Episode 1138 Scott Adams： Trump Taxes, Mail-In Ballot Fraud Scandal, How Trump Wins Without Trying, I Explain Taxes
Episode Stats
Summary
The President has been accused of using a performance enhancing drug called Adderall, which is a controlled substance that has been around for a long time and is used to enhance performance. But is it actually a drug? Or is it something else?
Transcript
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turn off my ringer get ready for work are you ready to learn something useful
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you know probably there's nobody who's going to be on this periscope who doesn't already
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understand what i'm going to teach you because you're smarter than average but there might be
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a few people wandering in here and it'll be useful to you and at the very least you might learn
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another way to explain it to other people so even if you already know about taxes and depreciation
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you might pick up a little tip so hang around it's going to be worth it we'll have some laughs too
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but first how do we get going you know how it's called the simultaneous sip and all you need is
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a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or sign a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind
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fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the
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dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better except taxes
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it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now go
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well before we get into a little whiteboard lesson on taxes that will not hurt what one bit
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i'm going to keep it so simple that that you won't even mind listening to it
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there's some disturbing news about brad parscale you've all heard it by now i'm not really going
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to talk about it except to say that we wish him well this is the sort of story that should only be
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viewed as a medical issue so that's all that needs to be said there's a there seems to be a medical issue
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and i hope it works out well i am loving just loving from the trash talking point of view
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uh watching the you know the the president to go at her go after biden and vice versa
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i am loving uh president trump challenging him to a blood test
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now i would say that the odds of that happening you know where where trump and biden both take blood
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tests before the uh before the debate i i think it's fair to say that the odds of that actually
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happening are zero there's no chance it'll happen but because it's such an outrageous thing to to bring
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up the president can bring it up there's no risk because there's no chance it's going to happen
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but because he's the president you sort of have to cover it in the news because he just keeps
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bringing it up and you can't really ignore a thing like that so it makes everybody ask the question and
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think about it and focus on that question of how are they medicating uh biden now part of the reason
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that it's sticky and it's a it's a good attack is because even if you support biden don't you think
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there might be some pharmaceuticals involved a little bit because even if you support him you do
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notice that he has good days and bad days you can't miss that what causes a good day versus a bad day
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is it maybe medication is it maybe a natural cycle which would be disturbing as well it's a it's a
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perfect attack now of course the counter-attack on the president is his critics accuse him of uh using
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adderall now do you know anything about adderall i would say that it should be a rule that every
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president should be on adderall even if they don't need it now adderall is a very controlled substance
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because if the wrong person is using it for the wrong reason it basically acts like speed and it
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could be bad for them but if somebody just hypothetically hypothetically if someone was under a doctor's care
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such as a sitting president would you want them to be on adderall or to not be on adderall well here's
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the thing if you know anything about it you probably want them to be on it because they're going to be
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way more productive and actually smarter that's what it does i don't want to encourage anybody to
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take an illegal drug if it's not uh if it's not recommended by your doctor but it is a fact that
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adderall is not like cocaine or heroin or you know oxy content or anything it's just nothing like any
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of those drugs it's not like alcohol or weed it's not a quaalude it's not it's not any of those it is
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purely a performance enhancing drug which has plenty of you know history and science so if it turned
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out and i don't think that that this is an evidence but if it turned out that the president was on adderall
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that would be a plus you're just not allowed to say that in public anybody everybody here who's had a
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little experience with this and has had anything in that family of chemicals you know what i'm talking
