Episode 1256 Scott Adams: Grading the News Networks on HOAX Reporting, Impeachment Trial Fun, and More
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
154.29305
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams talks about whether or not the current pandemic is a real one, and why he doesn't think it's a real pandemic. Plus, a new poll suggests that it's become embarrassing to become a Republican or Democrat.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in, come on in, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
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I guarantee that this will be the, I don't know, I think I'm safe to say this.
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This will be the best Coffee with Scott Adams all day, guaranteed.
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And if you'd like to enjoy it to the maximum potential, what do you need?
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Well, you need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid, I like, coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, 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.
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There's a Gallup poll out that says that the current breakdown of Republicans, Democrats and Independents looks like this.
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Republicans, only 25% of the public says they are Republicans now.
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So it turns out that it's become embarrassing to become a Republican or a Democrat.
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It's actually embarrassing to say you're a member of either party, according to these numbers,
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because it seems that the independents have swelled in size.
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There's no such thing as an actual independent.
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They are actually Republicans, effectively, the way they vote.
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Or they are actually just Democrats, effectively, the way they vote.
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So I think this just tells us that we've embarrassed each other to the point where we're no longer willing to say what we are out loud.
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Or at least 41% of the people would prefer it that way.
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On the super bad news, we're up to 400,000 deaths from COVID.
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If you were one of the people who, early on in the pandemic, said,
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Is there anybody out there who said, I think this is just the regular flu?
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It used to be, every time I went on social media, there would be, you know,
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one of the biggest categories of topics were people debunking the pandemic because it's not real.
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But, oh, okay, I'm answering the question I was going to get to.
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I was going to ask how many people could look at this now and still think that it's not a real pandemic.
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And I'm looking in the comments, and there's a tremendous number of you think that it's all still made up.
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We're in a very bad place, people, when we can't tell if we're in a pandemic or not.
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I would say that's as bad as you could get in terms of the reliability of your information.
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Suppose you lived in a country where the news on both sides was actually attempting to be objective.
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What if both the left and the right told you, oh, it's a real pandemic, this one's real?
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We're at a point where nobody believes anything in the news anymore.
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It doesn't matter if your side says it or the other side says it.
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Now, it could be that there's no apparent flu this year because the social distancing is so good.
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And maybe the regular flu is not as aerosoled and spready as COVID is.
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Or my hypothesis that the regular flu was never killing anybody anyway and that they scare you to take the vaccinations, but you've never met anybody in your whole life who ever died from the regular flu.
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Never even heard of anybody dying of the flu, the regular flu.
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But 400,000 people I've heard of dying of this one, and I've heard of real people with real names that, you know, people I know, that people know them, etc., who have died just this year.
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So I'm pretty sure the pandemic's real, people.
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If you're still in the camp that this is all an artifact of bad data, I feel like 400,000 reported deaths would be about the time you should change your mind.
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I don't think you will because that's not how cognitive dissonance works.
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All right, now let me take the counterpoint to that.
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I don't know how dependable this is, probably not terribly.
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But it says that half or two-thirds of the deaths in the UK are people who would have died that year anyway.
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Is the final year of your life, is that a good one?
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But if you're looking at how many people are dying from this, is it fair to say that the ones who are going to die that year anyway
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don't count as much as somebody dying when they're 15, for example?
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Now, that's one of those things you're not supposed to say out loud, but we all intuitively think the 15-year-old,
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you don't want to say is worth more because that's not a place you want to go to.
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But you could certainly say they have more life left.
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They have more to contribute, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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They may not be loved any more than the 81-year-old.
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But I think it is fair to consider when you're looking at deaths that not all deaths are the same.
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And in a very real way, if we were making the decisions ourselves, let's say you had to make a decision for your family members
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and somebody has to die, the teenager or the 90-year-old.
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Well, you'd pick the 90-year-old every time, right?
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So it's hard to get a number that makes sense for this because 400,000 deaths, what if 300,000 of them were going to die anyway in a year?
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Have you noticed there's always this guy on Twitter?
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And you're going to recognize this guy as soon as I say it.
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So this guy, who I'll refer to him generically as just this guy, there's always this guy.
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If you bring up Lincoln's assassination, there will be a bunch of comments in your thread, but one of them will always be from this guy.
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And this guy will say, Scott, Lincoln's death was a tragedy to his family.
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There's always this guy who thinks it's too soon.
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Sometimes there are situations which can be part tragic, but there's a part of it that's not tragic, might even be positive, paired with something tragic.
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If I say that something tragic happened, say, Lincoln was assassinated, that doesn't mean you need to go into my Twitter feed and tell me that there was some bad news associated with his assassination and that I should consider that a little bit more.
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Because I will take it as a stipulation that should I mention anything which also has a tragedy as part of it, that the tragedy still counts, even if there's something else to talk about.
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You just don't need to tell me every single tweet that something bad happened too.
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I wonder if controversial police shootings are going to be done for a while.
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I wonder if a Biden administration will change the nature of what news gets promoted to the top of the pile.
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Sometimes the news is so big that, of course, it's the headline.
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But most of the time, the news is what the news people decide to talk about.
