Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1241 Scott Adams： How the Fake News Industry Manufactures HOAXES, Using Today's Fresh Example

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. Did you think 2021 was going to be boring? Nope. I'm glad we saved up all

00:00:12.380 the craziness for the first weekday after the holidays. I feel like I was worried things might

00:00:20.680 get boring, but then we've got the lizard squad. We'll talk about that in a moment. I said lizard

00:00:28.580 squad. That's actually in the news. The lizard squad. But before we get to that fun news, all you need 0.83

00:00:36.500 to enjoy this in the maximum possible way. And why would you settle for anything less, frankly? Would

00:00:42.600 you? No. No, you're not going to settle for less. So get your cup or mug or glass, tank or chalice or

00:00:48.540 stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, and get ready to maximize your experience with the

00:00:55.760 little thing I call the simultaneous sip. Feeling connected to people all over the world, better

00:01:02.500 than even fungi. Yeah. You think fungi are connected underneath the forest floor? Well, they are, but

00:01:11.040 not as much as we're going to be connected in a moment with a simultaneous sip. The dopamine here

00:01:15.880 of the day, have I built this up a little too much? Go. No, no, I didn't build it up too much.

00:01:26.180 It was just as good as I thought it would be. Sometimes I think I'm exaggerating then. No,

00:01:33.220 not exaggerating at all. Story number one.

00:01:36.580 So, a fellow named Tyler Bowyer, he reports that he was elected to the GOP chair in Maricopa County.

00:01:49.200 And he says he met with then Senator McCain, who is now the late Senator McCain. And he said he met

00:01:57.400 with him just out of respect for the office and that, this is what he said, he tried to buy me off

00:02:03.920 by offering local chamber money, chamber of commerce, I guess, local chamber money he said

00:02:09.560 he controlled. He wasn't shy about it. It didn't work. Now, what do you think of that story?

00:02:18.320 Does that sound true? Well, Senator McCain is not here to defend himself. So, it's a little bit

00:02:25.320 unfair because the person isn't here to defend himself. But I don't see anything about it that

00:02:32.520 strikes me as a lie. I mean, it doesn't seem like something you would make up because it's got

00:02:39.920 this detail about the chamber money he said he controlled. That's not exactly the kind of lie

00:02:46.280 you would make up, right? If you're going to make this up as a lie, you would say, Senator McCain

00:02:52.420 said he had some money, you know, and he would put it my way or something. But you wouldn't say

00:02:58.440 something so specific that he controlled the chamber money and all that. That's pretty specific.

00:03:05.280 I think he's telling the truth. And my only comment on this is that I prefer bribers who don't get 1.00

00:03:13.800 caught. And scene. In other news, some employees of Google and Alphabet are trying to organize to

00:03:27.200 create a union. We don't know how well they'll do. But I wondered, why do you need a union

00:03:34.040 at Google? Don't you always hear it's like the best place to work and people are fighting to work

00:03:41.160 there and salaries are good and benefits are great. And it's a prestigious job in the middle of the most

00:03:48.240 active industry in the world and a great place to live in many places, depending on where the office

00:03:53.300 is. Why would you need a union? And so I looked at the details. Turns out they're not so focused on

00:04:05.680 compensation. No, they're not really focused on working conditions. Some of the things you would

00:04:14.180 expect from a union. Nope, they're focused on the lack of wokeness at Google. Because as woke as Google

00:04:23.400 is, it's not woke enough. Because it's doing contracts for the Department of Defense.

00:04:32.380 No, protect the country, homeland security. So that's no good, according to these folks at Google.

00:04:39.580 And what else have they done? They've profited from advertisements by hate groups. Now, when I say

00:04:49.340 hate group, I mean a group that somebody else doesn't like. Maybe that group is a hate group. Maybe

00:04:56.960 they're not. But if you hate them, well, let's call them a hate group. It's close enough. So those were

00:05:03.620 the two things that they surfaced as being worthy of note for their major claims are two wokeness items.

00:05:14.120 Now, how perfect is it that Google could be taken down by wokeness? I don't know that it'll happen. 1.00

00:05:22.620 But it's a fun story. But not as fun as, yeah, I'm going to get to Trump's phone call. I'm building you

00:05:30.260 up to it. It's this is the buildup. So attorney Linwood, who, as you know, is working for the

00:05:39.100 president's benefit on the election fraud stuff. But that's not all he's doing. It turns out that

00:05:47.040 Linwood has something else to say today. Totally believable. And it goes like this.

00:05:55.760 Now, let me be very clear. This is not my opinion.

00:06:02.960 What you're going to hear now is somebody else's opinion.

00:06:08.400 Or fact, we don't know. But it goes like this. Linwood tweeted,

00:06:12.960 I believe Chief Justice John Roberts and a multitude of powerful individuals worldwide

00:06:19.400 are being blackmailed in a horrendous scheme involving rape and murder of children

00:06:24.820 captured on videotape. It's captured on videotape. Well, if it's captured on videotape,

00:06:32.460 obviously it's true. Because there's never anything that's on videotape that's not true.

00:06:39.800 Well, hold that thought. Hold that thought for later.

00:06:42.920 But given that it's right there on video, and apparently he has access to it, there's a crypto

00:06:52.020 key and there's a file and something and he apparently has access to it, wouldn't you think

00:06:57.860 you might see, I don't know, one screenshot, for example? I don't have to see the whole video because

00:07:06.520 it sounds like the video is pretty bad, which totally exists. And you know why? You know it exists?

00:07:14.700 It comes from a credible source called the Lizard Squad. Now, if you are going to be a credible

00:07:22.740 organization, one way to advertise your credibility is to name yourself the Lizard Squad.