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about so uh it's interesting that ignorance is the the most important part of these political attacks
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is that you can make an attack as long as the public doesn't understand the topic so right now they
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can say hey he's on this drug called adderall and eighty percent of the public will say i don't know
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what that is but it doesn't sound good the way you described it and that's it that's all you have to
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accomplish is that it doesn't sound good just like uh you know just like asking for biden to take a
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blood test it doesn't have to happen it just has to sound sort of sketchy and damaging and that's it
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it um so matt walsh tweeted uh today or yesterday trump has had financial records leaked to the press
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secretly recorded conversations leaked to the press and many officials who worked inside the white house
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have written tell-all books and yet through all of that no crime or actual serious scandal has been
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uncovered did you expect that we would get all the way to here and this president would be i mean he's
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investigated inside and out the last thing that people were waiting for was these taxes and i can
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tell you that i i personally had a conversation with a uh let's say a a notable person who i will not
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describe further a notable very smart person who said you just wait when the taxes come out someday
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those taxes are going to come out and it's going to show all those terrible crimes well taxes are out
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where's all the terrible crimes if there were any terrible crimes or even crimes you know even little
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crimes that were that were in evidence in those taxes do you think we wouldn't have heard about it by now
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because you don't lead with the boring stuff if the new york times had the goods they had something that
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was like a you know even even something suspicious they would have told you by now don't you think so it
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turns out that the president is way cleaner than anybody imagined
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i have to admit you know i'm a uh you know i'm a complete supporter of the president but even i
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was surprised that there's nothing there i thought you know any billionaire it wouldn't matter who it is
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if you take anybody with a real complicated billionaire kind of a tax return and you say all right here here
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you public go take a look at it i feel as if you would find something suspicious looking in just
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about anybody's billionaire tax returns it might not be crimes and it might you know if you looked
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into it it might not actually be as bad as it looks on the surface but there would be all kinds of
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stuff that would be flags where you'd say i better look at this a little bit more but apparently trump
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doesn't have those he apparently has a pretty clean return now the one thing that is being audited
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and the president has been telling us this for years is that there is a big 72 million dollar deduction
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that's being debated now is that a crime is it a crime if the irs ultimately says
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this will be disallowed not really i mean there might be a penalty with it because you know there
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may be some requirement for that but it is completely routine completely routine for companies to see some
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gray area thing and say well might as well take a shot it's sort of a gray area we have an argument the
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irs would have an argument the other way we get that but give it a shot it is not illegal to give
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something a shot all right you have to understand that that that deduction could be disallowed but it
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was done publicly in the sense that the irs is aware of it the irs got to look at it and they started to
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question it and apparently apparently there's enough of an argument on the trump side that it
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hasn't been resolved for years if it were easy to resolve as if you know let's say that there was no
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argument on the trump side there's just no argument for this deduction i feel like it would have been
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resolved in less than four years right it wouldn't take four years to resolve something that didn't have
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an argument on the other side so even if trump ends up not winning the you know that that deduction
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conversation that's not illegal it's completely legal to take your best shot if it doesn't work it
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doesn't work but you knew what your risk was uh here's some of the best uh tax advice i ever heard
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this came from uh my smart democratic friend coincidentally and it was from a friend of his
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and he recall he recounts this story he said he said he was doing his own taxes because he's really
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smart so he can he knew how to do his own taxes even the complicated stuff but he reached a point where
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there are two ways to calculate something and it appeared that the irs would allow either one one of
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those ways he could do it was good for him and the other way was not as good for him but they both
