Real Coffee with Scott Adams - September 29, 2020


Episode 1139 Scott Adams： Debate Preview, I Explain Trump Taxes to Artists, Ballot Harvesting, Shy Trump Supporters


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

153.70422

Word Count

7,303

Sentence Count

463

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

Scott Adams talks about the wine country fires, electric bikes, and the government wants to make COID's easier to administer. Plus, the Nobel Peace Prize is in the works, and a government task force wants to test COID.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hokie, California. I'd love to tell you that that's fog, but it's not. The forest fires are
00:00:08.240 encroaching again. These are not too close to where I live, in this case, but the wine country
00:00:14.820 is in trouble. However, that's not our concern right now, because at this moment in time,
00:00:23.520 everything is perfect. Sure, people are having trouble everywhere, but are you right now? No.
00:00:32.600 You're watching Coffee with Scott Adams. Possibly the best part of your day. No, probably the best
00:00:39.660 part of your day. And everything's starting to go really well for you, anyway. Too bad about other
00:00:45.100 people, but you're doing great. And the only way that you could do better is with a simultaneous
00:00:51.120 sip, and all it takes is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen,
00:00:56.000 chug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And
00:01:03.580 join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes
00:01:08.080 everything better, except my air quality. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens
00:01:14.500 now. Go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. Here's the coolest thing that happened
00:01:27.320 yesterday. I saw an advertisement for an electric bicycle for the water. That's my own description
00:01:35.520 of it. They call it a hydrofoil, and it's the Manta 5. And you ride it like a little bicycle,
00:01:43.580 and you pedal it, and there's a little propeller underneath you. And it's just a bicycle kind
00:01:49.340 of a frame, except that it has some kind of floating device underneath it. And it has an
00:01:55.560 electric bicycle kind of assist. And I looked at the video of people just zipping around on
00:02:00.800 that thing. And I thought, you know, the first time I rode an electric bike, and I told you about
00:02:07.760 this, I realized that this is really the future. You spend 10 seconds on an e-bike, and you wouldn't
00:02:16.020 want to do any other kind of transportation. It's just a cool feeling. And I've got a feeling
00:02:21.140 that the electric assist human pedaled vehicles are going to be way, way bigger than they are now.
00:02:28.680 All right, so that's coming. Other big news, the government task force has announced there's
00:02:35.720 now a 15-minute test for COVID. And they're going to make, I don't know, 100 million of them and
00:02:42.240 hand them out. Now, the trouble is, apparently, it still requires some kind of a health care
00:02:47.620 professional to administer it. Why? Don't know. Because apparently, it's not a deep nasal swab. It's,
00:02:56.180 you know, it's toward the front of your nose. It's not the kind that some of you have had,
00:03:01.900 where they stick it up to your brain. So all you do is go rant, rant in your nostril,
00:03:06.680 stick it in a little liquid, no machines involved, and wait 15 minutes. And you definitely need a nurse
00:03:14.200 to do that, right? What? Yeah, somebody's saying it's because of liability. Well, whatever it is,
00:03:22.020 it could obviously be changed. I would say that if there is some kind of law,
00:03:28.500 I don't know, law, regulation, rule, or something that requires a health care professional for that,
00:03:35.540 let's change that today. Is there any reason that by the end of today, that should not already be
00:03:43.620 changed? Because there's no reason for it, right? Can we all agree that whatever dumbass reason there
00:03:49.600 is that you need a health care professional to go rant, rant in your nose? That's it? I'm pretty sure
00:03:56.760 that we can get rid of whatever obstacle that is and make more of them. Now, it's not quite where
00:04:05.580 we need it to be, where you've got like a $1 test that everybody can do at home three times a day.
00:04:10.880 That would be the end of coronavirus if we had that. But we're getting close. Getting pretty
00:04:17.400 close. I don't think it's good enough for contact tracing either, necessarily. But, you know,
00:04:25.200 there are a whole bunch of things collectively that are all working in the right direction.
00:04:31.180 So that's the good news.
00:04:32.180 As you know, you probably heard this, Trump has now been nominated a third time for the Nobel Peace
00:04:40.860 Prize. Three separate nominations. And what's interesting is each nomination is different.
00:04:47.780 In other words, he's not being nominated three times for exactly the same reasons. Three separate
00:04:53.600 reasons. You know, they're related, of course, but he's done enough now that you could have three
00:05:01.060 legitimate nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time. How would you like to be debating
00:05:10.340 against a guy who just got three separate Nobel Peace Prize nominations? Now, will he win any? I don't
00:05:18.860 know. You know, when I say any, will he win one? I don't know. But three nominations for three
00:05:26.660 completely defendable, defensible reasons is pretty strong. The Portland police are getting more
00:05:36.940 aggressive. One of the things that they're doing is trying to take the shields away from the
00:05:42.320 protesters. I guess they found a big stockpile of shields, and they went in and they took them away.