00:07:28.700 There are apparently some hackers who got into these files and have determined that these are

00:07:35.960 actual files showing rape and murder of children. And wouldn't you expect to see at least a screen

00:07:47.180 grab? Maybe not something that shows the whole story, but wouldn't you like to know that at least

00:07:54.380 Chief Justice Roberts is on it? Because if he's not on one of these videos, I'm not so sure there's

00:08:03.480 any kind of evidence. And by now, wouldn't we see at least a screenshot? Not the whole video.

00:08:12.140 Of course, we don't want to see that, but a screenshot. Or how about, has he shown it to somebody else?

00:08:19.180 Let's say a prosecutor. Has he shown it to a prosecutor? And has the prosecutor said, yes,

00:08:26.900 I've looked at this video. Looks real to me, or at least something I need to look into to find out

00:08:32.880 if it's real. Where's that? Kind of missing. Kind of missing. Well, here's my take on this. I think

00:08:41.240 the odds that John Roberts is on any kind of a blackmail video are really, really small.

00:08:51.840 Like, really, really small. Like, if you were to take all of the allegations that have ever been made

00:08:58.320 since the beginning of time and rank them from most credible to least, eh, this might be close to least.

00:09:06.340 Now, let me say this as clearly as I can, because I know you're not gonna hear me. This is one of

00:09:14.820 those topics where I could look at you and say, two plus two equals four. And a lot of you will go

00:09:20.340 away saying, he keeps saying two plus two is five. I don't know what's wrong with him. And I'll just say,

00:09:26.500 two plus two is four. And you'll hear two plus two is five. It's gonna happen right now. Are you ready?

00:09:31.920 It'll happen right now. Not to all of you. But some of you watching will hear two plus two is five

00:09:38.720 when I say two plus two is four. Are you ready? Here it comes. I'm guaranteed it's got to be true 1.00

00:09:47.220 that there are very important people who are being blackmailed by major intelligence services.

00:09:54.580 That's got to be true. Because it falls into the category of something that would have a high

00:10:02.500 upside potential, blackmailing important people. If you're an intelligence agency, your risk of

00:10:10.140 getting in trouble for it is zero. Because that's actually your job. What is somebody going to say,

00:10:17.220 hey, intelligence agency, your guy is trying to blackmail me? And what is the boss of the guy doing

00:10:23.680 the blackmailing going to say? Is he going to say, oh, I got to fire that guy? No, no, the head of the

00:10:30.340 agency would say, well, that's why we hired him. He's supposed to be blackmailing you. And by the way,

00:10:35.520 he did a good job. So you better shut up. Because we got all the evidence on you. So if you have a case

00:10:42.940 where there's no risk of penalty, at least for the person doing the blackmailing, because it's literally

00:10:48.120 their job in an intelligence agency, there's a gigantic upside. And then the third thing that's

00:10:55.260 necessary to be guaranteed that it happens is that there are a lot of people involved. If there were

00:11:01.780 only one important person in the world, well, there's a pretty good chance they haven't murdered

00:11:06.700 or raped anybody. But if you have lots of leaders, you can guarantee some number of them, and it might be a

00:11:15.160 pretty big percentage, like an alarming percentage of them, 20%, 30%, 50%, it's a big number, have done at

00:11:22.480 least something they could be blackmailed for. Maybe it's 80%. But I would say minimum 30% of leaders

00:11:29.980 have something they could be blackmailed for. So under those conditions, what are the odds that there

00:11:36.820 are sexual predators and rapists, I guess that's the same, in government in major roles? The answer is

00:11:49.180 100%. 100%. There's 100% chance that people in power are doing bad things. There's 100% chance that

00:11:57.900 intelligence agencies are trying to find out about them. There's 100% chance that in some number of

00:12:04.200 cases they have succeeded. And there's 100% chance that it makes a difference. That some intelligence

00:12:12.160 agencies have leverage over a number of people. Now, that said, if you were to pick any one allegation about

00:12:21.560 any one person, and here's an example, an allegation, the worst possible allegation against Chief Justice

00:12:28.400 Roberts, what are the odds that any one specific thing is true, in the context of knowing that the larger story is

00:12:37.940 definitely true? There definitely are people doing bad things, definitely being blackmailed by intelligence

00:12:43.960 agencies, probably more than one of them at the same time. Those two things are not incompatible. So do you hear

00:12:52.760 this? It can be definitely true that it's happening. While almost statistically, you know, if you're just

00:13:00.420 going to put an odds on it, any one person who gets accused, very low odds. So I would say the odds that

00:13:07.200 Chief Justice Roberts is actually doing anything like any of these allegations, vanishingly small. So small, I

00:13:14.980 wouldn't even think of it as being in the category of things that might be true. That's how small the odds of

00:13:21.200 this being true are. At the same time, it could be true that there's this stuff going on, but not for

00:13:26.800 any individual. You can't make that claim. So unless he's got a screenshot of Justice Roberts, I would not

00:13:34.460 look for that to be true. All right. The Epoch Times is reporting that there was a data analysis by something

00:13:45.560 called the Data Integrity Group. So I guess they do data analysis. And they did a time series look at

00:13:52.740 all the votes coming in on election day, and make the following claim that at least over 400,000 votes

00:13:59.660 were switched. Switched meaning removed, I think, at least subtracted from Trump. I don't know if in this

00:14:09.400 context, they mean that it was added to Biden or is just removed from Trump. A little unclear, but

00:14:15.320 it doesn't matter for the point. All right. Point is, and now here's the payoff. Now, I've been telling

