Episode 1083 Scott Adams： Guest Greg Gutfeld Talks About His New Best Seller The Plus, Then on to the Headlines
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Summary
On this episode of Thick & Thin, host John Rocha is joined by his long-time friend and former co-worker Greg Guffeld to discuss a variety of topics, including his new book, The White House Correspondent s Notebook and the latest episode of his new show, On Tap.
Transcript
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do do do do do well let's see if this works um that's the first time that's happened i got kicked
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off i got kicked off but i'm back apparently i'm unstoppable uh it's possible that this
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will help me connect with greg guffeld and i swear to god this is going to work
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um well maybe not anyway um we did the simultaneous step right before i got kicked off
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if we have any technological luck and it looks like we're going to have some difficulty day
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today um i wanted to talk to greg guffeld but if i don't do it today i'll figure out another
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another time it works so greg if you can either retry your device or
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well i think today will be the last time i ever try to use periscope for a guest
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i think i've made a decision that today will be the last time i ever try to use this technology
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live to bring out a guest those of you who've watched i think my my accuracy has been something
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like 50 maybe uh let me just try one more time all right so greg i've got my dm i'm looking at my
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twitter dm if uh if it looks like it's not going to work just send me a message on twitter i've got
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that open and i'll see it as soon as you send it but let me talk about some other things while we're
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doing that and by the way the plus you should see the reviews for this like it's killing it's a it's
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a number one self-help book on amazon it's a number two self-help book on new york times the reviews are
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ridiculous you gotta got a trump uh got a trump retweet that's pretty nice and uh and i think he has a uh
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part of his book tour will be at a drive-in theater we'll ask him about that if we get him anyway um
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while we see if that's gonna happen let me talk about another thing have you ever have you ever
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noticed that there are some words that are used in the political realm that are really more powerful
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than other words and there's a word that the anti-trumpers are using about trump and his in his
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performance for the uh coronavirus which is really it's a really good one they use the word botched
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have you heard that it's it's sort of the one that they keep repeating and i gotta say i think i'm
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gonna adopt that trick because i never i never thought about it before but if you say somebody didn't do a
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good job they might say well we did or or we didn't but if you say somebody botched something
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it seems entirely different doesn't it hey look i think greg's back
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let's see if this works greg you are live amazing
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palpitations because the technology was not giving you what you needed yes and plus i was on
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my fourth uh uh spontaneous sip or uh by i had my i'm on my fourth coffee you've over sipped you've
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yes yes so i don't know if you heard but i was giving you the giving them the rundown on your amazing
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book oh thank you and i i'm i'm just blown away at the both the reviews you're getting from this
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and uh you got a presidential retweet it's screaming up the charts number two on new york times and by
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the way the number one book that's ahead of you it doesn't belong there i've never heard of it but
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apparently it's very popular but they keep it there because it was there for months it's but it came out
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in october 2019 yeah the new york times list has some might have some let's say algorithmic
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irregularities if you will uh anyway uh are you still there oh we lost him
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all right i'll keep an eye on see if he comes back
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back um i think i think we we deserve at least one more try if your technology
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can can produce is possible that the gods are working against this day all right uh so i was there
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this is totally going to work this is totally going to work
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are like let let me jump right into this sure okay yes yeah i i want to ask you the the dumbest
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question that a anybody ever asked because this is this is one i guess sometimes i want to see if
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you've ever gotten this at the end of the book interview they'll say to the author uh so greg uh
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where can people buy this book that is the that is the local news staple of every interview um
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also i had i had a great interview and i'm not going to mention who the person is because she was
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very nice but did that thing you talk about where they don't read the book but they just kind of open
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up the book and they just and they just go like uh so and then she reads the chapter heading so yeah
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the prison of two ideas i found that interesting tell us about it and then you just do it and it's just
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like and then she did it again and then she's like well this was really a great book and then that was
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and then it's where can you pick it up and uh it's it's wonderful and you you write in a similar
