interest in lying.
Who you could believe, who went down there, looked for himself, talked to lots of different people, and tried to figure it out, on your behalf.
Thank you.
Thank you, Brett, for doing that.
And the fact that our news industry has failed us to the point where somebody is going to buy a plane ticket to South America to just, you know, wallow around in the mud and figure out what's going on and why the country is going to hell.
I mean, you've got to really fail as an industry before somebody buys that plane ticket.
And here we are.
So great work on that.
And I think our government is lying to us about all of it.
There is still some mystery about the border that we don't know.
There's still some mystery.
It could be who's funding it all or that's probably what or why.
Alex Jones warns us that he's seen a memo that there's a secret FBI memo telling Border Patrol to be ready for a quote imminent white supremacist attack.
So, wouldn't that be exactly the perfect political thing to happen right now, when the border looks like the worst thing in the world for Democrats and the worst thing in the world for Biden, and will certainly cause him to lose?
But you know what would be perfect?
Wouldn't it be perfect if suddenly, as if by magic, there's a white supremacist event at the border because they're trying to keep the brown people from coming into the country?
And then the news gets to reframe resistance to immigration as a white supremacist opinion.
Now Alex Jones warns us that there could be a false flag coming.
Wow.
It sure looks like it.
So first of all, I believe Alex Jones when he says he's got a source that says a memo says there might be attack.
Now that doesn't mean it's a false flag.
It could be there's a false flag, but also the memo is real.
So there could be any combination of realities here.
We don't know.
But would I be concerned that something that would help Biden so much as a white supremacist attack on people coming across the borders?
That does feel like exactly the thing that could happen in a terrible country.
And we might be living in a terrible country.
Because the Why are we looking at those severed head?
Oh my God.
Anyway, I guess we'll wait and see on that, but if you see a attack that looks like white supremacist, you know, you should say, alright, Alex Jones warned us about this.
Now this is the best thing about the independent press.
The best thing is when they warn you what the next play is.
Because that has a real chilling effect on the next play.
If Alex Jones tells you what the Democrats are going to do, and then they do it right in front of you, that really weakens their narrative.
It's like, we told you we were going to do that.
It's an obvious play.
False flag.
Even if it's not a false flag, it still weakens it as a story.
Because you can think, well, maybe it was a false flag.
It was predicted exactly the way it happened.
So the predictions of badness are actually quite useful.
I saw a report that Putin announced that Russia plans to integrate those captured or occupied, or whatever you want to call it, Ukrainian territories into Russia by 2030.
That is exactly the right way to play it.
That's the right way to play it.
He's thinking past the sale.
So he's making you think, well, it's not a question of whether it's done.
I'm giving you a deadline.
I'm telling you when it's done.
I'm not saying if it's done.
Because that's just a given.
I'll just tell you when it's done.
So it's good persuasion.
If it's true.
I don't know if it's true.
But I also think this is the only answer for Taiwan and Gaza as well.
The correct way to do the impossibles Is to say you've got a long-term plan.
Now, I always mock when people say, oh, form a committee and do a report.
That's just useless.
That's useless.
But you could actually get utility.
And I'm saying we have a 100-year plan to, let's say, unify North and South Korea.
Because nobody can predict 100 years from now.
And you're not going to be held to it.
The entire world would be different in 100 years.
But you can act like you have a goal, so that lets you solve it today, at least psychologically solve it today.
And it might even start aligning your actions in that direction, and maybe something good will happen in 100 years.
Yeah, the I'll do something you don't like, but it's going to take a long time is exactly the right way to handle it.
So let's do more of that.
There's some fake Joe Biden news, just so you can note that I don't only call out fake news when it's against Republicans.
This is something that the right keeps doing, and it starts like this.
The reporting is that Biden says that his son was killed in Iraq.
You've heard that, right?
You've heard people say, Biden says at this event that his son died in Iraq.
I don't think that's true.
I don't think he's ever said that.
Here's what he has said, and it's happening again today, he's being accused of doing that again.
He said, he was talking to one of the parents of the three who were killed recently in the Middle East, and he said, my son spent a year in Iraq, that's how I lost him.
That's a true statement, as far as we know.
He spent a year in Iraq.
He was allegedly exposed to some, you know, burn pits or something.
And then five years later he died of a brain cancer, which you don't know for sure, but he has a suspicion or a strong indication that it was his time in Iraq that caused him to get the cancer.