00:14:21.680 you before that simplification is going to be the key, because you've got a whole bunch of complicated

00:14:27.920 claims about all kinds of things in the election. They all conflate, and did the courts rule on them,

00:14:34.740 or did they only rule on doctrine of latches, and, you know, was it only about standing? The whole thing

00:14:40.440 is way too complicated for the public to understand. But if anybody, and I talked about, this is going

00:14:47.520 to sound familiar, because I talked about this in a different context. If anybody in that data analysis

00:14:52.700 world who's got a claim can boil that down to one thing that can be checked, that's going to be

00:14:59.240 powerful. Because you've got a whole bunch of claims that are hard to check. If you could take

00:15:05.940 even one important thing, let's say something that affected 400,000 votes, if you could boil that one

00:15:12.340 claim of 400,000 votes down to one verifiable objective fact, you just look at it. And if you're not

00:15:22.360 looking at it, you can't tell. But if you are looking at it, you know. And apparently this group

00:15:29.640 did that. They boiled it down to one simple data fact that you could just observe. Now, they make a

00:15:40.620 claim that, in my opinion, is probably false. And I'm saying probably just because the way the world

00:15:48.120 works, right? It's not based on anything about the data integrity group. It's not based on the

00:15:53.620 reporting of the Epoch Times. It's not based on anything that. It's just if you live in the world

00:15:58.340 long enough, there are some things you just expect not to be true in the end. And this sort of fits in

00:16:04.440 that category. But here's the genius part of it. All you have to do is check. And I'm going to tell you

00:16:11.060 what their claim is. And when you see how simple it is, you're actually going to feel it. I tell you

00:16:17.580 this sometimes. Every once in a while, there'll be a little piece of knowledge. Your understanding

00:16:22.960 of the world you live in just goes up a little bit. Like you reach a little higher level of

00:16:27.340 awareness. And sometimes you can feel it. Like you'll get a little goosebumps or something. I'm

00:16:32.220 going to do that to some of you now. Most of you won't feel it. But some of you are going to feel it.

00:16:36.440 Here's your goosebumps. Here's the claim that is so simple. Just check. It goes like this.

00:16:44.340 Quote, there were vote movements across all candidates. Of course, you know, the vote is

00:16:50.240 changing in real time as the candidates are getting their votes counted. And they say, however,

00:16:57.080 we did not see the same type of negative decrements, meaning votes decreasing in real time from a total

00:17:03.540 that was higher to lower, to any of the other candidates that we saw with President Trump's

00:17:09.780 tallies. And they happened repeatedly, the Trump ones, with no explanation, said Linda McLaughlin,

00:17:17.180 a member of the group. Now, that is a very specific, simple claim, which the data that they have

00:17:25.840 available to them, apparently, shows. Now, here's my problem. I'm not telling you to believe this,

00:17:34.700 okay? So if it sounds like I'm saying, hey, this is a credible one, believe this one, I'm not there.

00:17:40.180 I'm not there at all. But what I love about it is that it's a claim you don't have to believe or

00:17:45.740 disbelieve. You can just check it. All right? Now, if it's true that only President Trump's vote counts

00:17:54.800 showed several times when they went down, and nobody else ever, ever experienced even one issue

00:18:03.380 of where any other vote count, either Biden's or anybody else on the ticket, Republican or Democrat,

00:18:09.980 anybody else, if no other vote count all night ever showed one decrease, but the Trump votes did a

00:18:19.620 number of times, easy to check, right? Because apparently they have the data. They can just look

00:18:24.360 at it and say, okay, here it was, it decreased. And the other ones didn't. Now, do you think if that

00:18:31.260 claim is checked, that it would stand up? Oh, and somebody's saying in the comments that it was

00:18:37.860 true across multiple states. I believe that's true, that it was not in one place. It was multiple

00:18:44.700 counties. Now, how do you like the fact that this is boiled down to something that you could just check

00:18:51.140 it? You don't have to wonder. Now, based on the claim, you should not believe it. If all you've read

00:18:58.760 is the claim, zero credibility, just like every other claim about the election, no credibility.

00:19:06.400 But if the other side doesn't weigh in and say, you idiots, there's a perfectly good reason why it

00:19:14.140 looked like that was happening, but it really wasn't. I'd wait to hear that. But what if you'd ever

00:19:22.480 hear that? Because as Linda McLaughlin says, that no explanation has been offered. Don't you think

00:19:31.160 that would be something they'd want to explain? And don't you think it wouldn't be hard to explain it

00:19:37.060 if there were an explanation? For example, and I'll just brainstorm what it might be. It could be that

00:19:44.000 they've got different sources reporting, and that every once in a while, there's, you know, an artifact

00:19:50.920 where there's a slight timing problem, and it looks like something was decreased, but it really

00:19:56.780 wasn't. It was just decreased before it increased, or something, right? You could imagine they'd say,

00:20:03.980 look, this is normal. We'll show you that it happened in other elections. We'll show you that it happened

00:20:09.720 to Biden too. We'll show you that it happened to other candidates. A defense would be easy. It would be

00:20:15.020 easy to defend it. Just tell us why it happened, or tell us it didn't happen. Easy. So do you think

00:20:24.680 that this exclusive story in the Epoch Times will be picked up by all the major media, because now we

00:20:31.380 know a way to find out for sure if the election was stolen? Isn't that good news? We don't have to

00:20:38.680 wonder. In fact, we could probably be sure of it in 24 hours. All you need is somebody who's got the

00:20:45.840 opposite opinion about what this data means, somebody qualified, have them look at the same data,

00:20:53.280 and then tell us what they think. If they look at the data and have a good explanation, I'm open to

00:20:58.620 that. Indeed, I'm not only open to it, I'm far more likely to believe the explanation, because most of

00:21:06.620 these things are going to be explained away, like 95% minimum will be explained away. Why would this be

00:21:12.440 different? So I would expect it's not real. But every day we go, in which the explanation, the

00:21:19.560 alternate explanation doesn't exist, it's a little harder to believe it's not real, isn't it?