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looked like they were allowed it was just two different ways to account for the same thing
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so he asked his friend who was more of an expert on finance he goes what do i do i've got two valid
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ways to do this one is good for me and the other one's not good for me what should i do
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his friend gave him this advice do the one that's good for you that's it do the one that's good for
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you now what if it turned out that the irs said no you know really it should have been that other
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calculation it's fine you might have to pay a little extra be you know for the the the interest
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or something for something that shouldn't have been a deduction but the irs doesn't put you in jail
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for having for having a good argument that's an important point that people don't understand
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it's not cut and dried these are legal things these are illegal things as long as your lawyers
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can go in there and say look this is the reasoning we used here here's your own rules your rules say this
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we read those rules and we did this how's that wrong and if the irs says well it is wrong and here's
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why nobody goes to jail for that all right it's very routine all right so um let's talk more about
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trump's taxes you should not trust anybody who who makes this comparison if you see this on twitter and
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you're all you're seeing it this morning all over the place people are going to say this a typical
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uh middle class taxpayer might pay several thousand dollars whatever per year trump only paid seven
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hundred and fifty dollars in 2017 so therefore it's totally unfair right no anybody who gives you that
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comparison and tries to convince you that you've learned something because you compared trump's total taxes
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to an average citizen they are lying to you or they don't know a freaking thing about taxes those are
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the only two possibilities anybody who makes that comparison is a flat-out liar or they don't understand
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the field whatsoever there there's no way that that comparison makes sense it's comparing a peanut to
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an elephant they have they just are different things and i'll explain why all right let me explain for
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anybody who doesn't follow finance doesn't do their own taxes a little simple situation i'm not claiming that
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this uh equals trump's taxes it's a generic situation right so suppose you've got a company in one year any any
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a year that makes two billion dollars in money coming in so that's what they've earned from people paying
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them for their services or products and they've got an expense of a billion dollars a year that is actual
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checks and money that they've given out that would leave them since they brought in two billion and
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only put out a billion in expenses that's a billion dollars left over to spend on stuff
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but if they also bought a lot of assets let's say they bought buildings or computers or vehicles you
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can do a thing called depreciation depreciation is instead of taking the cost of that thing and acting
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like you you spent all your money the year that you bought it so let's say you bought up you bought a
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building and it was a million dollars you don't write off the whole million as an expense the year that you
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bought it the tax law says that you write off a little bit every year based on what the tax law
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says if it's a building maybe it's 15 years for example you just spread it out as if it's an expense
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so if you had a billion of these paper artificial expenses and a billion of real ones the two of them
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would equal two billion and that's all the money that you had coming in so even though you've made
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a half a billion dollars in cash that's yours to keep you made a half a billion dollars it's yours to
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keep you've got a half a billion dollars in cash on paper you made nothing and you don't have to pay
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taxes federal income taxes if you made nothing now is that a bad situation is that unfair is that the rich
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people take an advantage of a tax loophole nope nope this law about how to how to deal with depreciation
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and indeed uh depreciation won't be the whole story with trump's taxes there will be other um loopholes
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and things built into the law that he took advantage of but everything that's in the tax law is there
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because both democrats and republicans in all likelihood thought it was a good idea that all
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the smart people thought it was a good idea now there are people who argue you should change the tax to
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a flat tax etc so there is always room for debate but the point is this this idea of how to treat taxes
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even for rich people is not really controversial in in the mainstream of people who understand finance
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find me a cpa somebody who is an expert on taxes who thinks that this is bad for society