Now, is that unfair to say my son spent a year in Iraq, that's how I lost him?
Now it's ambiguous and you could see how somebody would interpret it as he died in Iraq.
But I don't think that's such a big stretch to say he served his country and because of that service he died earlier than he needed to.
I'm going to accept that.
I'm going to accept Biden's framing of his son's service because I think that's just a more honorable way to treat the topic.
If there's some other person who served in Iraq and then got an injury that killed them later, I want to fully respect that.
I'm not going to nitpick and say, well, but she didn't die in Iraq, you know, not 100% sure.
No way.
No way.
I think you've got to give the benefit of a doubt.
To not only the fallen, but the, you know, the gold star parent in this case.
I'm getting a lot of pushback on this.
I think everybody's disagreeing with him.
I'm seeing F him, no, no, no way.
All right, I will accept your disagreement.
So my pushback on this is that I feel it's insulting to the veterans, and it's not about Biden.
I think Biden is actually treating this closer to the way I would have treated it, which is to say these two things are connected.
Well, we can agree to disagree on this because it's very subjective how you treat respect.
And I will accept your disagreement.
All right.
Frank Luntz, as you know, famous pollster, says that it looks like Trump would win unless there's a third party entry.
Well, Trump's going to win if there's a third party, basically.
Let me say that in a straighter.
But he also said and made some news that Biden's the weakest incumbent since Jimmy Carter.
He's the weakest incumbent since Jimmy Carter.
Now, what he didn't specify is if he meant Jimmy Carter the way he was when he was incumbent or Jimmy Carter the way he is right now.
So I think Biden is weaker than Jimmy Carter right now.
Just saying.
All right.
The libs of TikTok was talking about they have a scoop.
And they got some internal documents from Southwest Airlines that are trying to double the racial diversity and increase their gender diversity.
In other words, they're going to discriminate against white men in hiring.
I saw Megyn Kelly reposted this.
So the Libs of TikTok creator is, I believe, an American woman.
Am I correct?
And Megyn Kelly, Let me tell you what's bothering me about this.
TikTok American woman who says it's a scoop that Southwest Airlines is discriminating against white men.
And Megyn Kelly wants to make sure that people know this news.
And so she reposted it.
Let me tell you what's bothering me about this.
You didn't know that this has been the normal case for 30 years.
This is the normal case exactly like this.
No different.
Nothing's changed for 30 years. - For 30 years, white men have been overlooked for gender and racial diversity purposes in a massive way in every large company, every public company.
Now what's different is we have some names for stuff, and maybe they put it in writing a little bit more.
But whether it was in writing or not, it was exactly the same policy.
In 1990s, my boss called me in, and I've told this story too many times, and said, we can't promote you because you're white and male, and we've got to get our diversity and our gender balance up.
And then when I changed companies, Pacific Bell told me exactly the same thing.
This is in the 90s.
Nothing changed.
So the thing that's blowing my mind, and I'm trying not to use the F word because this is usually where I would use it a lot to underscore that just how mind blown I am.
How did the libs of TikTok, a very well informed person, Living in the modern world and Megyn Kelly Extremely well-informed person living in the modern world.
Do they not know that nothing changed?
This is exactly what it's been for 30 years.
Let me tell you what's changed 30 years ago.
I would never would have talked about this in public 20 years ago, I never would have talked about this in public.
It would have just been bad for me.
10 years ago, I kind of mentioned it.
Didn't go well.
Didn't go well.
Everybody said I was lying or that I must be a black man.
Mostly said I was obviously a mid, what do they call it, like a midwit or a They have some insulting word for white people, like a medium or average.
What's the word?
Something like an average person or mid or something like that.
Mediocre, I guess.
Mediocre.
So they tried to spin my story as really I was lying and that the only reason a white man would ever be overlooked in corporate America is that they were actually bad at their job, but they were spinning it to say it was some racial thing.
There's not a single person in the corporate world who thinks that's true.
None.
And then they asked me, I remember people, in fact, even just a year ago, a writer for the Chicago Post was challenging me to prove that there was any such discrimination 30 years ago when I was experiencing it.
And he said he wanted like a witness.
And at first I thought, huh, You know, they're private people, and I know their names, but I don't know how to find them.
You know, my bosses, I don't know if they're alive, that sort of thing.
But then I thought, I'm not gonna play your game.
I'm not gonna play your, can you give me one witness?
So instead, here's the F word.