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uh fashion you have the same problem i do that that a lot of authors will write a book that has one
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theme so you can always speak to it but you hit you hit like hundreds and hundreds of points if they
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pick one out not only does it misrepresent what your book is yeah because people think oh i heard that
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one story but about that one point and i you know and then they make a decision based on that one
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point i would say that you have the kind of book that has to be read in full because it's more like
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an experience of reading the book than it is about you know all right so wait can i tell you a funny
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thing though about it though please please do yeah yeah okay so i have a hard time explaining what
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the book is about and i've always been that way with almost every book that i do because i was so close
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to it so when i when i get interviewed by people they often do it better than i did like what walter
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kern uh interviewed me and described it as it's a book about impulse control and i never thought of
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that but the the actual plus thing is is for people who have options and they and they and they forgot
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what impulse control really is oh frick we lost him again can you believe that unfreaking believable
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now i don't know what is causing these calls to drop but it is it is crazy i'm not even sure why this
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is a commercial product at this point or at least this feature of it i like the periscope part but not
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the uh the guest part let's see if he's back there we go
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just act act like you weren't even cut off and you're starting right in the middle of the sentence
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go and that is why they threw me in jail scott and i swore it was all in self-defense and i found
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my pants an hour later but that wasn't was that a great story scott it was uh not only self-defense
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but he had it coming and uh that's what happens when you have a relationship with the duck yes
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all right so i you're you're saying how other people are characterizing your book i i had one
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for you it's it's how to uh how to deal with your reflex for negativity yes that is really good uh
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it was basically a lot of reframing well this is the negative thing you're doing
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you know why don't you reframe it this way etc uh let me let me tell you my uh my favorite
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part of this uh every once in a while you read like one sentence that just just sort of really
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speaks to you this was one sentence i'm paraphrasing a little bit but it said that no matter uh
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before you do something dumb ask yourself how you were feeling yes yeah just say something about that
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well it's because i realized and it's been in the last couple years especially when i'm listening
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to the uh your periscopes that almost everything i do is judged by my current state or mood so like if
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i'm in a bad mood i don't really know i'm in a bad mood and then i do something and i go why did i do
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that i was in a bad mood so i might say something negative to a friend or to the spouse or uh on twitter
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and it's like why am i doing this and then so i so i i wait i wait until the mood passes and then i
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never and then i lose interest in what i was going to do i i feel like to that point i feel like the
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people with the highest levels of awareness are the ones who have realized that they have been
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different people at different times yeah like angry you drunk you tired you hungry you they're all
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different yous and if you've done you know mushrooms or something that's like a whole different you
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and then and and yeah that's that's one of the great things you learn as you get older how many
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yous there really are the hungry you the hungry you is often the worst you because you become like a
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child especially i do if i don't have anything to eat i am uh i'm just an animal and i'm i'm the
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worst kind of greg is that is the hungry greg yeah listening to somebody else's long boring story
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is the worst thing when you are hungry hungry yes it's like two things you don't want to do don't
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don't buy groceries don't listen to the long stories it's true um i also like this tip you
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know no matter how you're doing someone is doing worse today yes as funny as that sounds that's a
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real thing it is i i really use that you say more about that well yeah i mean it's it's um for
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example so two trees fell uh outside my house uh yesterday or two days ago two days ago two days
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ago because of the storm so i couldn't leave in order for me to leave my house i had to try i had
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to go through somebody's backyard two backyards over uh down power lines to get down to a van to do the
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five because the five couldn't get up the hill the five van couldn't get up the hill i'm doing all the
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shows from a van in my driveway so i get down there and i'm going like oh this sucks this i'm screwed but
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then i'm looking at my neighbor a giant tree has landed on her um tesla completely destroyed her