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you won't find any there's nobody who understands this field who thinks that this is bad or should
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be changed now when i say nobody you can always find some somebody who will say anything but the
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mainstream democrat mainstream republican they're all in favor of this there's no there's nobody on the
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other side of this now the other thing you need to know is that when they say he didn't pay taxes
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they're usually talking about federal income taxes it doesn't mean that no taxes were paid indeed
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he paid a bunch of salaries and everybody who earned a salary paid taxes so instead of the taxes coming
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out of here it went to the people the people had an income they paid taxes and that goes to the
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federal government they they also probably paid payroll taxes and social security and you know and other
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related things that all goes to some government either local or or federal what about property taxes
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every big company especially if you're a real estate company have have enormous property taxes
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what about uh suppliers he's buying stuff from suppliers they make a profit they use that once they get
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that profit they pay taxes right none of this happens none of this unless this happens so why is it that the
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government and the irs thinks it's a good idea to have a situation where sometimes big companies pay
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nothing it's a good idea because you really really want this other stuff you want jobs because if
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somebody has this job the government doesn't have to support them that's a big win you want all these
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taxes this is exactly what you want now if this lasted forever would that be good what what if a big company
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just never paid taxes they just always found loopholes and just never paid taxes would that be good well it
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actually would be pretty good for the reasons i just told you tons of taxes get paid but it's a second
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order effect now remember these these suppliers who uh who made money because they sold stuff to the company
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once they make their money they go spend it again that's called the multiplier effect in economics
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so these dollars that are generated by this business it's not one dollar this dollar goes to the supplier
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the supplier buys his own his own supplies that dollar goes to the next person that dollar goes to the next
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person and the next person every time that dollar changed hands somebody paid taxes maybe sales tax
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probably income tax if there was a profit there so there's an enormous economic benefit from a company
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that pays no taxes that's why it's allowed because it's really really good for the world it's not a coincidence
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that amazon has this situation it's not a coincidence that there are lots of companies that have this situation here's
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what you need to know for your further lesson in economics with my awkward whiteboard
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here's the situation which might be somewhat typical for a company that's not paying federal income taxes
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if you're if you're a growing business meaning that you're you're plowing money into your business
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continually it could be that your expenses are going up because let's say you're you're buying a new
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building you're investing in some infrastructure you're just putting all kinds of money into that
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now this could be real money expenses or depreciation but it could be going up like crazy
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at the same time though it's fine your bank will give you loans because your revenue is going up like crazy
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too and the hope is that someday you'll get to the point where you don't have to put in as much every
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year and you can just start harvesting the benefits a good example this is your cable company the the
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company that that is digging ditches and putting cable in the ground and connecting one neighborhood after
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another every time they connect a neighborhood they make money from that neighborhood
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so that so that neighborhood that the cable company connected is now profitable but the company
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itself is not profitable only that neighborhood because they have already put in two new neighborhoods
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that are not yet profitable as those new ones become profitable now you've got three profitable ones yay
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if you stopped there you could immediately get your expenses going down while your income goes up
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hey you're making money and you're paying taxes but why would you you didn't start a
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company you didn't start a company to get to some point and then just level off you started a
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company to grow forever and the best way to grow forever is to keep getting bank loans to keep
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getting financing private financing etc as long as your revenue is going up and it looks like it could
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cross over in the future the banks will give you all the money you want people will buy all the stock
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that you want you can give financing easily and cheaply now i don't know if president trump's situation is