It's coming, I can't stop it.
And so instead, how about you just walk out in the street, See any adult male, white male, who's 50 or older, and you say, excuse me, have you ever worked at a big company?
Well, yes, I have.
Have you seen the massive discrimination against white men?
What do you think he's going to say?
Do you think you could find one person who would say no?
I don't think so.
I don't think you could find one anywhere in America Who had corporate experience who would say, no, that doesn't happen.
You might find somebody who said it didn't happen to them.
That could be a totally fine, but you won't find anybody who doesn't say, yeah, it's massive.
It's been there for 30 years.
It's no different than it's ever been.
Every single one.
So why is it that there are millions, tens of millions of witnesses?
And most of the world doesn't know it.
Megyn Kelly, you know, I don't want to read her mind.
She may have been fully aware of this forever.
Kind of unfair of me to imagine they didn't know it.
But the way it was posted, it was like, here's some new information about this one company doing something unusual.
No.
Southwest is every company all the time for 30 years.
Every company, all the time, for 30 years.
And if you're just fucking waking up to that, let me do a callback to Dr. Drew and Elon Musk.
If you're just fucking figuring that out, you have been asleep for 30 fucking years.
Thirty fucking years you've been asleep and it's time you wake the fuck up.
So that's what I'm here for.
To wake up the sleeping.
Jonathan Turley and others have reported that the young gentleman who had some sex in that congressional room will not be charged because there's no particular crime.
You know, when the two guys had sex there.
The only thing I have to say about it is, you know what they say about Congress.
Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made.
Okay, next story.
The US plans to target Multi-day strikes in Iraq and Syria against multiple targets including Iranian personnel and facilities and blah blah blah and then Lloyd Austin says That they will act, I'm paraphrasing, at the time of their choice, the targets of their choice, you know, wherever they choose.
So our take is that we will be generic and we'll say, you know, watch out, we're going to get you.
But they also said, I also saw a report that said, you know, Iran can't completely control its proxies.
So we're going to bomb the proxies.
But we can't be 100% sure that Iran told them to do these things.
They just provided all the weapons to do exactly this.
So that's a crazy thing to say.
But let me give some persuasion advice.
Or maybe it's just a question.
For Lloyd Austin, I think he needs it.
Compare these two approaches.
Number one, we will attack something unnamed at an unnamed time in an unnamed way.
And then there are people all over the region who say, I suppose it could be us, but probably not.
There's so many of us, got proxies all over the place, and I'm not really connecting it to what happened.
Like, we're just minding our business over here, and something happened somewhere else, somebody else did it, and now you're gonna bomb us.
It's sort of, you know, it's a little generic.
Let me tell you what Trump has done, And probably would do, and what I would do.
And I believe this is better persuasion.
Do you remember when Trump tells us that he was talking to Putin, and he said, if you do whatever it was, was it invade Ukraine?
I forget what it was.
He said, I'm going to take out Moscow.
And then Trump laughs at it.
He goes, only a 10% chance you believe that, but that's all I needed.
You know, which always makes me laugh, because he tells you exactly what he's doing, like in public.
I just want to give him a 10% chance it's going to happen.
Which just blows my mind that he says that in public, and it is exactly what he's doing.
Well, I don't think we should nuke Moscow, so that was just a bluff.
But here's what I would do.
I would do what I call the menu approach.
The menu approach.
And here's why I think it's superior, but maybe they've tried it before and somebody has better information, right?
If you say, I'm generically going to do a thing at my time in a generic place and time, it doesn't have that fear, Specific tit-for-tat cause and effect element to it.
The only way it does that is through your talking about it later.
Well, you see the thing we did over here is conceptually attached to the thing over here.
It's not enough to really change anything.
Compare that to this.
Hey Iran, here's a menu.
At the top of the menu is the thing we're going to destroy first if you do X. And let's say X is send another missile from the hoodies or allow the hoodies to send another missile at a ship.
So you might say at the top of the list, the first time another missile comes from the hoodies, we're going to take out your tanker.
And here's the name of the tanker.
And then you do it.
Then you do it.
And then you say, next on the list, and you can see the whole list, right?
So it's all published in advance.
Next on the list is this Hezbollah camp or whatever.
You know, maybe it's an important one.
And then you take it out.
Now you might say, but Scott, they'd have time to move the tanker and they'd have time to, you know, reinforce the camp and stuff like that.
Yes.