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tesla and and she's laughing she's actually got a pretty good uh sense of humor and i'm just going
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i she said to herself i was almost in my car and so i'm going back to this and i'm going like okay
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that's worse than what i went through and it could have been worse and it could have been worse for her
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so there's all these different levels of worse right there's there's somebody in africa right now who's
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saying a tree fell on her tesla i do not feel bad for her yeah exactly yeah i do not feel bad
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but but she looked at the car she said a hundred dollar deductible you know life goes on so that
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was i mean it's like i tend to i'm a catastrophic thinker about i mean everything and but i realize
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it's passing and that's the most important thing that almost all my errors are due to the fact that i
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can't interpret my moods correctly you know i i would say that's safe for me um now you you have a
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a uh an event at a drive-in theater coming yes which is which is the coolest sounding thing i'm so
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jealous of that because if anybody who does book tours knows there's a sameness about them yeah it's
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just the same freaking thing over and over again but tell us about the drive-in so the drive-in is
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yeah it's yarmouth drive-in in massachusetts they're going to have because it's social distancing
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basically the cars are going to keep people separated but they can get out of their cars
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and i think it's like 450 cars i will be on stage there'll be movie screens and speakers so i'll just
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be doing a show like i normally do when i'm traveling with tom shaloo tom shaloo usually opens the one
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thing that concerns me is how do you tell jokes if you can't hear the response but i'm told people
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will be out of their car so you'll hear the laughter which will be important because i don't know how
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you talk and then there's this silence but they're apparently it's worked out really well but that's
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yeah so it's going to be like it's going to be basically a drive-in comedy show yeah i i've had
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situations where like that where you just have to like live in your own head and imagine laughter it's
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like imagine somebody was laughing at that yeah i do that a lot so so are you finding that trying to uh
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to you know promote a book during a pandemic did it help or hurt because there's there's something
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i mean the book is obviously getting lots of attention and and doing great and i feel like
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because you're a you're a tv kind of a guy anyway did this actually help you do you think i think so
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i think it's the same kind of logic that worked with covid in the protests when they did they said oh
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look the protests didn't spread covid covid and then you hear that it's because all the people were
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staying home away from the protesters so it's like there's a weird kind of they cancel each other
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out so everybody's stuck at everybody's stuck at home which means they're bored which means maybe
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they'll buy the book right but they won't go out into a signing but i think it all can't everybody's
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in the same boat so nobody's got an edge over everybody else if they're all being kind of punished
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the same way and i think that like you know i mean our ratings have gone up so that means more people
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are watching me talk about the book so that helps wow speaking of speaking of ratings you're you're
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like leading in both of your time slots right on the five and also the greg gotfeld show yeah it's been
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it's been crazy in fact on saturdays generally that we win the entire demo for the whole night
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like so we beat people at seven o'clock on cnn uh there are times when we beat stuff on regular network
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and then um the five oh it's always been a monster i mean it's it's insane how and it it pulls in
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prime time ratings at 5 p.m it's caused msnbc to completely revamp their lineup i don't know if you
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noticed that they they pushed uh what's the dude with the goatees they uh that guy from i can't think
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of his name doesn't matter doesn't matter exactly he's gone and they just they now they expanded the
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four o'clock to six o'clock just to just to fight the five which is you know i i always like to give a
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shout out to the producers of the five no i know i know you like sometimes we'll make fun of the
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staff and stuff just just to have jokes yeah i i gotta say that is the best produced show i mean
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it just screams somebody's good at that and it has to do with even how they put the personalities
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together yeah it's it's the chemistry and and to reproduce that night after night it's it's just
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really amazing work i would say i i just thought of the name chuck todd but no you're right about the
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producing and the five is hard because it's like it's not like you have one anchor you know you
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got to deal with five babies because every now i'm actually a baby i don't think nobody else i'm more
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of a baby than probably most of them because of uh i'm just more neurotic but you have to deal with
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five different people and and you got to figure out which works and keep it light while having it