00:21:28.940 Now, do we live in a world where the news can just disappear something this important? Well,

00:21:35.240 let's talk about the Trump phone call. So you all saw the news. Trump made a phone call with, I guess

00:21:42.180 it was the Georgia Attorney General and other people in that office and job, in which he was listing his

00:21:48.940 grievances and evidence for why the election was stolen. And he had a pretty long list of things

00:21:55.640 like dead people voting and people whose addresses don't check out, and there were places where he

00:22:02.320 claimed that there were more votes than registered voters, etc. Now, I listened to the entire hour,

00:22:09.260 because I think you need to, because if you're just a clip coming out, you won't know what to believe.

00:22:16.940 But I listened to the whole hour, and I have a few thoughts. Number one, the president is very,

00:22:25.000 very, very poorly advised at the moment. I mean, shockingly poorly advised. Now, do I blame the

00:22:34.900 president for thinking that there are all these irregularities, which have been, in my opinion,

00:22:41.200 mostly debunked? In my opinion, right? There's some room for opinion on this. But I feel as if he's

00:22:49.400 mixing claims that have not been debunked, and are definitely worth looking into, and look pretty

00:22:55.980 strong, like this Epoch Times one. I don't know if that's true, but it looks pretty strong, and it

00:23:00.840 hasn't been debunked as far as I know. So wouldn't you like to look into that a little bit? Of course

00:23:06.280 you would. But by mixing stuff that, at least again, just in my opinion, sounds transparently and

00:23:14.160 obviously not true. Somebody's not telling the president the truth. There's nobody in his circle

00:23:23.260 at the moment who apparently feels safe that they can say, um, you got some strong things you can say,

00:23:30.140 and you got some weak things, and maybe just leave the weak things alone. Because if the strong ones work,

00:23:36.300 that's all you need. Why would you throw weak ones in there and ruin the whole thing? So I would say that

00:23:41.360 for those of you who have been following the claims, they seemed almost embarrassingly uninformed.

00:23:50.860 So that was my take. Now you know, if you watch me, I could not be a bigger booster of Trump,

00:23:57.900 right? To the point of a flaw. I'm a booster to the point of flaw. But even I didn't think the stuff

00:24:06.760 he was saying about the election was too credible in whole. There were parts of it that I didn't know,

00:24:13.080 and I'd like to know more about them. Definitely stuff to look into. But the way it was interpreted

00:24:17.320 by the news is in the form of a hoax. Oh, here's the other thing I noticed. He's the president of

00:24:24.000 the United States, albeit lame duck, it looks like at this point. And he could not get the people on that

00:24:31.280 phone call to be even a little bit cooperative. Not at all. So watching the president of the United

00:24:39.620 States trying to make a basically a Karen phone call and complain about the service, and he couldn't

00:24:46.000 get the supervisor to say anything helpful. It was shocking to see how little power he had.

00:24:54.860 How did it get reported? When we saw how little power the president has? The president couldn't

00:25:01.380 even get the other people to be polite, basically. I mean, he couldn't get anything out of them. And

00:25:06.420 they're his own party. How was that reported? Obviously a dictator, obviously, trying to force things

00:25:13.980 through. If you listen to it, man, that was no dictator. That was whatever you are when you're

00:25:22.020 complaining to the DMV, and they're not hearing it. That's what was happening. That wasn't Hitler.

00:25:31.720 That was Karen complaining, and nobody cared. That was it. Now, it was characterized, of course,

00:25:39.080 as that he was, you know, he was pressuring, and it was illegal, and all the bad people say it's

00:25:44.700 illegal. He's pressuring. But if you listen to the whole call, there are a few things that are very

00:25:49.860 clear. Number one, I would say with complete confidence, and I believed this before, but the

00:25:56.840 phone call removes all doubt, and it's this. I'm not a mind reader, but that call makes it really,

00:26:04.700 really clear that Trump believes it was stolen. So if you're thinking to yourself, he doesn't really

00:26:10.800 believe it was stolen. It was some kind of a trick to stay in power. In my mind, there's no chance of

00:26:18.480 that. You hear the phone call. He absolutely thinks he got screwed. He's got lots of evidence that he

00:26:24.160 believes. A lot of it, I don't. But he's convinced. I mean, he sounds like a true believer, and he sells

00:26:31.540 that completely. So if you're worried about, you know, he's a dictator, that should dispel that,

00:26:38.920 because you didn't see much dictator stuff going on. But the fake news, CNN has turned it into a scandal,

00:26:44.880 because they need Trump for their ratings. And here's the pattern of how they turn real news to

00:26:51.560 fake news. You see it in this example, and you've seen it a number of other times. Once you see the

00:26:56.320 pattern, it's just kind of funny. They use the same trick. First, they'll take an audio or a videotape

00:27:02.280 that's longish, and they'll cut out a quote that's out of context. Where have you seen that done?

