Episode 1145 Scott Adams: Trump Goes For a Drive and Other Excitement
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.00244
Summary
A new turn in the President Donald Trump's medical situation, a new side effect, and a question about where the Secret Service agents who drove the president to Walter Reeds Hospital yesterday have been infected with something called coronavirus.
Transcript
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hey everybody come on in come on in it's time for coffee with scott adams that's right best part of
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the day and you found it again think of all the people who wish they were here but they're doing
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something far less interesting and stimulating don't we feel sorry for them just a little bit
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and they're also going to miss a little thing called the simultaneous sip because they may
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not be prepared with a cup or mug or glass a tank or gel just dine a canteen drink or flask
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a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the
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unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better
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it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now go
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well i don't like to brag you know because i live in california and there's a lot to brag about
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for example today the air is actually breathable um again i don't like to brag but i'll be able to
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walk outside my home today open up my mouth and breathe in the air without risking a serious medical
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problem yeah in my town the smoke has actually subsided to the point where i can go outside
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so look at me oh try to hold your jealousy um there's a new turn in the uh the president trump's
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medical situation i don't know if you've heard this but he is exhibiting a new side effect
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um i don't know if this is a side effect from the the meds or it's something that the coronavirus
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does but apparently he can only tweet in all caps um i don't know exactly what the treatment for that
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is you know sometimes people will send one tweet in all caps as kind of a way to emphasize a specific
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tweet and that's okay that's not necessarily a sign of any kind of illness or side effect
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but if you tweet a whole series of tweets the same morning and they're all in all caps
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that's that's time for some serious medical intervention and so i think president trump
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needs a little more a little more attention uh otherwise we're going to be treated to all caps
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tweets from now on and it's worse than that it's worse than that because as you know the president
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took a little drive yesterday uh and he wanted to just wave to the supporters who were gathered
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around walter reed hospital but because he's still infected he was in the car with two secret
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service agents and now people are concerned that those secret service agents could in worst case
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scenario they might start tweeting in all caps as well because we don't know what it is about the
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president that's causing him to tweet in all caps but i don't think it's the sort of thing you want
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to expose other people to because the secret service people are just trying to do their jobs
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and you know what if what if they have to go through life tweeting in all caps because of this
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exposure to whatever this is that's not fair is it no it's not fair at all so i think we should be
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concerned about that um now some people are saying it's very very uh inappropriate for the president
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to put the secret service at risk now i did hear an ex-white house physician talking about this and
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he he determined that the risk was very very small tiny tiny tiny little risk
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and apparently the doctors at walter reed the ones that are treating the president
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cleared him to do this so they too judged that the risk to the secret service agents
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and to anybody else was very very very small very very very small but it wasn't zero it wasn't zero
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so was it worth it was it a good risk management decision by the president well one of the things
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it does is it it reminds the public that the president is relatively uh good shape and probably
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recovering on schedule and the country will go ahead and probably the stock market will will open a
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little bit higher today i don't know if it has but there's a good chance it will because the president's
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looking uh robust so i would say the trade-off is this a tiny tiny little chance that the secret
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service could be infected versus the benefit of showing the public that he is alive um
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somebody just asked me what city should i move to to be successful not san francisco
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don't come here not los angeles i would rule out baltimore chicago new york city
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um austin maybe i'm hearing good things about austin maybe someplace in texas uh hearing good things
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about nashville uh so that was just a question about where to move for success all right now here's a
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question if the secret service agents who drove the president around in his little uh one block drive
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there if if they were put at risk what about the doctors why why do we ignore the fact that there
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apparently there's a an army of doctors i don't know how many of them looks like a lot of them but
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there must be probably 15 people who have daily access to the president now they're also wearing
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protective gear but so are the so are the secret service agents shouldn't each of those uh medical
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people have to go into a 14-day quarantine every time they talk to the president i mean i suppose you
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have to treat the medical community differently but i only point this out to say we're really bad at
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estimating a risk because we've got this team of people going in and out and dealing with probably
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other coronavirus patients and then going in and out and dealing with other diseases and then going in
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and out of the president's uh room there is a lot of leakage i also would like to point out
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that the average person the average person doesn't do that good a job with social distancing and mask