00:05:48.740 So I was reading about this on Twitter, and my first impression of that was, oh, that's good,
00:05:55.020 because the shields are obviously being used as offensive weapons and makes the protesters more
00:06:02.060 bold, and it's probably bad news, right? You don't really need a shield to peacefully protest,
00:06:09.160 do you? Explain to me why you would need a shield to peacefully protest.
00:06:14.980 protest. And so when I read the comments, I thought, well, those comments are going to agree
00:06:20.940 with me. Why wouldn't they, given that I'm so darn clever and right all the time? So I look at the
00:06:27.740 comments, and I'm waiting for the part where they say, yeah, that's a good strategy. Take the shields
00:06:32.000 away. I think that could make a difference. Maybe everything would be better if we do that.
00:06:37.360 But the comments did not say that. The comments said, well, it's obvious that they planned violence
00:06:42.980 because they took the shields away, meaning that it's obvious that the police were planning
00:06:48.720 violence because why else would they take the shields away? And I thought, okay, the first time
00:06:55.480 I read that, I thought, okay, well, there's always, there's always some idiot, right? There's always
00:07:00.000 somebody who has a weird opinion about anything. And then I read the next one. It's basically the same
00:07:05.520 opinion. Hey, those, those fascist cops taking our only protection away. They're going to kill us
00:07:12.100 with rubber bullets in the head now. And I thought, okay, well, two crazy people. And then I kept reading
00:07:19.340 and they're pretty much uniformly against police removing shields, which are basically weapons,
00:07:27.840 the way they're being used. They're used in a, in a offensive way, not a defensive way.
00:07:34.920 Different worlds. What can I say? But it does seem like a good strategy.
00:07:43.800 So I was chatting with my smartest Democrat friend. I mentioned him often because he's very smart,
00:07:51.520 legitimately very smart and very well-informed, but disagrees with me on everything Trump related,
00:07:57.400 which makes it fascinating. Because when you're disagreeing with somebody stupid or uninformed,
00:08:03.580 well, that's the whole story. There's nothing interesting about that, right? The reason you're
00:08:08.660 disagreeing is that you know some stuff and they don't know anything. So of course you disagree.
00:08:14.620 But when you run into somebody who is actually smart and well-informed and really paying attention
00:08:18.840 and they disagree and you pay attention too, and you think you're pretty smart, well, there's something
00:08:25.580 to learn here. So yesterday, I guess I mentioned something about the shy Trump supporters not
00:08:32.320 showing up in the polls. And my smartest friend, who actually knows quite a bit about this field,
00:08:39.840 said, that's not true. It's debunked. It was debunked in 2016. And when people looked into it,
00:08:47.580 they found that there was no such thing as shy Trump supporters in actuality. There were problems
00:08:53.340 with the polling, but it didn't have to do with people lying to pollsters. And I thought to myself,
00:09:01.060 that's weird, because the news that I've read was exactly the opposite, that it was confirmed and that
00:09:08.360 they found it. And I sent him an article that showed it was confirmed. It was in some major publication.
00:09:14.340 And he said, no, no, no, that was initially. Initially, they thought they existed. But when
00:09:20.600 the deep dive was done, it was confirmed. It was debunked. No such thing as these shy Trump supporters.
00:09:30.620 The very next morning, I see an article that Joel Pollack was tweeting around from Press Stevens in the
00:09:41.340 New York Times, in which he interviewed a shy Trump supporter, someone who wouldn't tell anybody she
00:09:48.760 worked with that she was a Trump supporter and gave her reasons. And it's important for the story. It's
00:09:56.560 not important in any other way, but because every time we tell a story about politics, you have to throw
00:10:02.260 in their demographic information. Someday, we won't have to do that. You know, I think I agree with
00:10:09.420 Martin Luther King. You know, someday, we won't have to throw in somebody's gender and sexual preference
00:10:16.840 and ethnicity, just to tell a frickin story. Right? I mean, nothing really bothers me as much as that, in terms
00:10:25.760 of, you know, the way we talk about things. But you have to do that. But you have to do that. And so this was a story
00:10:31.580 in the New York Times about a woman who was described as a 50-year-old lesbian who wouldn't want her
00:10:38.340 co-workers and friends to know she was a Trump supporter. And when she was asked about some details
00:10:43.420 of what she liked or didn't like, there was only one thing that she didn't like about Trump. She was an
00:10:49.780 ex-Bernie supporter, and she liked Trump's economics, and she liked a lot about him. But there was one thing,
00:10:56.480 it was one thing she did have a problem with. It was the fine people hoax, which she didn't know
00:11:04.180 was a hoax. She only had one problem with Trump, and it was the thing that never happened, the fine
00:11:11.180 people hoax. Now, as Brett Stevens asks in the article, essentially, I wonder if there's anybody else
00:11:20.400 like that. Is there anybody else out there who is just pretending to not be a Trump supporter but
00:11:27.240 really is? So I ran my highly unscientific Twitter poll to see if I could stir up some people. And
00:11:35.840 here's the question I asked. I said, have you lied to pollsters about your Trump support? Now, the way
00:11:43.640 I worded it was, I didn't say, would you lie? Because that's, that's sketchy. Because people
00:11:50.640 might say they'd lie, but maybe they're lying to me. And when they're actually asked, they might
00:11:55.600 just automatically say the truth. So I, so instead of saying, you know, would you lie? I said, have
00:12:03.640 you lied? Have you actually literally, physically, no kidding, have you actually lied to a pollster
00:12:12.300 about your Trump support? 18% of the people who answered said yes, which in just the few
00:12:21.180 minutes that the poll ran, you know, the numbers are clicking up like crazy. But just in the
00:12:26.420 first few minutes, I think maybe two minutes or so, that came to over 630 people who followed
00:12:34.720 me on Twitter, who happened to see that tweet, who happened to answer it, which is, you know,
00:12:40.240 a very shrinking group of people, 630 of them have actually lied to pollsters. Now, it's
00:12:47.460 a Twitter poll. So can I, can I be sure that these numbers, you know, are reliable in any
00:12:52.760 way? No, no, it's an unscientific poll. But do you think that 630 people within two minutes
00:13:00.700 or so would have lied to me, but would not lie to a pollster? Maybe, right? I mean, possibly,
00:13:11.980 possibly there were 630 people who said, I think I'm going to lie to this cartoonist.