00:27:08.280 You saw that with the Covington kids. You saw it with the fine people hoax. And you saw it with the

00:27:12.880 drinking bleach or injecting disinfectant hoaxes. In each case, if you had heard the entire piece,

00:27:21.960 you would have said to yourself, that's the opposite of what the news said. For example,

00:27:26.620 in the fine people hoax, before the quote that was taken, Trump talked about the people who were

00:27:32.780 there who were not racist, just there for the statues. And then after that, he made sure that

00:27:37.560 you knew that he was condemning totally the neo-Nazis and the racists who were there. But if

00:27:43.220 you take out the clarification and also the context that they started and just show the clip,

00:27:50.640 it looks like he called Nazis fighting people. If you look at the Covington kids clip, all they do is

00:27:57.160 clip out the parts before and after. And it looks like the kid is the bad person. But if you see the

00:28:02.960 whole clip, it's obvious that the person he was with or the guy who claimed to be a Native American

00:28:09.400 or who was, I don't remember the story, you could tell that he was the aggressor. Likewise, with the

00:28:15.380 drinking bleach hoax, if you hear it in all of its context, you're the first part where the president

00:28:21.560 sets it up as talking about light as a disinfectant. Then he talks about it. And then he clarifies

00:28:29.480 about light. So if you don't hear that he set it up as light, and then he wrapped it up as light,

00:28:36.840 and all they take out is injecting disinfectant, that's how they create the hoax. Now, the fake edit

00:28:47.800 is not enough by itself. All right, that's not enough by itself. You need the other steps and I'll get to

00:28:53.740 them. All right, so in the case of this phone call, what they took in a quote, they took little pieces

00:28:59.420 and a quote and where he's saying stuff that makes it sound as if he's pressuring him to cheat.

00:29:07.140 Now, the opposite is happening. Trump is pressuring him to look into allegations to make sure that

00:29:14.680 nobody cheated. That is literally the opposite of asking him to, as CNN reports it, find votes.

00:29:22.900 So the second part of this is that the fake news will use persuasion primers. These are words,

00:29:32.080 wit, and phrases, which if you hear them at the same time you've heard the story for the first time,

00:29:37.920 they prime you to see the story a certain way. These are brainwashing persuasion primers. None of

00:29:44.640 this is an accident. They know how to do this. It's the fourth time in a row you've seen it. Same pattern

00:29:50.460 every time. So the the primer words that they use in this case are pressured to find votes. Here's

00:29:58.340 another way to describe exactly what you you heard on the the audio. The president forcefully was

00:30:07.920 promoting his idea that the people in charge should look into the allegations of fraud so that the public

00:30:15.120 can understand that the election was either clean, which would be good, or they'd find that it wasn't,

00:30:21.920 which would be good in another way. So did that sound like pressuring to find votes, meaning

00:30:29.440 manufacture, you know, manufacture about nothing? Did that sound the same? Because what I said was just

00:30:35.340 objectively true. You listen to it. He's making his case. He's presenting his claims for fraud.

00:30:40.780 He says, we just want a fair vote. We just want to know. I just want you to look into it.

00:30:47.220 That's all. And, but if you hear pressured and find votes, and you pair it with a clip,

00:30:54.160 which doesn't have the rest of the context, it looks like what? A mob boss talking. They like to use the

00:31:01.700 things that you've, that you've believed before. Now, because the whole, he's a mob boss was already

00:31:10.520 a meme. They just take a meme that is already active in your mind, and they just attach a new

00:31:16.180 thing to it. It's much easier to attach fake news to an existing meme. Oh, he's like a mob boss. Yeah,

00:31:24.000 whenever he makes a private phone call or thinks it's private, he talks like a mob boss. And here he is

00:31:29.200 making a phone call like a mob boss. Now, if you listen to it, there wasn't anything even close

00:31:36.040 to talking like a mob boss. I mean, not even close to anything like that. The tone was not that.

00:31:46.400 It was just asking for something to be looked into. That was it. And the boldness with which they

00:31:56.120 they try this is amazing. Here's some more phrases from CNN. The president was caught on tape.

00:32:03.540 Caught on tape. Now, what do you imagine is true of somebody who was caught on tape? Well,

00:32:11.340 they're guilty. What does it mean to be on a recording if you were caught? They're signaling

00:32:20.900 that he's guilty before they've even told you what the content is. That's a primer. That's brainwashing.

00:32:29.600 So he was caught on tape. No, he wasn't caught on tape. There was simply an audio tape, which has

00:32:35.300 been available to the public, in which not much of anything happened. That's not even close to being

00:32:41.700 caught. And by the way, I prefer presidents who don't get caught on audio. Here's another sentence

00:32:52.480 directly out of CNN's coverage, that the tape, quote, exposes the depth of his corruption.

00:32:59.840 Suppose you knew there was a long tape. You only heard one part of it, which was something about

00:33:05.880 finding votes. And then you read CNN saying that this tape exposes the depth of his corruption.

00:33:13.220 Wouldn't you kind of think that the parts you didn't hear were more confirming the depth of his

00:33:19.020 corruption? Nothing like that on the tape. Not even close. Nothing even in that general category of

00:33:26.780 corruption. Not even close. It's just him asking for data to be looked at, because they've got some

00:33:33.060 claims. They would like some data to be released by the state to make sure the claims are true or

00:33:38.120 false. Just nothing like exposing a depth of corruption. He literally just asked questions.

00:33:45.200 That's it. They said it was a smoking gun. Anytime you hear any of these phrases, you're being brainwashed.

00:33:56.580 These are not news phrases. They're not even close to news. It's just straight up brainwashing

00:34:02.920 at this point. And then step three, they Bernstein it. So you bring in Bernstein just to say it's worse

00:34:17.080 than Watergate. Literally just to say that. Now, have I taught you the trick of having a big opening

00:34:24.980 offer? So if you're negotiating, which is in a way similar to persuading, at least in the way I'm going

00:34:31.740 to use it now, if you start with a big opening offer, it anchors people to the first thing they

00:34:38.980 heard. So if I say to you, I'm going to sell you my car, and it's worth a quarter of a million dollars.