Doesn't matter.
Here's what you're doing.
What you're doing is you're creating a proponent within the Iranian constellation.
So, going back to my example, if you say, if you hit any ship in the area, we're going to take out this specific tanker.
There's a person who owns that tanker, or entity.
That entity immediately becomes the persuader within Iran to cut it down.
Whoever could own a tanker, whether it's an entity or a person or a company or whatever it is, or just somebody in charge.
They don't even have to own it.
They just have to be in charge of it.
The first thing they're going to do is call up somebody they know in the administration and say, are you freaking kidding me?
My tanker is on the top of your list.
Whatever you do, like, I'm on your side.
And you're going to let them take out my tanker?
Because you're going to let the Hooties send a stupid missile in?
What are you gaining by that?
Stop it.
I don't want to lose my tanker.
And then, let's say a few tankers go, and then the next thing on the list is Karg Island.
Now Karg Island is where Iran's primary energy infrastructure exists, if you take that out, they're out of business.
But if it's fourth on the list, and you took out the first three, I think Iran just does anything you want after that point.
If every time a RAM does something, you do a surprise thing to a proxy somewhere, and you killed a few people, or maybe you didn't, or maybe they moved, or you're not even sure, how does that get you anything?
So, compare the menu to the Will Strike when you don't expect it.
I think the menu gets you there faster.
But you've got to start with some things you're really going to do.
Because Karg Island might be something you really, really don't want to do, because that's all that war.
But you put it fourth on the list, and you do the first three, and Iran is going to be, OK, they really mean they're going to take out Karg Island.
And we would.
Maybe we would take it out.
All right.
So that's a persuasion advice.
Apparently Iran's going to begin construction on four more nuclear power plants.
What?
Iran can build nuclear power plants, and I'm talking about the technical know-how, and the ability to get it approved, and we can't in this country.
So the United States can't figure out how to build these, and they've got four?
My God.
All right.
I'm going to remind you again that the cyber mutually assured destruction that at least we have with China, where China basically has infiltrated all our systems.
They can take the whole country down anytime they want.
We could probably do the same thing to them with cyber stuff.
So, I think that makes the odds of a nuclear war with China basically zero.
Because you would do the cyber thing first, if you were going to do something extreme.
So, and that would get, yeah, that would sort of make nuclear war unnecessary.
I think it's enough of a threat.
But Iran might not have the same cyber capabilities, so maybe a nuclear bomb, if they could get one, might still be on the table in their specific case, which is dangerous.
All right.
So Biden has decided to sanction some Israeli people who are doing terrible things in the settlements.
So they're doing some crimes against the Palestinian in the area.
Now, I'm not going to, you know, obviously I'm not going to endorse their crimes.
You don't need to know what they are, but they were pretty bad.
But Biden has decided to sanction these Israeli citizens for some crimes they did in the West Bank, I guess.
How does that make sense?
Private citizens doing crimes?
Do we police other countries all the time?
Why in the world are we involved in an individual crime in another country?
Can anybody explain that?
There's something to this story I completely don't understand.
Why in the world would we get involved at that level?
I'm not, you know, certainly not defending whatever these guys did, but America has to do that?
That's crazy.
There's something missing in the story.
And then I guess the IDF, Israeli military, took out a Belgium building that was still standing in Gaza, because Belgium apparently is one of the countries that refused to cut funding to UNRWA.
The group that is in the United Nations and gives support to the Palestinians historically.
So do you think that's a coincidence?
That Belgium decided not to back Israel and then Belgium's building just disappeared?
It actually could be a coincidence because 60% of Gaza is being destroyed.
So I don't think they care too much what building it is.
I think they'll all be destroyed eventually.
Is that a fair target?
Do you think if Belgium was still paying money to UNRWA, which we know now was involved in the planning of the October 7th, do you think they're a fair target?
They're building, not the people.
I say yes.
Oh, it's ANRWA?
Is that the correct pronunciation?
ANRWA?
That might be it.
I'd say it's a fair target, because it's an economic target.
If there were people there, I'd say absolutely not, but as an asset, sure.
Here's a fake poll.
So you can learn to spot fake polls.
The AP, which nobody trusts, if you're paying attention, you know that it's sort of a... They're very Democrat-leaning, let's say.
So here's what they report.
They report that half of U.S.
adults say Israel has gone too far in their war in Gaza.
So that's an AP NORC poll.