00:13:17.600 Why? What, what reason would you have to lie on my Twitter poll? You know, if it, if it had
00:13:24.740 been an hour later, I would say, oh, maybe trolls have, have spotted it and a bunch of
00:13:30.800 Democrats are coming in to mess up the poll or something like that. But it happened in
00:13:34.880 two minutes. In two minutes, it just lit up with people who said they lied, literally already
00:13:40.640 have lied to real pollsters. Do you think that's fake? It could be, right? It could be. The whole
00:13:48.920 point of it being unscientific is you just can't say for sure it's true. It could be 630
00:13:56.300 liars just sprang up just like that. Maybe. What do you think? I don't know. My belief
00:14:03.600 is that however many of the 630 lied, there's still probably plenty left over to suggest there's
00:14:11.220 a big number there. Now, let me ask you this. In 2016, if you were going to vote for Trump,
00:14:17.360 had he not won, or even if he did win, did you think there was a big risk to the rest of your
00:14:25.100 life? Maybe you thought a little bit, but probably not that much. I don't remember being terribly
00:14:32.580 concerned that my reputation would be destroyed forever in 2016. But 2020? In 2020, you could
00:14:44.300 actually get killed for being identified as a Trump supporter. Let me say that again. You could
00:14:49.860 actually get killed, and at least one person has as far as I can tell, for being a Trump supporter.
00:14:56.940 If I were to, let's say, go to some business or personal thing in Berkeley, California down the road,
00:15:04.620 road. And I was just, I just happened to be there for my own personal reasons. And I happened to walk
00:15:10.620 out the door, and accidentally, I didn't know it was going to happen, but I came into the middle of a
00:15:16.180 BLM protest. Suppose I would, suppose somebody recognized me. Think about this. If I just walked
00:15:24.460 down the door and didn't know there was a protest outside, I just walked into the middle of it,
00:15:28.580 and somebody recognized me, would I be safe? No. No, I would actually be in mortal danger. My life
00:15:38.100 would be in danger just by walking outdoors, if somebody recognized me. Now, if I go where there's
00:15:45.120 more normal people than in Berkeley, I don't feel afraid. But I can't believe that 2020 is going to be
00:15:51.860 like 2016. Because the level of literal, physical, economic danger in saying you support Trump is
00:16:00.820 through the roof compared to 2016. All right. Here's a little dog not barking situation for you.
00:16:08.380 Watch CNN and MSNBC as long as they're talking about Trump's taxes. And here's what you want to look
00:16:16.680 for. Look for somebody talking about his taxes on one of those two networks who actually knows taxes.
00:16:25.960 I haven't seen it yet. Now, I would guess it's probably happened. You know, I would think at least
00:16:32.180 once they would have had somebody on who understands taxes. But I don't think so. Have you seen it yet?
00:16:39.920 Have you seen anybody on either of those networks who could explain why the tax code is why it is,
00:16:47.200 what it is, and why Trump's taxes are the way they are? I don't think so. And when I pointed that out
00:16:54.940 on Twitter, someone helpfully pointed me to a CBS interview in which they did try to bring on a tax
00:17:01.540 expert. How do you think that went? When the tax expert was asked about all these sketchy looking
00:17:08.940 Trump deductions and why he didn't pay taxes, did the tax expert, someone who actually understands
00:17:16.240 taxes, say, my God, that's a travesty. How can he get it? How can he do that? Some law must have been
00:17:22.980 violated or at the very least something ethical and unethical and immoral happened. Do you think
00:17:29.540 that happened? Nope. The tax expert said, yeah, that's, those are just standard deductions. It's just the
00:17:37.160 way, basically, this is the way you do it. This, this deduction was available. So he took it.