00:34:45.920 The first thing you think is, there's no car you drive that's worth a quarter of a million dollars.

00:34:50.600 Well, that's true. It's not worth that or anywhere near it. But it's the first number you hear.

00:34:56.860 So now I say, all right, maybe it's not worth a quarter of a million, but man, I'd like to get

00:35:02.160 a hundred thousand for it. Now the hundred thousand doesn't sound so bad because you got primed with

00:35:08.300 the 250. And even though the thing is only worth $35,000 used, suddenly the hundred doesn't sound

00:35:15.900 so bad because you got primed with that 250. That's what Bernstein does. The worse than Watergate

00:35:22.220 guy comes in to give you the first offer. Worse than Watergate. And in your mind, you're like,

00:35:27.200 whoa, whoa, that's big. Now later, when you get more, let's say you get more information about what

00:35:34.700 was on there, you're already primed. So maybe you, maybe you come down a little from worse than

00:35:40.220 Watergate in your mind, but you're like, yeah, I'm not sure it's quite worse than Watergate,

00:35:45.640 but sounds like it's pretty bad. See? So that's how their brainwashing works. Start with a big

00:35:52.060 offer. It's worse than Watergate. And then it's hard to get you off that no matter how much data

00:35:56.680 comes out later. They use repetition because if they say it enough, you'll think it's true. If you

00:36:02.620 hear a news story or item a hundred times, you're going to believe it's more true than if you heard

00:36:07.640 it once. It's just how your brain is operating. They make you think past the sale. So you've got things

00:36:15.060 like exposing his depth of corruption or caught on tape. Those are manipulation phrases to make

00:36:22.300 you think past the sale. The sale is whether anything bad happened. And they're making you

00:36:28.720 think it is exposing the depth of his corruption by making you think of all the other corruption

00:36:33.900 it's like. But they haven't made the sale. They're making you think past it. There's no sale that

00:36:40.760 anything bad happened. They're making you think all the way to not only did it happen, but it's like

00:36:46.080 this other stuff that turns out didn't happen either. All right. Then, of course, you do the

00:36:50.960 mind reading. What is the president's state of mind? Yeah, he's like he's thinking like a mob boss and

00:36:55.840 he's trying to pressure this guy. He's not trying to get justice. Now, in his mind, it's not about

00:37:03.080 justice because CNN can read his mind. You can't, but they can. They got pundits with powers and they

00:37:11.000 read his mind and they find out that, no, despite all of his words that clearly and repeatedly say he

00:37:18.360 just wants to know what happened and can we see the data, please. Now, there's some legal reasons it's

00:37:24.820 hard to give him the data, but that's a separate story. But if you mind read him, none of that's

00:37:29.920 happening. He's just trying to be a dictator. And then the most important part, which is disappearing

00:37:36.260 the debunks. So this video, which is debunking it thoroughly, will not be highly rated on social

00:37:46.520 media. And so anybody who's going to do what I just did will just sort of get disappeared. Now,

00:37:54.180 you might say to yourself, well, that's CNN, right? CNN's crazy, but at least people will go over

00:37:59.760 to Fox News and they'll read the real story. They might even agree with you, Scott, and they might

00:38:05.500 even be on the same side. So you go over to this Fox News and you look for the story and good luck

00:38:11.980 finding it. Now, I don't know what's up with Fox News, but I would think this would be like one of the

00:38:18.000 big stories as opposed to not mentioned. So take that for whatever it means. I would think this one

00:38:26.740 would be mentioned, but it must be a story there. I'm sure Fox News will cover it eventually and the

00:38:32.700 opinion shows later today will cover it, of course. But it's sort of suspiciously not there at the

00:38:39.480 moment, unless it happened in the last hour. All right. So here's the more CNN bad behavior.

00:38:48.740 They also say, quote, legal experts say Trump broke the law by pressuring blah, blah, blah, blah. Well,

00:38:56.060 if he pressured him, maybe he broke the law. I don't know what law they're talking about. But if he was

00:39:01.960 just talking to him and asking for data, is that breaking the law? So here's CNN acting like a law

00:39:11.120 has been broken when you can just listen to the tape and it's obvious no laws are broken.

00:39:17.660 All right. Here's another story just because the simulation loves us and gives us lots of code

00:39:24.280 reuse. All six members of the congressional group we call the squad, you know, the progressives,

00:39:30.680 AOC, et cetera. They all voted to put Nancy Pelosi over the top as speaker. Unanimous they were.

00:39:38.680 So Nancy Pelosi must be doing something right. The squad loves her. Now, I have to admit, when I first

00:39:44.780 saw that the phrase lizard squad was trending, I thought, well, that's not a nice thing to call AOC

00:39:51.920 and the other people in that squad. I feel it's unkind to call them the lizard squad. But it turns out 0.94

00:39:59.520 that lizard squad was a different squad. I got that wrong. Lizard squad was the hackers as opposed to

00:40:06.420 the squad who are also lizards, but they go by a different name. Also lizards because they're part

00:40:13.960 of Congress, not because they're... See this taken out of context? Imagine that quote becomes the part

00:40:22.400 they take out of my live stream and miss the part where I say, no, it's because they're in Congress.

00:40:28.140 They're lizards. It's not because it's these, you know, few people in the squad that are lizards.

00:40:33.980 They're all lizards. But you take that part out.