Half of U.S.
adults say Israel has gone too far.
Do you immediately see what the problem with the poll is?
Before I even tell you what the answer is.
Do you see the problem?
Let me tell you.
If you ask the question that way, has Israel gone too far?
Your human brain goes immediately to all the people dying at the moment in Gaza.
And your natural human reaction is, oh my God, that's too far.
Because nobody presented the alternative path.
You're just asking if this one thing seems like much.
And of course it does.
If you weren't considering any history or predicting what would happen if they didn't do these things, if you just said, does it seem too far?
Anybody who's a human being Could predict you get a lot of people saying it's too far.
So that's the way the AP asked it.
So that's how you you rig a poll to get an answer that pushes the news the way you want to push it.
So they seem to be pushing the news to think that Israel needs to slow down and you know that would be consistent with what the Democrats are saying right now.
Now, how could they have asked the question to get a different answer from the same people?
Well, this is, you know, a fake example, but just to give you a feel for what they could have done.
Suppose they'd said this.
Imagine instead that I ask you to predict what happens to Israel later if it stops fighting and returns Gaza to its prior situation.
So suppose the question was this.
If Israel stops fighting and returns Gaza to what it was, what would happen to Israel in the long run?
Right?
If you ask that question, you've automatically put the benefits and the costs on the table at the same time.
If you say, have they gone too far?
Your brain is biased toward just the cost.
You're like, oh yeah, I'm a human being.
I don't like killing.
Too far.
If I say, tell me the two paths.
One path is they keep going hard at Gaza, and then dominate it and control it totally.
And then the other is they just sort of hit them hard, put them back to where they were, Tell me what you think happens if they put it back together.
Now, is anybody going to say, oh, I think they'll all learn to live in peace because after being brutalized for, you know, a year, they're not any angrier than before?
Like, who in the world could even have that opinion?
Of course they'll be angrier.
Of course they're more radicalized.
Of course they are.
You can't just put it back together like it was.
Whatever it is, it's not gonna be like it was.
That's the one thing that's not gonna happen.
So, learn how to find these fake polls.
Now, is Scott, outside of his area of expertise, is Scott talking about polling in a way that he does not understand?
Yes, but I will tell you where I get it.
I had a friend who was a pollster.
I still think he's a friend.
He doesn't love Trump, so it could be different on any given day.
But a long time ago, he taught me, because he was in the business of forming poll questions.
It was his job to actually write the exact question.
And he would tell me how easily you could do it wrong if you didn't know the science of how to write it right.
That it's really hard to write a question that doesn't bias the the answer in a way you don't want to bias them.
And when I look at the AP thing, to me that looks like somebody who knew what they were doing.
And knew it would bias the answer and chose to do it.
Now that would be mind reading and speculation and so I can't allege that that's true.
I just say it looks like it.
I can't imagine a professional pollster not knowing what this would do.
So, this morning I asked a professional pollster, do you see this too?
And the professional pollster who shall remain anonymous said, oh yeah, definitely.
So if you ask somebody, not me, somebody who actually knows this field, they'll back me up.
So if you know anybody, ask them this question, show them this one and say, is this one of those polls where you're trying to force the result?
Just ask, you'll be surprised.
And I take you back to Dr. Drew and Elon Musk, that all the information is biased, but all the polling is too.
Now that doesn't mean it's all wrong, but you should assume that every pollster has a preferred set of questions that they're comfortable asking, and a set of questions that that particular pollster would never ask.
It's helpful if you're looking at polls that are showing both sides.
Maybe you can triangulate.
You also want to look at who's got a good track record.
Does Quinnipiac have a good track record of presidential polling, for example?
You tell me.
Quinnipiac.
Because Quinnipiac had a different result than the other pollsters recently.
Quinnipiac?
I'm seeing yeses and nos, which means that it's not generally known if their accuracy has been good in the past.
Some say they've been good.
Others don't know.
Some say not.
I don't know.
I haven't looked it up.
If you see a poll result on a presidential election and you don't know their historical record, you don't know anything.
You got to know that.
All right.
That, ladies and gentlemen.
Concludes.
Oh, way too long.
I've gone over my limits.
I'm going to say goodbye to the platforms of X and Rumble and YouTube.
Thanks for joining.
If you were on the locals platform, I would see your comments first and I'm going to give them a little extra time as I always do.
So if you want to join the locals people, they get to see a little extra.
Bye for now.
Thanks for joining.
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