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like the one i described but what's important is neither do you we don't know now maybe if i looked at the
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details of his tax returns i could i could deduce this i'm not sure i could but um if the if the news has not
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described to you if this is a normal situation of a growing company is he is he plowing his money back
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into assets that are creating jobs and creating other kinds of taxes that's the best situation you
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could possibly have now it turns out that as an attack on the president it's really really effective
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because how many people how many people understand this little lesson that i just gave you if you were
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to guess what percentage of the general public understands that you can't compare an average wage
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earners taxes to a big company and that there are good reasons you can't compare them what percentage
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of the company do you think of the of the country do you think knows that i would say 20 percent tops
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yeah somebody's guessing 20 and somebody says five percent ten percent it's somewhere in that range
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it's definitely not more than 20 but it's probably in the five to twenty percent range now having explained
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it to you we're good now right everybody who sees an explanation like this you know they didn't used to
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know but now they've seen the explanation oh good i guess that problem is solved we used to be ignorant
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but now we've been informed so i guess i guess we're all good no it doesn't work like that
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it's not just that 20 of the country are the only ones who understand this
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it is that 20 of the country might be the only ones capable of understanding it which is a horrible
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thing to think but it's true something like i would guess this is true something like maybe 20 of the
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public has the raw intellect and the enough you know context and background and enough of a talent stack
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to even understand what i just said it's kind of complicated i would guess that there are a
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whole bunch of people who watch this saw this maybe for the first time some of you and are saying to
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yourself i think i kind of follow that but i'm a little hazy on the depreciation part i kind of need to see
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that explained a few more times which would be perfectly normal trust me if you if you go to school for
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you know economics or accounting or something like that the first time you're introduced to the idea
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of cash flow being different from income and depreciation being this invisible expense the first
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time you see this stuff it doesn't really stick you kind of need to you know be introduced to it over
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and over again before it sticks so as a political attack it's just brilliant but it is completely
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um disreputable disreputable it is uh it is not good behavior it let's just say this the attack
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on trump's taxes if they were honest players this is what it would look like if the critics were honest
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okay we thought we would find a whole bunch of criminal activity here we didn't find any okay that would be
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the first honest thing they would say because unless they're hiding something you know waiting for
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later and it seems unlikely they found nothing so the first thing they should say is all those things
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that we thought were going to be big problems we didn't find any that would that would be an honest
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statement but instead they've suggested that there are problems when it is not demonstrated that there is
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here is another example if you look at cnn the way they're covering it they say stuff like this
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president trump has a 300 million dollar loan personally guaranteed that's coming due so you say to
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yourself whoa that that's that's bad right 300 million dollar loan coming due sounds bad and then you
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say what would you say to yourself cnn would say and what would you do if you needed 300 million
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dollars and you're the president and let's say let's say russia might be a future place that you think you
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might get some money what would you do would you be a little nice to russia because it might help your
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financing later in your own personal life that's the cnn uh the cnn uh take let me explain to you what
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they don't know or are lying about i don't know they either don't know or they're lying a large company
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with a large loan coming due how how should you value that what what should your brain do when you hear
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that there's a big company with a 300 million dollar loan coming due here is the correct way to analyze
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that so that's it that's the entire analysis there's a big loan coming due in a big company so
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that is the most routine thing in the world do companies pay off their gigantic loans
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before they're due sometimes sometimes they just refinance the only thing that matters is if the