00:40:40.320 My Twitter friend Zach says that watching the Biden presidency is going to be like watching a bad

00:40:48.420 spinoff of a TV show. You know, the Trump TV show is just so awesome and top rated show. But then,

00:40:55.280 you know, they do the spinoff of the minor characters. So it's like, Trump was the TV show

00:41:00.520 friends. And Biden is going to be like Joey, you know, the spinoff show about just Joey. It's like,

00:41:08.920 yeah, we're going to watch it by habit and reflex. And maybe it'll remind us of friends.

00:41:15.900 But it's not friends. It's not friends.

00:41:20.420 All right.

00:41:23.620 Here's a little tip for you. I don't know how much backing this has by science, but there was a study

00:41:31.700 saying that if you drink alcohol soon after getting the vaccination, it will make the vaccination way

00:41:38.360 less effective. There's something about alcohol that makes the meds and the vaccination a little

00:41:44.100 less active. So don't drink alcohol within several days of getting the vaccination. So you have all

00:41:51.580 been made more safe by watching this live stream. Here's a question for you. Remember Howard Schultz,

00:41:58.140 who was the founder of Starbucks, and he was running for president for a while? What if he had been

00:42:03.640 elected? Would Howard Schultz, could you trust him to make decisions about whether Starbucks should be

00:42:10.760 open? How do you do that? I feel as if Howard Schultz, although I have lots of confidence in

00:42:19.120 him as a, you know, a smart operator and capable and all that, I have only good thoughts about him.

00:42:25.700 But he would be in quite a bind, wouldn't he? Because one of the biggest questions in the pandemic is,

00:42:32.980 does a place like Starbucks stay open or just go out of business? How could he make that decision or

00:42:38.620 even be part of it? Or, I mean, I don't see how that would have worked. But, you know, short of

00:42:44.400 having a pandemic, he would have been fine. But as soon as it's a pandemic, he's the wrong match for

00:42:49.280 the job, right? Remember, I've told you that there's no such thing as bad presidents and good

00:42:53.980 presidents. They're just presidents who coincidentally are matched for a task. Trump perfectly matched for

00:43:01.380 a whole bunch of tasks, mostly international. But Howard Schultz would have been a bad match

00:43:06.900 for a pandemic, just because you would never know if he was doing something because of Starbucks.

00:43:13.820 You just wouldn't be able to know that. And I'm not casting any aspersions on Schultz. Like I said,

00:43:19.320 I have only good feelings about him, but it'd be a bad position to put him in. Gordon Chang, who talks

00:43:25.200 quite a bit about North Korean Chinese, an expert in that region, is recommending that we cut all ties

00:43:31.120 with China. Think about that. Cut all ties with China. Now, Gordon Chang is not random crazy guy

00:43:40.620 on Twitter. He knows what he's talking about. And if Gordon Chang is telling you we'd better cut all

00:43:48.660 ties with China, you need to take that seriously. Now, I know that the president listens to him, so he

00:43:55.060 probably is taking you seriously. And it's not very easy. I mean, now, and I made the case just

00:44:00.740 briefly, when we say cut all ties with China, it's because every interaction we have with them 1.00

00:44:06.100 is militarily bad for the United States. I say militarily, because anything that kills Americans

00:44:12.780 at the hands of our enemy that we're in a hot war with, it's a cyber war, but it's a hot war.

00:44:19.340 Anything that your enemy does to kill people in your country is an act of war. So whether it's they

00:44:24.340 send us fentanyl, they do trade deals that are illegal, they steal our IP, they send spies over,

00:44:31.040 you know, you can just go down the list. Every contact with China is militarily negative to the

00:44:39.020 United States. So we should delist their companies from the stock exchange. The president did that.

00:44:44.420 We should send all of their residents home that are trying to get educations here. We should stop 1.00

00:44:50.560 trading with them. We should bring all of our, we should have an order to bring all of our companies

00:44:55.360 home. Now, and I don't, I just don't know. Oh, and this other news thing is that Jack Ma,

00:45:03.520 the founder of Alibaba and multi, multi hundreds of billions, I don't know, he's super rich guy.

00:45:10.320 I guess he criticized the regime and he disappeared so far for a week. Now, it's really hard for a

00:45:16.680 billionaire to disappear. If somebody like, you know, Elon Musk or, you know, Bill Gates were not

00:45:23.100 seen for a week and it were a national story, it wouldn't take long to find them. You know,

00:45:29.120 he was at the retreat or he just took some break from social media or something. But it's been a week

00:45:35.180 and we don't know where one of the richest people in China is and very public guy. Like Jack Ma is

00:45:42.780 always on TV. He's like very public. So what if he never shows up? Because that's possible.

00:45:51.320 We might never see him again. He could be making shoes with the Uyghurs right now. Anything could 1.00

00:45:57.480 happen. Now, I imagine he will turn up soon, but his attitude will be adjusted, is my guess.

00:46:03.780 I think the regime probably will talk to him and say, you know, if you'd like to stay, oh,

00:46:09.220 alive and a billionaire, let me tell you how to do it. And it's not the way you're playing it right

00:46:14.600 now. But the other thing that's interesting is that Jack Ma is no ordinary guy. Whatever it was

00:46:22.880 that turned him into one of the richest people in the world was not an accident. He's got skills

00:46:28.720 and he's got billions of dollars and skills. And did I mention skills? And here's my question.