00:17:43.920 One of the things I learned by watching that, and I've been waiting to hear about this because I
00:17:48.840 hadn't heard about it at all, is there, the, the point of the audit is that the, and he is being
00:17:55.160 audited, Trump is, is there was a $72 million tax rebate, I guess you'd call it. In other words,
00:18:03.240 the government paid him $72 million that he had previously paid in taxes. They gave it back.
00:18:10.420 And I didn't know what the situation was, but apparently it was this. Obama, in the Obama era,
00:18:17.460 they passed a law that said you could, you could take into account losses for earlier prior years
00:18:26.200 than before. So the only thing that happened is that Trump initially did not have any way to write
00:18:34.000 off that $72 million. He'd already paid it. It was just gone. It was just money that was gone. But
00:18:39.780 Obama changed the law specifically for companies like his, where they had a, they had a loss and they
00:18:48.180 hadn't, they didn't get the benefit of it because it was too far away. So all Trump did, apparently,
00:18:54.280 his lawyer said, Hey, there's a new law. It totally applies to us. So we're going to apply for this
00:19:01.000 $72 million. Apparently they filled out their paperwork. Apparently the government looked at
00:19:07.000 it. Apparently the government said, yeah, that looks good. And they mailed him $72 million.
00:19:11.660 So if you think that whatever happened there was some sketchy thing, I doubt it. I mean,
00:19:18.740 I'm not even sure why it's being audited because it sounds like it was pretty straightforward,
00:19:22.720 but that's not, that's not the way you heard it from the New York times. Is it?
00:19:27.620 Yeah. Did you hear that in the first 24 hours or so? Did anybody explain to you that all Trump did
00:19:34.580 his, his, his accountants did was they applied for, uh, a rebate that Obama made available?
00:19:42.440 That's it. That's all that happened. That whole part of that story there. Now there may be more to it,
00:19:47.940 which would be the subject of the audit, but it's not in evidence as far as I know. All right. Uh,
00:19:55.160 here are some other things that people who don't understand how finance and taxes work
00:20:00.520 have been thinking. The first thing is, I think that a lot of people believe that when they hear that
00:20:07.780 Trump owes $400 million or whatever the number is, I think that people who don't understand how money
00:20:15.040 works, when they hear that Trump owes $400 million, they think that he's $400 million in the hole,
00:20:23.760 meaning that if he paid back all that $400 million, he would have less than zero money left over.
00:20:31.280 You know, he would use up all of his money to pay off the $400 million. That's not the case.
00:20:36.860 He's just a guy who has some debt. And apparently, according to him, it's not much debt compared to
00:20:44.860 his assets. So like anybody who's got, let's say a good income, but they also have a home mortgage,
00:20:51.440 the home mortgage doesn't mean that they owe more than they have. It means there's a little bit of
00:20:56.380 debt in a larger picture. So that's the first thing that the, the money morons don't understand is
00:21:02.740 that that debt isn't necessarily a big deal. The other thing that I see them jabbering about today
00:21:10.160 is there's some indication that Ivanka was paid a $26 million consulting fee. Now, we don't know if
00:21:19.540 this is true yet, right? But this is the way it's being reported. And it's being reported like that's
00:21:25.820 some kind of an illegitimate write-off that, that he's, he's figured out how to save taxes
00:21:32.480 by paying his own daughter a salary, not a salary, but a consulting fee of $26 million. And that's
00:21:41.160 pretty tricky, right? It saves some taxes there. Yeah. All, all, all the, uh, all the people in the
00:21:48.440 news are pretty sure that looks a little sketchy because, you know, normal people can't do that,
00:21:54.320 right? Well, here's the part they're leaving out. The amount that Trump saved in taxes for his
00:22:03.780 company by paying Ivanka is exactly identical to the amount that Ivanka paid in taxes because she
00:22:10.800 made an extra $26 million. There's no difference. The government got exactly as much taxes, as far as
00:22:18.160 we know, unless there was something weird going on with their taxes that year. But as long as they're
00:22:23.140 both in the top tax range, which they would be, the taxes just paid a different way, but it doesn't
00:22:30.060 change it. So it's basically a mechanism for, let's say, it's, it's an estate planning mechanism.
00:22:37.600 But how about this? Do you think Ivanka was worth $26 million in one year?
00:22:44.600 I do. I do. Yeah. If you look at what Ivanka adds to the whole operation, you know, both in the White
00:22:56.280 House and then, and then you look at presumably what she added to the whole operation when she was,
00:23:02.080 you know, in private business. If you tell me that that wasn't worth $26 million, whatever it was,
00:23:08.480 you know, I don't know the details, but I would say that's in the range. That doesn't even seem,
00:23:14.720 that doesn't even seem high. But here's the cool part. If Trump could pay Ivanka $26 million,
00:23:22.420 which I think we'd agree was completely optional, right? Optional in the sense that if he was bleeding
00:23:29.240 cash and couldn't pay his bills, would he have paid Ivanka $26 million? I don't think so. So it sounds
00:23:37.100 to me like he had enough cash flow that paying off his debt wasn't going to be a big problem.