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company is producing enough cash to pay the loan if you're a bank and and the loan is coming due but
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the you know the borrower is making plenty of cash that's all you care about you don't care about his
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income statement you don't care that on paper it looks like he's not making money you
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care that his bank account is producing cash because you don't get paid with uh conceptual
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money you're the bank you want actual money if the company is producing actual money and it's enough
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to service the loan the bank loves you the bank will fight over you the bank will compete for your
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business they love to give you money so which is this situation is this a situation where there's not
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enough cash flow and the president's really in trouble well they've kind of suggested that haven't
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they they've kind of suggested that's the case but they haven't demonstrated it they've they've produced
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no evidence to suggest that it's even a little bit of a problem might it be a problem sure sure it might
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be a problem but in most cases it would not be if they don't tell you does he have enough cash flow
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to service the loan they have told you nothing the amount of the loan irrelevant the fact that it's
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coming due irrelevant if you have cash flow that's all that matters what you tell me how much reporting
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there will be on cash flow there won't be any right there won't be any reporting on cash flow because
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cash flow is the story that probably makes trump look good when trump talked about his balance sheet
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before these taxes came out when he was talking about him do you did you ever notice the way he
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talked he talked about having a strong balance sheet and good cash flow he did not say on paper i have a
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big income because that would be dumb what you want is the biggest cash flow and the smallest paper
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profit did he do that don't know because the reporting is silent on his cash flow so far so in other
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words the people who understand to have a look at this would say wait a minute i don't care about any
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of that stuff there's nothing on the taxes that's really that important what matters is the cash and where's
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that reporting where's all the reporting on the cash also known as the only thing that matters
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all right when you see somebody says next explain the EBITDA we won't be explaining that today
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keep it easy all right um the trump lawyers have said that the quote the new york times story is little
00:31:51.440
riddled with gross inaccuracies now what does that mean when trump's lawyers say that the story is
00:32:00.640
riddled with gross inaccuracies does that mean that they don't actually have the actual taxes
00:32:07.520
it could you could interpret it that way but it could it could mean that they have exactly the right
00:32:13.840
taxes but the way they're interpreting them is so selective that it's grossly misleading
00:32:20.160
so the lawyers have very cleverly worded it so it allows two interpretations one they don't have
00:32:27.040
actual taxes it's more of a you know a fake news thing or two they do but they're explaining it all
00:32:34.320
wrong to confuse you i would say the second part is unambiguously true as i just explained but we don't
00:32:42.400
know if they have the real taxes given that the southern district of new york presumably has those taxes
00:32:48.240
and they hate the president it probably got leaked from the southern district of new york which would
00:32:54.080
be a very big crime it's a felony so there's somebody who committed a felony and then and that might
00:33:01.760
actually include the new york times there's some i'm not a lawyer so i can't speak to this but there are
00:33:07.120
some people who seem to suggest that the new york times broke the law by printing it i doubt that they
00:33:15.840
would be in legal trouble i feel as though they would claim that there's enough of a
00:33:21.360
need to know in the public that that it was okay we'll see all right the thing that makes this
00:33:30.160
argument so devastating is that the entire protests and you know the the way that the democrats feel is
00:33:37.200
is they have this sense of unfairness a sense of unfairness and the sense of unfairness is not based
00:33:45.280
on anything uh objective or smart it's just how you feel so if you have um you know if you have a
00:33:52.960
million dollars and there's somebody who has a hundred billion dollars you find you kind of hate them
00:33:58.480
because you're unfortunately uh we're we're sort of built that way we're built we're built to envy and
00:34:06.880
maybe think poorly of somebody who is doing better so because this fits so perfectly into the the democrat
00:34:14.320
worldview that there's something you know with uh unfairness in the world it's really good it really
00:34:20.960
fits their their message pretty well and indeed uh rasmussen is teasing that the president's approval rating
00:34:28.800
took a steep dive last night i think or recently so the president's approval did recently take a steep
00:34:37.920
dive these are just the overnights so they might not be you know a long-term effect um
00:34:47.200
joshua gans who's an economist uh i mention him uh often uh he had this tweet which i thought was funny
00:34:55.360
uh this will be the sort of thing that when you hear it you're going to say why didn't anybody else
00:35:01.680
think of that you know one of those where you go that's true here it is he says the thing about the
00:35:08.240
new york tax new york times tax story is that trump doesn't have to release all of his tax returns to
00:35:15.520
show it's fake news just one page of one submitted return would get it done so in other words he could
00:35:23.760
just say hey new york times if you think you have my actual tax returns release one page i will allow
00:35:31.680
you to release one page maybe pick one of the pages that doesn't have much on it that's you know