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serious that kind of thing well you've got the other thing that fox does is that you have personalities
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like when you guys are fighting on the five it it feels like oh my god that's that's what real
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people would say right they were in that chair if nobody was watching that's what you'd say but but
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we're all watching and so i've often said that what makes anything good in entertainment is a sense of
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danger and it's there it is there you know i don't know i mean you i don't know if you watch it when i've
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got like but i'll be shaking at some point like because because that means that that was completely
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improvised and it came out without it came out before i was done thinking you know right yeah
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and uh and i gotta say as much as juan you know gets like beat up by by the other co-hosts and as
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much as the the audience likes making fun of him he's really perfect for that job like you got it the
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the chemistry i mean because he's a good soul and and and obviously it's his job to represent a
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a point of view and uh he does a great job of it in terms of his how he fits with the group it
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just couldn't be better yeah i can't wait to get back into the table scenario and i and i hope i hope
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that soon because i i compare it to going from like playing a game of pickup basketball to going to a
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batting cage where everybody's in their own batting cage and so when you're when you're um when you're
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asked a question it's like you're taking your big swing and you're not really talking and i it it
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kind of drives me a little crazy because i feel like we're in these separated little pods and it
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reduces the conversation so i think that once we get back to normal i think it's going to be great
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because it really hurts in my pain it hurts the chemistry a little yeah you know i would say like
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probably uh 40 of what makes your show work the five is people talking over each other yeah exactly
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then then then you add the satellite delay and it just you're like it it it's getting really hard
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to watch the live shows where the the host and the interviewer are talking over each other because
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of the delay right and you know when i do tucker's show the one thing i i promise myself is when tucker
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says he doesn't have a delay but when tucker says he introduces you don't say oh glad to be here
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because he's going to talk over you exactly like i was really proud i'd go i'm not going to do that
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i'm going to be the only only guest he's ever had who's not going to talk over him and i just sit
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there silently thinking like i'm a champion yeah no it's it's so important because when you do the
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thing like thanks for having me somebody will stop and go we'll hear that and then come back and go
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well uh i'm glad you're here and then and then the person might say thanks and then it goes
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it can go on for it can go on for like a minute and it's just it dry it just makes everything start
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off on a bad foot and you just want it to end uh all right so i know you've got a lot more to do
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today um i've got relatives in town so i'm taking today off i'm actually not going to be on the five
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because uh my sister flew in during the uh tropical storm so i'm going to go uh uh show her around town
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or what's left of new york actually and um before before you go the last question
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this is that this will be a science a science question yes see of jack basabic it goes like this
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if you have more than one goose it's a gaggle of geese right if you have more than one crow it's a
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murder murder rose right what is it if you have more than one antifa um oh wow that is a uh
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oh geez uh a nursery no riot no it's a riot that's good that's good it's very good all right thanks
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greg thank you glad we got it together come and do my show soon all right we'll do love to all right
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all right that was fun go out and buy the plus oh i forgot to ask him where books are sold
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but i think you can figure that out you got your google and all that don't you all right
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um here's a question for you on twitter you'll find lots of people arguing about whether president
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trump did a good job or a bad job so far on the coronavirus has he quote botched it as i was saying
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earlier botched is one of those words that's really good i'm going to start using botched
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to criticize other things because when you hear it just it almost closes down a debate it's like
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um well let's talk about what he did or didn't do he botched it okay but maybe we can dig in a little
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bit see what decisions he made compared to what could have been done he botched it it's like it's it's just
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a total conversation stopper but one of the questions i have is that when people uh give me examples of
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other countries who they say did a good job tamping down the the virus early they give these examples
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um and what was the other one uh south korea taiwan and i ask you this are those comparable
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and is there anything that you notice about the the ones that are doing well is there any commonality