00:23:43.120 Because if you can't pay off your debt, I don't know that you would necessarily move $26 million
00:23:48.900 to your kid as part of your estate planning. I think you'd keep it and pay your debts because it
00:23:54.860 would be better to keep the big operation afloat than it would be to temporarily just to hide some
00:23:59.960 money there and hope that that worked out in the long run. So that's the next thing we learn is
00:24:05.240 that probably, at least before coronavirus, which hurt everybody, he probably had enough money to
00:24:10.740 pay off his debt. Now here's the other thing. The accusation against Trump is that if his debt is
00:24:18.940 really big, that he's at risk of blackmail because he'll need those Russians or whoever to pay off his
00:24:27.320 debt. To which I say, okay, the amount of money that would have to be paid off for Trump, let's say
00:24:34.940 $400 million. Let's just pick a number for a conversation. Let's say that the Democrats are
00:24:40.040 concerned that Russians will pay off $400 million for Trump and therefore he would do whatever they
00:24:47.020 wanted to get them to pay that off. I don't think that's the case. But just say that you're a Democrat
00:24:52.680 and you believe that. Here's the thing. Is there some other politician? Is there some non-billionaire
00:24:59.920 politician, a senator, a president? Is there somebody you can imagine who would not be influenced
00:25:07.300 by $400 million? Because paying off somebody's debt is only one of many ways you can give somebody a lot
00:25:16.700 of money if you were inclined to do that. It's fairly easy to do legally. You just make sure that
00:25:23.200 there's some investment in something that their brother-in-law was investing in. You just make sure
00:25:28.520 that somebody in their circle got a lot of money and it's sort of untraceable. So if Russia wanted to
00:25:35.040 put a shitload of money into bribing an American politician, they don't need to depend on them
00:25:42.580 having debt. That's sort of an irrelevant detail. If you said to Bill Clinton, hey Bill Clinton,
00:25:52.040 I think I can arrange to give you $400 million. And let's say Bill Clinton was clever and he said,
00:26:00.660 whoa, don't write me a check. That would be obvious. But you know what you could do? You could
00:26:06.100 donate to the Clinton Foundation and they give me a pretty big salary and they pay for my jets and
00:26:11.640 stuff. So that would be legal-ish. So why don't you do that? My point is, if you're talking about
00:26:19.560 gigantic amounts of money, which is the only thing you're talking about, if you're talking about
00:26:23.620 paying off Trump bank loans, it has to be a big amount of money. That same big amount of money
00:26:29.040 would be just as influential for anybody. They don't have to be in financial trouble. Nobody says
00:26:36.460 no to $400 million if they can obtain it legally. So the risk of blackmail is just sort of the same
00:26:44.140 everywhere. If you're talking about millions of dollars, everybody has the risk. I would argue that
00:26:50.560 Trump probably has less risk of being bribed because I just don't think he would need the trouble.
00:26:56.740 There's not enough upside. All right. Oh, and it turns out that the $72 million that Trump could apply
00:27:07.620 to for based on his past losses was because of the casino abandonment. So when he got out of the
00:27:13.500 casino business, that was the loss. So we know exactly what the loss was. We know it was a real
00:27:18.100 loss. We know that the casino thing didn't work out. That was real. And we know he applied for it
00:27:23.480 with an Obama regulation. It all looks pretty good to me. I mean, I don't know. Ann Coulter,
00:27:31.300 who I consider one of the smartest people who comment on stuff. Also an attorney, right? Very,
00:27:39.660 very smart. But I don't know how much she knows about finance and tax law, which would put her in
00:27:46.840 good company with 99.9% of the public. But she tweeted today that as an example of how the law allows
00:27:56.960 real estate billionaires to get away with murder, how about fixing the utterly corrupt tax code?
00:28:03.360 So in other words, even Ann Coulter is agreeing that Trump and other billionaires are getting away
00:28:09.960 with something because they're not paying taxes like little people. And she noted that she paid 50%
00:28:16.160 a year, as do I. And here's the thing I'm not sure she quite understands. What exactly would you change?
00:28:26.140 How would you change that to make it better? Would you, for example, say that if you're a billionaire,
00:28:34.800 you can't write off expenses? Or you can't write off all of your expenses? What would be the justification
00:28:41.020 for saying that billionaires uniquely can't write off expenses? And what would happen if you did?
00:28:48.100 Suppose you said, all right, here's the law. Everybody owns small business. You can write off your expenses.
00:28:53.300 But if you're a billionaire, you can't, or you can't write them off all. What would that do?
00:28:59.680 It would probably change their behavior. There would be certain expenses, because they can't
00:29:03.900 write them off, that they wouldn't incur. They would avoid. And the reason that the tax law exists the way
00:29:10.740 it does is to encourage business and encourage the greater good, even though there's some minor
00:29:17.620 inequities that happen because of it, it's for the greater good. So how exactly would you change it?