00:35:36.720
controversial and say just just show us page 23 you know about this let's see if it matches mine
00:35:48.960
somebody says read trump tweets does he have some fresh ones that are fun
00:35:54.480
maybe if i have time i'll do that all right so joshua is correct it would be easy for trump
00:36:01.120
to prove that they don't have the real tax returns but i'm not expecting that to happen
00:36:06.960
because my expectation is that they do have the real tax returns uh but that they're telling a
00:36:13.120
misleading story about them all right um i wonder this is another one of those cases where all the people
00:36:22.480
who believe that there would be all kinds of crimes in his taxes those people now have to go back and
00:36:29.360
say all right i was wrong about something i was totally positive would be true so i believe that
00:36:36.320
there would not be indications of crimes in his taxes but there would be you know people would imagine
00:36:42.080
they saw them um so i think my estimate of where this was going to end up was pretty close if yours was not
00:37:03.280
financial illiteracy is is sweeping the country of course so everybody's going to be talking about
00:37:08.240
depreciation and explaining it to other people but none of it's really going to matter because we're in
00:37:14.400
a world where it goes without saying at this point do you remember in in 2016 when i said that facts don't
00:37:21.600
matter and that people don't make up their mind based on facts do you remember that all right people are
00:37:28.640
begging me to read trump's tweet so there's got to be something going on here that's that's good
00:37:42.240
he z joe biden announced that he won't agree to a drug test
00:37:47.360
uh bringing up my taxes all the time bad intentions is there something here that's
00:38:05.520
i have very little debt compared to the value of assets
00:38:10.320
there we go he has very little debt compared to his assets now that's that's the finance
00:38:17.200
way of saying that he's not going to have trouble getting bank loans you know
00:38:24.320
okay i have no idea why you needed me to look at that
00:38:28.560
because i don't think that told me anything all right the other big story
00:38:32.800
we'll get to let's see if i said anything i want to say about this
00:38:36.000
oh so cnn's take is that he will be desperate for money and he the only reason he's president is
00:38:42.320
to make money because he needs money to to save his struggling businesses now i don't think that's the
00:38:51.120
um i don't think that's the case but let me ask you this
00:38:55.440
what president would not want a billion dollars right or what president would not
00:39:04.160
want to get rich do do we produce presidents who don't have any
00:39:09.520
any personal ambition or cannot be bribed it seems to me that any president who wasn't already rich
00:39:17.840
is a risk for bribery right wouldn't that be true of every president if you had a president who
00:39:25.680
you know let's say he needed some money to pay off a loan is that really a big difference
00:39:31.120
with somebody who just might appreciate a hundred million dollars after leaving office i i feel like
00:39:37.440
they all have a bribery risk um yeah i don't know that you could really say that one is worse than the
00:39:43.840
other because the the dollar amounts would be so big um all right project veritas uh as you know
00:39:51.920
project veritas uh just came up with an expose of uh mail-in vote fraud and it looks like a good one
00:40:02.720
meaning that they have uh on video somebody who says that he personally was part of a larger operation
00:40:10.720
in elan omar's territory in minneapolis to collect the the ballots whether they're filled out or empty
00:40:18.880
from let's say senior citizens and other people and to fill them out themselves i guess so massive
00:40:26.880
vote fraud appears to be demonstrated and it appears to be demonstrated um in a massive way and it appears
00:40:35.760
to be maybe even decisive meaning that it may be the only reason that elan omar can stay in office
00:40:42.560
is by ringing the vote every time so uh that should it should change the story right now in a rational
00:40:54.960
world where one side is claimed there's no such thing as widespread voter fraud with mail-in ballots
00:41:02.800
that's the claim they're there they've continued to push that claim nope there's no evidence can't find
00:41:10.080
any widespread voter problems and then you show it to them what what should happen in a rational world
00:41:20.000
it should look like this oh my goodness i sure am surprised my old opinion has to be revised now that
00:41:28.640
we can clearly see that in this one location it was so easy to do we should assume that even though this is
00:41:36.800
the the the place that it was spotted we should probably assume it's happened in other places
00:41:43.440
because look how easy it was moronically easy to cheat in this one place minneapolis wouldn't you expect
00:41:52.880
that somebody else in the country has figured this out and if such activity were to happen in tight races
00:41:59.760
well it could be the difference so we should expect that by this afternoon everyone who's been making
00:42:06.880
the claim that widespread mail-in voting uh doesn't have issues every one of them including um the fbi
00:42:16.080
and everybody who's looked into it every one of them will be uh apologizing to the public right
00:42:21.600
what don't you think i mean obviously they found out they were wrong on something that's terribly terribly
00:42:30.160
important and we really really need to know what is true and what isn't and they misled us so now
00:42:37.440
they'll all be apologizing today right that's that's how it works right no no we're we've reached a point
00:42:46.880
where you can just say it didn't happen the the the democrats will simply just act like it didn't
00:42:53.920
happen that's it and do you know how they're doing that they're saying project veritas well you know
00:43:00.560
they're they're not credible that's it that's all they have to do they have they have primed their
00:43:07.200
viewers and supporters to the point where they can just tell them anything it doesn't matter what they
00:43:12.320
say they can just say um let's pick a dumbass excuse from the list uh randomly uh oh we'll just
00:43:19.840
we'll just say the source is bad that's it goes away now because they control so much of the the news
00:43:29.520
business all they have to do is just ignore it that's it and it just goes away it should be one of
00:43:38.160
the biggest stories of the year and they're just going to make it move go away and they're going
00:43:43.520
to do it right in front of you and it'll be incredible all right um and of course every story
00:43:52.240
is something about trump being beholden to putin i guess i guess that's what i guess every story has
00:43:58.160
to have that connection to it um farid zakaria did a really good job of explaining what could happen