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of the countries that did a good job early or so it seems and i would say yes oh new zealand is
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another one all right so so see if you can find the pattern new zealand south korea taiwan
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and was it indonesia what do they all have in common yeah they're islands or island dish you know uh
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indonesia is separated by water but and in south korea is effectively an island because it's only
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connected by the demilitarized zone to the rest of the the continent so if you're a small homogenous
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population with strong central leadership and you don't have many states and you're not an international
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destination can we compare that i mean is it fair to say that the united states is comparable to those
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little small island different cultures may have a completely different um a different impression about
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let's say conformity let me ask you this i wonder if i could get cancelled for this but i'll put it out
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there anyway we're talking about culture not ethnicity so that's that i'm hoping that keeps me from getting
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cancelled culture is the south korean culture of let's say doing what the government asks and other
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people expect is that the same as in the united states because in the united states if the if the
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central government said um i'm going to sign an executive order i'm the president and the executive
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order says that all citizens must breathe oxygen every day thirty percent of the country would be dead
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by lunch because they'd say i'm not going to breathe no oxygen just because my government told me
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is that the same in south korea in south korea do they say if the government tells me to do it i'm
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going to do the opposite that's sort of unique to the american identity isn't it you know if we're being
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honest part of what has made america a successful country is that we are some um
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how can i say it in the kindest possible way we are some uh
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let's say non-conformists you know there are a whole bunch of ways you could put a bad spit on this
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but america our our greatest strength is that we're all different and those differences are
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allowed you know we we allow uh dissension we allow rebellion we we idolize people who go rogue
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you know so if you have a country that's really big it's an international destination
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it's got you know bunch of states governors who also have power under our system
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you're you know you can't easily just stop all travel uh you know on the ground because you've got
00:24:38.800
people coming across the borders etc i just don't see how these are comparable but uh and then somebody
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said wait you're saying the islands do well what about great britain to which i say i think great britain
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is sort of the exception that proves the rule so in other words great britain yeah i'm no
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international expert but is it not true is it not true that great britain is an international hub
00:25:09.680
but they also started out with a different strategy from the rest of the world so they've got two
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different strategies they started with herd immunity they turned to let's try to control it
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so i'm not sure that you could compare that to anything you know i think at the end of this
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we might be able to say that the herd immunity people let's say sweden were better or worse than
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the rest of the country but you have to wait till the end don't you because what if we think that great
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britain did the worst possible job but we don't get a vaccine in time
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to reach herd immunity as bad as that will be it could be that when you get to the end of the game
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if you will i don't want to call it a game because people say stop calling it a game i'm going to call
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it a game just for analogy purposes there's nothing fun about it but when you get to the end is it
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possible that because great britain accepted more infections intentionally up front that they
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simply front loaded their pain and those that tried to suppress it and suppress it but we never
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get a good vaccine possibly could it be that they've uh back loaded some of their pain so would you be
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just looking at the front loaders versus the back loaders and you really haven't compared their
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strategies because you got to wait till the end of the game all right if if you're ropa doping versus
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trying to punch your way to a victory uh you just got to wait till the end you can't tell in the first
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round um likewise i would say that the people who believe you can compare countries just in general
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any any two countries i think they're missing a lot because can you sort out you know all of the variables
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that compare these two countries think about think about the number of uh studies and data that you've
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seen recently let's just say the last year just pick the last year how many times have you seen a study
00:27:17.600
or an analysis that turned out to be wrong how about every day it's the most common thing in the world
00:27:25.760
so we know that studies in general and predictions and analyses and models we've seen them all be
00:27:33.440
wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong now imagine how uncomplicated a lot of them have been