00:29:23.060 Would you change the capital gains laws? Because if you do, that disrupts a lot. You know, there's a lot
00:29:30.500 that depends on that. So you could collapse, you know, the real estate business by changing a law like
00:29:36.200 that. You could just collapse the entire business. Is that what you want?
00:29:39.020 How about somebody says a fair tax? There's no such thing as a fair tax. That's not a thing. You can't
00:29:48.220 design a tax system that's fair. If you think that that can be done, you need to look into it. There
00:29:55.100 are only tax systems that can burden some group more than others. That's it. But you can't do something
00:30:01.420 fair. That's not one of the possibilities. Because in the end, people always think that whatever their
00:30:07.740 taxes is are unfair. It's subjective. That's why you can't get there. So if anybody can come up with
00:30:13.620 some specific thing that could be changed that wouldn't collapse the economy or destroy an industry
00:30:19.620 that's vital to the United States or something like that, I'm all ears. But I think there's some kind of
00:30:25.680 the people who don't know tax laws, I think they imagine there's some obvious fix here. It's like,
00:30:32.760 well, it's obvious. It's sort of obvious. This is all wrong. But if you tweak this, things will be fair and
00:30:39.700 the economy will be great. It doesn't really work that way. It doesn't work that way at all.
00:30:50.540 Yeah, the flat tax is a talking point, but it's not. There's a reason that it's never gotten anywhere.
00:30:57.900 It's because as soon as you start digging into the details, it all falls apart. You know, I mean,
00:31:03.600 if it could work, that'd be great. But I think that ship has sailed. There's also the accusation that
00:31:11.280 Trump wrote off his haircuts. And on Twitter, that is being seen as an obvious, unethical thing that's
00:31:18.740 no fair, and it shouldn't be allowed. To which I say, well, there's somebody who doesn't understand how
00:31:25.140 taxes work. Because is anybody suggesting that the $70,000 he wrote off for haircuts,
00:31:33.080 is anybody suggesting that the IRS has disallowed that? They haven't disallowed it. If it's not
00:31:39.740 disallowed, it's allowed. All right? If your accountant is not putting in deductions that get accepted,
00:31:49.920 you need to get a better accountant. But this is an example of a deduction that was accepted.
00:31:56.620 Now, why would his haircuts be allowed and yours would not? Why is it that you can't write off your
00:32:02.520 haircut? Well, let me give you a possibility. Is it possible that there was a contract employee who was
00:32:11.780 part of the cast of, I guess, The Apprentice, because the haircuts were related to his work on The
00:32:17.880 Apprentice? And did that person get paid an actual fee for being on call to play with his hair and to
00:32:25.640 cut it, and probably also to make sure it's in good shape for the camera? That's an employee.
00:32:33.440 That's an employee who probably he paid, as opposed to the production company paying.
00:32:39.340 If you pay an employee, it doesn't matter what they do. It doesn't matter that they cut your hair,
00:32:46.120 or if you pay a contract person. So it probably was a perfectly reasonable deduction in the context of
00:32:52.580 being on a TV show, and in the specific context that Trump's hair is part of his brand. You can't compare
00:32:59.920 that to anything else. All right. And there's lots of questions about family members acting as
00:33:10.860 as project managers and acting as consultants. And Chris Eliza is writing about this as if there's
00:33:18.440 something wrong with it. Almost certainly not. You can hire your family members. There's nothing wrong
00:33:25.860 with that. You can overpay your family members. You're allowed. You can overpay your family members.
00:33:32.980 And in this case, because so much money is involved, it just transfers who pays the taxes.
00:33:38.920 So, you know, if Eric Trump is paying more taxes and Donald Trump is paying less, it's the same amount.
00:33:46.820 It's just moved to a different pocket. In case you didn't know, over at Locals, for those who don't
00:33:54.220 know, there's a subscription service that I'm part of. Also an investor, by the way. Full disclosure.
00:34:00.300 I have a small investment in it. And that's where I do some of my, well, all of the stuff that I don't
00:34:07.280 put on Twitter that's worth seeing. So the provocative stuff, and I'm putting a lot of
00:34:11.400 micro lessons there on success and persuasion, etc. Things you don't see on Twitter. But Greg
00:34:18.460 Gottfeld has joined Locals. So if you want to see the stuff that you're not seeing elsewhere from Greg,
00:34:25.620 go to Locals.com and look for Greg Gottfeld. And you'll be glad you did. So look for that.