00:44:06.160
that would get trump elected without him doing anything devious even if he didn't win
00:44:15.760
so i i'd never seen it framed this way so you know and i recommend farid zakaria's show
00:44:23.280
um because i find he's just unusually good at explaining things and he's unusually good with his
00:44:30.000
guests so even if you don't agree with him on politics it's worth watching if you want to make
00:44:36.400
sure you've you've seen the whole field he's a real good watch um but he explained it this way and i'll
00:44:43.040
see if i can do as good a job there is a scenario in which uh because the mail-in votes are coming in
00:44:51.360
late and there's disagreement among the electoral college uh the people who are in the electoral college
00:44:58.000
if you get to the point where the states just can't agree it goes to a vote of the states and
00:45:05.200
every vote every state gets one vote and there are more there are more republican states so even though
00:45:12.160
by population the democrats have more people because of this old constitutional rule that just says well
00:45:21.040
if we can't figure it out the normal way if if our attempt to have a fair vote and electoral college and
00:45:28.320
and a credible result if it just doesn't work our our fallback position is every state gets one vote and
00:45:35.280
and there we go so trump simply needs to create enough uh doubt about the outcome because of mail-in votes or
00:45:45.200
anything else as long as there's doubt about the income he personally doesn't have to do anything
00:45:51.360
because it's the states that would just do their thing without any involvement from the federal
00:45:57.440
government he would just sit back and say you know um it's not up to me i'll just follow the rules
00:46:04.960
wherever they lead i'm just saying that this vote did not look credible to me do what you need to do with
00:46:13.280
that now if enough of the states agree and say you know you got a point we we found this irregularity
00:46:21.600
here and there was an irregularity here and there's still votes coming in and we tried the best we could
00:46:28.080
we really thought this would work but in the end we have to admit if you're just being objective it didn't
00:46:35.680
work it's very very likely i'm going to say somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 percent
00:46:45.200
chance that that's how we'll feel after the vote even after a few weeks after the vote we're going to
00:46:51.760
feel like we're not quite sure we believe the outcome don't you think probably a 70 chance you're
00:46:58.960
not going to believe the outcome whichever way it goes you're still not you know even if your team
00:47:04.000
wins you're still privately going to be thinking i'm glad i won but i'm not sure i believe it you
00:47:10.320
know that's that's what the count was but i'm not sure i believe it if that happens trump gets reelected
00:47:19.120
and and there's nothing he needs to do he doesn't need to be a dictator he doesn't need to invoke the
00:47:26.320
military he doesn't need to refuse to leave the white house he just needs to follow the rules that
00:47:32.640
the states the states will perform for him it was good to know a good um good addition by for reed to
00:47:41.280
our understanding um i understand that in the uh debate tomorrow uh that chris wallace will not be
00:47:50.560
doing any fact checking would you want the debate moderator to do fact checking i have to think that
00:47:58.480
while you think to yourself yeah you know that would be useful if he did some fact checking in
00:48:04.000
real time while it's happening that could be useful but i don't think it is because first of all nobody
00:48:11.120
would feel it was fair if he did a little more fact checking for one than the other everybody would
00:48:16.400
complain so as soon as he starts fact checking it becomes this whole new thing to complain about
00:48:21.200
and everybody would say well you fact checked it but you fact checked it wrong so you really can't win
00:48:26.640
with the fact checking so if you don't have fact checking and especially because there's a time limit
00:48:33.120
you would use up all your time with the fact checking if you did it what good are the debates
00:48:37.680
are they any good at all now these debates are are unique because the biggest question is whether
00:48:47.360
biden can get through it without having some kind of a mental collapse right so really the only thing
00:48:54.800
we're looking for is joe biden's mental collapse we're not looking for facts or you know we're not really
00:49:01.920
going to learn too much about policies that we didn't already know we're just looking to see if
00:49:07.920
he can stand up there for 90 minutes and not become a blithering idiot now if i had to put odds on it
00:49:15.520
i would say that the odds are probably better than 50 and probably a lot better than 50 that biden will
00:49:24.720
have a good night meaning that he'll just blather his biden stuff and he'll just do you know from
00:49:31.280
memory he'll just say what he needs to say and he'll probably have angry biden moments where he
00:49:38.560
gets that furrowed brow and and and acts like he's indignant and angry about everything
00:49:46.400
but probably won't go so far that he just has a complete meltdown i think there's a solid up i'll put
00:49:52.880
some odds on it i think there's a 30 chance that biden will have a meltdown that everybody sees
00:50:01.280
and and everybody agrees oh that doesn't look good probably a 30 chance of that 70 chance he
00:50:09.040
actually has a good night and and you know he rests up and he's sharp and who knows if they shoot him
00:50:16.080
up with chemicals i think maybe they do maybe they do possibly uh i i don't know what the odds of that
00:50:24.400
are but at least at least at least 50 chance i'd say he gets a little shot in the ass or something
00:50:31.680
um so i think he'll probably be fine uh i will be watching the debates with christina i don't think
00:50:40.000
we're gonna live stream but i might be uh i might be texting while it's on um
00:50:46.160
uh he's done debate prep half the month yeah he disappears a lot have we heard yet if uh biden has
00:50:55.600
put the lid on is lid on yet oh there's a really good uh bingo um bingo board from uh oh my god what's
00:51:07.760
the name of uh john show there uh adam curry john dvorak's show uh somebody tell me in the comments
00:51:15.920
the name of their it's a no no agenda so if you look for the no agenda podcast or it must be a website
00:51:24.160
or something they have a bingo card of things that biden says and it's pretty hilarious and actually it would
00:51:29.840
be fun uh to literally play at a home so look for that the no agenda uh bingo card for biden just google
00:51:38.160
it it'll probably pop up um reporters say he should get mad but they describe him as the nice one
00:51:50.880
all right so i think we've done what we need to do today that's my lesson on finance and we will talk