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wearing yeah if people are watching if people are watching you're probably pretty good with your mask
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if there are people around you're probably good with your social distancing what happens when you're home
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is anybody come in your home without a mask is there anybody anybody who comes in and out of your home
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that maybe goes in and out of other homes i've got a feeling that if you drilled down and found out what
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was happening behind closed doors that the social distancing is not nearly as good as you would hope
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not nearly as good it doesn't have to be perfect just has to be pretty good all right um i understand that
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there are some kind of basketball playoffs happening i have reached a new all-time low in caring about
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sports for all the right reasons sports never really needed to be important did they
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you know what what hole was it that sports were filling i think the hole that sports fills other than
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taking up some time is that it allows you to have a team that you can root for but i feel as if
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we're all already on teams because of politics it feels like you're on the team then some people are
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joining antifa and black lives matter i feel as if the purpose of sports is much less because sports
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in a way you could argue is like this symbolic kind of a fight you know this big symbolic battle so that
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your need for a real battle is somewhat siphoned off by your enjoyment of entertainment in these fake
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battles called sports but if you see fake battles every day and you feel like you're on one of those
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teams or rooting for them maybe you don't need sports as much maybe you don't
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um did you notice how little news there is today
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that the biggest news is the infinitesimally infinitesimally small risk that two secret service
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agents who sign up to risk their lives for the president and for the for the nation i would say
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even more than the president that there there's slight risk to these two people because the president
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drove around the block that's it all the other news in the world just sort of stopped
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what does that tell you about the subjectivity of your news consuming experience because this happens
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on holidays and weekends whenever the people who make the news take some time off there's no news
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so if you think that your understanding of the world and what's important is driven by what's
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actually happening it's not it's not at all um it's it's really entirely because people make up the
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news they they decide what's important they transmit it to you and then they assign your opinions and then
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you get worked up over the opinion that somebody else has assigned to you and if you don't think
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that's what's happening just pay attention and you'll notice these little these little suggestions that
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that's what's happening and you're seeing it right now as soon as president trump can't be attacked
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as easily because he is sick so you don't want to attack sick people as much it just makes all the news
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go away it's like nothing is important suddenly but is that the case did did the world change
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no the world didn't change at all but the way you process the world completely changed because the
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people who are assigning you opinions stopped doing it for a couple days they just stopped assigning
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you opinions and they're giving you dumb ones like you know the president driving around in a car
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and you know it's a it's a real thing but in terms of the global things that you're worrying about
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pretty small today i got a little back and forth with a twitter troll who tells me that president
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trump has no empathy he has no empathy to which i quite naturally responded that mind reading is not a
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thing can you really tell if an if a stranger has empathy well the troll got back to me and said
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quite reasonably quite reasonably said you can tell empathy by people's actions now that's not a hundred
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percent true because our actions don't always correspond to our inner thoughts we might be concealing
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our inner thoughts for any variety of reasons either to look strong or whatever but you could conceal your
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your your true inner thoughts but i thought well but let me consider this accusation accusation
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that president trump has not acted in a way that would demonstrate empathy what do you think of that
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do you think that the president has so far in in his uh let's say campaign for and then first term
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as he demonstrated as he demonstrated through his actions not just his words but his actions
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well i would say he based his entire campaign on it didn't he correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't the
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central message of his campaign empathy for the middle class americans who have been forgotten
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that was not just an add-on that wasn't something he said you know uh i got my campaign platform and
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uh it probably sounds good i'll throw in some stuff about the middle class no it started there
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the entire heart of his entire movement started with an empathy core and then built on top of that
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it's all built around the middle class and the empathy for them because if you get that part right
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everything else works you know it's it's a general truism that if the middle class is healthy
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you have a much better chance of helping everybody else right you know the the rich are going to be fine
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if the middle class are good and the poor are in much better shape if the middle class are healthy
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they don't need help they can provide help so and of course the president has been very direct
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because he cares the most about the people who are closest
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you know a person's primary empathy is to themselves
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we're designed to to take care of ourselves first