00:34:35.620 So the big debate is tonight, of course, I'll be I'll be tweeting. And I was watching a Brit Hume
00:34:42.280 interview. And I hadn't seen Brit Hume use these words before. And he was talking about Biden,
00:34:50.400 and he described Biden as, quote, plainly senile, plainly senile. Do you remember, it wasn't long
00:34:58.620 ago, we were saying things like, well, he may have lost the step. Or we're saying things like,
00:35:06.300 well, you know, he, he doesn't have the same mental acuity. But day before the debate or day of,
00:35:15.240 Brit Hume says he's plainly senile. Now, the reason this is important is that if you if you don't
00:35:22.000 follow Fox News, if you were to rank, you know, the opinion people to the news people in terms of
00:35:28.720 credibility, you know, that the more opinion in the opinion they are, you would say they have less
00:35:34.500 credibility in terms of the factual part. And the more news oriented they are, the more credible they
00:35:40.900 are. So on the, on the most credible end, you'd have Brit Hume, right? You know, Brett Baer,
00:35:47.720 Brit Hume, you know, these guys are considered even by independent people as fair and, you know,
00:35:54.500 pretty much down the middle kinds of players. And even he's willing to go on national TV
00:35:59.540 and say, plainly senile. It's that plainly world word that, that got me, because plainly says,
00:36:06.920 you don't have to talk about it. We're beyond the point where this is a conversation of whether
00:36:12.780 or not it happened. We're, we're completely at a point where it's plain. You know, I see it,
00:36:19.920 you see it, we all see you senile. And I can't believe he used that word, just put it out there.
00:36:26.140 So Trump's strategy tonight. I don't know if he has a strategy per se, but I would guess that he's
00:36:34.600 going to try to get Biden worked up. Don't you think? It seems to me that the most obvious thing
00:36:43.640 that Trump would do is try to figure out how to get under his skin and make him mad. Now, Biden knows
00:36:49.960 that because everybody will be telling him, he's going to try to make you mad. Don't get mad. Don't
00:36:55.780 get mad. So I think you're going to see the Biden over smile. Do you know what I mean by the Biden
00:37:02.700 over smile? It's where he has to listen to Trump say bad things about him and bad things about Hunter,
00:37:10.560 but he wants to act like he's not fazed by it. So he does the over smile. Let me do the over smile
00:37:16.020 for you. It looks like this. Yeah. If you're listening to this on the podcast, it's not very
00:37:24.400 interesting. So he squints his eyes really high and he just does this really fake looking smile
00:37:31.080 that doesn't match the eyes. That's how you know it's fake. So look for the Biden fake smile.
00:37:37.600 And of course, Trump is going to go after Hunter, right? Because that's the most obvious thing that
00:37:43.600 would get Biden worked up. So if Trump is playing it right, he should probably not introduce any new
00:37:55.420 ideas that would be headlines of themselves. Because I think he wants to not make news except for whatever
00:38:03.660 news Biden generates by being, you know, by being tweaked by him. I would love to see Trump make a full
00:38:13.420 throated play for the black vote, which he might. Wouldn't you like to see Trump just say, look,
00:38:20.920 what have you done for the black population of this country? Now look what I've done and already
00:38:26.600 plan to do. Look at my portfolio of what I'm doing for black America, compare it to everything you've
00:38:33.500 done and give me a freaking break. These are not even close. We're not even in the same zip code
00:38:40.960 of what I've done compared to what you did in 47 years, which amounted to what putting black people
00:38:47.420 in jail. That's what you did. So I think Trump could tell a story that would just kneecap the black vote
00:38:55.500 quite factually. He wouldn't have to add any hyperbole at all. He could just lay it out there because
00:39:02.600 at this point it's just factual. And I don't know what Biden does with that except go for the fine
00:39:09.840 people hoax. And here's the thing I know is not going to happen, but I would love for Trump to debunk
00:39:19.060 the fine people hoax explicitly. Now, if Joe Biden brings it up, which there's a very high likelihood he
00:39:28.200 will, what will Trump do if the fine people hoax is brought up? How do you deal with it?
00:39:35.700 Here's how I'd do it. Given that they have a time constraint and so Trump would not have time to go
00:39:42.040 through the whole, well, it's a fake news that they edited this part out, et cetera. If you wanted to get
00:39:47.860 to like the most clean quotable part, I would say, here's what I said that day. I said that the
00:39:56.120 white nationalists and the neo-Nazis should be condemned totally. That's my exact quote. If you
00:40:03.380 look at the tapes that you think I said fine people, you'll see that they cut that out to make it look
00:40:09.180 like I was talking about a different group. So it's fake news. I said this sentence exactly without
00:40:16.940 prompting that they should be condemned totally. Isn't that right, Chris Wallace? Now, Chris Wallace
00:40:25.120 he's not going to do fact checking, but maybe he could help out with the question, if you know
00:40:32.260 what I mean. All right. So there's a, it looks like the grand jury stuff is going to be released
00:40:44.200 on the Breonna Taylor situation. So we're going to get to hear the public is the exact deliberations
00:40:52.180 in the grand jury. I don't know how often that happens, but I think that's a good idea.