00:27:40.800
they're complicated they're all complicated but they're relatively uncomplicated compared to comparing
00:27:47.200
two countries think about it try comparing any two countries and and it's a it's a dumb comparison in
00:27:55.440
the first place because if you're trying to figure out if president trump is a good leader try this
00:28:00.960
experiment here's a here's a mental experiment you know those countries you thought did a good job
00:28:07.520
south korea new zealand let's take their leader make that person the president of the united states
00:28:15.120
during the pandemic now how'd they do same no not the same because leadership might be the least
00:28:25.120
important variable in this whole damn thing because i've got a feeling that all of the leaders
00:28:31.600
follow the experts now the experts might have been a little different in each country and also there
00:28:37.200
are some countries who had to do whatever they could do just whatever they could do they didn't have the
00:28:43.040
same resources imagine if you will and i'm not going to predict this but just imagine it imagine if you will
00:28:50.800
that the countries who didn't have great resources said to themselves well we better try this hydroxychloroquine
00:28:57.520
thing because we don't have you know a lot of uh icus and hospital capacity it's a hail mary we don't know
00:29:05.280
if it works but it's cheap let's try it so suppose all the all the poorer countries or let's say countries
00:29:12.960
that were worried about their hospital capacity tried a certain medication we don't yet know if it
00:29:19.120
worked you think you do but i think it's pretty unclear at this point and what if that was the
00:29:25.600
thing what if the united states and some other countries were just sort of excluded from using
00:29:32.320
that because the press had poisoned it so uh so anyway my point is there are so many variables in
00:29:39.920
comparing a country that can't be done and the moment that you think it can be done you've you've
00:29:47.200
you've fallen into a trap it just isn't doable now if you'd like to check that
00:29:53.840
only talk to somebody who's done this for a living all right talk to somebody who is actually an expert
00:30:01.600
at analyzing things and just ask this question you expert at analyzing things can you really compare
00:30:08.560
countries now and if you can can you do it halfway through the pandemic when you know that they have
00:30:16.880
different waves and different you know uh different strategies or do you have to wait to the end all right
00:30:25.920
on that point uh joe scarborough of morning joe tweeted this quote from scott gottlieb md who was the uh
00:30:35.840
what was he the past head of the fda in the past administration correct me if i'm wrong he was in
00:30:42.240
he was in that administration prior uh but he said all of the studies that are that were rigorously done
00:30:49.840
have pointed in the same direction talking about hydroxychloroquine so all the studies that have been
00:30:55.760
rigorously done all of them all of the studies that have been rigorously done have pointed in the same
00:31:03.600
direction that it doesn't work hydroxychloroquine i think at this point he says we can definitively
00:31:10.400
say hydroxychloroquine doesn't work i'm not sure what more we need to do to which i tweeted back
00:31:18.400
it is also true by the way what he says is completely true it is 100 true that all of the studies
00:31:25.120
that were rigorously done shows it doesn't work i think you all agree with that right all of the studies
00:31:31.520
it is also true that all of the studies that were rigorously done that show it don't work studied
00:31:40.640
the wrong application of the drug right it aren't both of those true i think i think dr gottlieb is
00:31:48.480
100 true in his statement that all of the rigorous studies show it doesn't work but it is also true
00:31:55.680
i'm adding this part that all of the rigorous studies studied the wrong thing
00:32:02.960
now i'm still at 50 chance that this hydroxychloroquine is is effective and works because i've never seen
00:32:13.520
anything quite like this i got to tell you well i probably don't have to tell you you you've observed
00:32:21.280
this if you've been watching me for a while is it or is it not true that i'm generally
00:32:28.480
confident to let's say overconfident all the way to being a jerk i'm so confident about a lot of stuff
00:32:37.360
i mean it doesn't matter the topic i'm usually pretty confident in my opinion on the hydroxychloroquine
00:32:43.760
i don't have anything like that and it's really weird because i've never seen a situation in which
00:32:50.080
i was so fascinated at how little that little advantage i have either the let it works or it
00:32:58.000
doesn't work i'm right on the fence i can see why the people say it works are going in that direction
00:33:05.280
i can see why the people who say it doesn't work are saying it and i don't know who's going to be the
00:33:10.240
winner when this when this is all done which fascinates me um here's a uh i think cnn is trying
00:33:20.960
to get the president killed um here's a headline that they ran trump signals he'll do anything in
00:33:28.160
his power to win and then you read the article and do you think the article supports this headline
00:33:35.840
no i don't even have to tell you what's in the article but it doesn't support this headline
00:33:41.280
but it's the top left headline on the cnn home page which means it's the one they want you to see
00:33:47.520
you put the top left one is the important one and they're actually saying trump signals he'll do
00:33:54.000
anything in his power to win meaning that you know breaking the law apparently that's what they're
00:33:59.600
suggesting but then you read the article there's nothing there's nothing like that there are just some
00:34:03.600
things that he's suggesting that you know like having an extra debate does does suggesting an earlier and
00:34:13.920
extra debate sound like doing anything in his power to win those sound different to me uh did you all
00:34:23.440
watch the sally yates testimony that was boring and complicated and here's what's uh so diabolical about
00:34:32.400
it there are very few people in the public and i'm certainly not one of them uh who can listen to
00:34:39.520
something like the sally yates um interview and know what she said wrong and know what maybe was a lie
00:34:48.000
and know what is accurate and thankfully we have joel pollack who has all of the all of the qualifications
00:34:55.680
to watch that and tell us where the lies are so you should follow him on twitter because he calls out
00:35:02.080
the um i guess they would be lies or at least inaccuracies in uh what she said compared to
00:35:09.200
what we know to be true now what's dangerous about the all this stuff is that it feels like the biggest
00:35:16.960
thing in the world right that there was a a coup against a legally elected president and that the
00:35:23.520
you know members of uh the fbi etc were in on this coup and and now it's been uncovered and we know
00:35:32.000
that's a coup and half of the country is acting like it didn't happen is this weird and we've come into
00:35:42.160
this world where you could just act like something didn't happen and i feel like at this point the uh you
00:35:49.760