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but then there's your family your loved ones your
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you know your extended family your co-workers your
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your local town then your state your country in the world
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and the empathy that you have if you're a normal human
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is the greatest the closer you are to the center of your core
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more empathy for your family than for strangers etc right
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so the president has said you know his empathy stake in the ground is
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the middle class it's pretty big big group of people
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so um i've noticed that and maybe this is an exaggeration
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but it seems like i can tell somebody's political affiliation
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online by whether they criticize systems or people
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so i'm not i'm not saying that's exclusive to the left
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talking about free markets and the system capitalism
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the system socialism the system how many people on the supreme court
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a system um you know the separation of powers a system
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so mostly mostly systems they do also talk about people
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and then they'll throw in a little bit about systems if they need to
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seems like a big difference and i'm watching for that
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and i've often thought that that's the lowest level of analysis
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because the lowest level of analysis is simply substituting a word
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so what would be the difference between a salesperson
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whether they're doing something for good or for bad
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is the president trying to help the middle class
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yeah yeah obviously he can't he can't do anything good for himself
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unless he's doing things that are good for the country
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it's so hard to read all these comments and think at the same time
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is probably what's driving the market right now
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so it looks like the stock market thinks they want more president trump
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made a list of the attacks that i get on twitter
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so here's the list of every criticism i get on twitter
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so what i was saying about a con man versus a salesperson
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and find out that they're really doing it for bad reasons
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so instead of saying what is it we want to be done
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what are what are the things you want accomplished
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but if you just want to put a different word on it
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i i would like to refer to his salesmanship as con man
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what what was your what was your contribution to the conversation
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the six things that capture almost every criticism i get on
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where they imagine i'm thinking something i'm not
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where they just imagine some straw man opinion and attack it
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with no with no complaint about the facts or the reasoning
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once suggested uh injecting bleach into your arm
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and the person we're talking to doesn't understand science
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we're all pretty sure that we've got the right view of science
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is there anybody here who doesn't think you should trust
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but they're no more reliable than people in general
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one of the things that trump has going for them
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and yes i do understand that the tariffs are not paid by the other country
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whether uh he's having any kind of side effects from the meds
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but uh can somebody who knows more than i do tell me
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that would have any chance of changing his decision making
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those of you who have been watching me on periscope for a while
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i went through several bouts of taking prednisone
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you don't want to give somebody who's already aggressive
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60 minutes i guess is doing a story about tara reid
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the accuser of you know joe biden's accuser of sexual assault
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is being handled by um just asking the mexican government
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somebody says that steroids make you aggressive
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maybe i would think it would make anybody aggressive
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will will trump having covid help him or hurt him
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it's simply true that you'd rather have somebody
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who has experience in the very thing that you're trying to manage
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it's going to be it's going to be an advantage to have some experience
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so trump just learned a whole lot about coronavirus
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you know the the actual mental psychological part of it
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what anybody would feel going through that situation
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uh why did your uploader youtube have so many ads
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so you should not see the interstitial ads anymore
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somebody says that dexamethasone is stronger than prednisone
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prime version of youtube that gets rid of the ads
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because you can get these little short hits of things
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and then i've got to wait for the opening credits
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i can just click some interesting 10 minute video
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what percent of your followers have had to re-follow you at least once
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i don't know percentage but it's certainly thousands
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do you believe that you also assign opinions to your viewers to a certain extent
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that i personally have assigned opinions to my viewers
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and say that the way they see the world is changed
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i think you just have to look at the number of people involved