00:40:57.740 Transparency will probably help. Um, the, uh, Elon Omar situation with the ballot harvesting
00:41:05.940 is getting interesting, but I'm worried that it's going to go into the, uh, into the, um, the news
00:41:14.200 black hole. What, what would be a bigger story than undercover film of Elon Omar's, uh, campaign
00:41:24.020 people seem to be paid by the campaign, uh, allegedly, uh, collecting all these mail-in ballots
00:41:32.440 and doing sketchy things with them. What, what would be, you know, what would possibly be a bigger
00:41:39.200 story than that? And it's sort of disappearing, isn't it? I, I think the CNN is largely just
00:41:46.580 ignoring it. MSNBC largely ignoring it. Uh, they may have done a mention of it and then just moved on.
00:41:54.180 So it's the, the ability of the news industry to make something go away is the scariest thing
00:42:02.760 that you'll ever see. It's one thing that they tell a story that's not true. I mean, that's,
00:42:09.200 that's annoying and vexing and it shouldn't happen, but you sort of are used to that.
00:42:15.620 But making a story go away, that is actually a true story. It's just making it go away.
00:42:22.720 That's dangerous. That's really dangerous. I saw a suggestion that, uh, one way to promote Trump is
00:42:31.040 to change all your hotspots to Trump 2020 so that anybody who's looking for a hotspot, uh, they're,
00:42:38.180 they're going to run into Trump 2020. So they're going to see a lot more Trump supporters, but they'd
00:42:43.200 be a little bit underground because all you'd see is the hotspot. You wouldn't necessarily know where
00:42:47.460 it came from. I thought that was pretty funny. So if you know how to change your hotspot,
00:42:53.460 change it to Trump 2020. I'm not sure if that would conflict with other people or not.
00:42:58.720 Um, is there any reason why by next election, is there any reason that we won't solve this
00:43:08.520 voting problem? Because, you know, I get that the coronavirus caught us off guard and, you know,
00:43:15.580 so we're not ready to do the, the mail-in ballots as, as well as we would like to be prepared.
00:43:21.080 But by next election, and maybe even by midterm, doesn't it seem to you that we should have this
00:43:28.360 completely solved? And the way to completely solve it, and I can only think of one, is with
00:43:33.320 facial recognition. There has to be a way, both for home, you know, mail-in votes, but also for in
00:43:41.700 person. There has to be a way to use facial recognition to guarantee you're getting the right
00:43:48.700 person voting. Now, the, the company Clearview is, I think, the leader in that area right now.
00:43:57.160 And they seem to be, they do, I think, the best job of, uh, of dark faces. You know, sometimes you
00:44:03.680 get the false, false identifications with some of the, the lesser technologies. I think Clearview
00:44:09.840 is the leader in that in terms of getting actually, actually accurate facial recognition. So in two
00:44:16.960 years, there's just no excuse for not having facial recognition as at least an option or at least
00:44:25.000 something you're testing. Um, all right. Do you believe that the polls are, uh, with Biden winning
00:44:34.740 by a lot? Does that sound right to you? Because it seems that the average of the polls have Biden up
00:44:40.340 by, well, I don't know, six nationally, nine percent in Pennsylvania, something like that. Does that sound
00:44:46.480 right to you? That doesn't even sound close to right to me. Um, but we'll see. We shall see.
00:44:56.020 All right. Um, that's all I got for now. So I'm going to be, uh, watching the debates with
00:45:07.100 Christina tonight. I will be, uh, tweeting as I, as I see things develop. Um, you know, there,
00:45:15.000 there are predictions that this will be the most watched presidential debate of all time.
00:45:20.340 And when I heard that, I thought to myself, yeah, you know, I think that's true. I think this will
00:45:25.580 be the most watched presidential debate, but you know what else it could be. I'm not going to say
00:45:32.300 that this is a prediction, but it is not impossible. It will be the most watched televised event of all
00:45:39.700 time. I'm not going to predict that that's the case, but it's possible because of the, the specific
00:45:48.120 dynamic of, of it being Trump, it being 2020, uh, the stakes seemed so high. And the fact that,
00:45:55.060 um, the real fun here is watching Biden try to keep it together and watching Trump, the world's
00:46:02.080 greatest trash talker, try to set this guy off his game on national TV. Now, if you can tell me
00:46:10.440 there's anything you've looked forward to watching more than that, I'm not sure I believe you.
00:46:16.240 If you, if you, if you told me every sport, you know, literally there's no sporting event I would
00:46:24.120 want to watch more than this. There is also no comedy. I would be willing to watch more than this.
00:46:32.500 There is no first run movie that I would want to watch more than this. This is literally the most
00:46:42.680 anticipated thing on television that I can even remember. I mean, I don't remember anything that
00:46:50.580 I've anticipated this much. I mean, I've enjoyed watching a Superbowl now and then, but you know,
00:46:56.040 those were just sort of routine. I wasn't really, you know, I wasn't really loving it. Uh, I just sort
00:47:02.840 of did it because it was a party time. This might be just maybe the biggest televised event of all time
00:47:13.220 because there's nothing to compete with it, right? TV is awful. What else are you going to do?
00:47:21.000 Why wouldn't you watch this? All right. That's all I got for now. And I will talk to you maybe tonight.