you know they always they always say that trump could choose somebody on fifth avenue and it should
00:35:53.680
still be supported but in a different way uh i think joe biden could actually die on camera
00:36:04.400
and and the people the the democrats would say he's fine and it would turn into this monty python sketch
00:36:12.640
about the dead parrot and it would look exactly like that and we would just be we don't what are we
00:36:18.880
watching because we watched him die on camera he's laying there he's dead
00:36:27.200
and cnn would report no he isn't no he isn't and their viewers would would read cnn and they would say
00:36:35.600
oh he's still alive and they wouldn't see the clip of him dying and they would never read fox news
00:36:43.280
and they would literally vote for a dead guy because they didn't believe he was dead
00:36:48.800
i think we've reached the point where he could actually die on camera and cnn could just say that
00:36:55.040
didn't happen sounds like a right-wing conspiracy to me he took a nap sure he took a nap everybody takes
00:37:01.840
a nap oh you haven't taken a nap no he's permanently dead sounds like a conspiracy it's a crazy world
00:37:15.040
all right um so one of the big issues is censorship uh so not only has twitter removed twitter removed
00:37:26.320
something because they say it was not medically accurate in terms of covet 19 so it was the president's
00:37:35.120
campaign twitter account coincidentally the communications director for twitter
00:37:42.400
he happens to be kamala harris's former press secretary uh now i don't think he makes these decisions
00:37:49.520
he's a communications director not a decision maker of who gets banned or not but uh are are you
00:37:58.960
comfortable with the communications director for twitter being kamala harris's former press secretary
00:38:05.600
that should make you a little bit uncomfortable but yet but yet if i can if i can give both sides of
00:38:13.280
the story there probably aren't that many people who are world-class communications directors so you
00:38:22.160
know you can't you can't say he shouldn't have a job in private industry just because he was good at
00:38:27.040
some other job uh so i i don't uh i would not support you know any restrictions on who could have any job just
00:38:36.720
because of what job they had in the past that would be inconsistent with anything i believe
00:38:40.400
but it's useful to know useful to know the connections and here's what's interesting about
00:38:47.360
it though uh the original tweet uh violated twitter's rules for misinformation and i think
00:38:55.280
what he said was what trump said that got him in trouble was quote the kids are quote almost immune
00:39:01.920
to covet 19 now it would not be true that kids have an immunity to it it would be true
00:39:10.880
that when they get it it doesn't have that big of an impact on them now because trump is not
00:39:17.440
a medical doctor and as soon as he said almost immune i believe he clarified what he meant
00:39:24.720
to mean that it doesn't affect them as much when they get it that's what i heard but maybe i'm wrong
00:39:30.560
on that so here's the question at what point does twitter become your doctor and they get to decide what is
00:39:39.520
accurate medical information in a world in which experts disagree now if experts did not disagree
00:39:48.000
i'd say yeah if they're all on the same side and twitter sees somebody saying something the
00:39:52.240
experts disagree with why not you know you might want to flag it it'd be better just to flag it and
00:39:57.280
say the experts disagree but almost immune is really just a choice of words that one feels to me like
00:40:06.000
something that a clarification banner should have been better in other words here's how i would
00:40:11.520
have handled this if i were twitter if i were twitter i would pin a uh like a an alpha comment
00:40:20.400
so that if you saw the story you'd see very highlighted you couldn't miss it whatsoever
00:40:25.040
the twitter clarification and the clarification would be in this context almost immune refers to the
00:40:33.360
fact that they tend not to have medical complications when they contract it and i would think that would
00:40:39.040
be fair i don't think the president would even argue with that right because if you clarify what the
00:40:45.680
president's saying you're saying what he's saying which also is compatible with with science why would he
00:40:52.960
disagree with that so shutting it down until that tweet is deleted feels like feels a little political
00:41:00.320
when it would be easier to handle it as information that needs to be clarified um and then facebook also
00:41:07.520
took down something uh what did facebook take down facebook took down something for being uh inaccurate
00:41:15.760
to which i say how does anybody know what's accurate anymore we have so left behind the world where anybody
00:41:24.080
knows anything is accurate i mean any data any study any expert consensus there isn't any of it that's reliable
00:41:34.320
anymore we we've so left behind the world where you could just know what's true all right
00:41:41.280
uh did you all see joe biden's uh campaign ad in which he gets into a an old mustang i guess
00:41:49.280
and he drives up and down his own driveway i think i don't know if that's his driveway but
00:41:54.160
it looks like some protected area there um there were various reactions to it i saw mike cernovich say
00:42:01.840
that uh it was an impressive ad i don't know what words he used but but he thought it was a good ad
00:42:07.120
um and i had the opposite response because when i watch joe biden drive a car by himself
00:42:17.760
what thought do you have because the thought that i automatically have is we should take his car keys
00:42:24.640
away but yeah because he only drove like literally in this protected no other car area it looked like
00:42:31.920
somebody's driveway but it was at the very least it was a enclosed area so it's not like he was in
00:42:38.080
traffic and i really have to um well let me ask you this oh i'm sorry it was a corvette i was an old
00:42:48.960
corvette yeah you're right uh it was not a mustang it was an old corvette it was a pretty cool car
00:42:56.240
i like the car um but did any of you have the same feeling i did which is it's a question of taking
00:43:02.880
his keys away because i couldn't not think that the whole time he was in the car i thought take his
00:43:08.480
keys away take his keys away weren't you thinking that so i uh so i don't see that that worked the way
00:43:17.040
they wanted it to but it's hard to know um jake novak is a great source if you're not following jake
00:43:25.760
novak on twitter you should because the explosions that you're seeing in beirut and now there's some
00:43:32.960
more fires in iran and i think in iraq had some big fires recently um there may be a pattern here if
00:43:41.040
you know what i mean and the pattern as jake novak writes uh might be that we know where iran is
00:43:49.440
keeping their secret terrorist weapons it looks like that because what it looks like is that somebody
00:43:58.480
could be who knows could be israel could be somebody else but it looks like somebody knows where iran is
00:44:07.280
keeping their bad stuff and the bad stuff is going up in flames so there there must be something
00:44:14.000
different happening in iran compared to however long ago that we seem to know where their stuff is