00:46:38.220 As strong as the Chinese Communist Party is, I mean, it's immensely strong. I don't know

00:46:44.100 if they're messing with the right person right now. Because if he's already got a little problem

00:46:48.880 with the leadership, and they're doing something with him right now, you don't want to let him

00:46:55.660 out. Let me say this a different way. If China is doing something bad to Jack Ma, they better

00:47:03.940 finish him. Because you don't want that guy loose with his billions and really, really mad

00:47:11.620 at the regime. Because he is important. You know, he has enough probably inside knowledge,

00:47:17.580 contacts, people he could bribe. He could probably take down the government. Because I think that

00:47:24.360 any billionaire in this country who was like really serious about taking down the government

00:47:28.980 could have a good shot at it. Now, China, of course, you assume that they would close him

00:47:35.160 down the minute he tried anything. He'd obviously have to leave the country. And he'd have to get

00:47:39.280 most of his money out if he could. But if he gets out of the country with his money, and they tortured

00:47:45.360 him, Jack Ma could take down China. I think they've got a dangerous situation on their hands.

00:47:54.720 I don't think they can ever let him out if they're doing something bad to him. Now, they might reach

00:47:59.900 some agreement where they don't do something too bad, maybe just some house arrest. And then when

00:48:04.620 they've talked to him enough, he just feels like, I don't want to go through this again. It wasn't that

00:48:09.180 bad. It was just house arrest for a week. But I don't, you know, next time it could be bad. So I just

00:48:14.240 won't say bad things about China. I would think that's the way it's going to go. I think that he's a

00:48:19.320 smart guy. And they'll just figure something out. And he'll just shut up about China. But did I

00:48:25.240 mention he's Jack Ma? Now, I don't know much about him. I just know that you don't, you don't get

00:48:31.240 where he is by not having skill, not being brave, not doing things that people don't expect, not being

00:48:39.620 able to push through a brick wall as if it didn't exist. So I don't know, you know, what his real

00:48:47.320 capabilities are, but one assumes they're pretty good. China might be in trouble. We'll see. That

00:48:53.860 is my show for the day. And I've got some things to do. So I'm going to run off and do those things.

00:49:01.220 Somebody says Zuckerberg took down Trump. You could make that argument. Yeah. You know, there were too

00:49:06.640 many other variables to isolate one thing. But if Zuckerberg and Facebook did not exist,

00:49:12.900 Trump would probably be president. I mean, that's, that's not a reasonable and unreasonable

00:49:17.120 thing to think. All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

00:49:29.200 All right, YouTubers, you've got another minute. Why do you think the Trump tape was leaked? Well,

00:49:35.340 it was because his enemies probably thought that they could make something out of it. Now,

00:49:42.040 the interesting part is that a lot of people are going to hear the president make a lot of claims

00:49:46.000 about election fraud. So there's at least some thought that maybe the president's team released

00:49:54.400 it. Because by turning it into national news, which just has to be covered, all of his allegations

00:50:01.000 get out there. So it might be good for the president to do that. Explain lead stories. I don't know what that

00:50:08.580 means. Calendar drama. So as somebody pointed out on Twitter, the Dilbert calendar is printed in China.

00:50:18.460 And so the question was, hey, if, if, let's say about Chappelle can get Netflix to take his old show

00:50:26.940 off the air, can't I get my publisher to use a different printing company? That's not exactly a good

00:50:34.540 analogy. If I were Chappelle, and I had an ancient show that I probably made little or no money on

00:50:40.900 at this point, and all, all, all net, all Netflix had to do is just, you know, click a box and it

00:50:48.440 doesn't appear anymore. Because it's probably as simple as that, right? Just click a box and that,

00:50:53.720 that little part of their business just doesn't exist anymore. Probably doesn't make much difference

00:50:58.040 to Chappelle. Because the way Hollywood deals are made, even though it was his show, I doubt he had

00:51:04.960 profits going forward. I doubt it. Or if he did, they weren't much. So he didn't give up anything.

00:51:11.920 So Chappelle basically gave up nothing of any value. And in order to, for Netflix to give him what he

00:51:19.140 wanted, they probably just had to check a box. And they couldn't even tell the difference in their

00:51:24.640 profits. Because it's one of, you know, thousands and thousands of properties. By comparison, my

00:51:31.420 publisher, I believe, does all of their printing for all of their properties in China. It's not easy

00:51:37.240 for them to stop doing that right away. They can't just check a box and then there's no printing in

00:51:43.660 China. Do you have any idea how hard it would be for a major publishing company to change where they

00:51:49.400 publish all of their books? It's a big deal. Now, this is why I promote an executive order that just

00:51:55.780 orders companies out of China, American companies. Because your publisher, it's not really fair to ask

00:52:03.380 a publisher, why don't you decrease your profits by 30% and spend your entire next year trying to

00:52:09.080 figure out how to do this thing that there probably isn't even enough capacity in the United States to

00:52:13.960 get that. Or, you know, you'd have to take it somewhere. So the Chappelle thing was the smallest

00:52:21.680 possible ask. There was no real cost. I mean, immeasurably small. And just check a box.

00:52:29.820 Mine would be an entire publishing company working for a year, changing everything that they do.

00:52:36.260 Maybe there would be no Dilbert calendar, so it would make a big impact on me. It's not the same thing.

00:52:42.360 But I'm on board with getting the Dilbert calendar out of China. So if you wonder what I want,

00:52:50.580 it's that. But I also work in the real world, and it's not really fair to ask a publisher to make

00:52:56.400 that kind of a change until it's either legally necessary, or there's some kind of alternative

00:53:03.180 that doesn't look so bad. You know, do it in Vietnam or wherever. So that's where I stand on that. 0.96

00:53:08.600 All right. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 04, 2021

Episode 1241 Scott Adams： How the Fake News Industry Manufactures HOAXES, Using Today's Fresh Example

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