00:44:21.920
so there could be an insider who has turned that's speculation um and if that's the case
00:44:29.520
and maybe because iran has already degraded their economy is in bad shape because the sanctions
00:44:34.480
and coronavirus that maybe iran is in such a weakened position right now that if we if we meaning israel
00:44:43.280
united states knows where all the hezbollah stocks of weapons are etc maybe they're just rolling them
00:44:51.520
all up and just saying well by the end of the week they're not going to have any more weapons depots
00:44:56.640
so it looks like that's what's happening but it's hard to know there was a raid at jake paul's house
00:45:02.560
everybody's watching that i don't know what to make of that so there's going to be some crime that we
00:45:09.440
haven't heard of that i think he will be alleged to have committed there's some reports about taxes
00:45:16.560
they wouldn't raid his house for that there's pictures of them taking away uh weapons i don't
00:45:22.880
think they would have raided his house just for that so i think i feel like there's more to this story
00:45:28.480
we'll figure it out later um and let's see if i've covered all of my fascinating points
00:45:38.160
so biden's not going to go to wisconsin to accept the nomination he i don't know where he'll be in
00:45:46.240
his basement uh the president has said maybe he'll do his uh thing from the white house and then of
00:45:53.040
course people will complain because he's at the white house i think he'll probably have to back at
00:45:57.440
back down from using the white house just because you don't you don't use the white house for
00:46:02.480
campaigning um but i would love to see that also use the drive-in theater concept meaning that
00:46:10.720
people all over the country this is not my idea i've talked about this before could just go to a
00:46:16.000
drive-in and um you know watch the show from the drive-in at least they're with other with other
00:46:22.080
people who want to watch it at the same time um let's talk about these cheaper faster tests
00:46:28.720
uh apparently there are a number of companies developing cheap tests that are you know just
00:46:34.400
a few bucks and will give you a result in minutes as opposed to waiting days you could do it yourself
00:46:40.480
you don't even have to ask anybody else you just have your own little test kit like a home pregnancy
00:46:45.680
kit nobody knows if you're pregnant if you do a home pregnancy kit right you're the only one who
00:46:51.440
knows likewise these tests you'd be the only one who knows unless you want somebody to tell you now
00:46:57.360
the exception would be if you're being tested by your court your company or something then they would
00:47:02.160
know but of course they need to know and so the uh the question is this what needs to be changed
00:47:10.960
um so that these can work and it looks like there are two changes that i understand these are these
00:47:18.640
are from david boxenhorn who's uh who pointed me to a video by michael mina who's an expert in this
00:47:26.720
field and it looks like that the only thing stopping these cheap tests which by the way the difference
00:47:33.120
between the cheap ones and the expensive ones is that the expensive ones uh are really good at detecting
00:47:40.800
a lot of stuff that's too late the cheap ones are not as sensitive so they might miss somebody who
00:47:47.920
just got the virus and they don't have much of a viral load but because they're fast and cheap and you can
00:47:54.000
use them anywhere you want your odds of finding somebody when it matters are way higher so if you hear
00:48:03.280
less sensitive tests and your mind has translated that into less useful it's the reverse it's the
00:48:11.440
fact that you can do it cheap and quickly and it gets most it gets most of the big ones not everyone
00:48:21.040
that is the thing that can change the nature of the the curve because if you've got enough people
00:48:26.320
testing you get all the big ones the obvious ones you cut the rate of transmission enough that
00:48:32.240
probably gets it under control so there seem to be two as i understand it and by the way
00:48:38.720
uh at this point i'm still in the learning phase so you should take everything i say in this topic
00:48:43.440
as a little bit of well let's you know get some confirmation about this i want to make sure
00:48:48.080
so i wouldn't give a hundred percent certainty to anything i say on this topic or any other really
00:48:54.720
but there seem to be two changes uh one uh and let's call these over-the-counter tests because
00:49:02.080
that's a better phrase you it's easier to conceptualize that these cheap tests would be over-the-counter
00:49:09.200
versus clinical setting medical setting and uh the sensitivity requirements for these tests
00:49:17.440
are the same as the diagnostic tests so right now the fda has the same requirement for how
00:49:24.720
how accurate they are let's i shouldn't say accurate how sensitive they are
00:49:29.760
and they're comparing these cheap over-the-counter type tests to the ones that you do in more of a
00:49:36.080
clinical medical setting and it's just the wrong standard in this situation now in a normal
00:49:42.880
situation why would the fda ever approve anything that is less good at detecting
00:49:49.920
than whatever whatever we know we could get to under normal conditions this would be a perfectly good
00:49:56.640
standard from the fda fda this is not a normal situation this is a situation where being fast and sloppy
00:50:06.960
gets it done better fast and sloppy now sloppy just means a little less sensitive
00:50:12.160
but fast and sloppy over-the-counter solves a pandemic this is not like any other situation
00:50:21.200
and and the fda needs to be looking at that rule for an exception i don't know if there's an
00:50:27.280
executive order that can change that that may not be a thing but if there is that's what i'd be looking
00:50:33.200
at and the other requirement that the fda has so there are two things that need to change in order for
00:50:40.160
these cheap over-the-counter tests to be a a big tool the others the fda requires reporting of test
00:50:47.280
results now i don't know the details of that but who in the world is going to buy an over-the-counter
00:50:53.120
cheap test and then do what report on it you know who's who's reporting so why would he why would
00:51:01.760
even need a reporting requirement it doesn't even make any sense for this particular application so there
00:51:08.080
are two fda rules that i think probably make perfect sense for most situations it's just that it
00:51:16.160
doesn't make sense for this one and this is what you need a president trump for now again i'm not 100
00:51:25.840
sure that i know this topic well enough but i'm 100 sure that if we haven't exhausted this
00:51:32.800
that we're probably you know not doing everything we can to find out what we can do so we should at
00:51:39.200
the very least exhaust this topic and find out if it's real if it can make a difference if indeed just
00:51:46.480
these two little tweaks to the fda for just a special case could be a thing i think that needs to be very
00:51:54.320
close to the top of the task force's uh uh priorities all right i believe that is just about what i want
00:52:05.280
to talk about today and i thank you for tuning in and i will see you tomorrow