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They could be talking about, I'll just pick a topic, the fact that a lot of researchers think that microdosing LSD could be an end to mental illness problems, at least for some large number of people.
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But it's nothing but a tweet and a minor story today because the people who make the news have decided that's not a story.
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To me, if I were the one making the news and I got to decide what you talked about, that'd be right near the top of the list.
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Imagine that there's an existing chemical, widely available, basically close to free.
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And that it might solve most of the mental health problems in this country.
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That's actually what's being talked about by people who are looking into it.
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That it's so powerful, it might be one of the most amazing miracle cures, actual cure, of some of the biggest problems in the country.
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But if somebody dies in a police shooting that has some ambiguity, boom, it's a headline.
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So always understand that the news is not because the news is necessarily the important stuff.
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It's the stuff that the people who bring you the news have decided they want to be front and center in your brain.
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When they talk about TV schedules and what segments are in those schedules, they talk about that as programming.
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Well, you thought that they were programming their show, and in a sense they are.
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Because what they put in the front of your brain, figuratively speaking, the front,
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the thing that you think about the most becomes your reality.
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Things that you don't think about are not your reality, even though they are your reality.
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So the news is programming you, directly and intentionally.
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When they say this will be your top story, they're saying,
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I'm going to put that in the top of your brains,
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and I'm going to make everybody in the country think about this.
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It changes the actual physical structure, just like every experience does, of your brain.
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And they do that intentionally and daily, and in a way that affects billions.
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So I'm wondering if the number of controversial police shootings might be exactly the same,
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because I don't know that anything has really changed, right?
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We haven't come up with any great ideas for making questionable shootings go away.
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So if we see a great reduction in the apparent number of them,
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that would be another clue that your news industry is really a propaganda industry.
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Unless there's something you can identify that's different about how the police forces are handling situations,
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But if you hear that nothing big is different in terms of police work,
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but the number of weird shootings and controversial ones goes down,
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that's probably because the propaganda engine made a decision.
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Senator Graham, Lindsey Graham, has called on Chuck Schumer to dismiss the impeachment articles
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against Trump in the Senate so that they wouldn't have a Senate trial.
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And Lindsey Graham says, because it will, quote, incite further division.
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Now, when you say incite further division, is that much different than inciting violence?
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Well, it is, you know, it's tactically different.
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Inciting division is not exactly the same as inciting violence.
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But is there any adult who thinks that if you were to incite further division,
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in our current environment, that it would not likely cause, just common sense,
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likely cause a higher risk of death and or violence?
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Of course. Of course. Of course they are related, if not exactly the same.
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So inciting division isn't inciting violence, but in our current environment,
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Now, we don't know. It's not guaranteed that there will be any violence.
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But if you've lived in the real world, it would be reasonable to expect there would be.
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How is what Schumer is doing today any different than what President Trump did
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when the Capitol was being assaulted in terms of his rhetoric and not saying enough to stop it?
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Is it functionally different? Because I don't see it as different.
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What I see right now is Schumer and the rest of the Senate, the Democrats in the Senate,
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doing actively right now, like right now, as I'm talking,
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are committing the crime or offense, if you will,
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the offense that they want to impeach the president for.
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Actually doing the same offense right now while I'm talking.
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And nobody wants to sort of bring up the obvious that,
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Schumer, you're doing the impeachable offense right now.
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Is there anybody who's a Democrat who's going to say,
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Doing things that even both sides would agree would be divisive.
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That doing these things that we all agree are divisive during a moment when there's a match
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and a bunch of gasoline all gathering in Washington, D.C.,
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immediately after we saw that same situation escalate out of control
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so we don't have to wonder if it could, because it just did.
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I think he has to be impeached if he goes ahead with it and there's any violence.
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And I think the Republicans should tell them that up front.
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They should say, look, you have every right to pursue this.
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But we're telling you with complete confidence this will lead to violence.
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Now, of course, they'll say, no, and we have to do this anyway, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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If the Republicans don't nail them to the floor to make them stick to their own standard,
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which means impeaching Schumer the moment he's done, or actually the moment he starts.
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The moment Schumer starts the impeachment, Lindsey Graham should introduce, or whoever,
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should, in the House, I guess, introduce articles of impeachment.
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And they should play it like they are not kidding.
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Because if the standard is that Trump's rhetoric caused incitement of violence,
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and I think it's a reasonable argument, in my opinion,
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then you just have to use the same standard, or you've got to treat them the same.
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Because it's short enough, and it's catchy, makes a good acronym, MAGA.
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President Trump really knew how to do branding.
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America first, except when getting revenge on Republicans,
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That feels like about the maximum number of words you want in a slogan.
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America first, except when getting revenge on Republicans,
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I feel like they should work on that a little bit more.
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Jake Tapper refers to the doubts about the election as the big lie.
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If the news people who are not just reporting and giving you their opinion,
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but they're offended, if you look at Jake Tapper,
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he looks like he is personally bothered by this stuff.
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And when he talks about people doubting the election integrity as the big lie,
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it sounds like something he cares about quite a bit,
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and he puts a lot of emotion into it, or at least apparent emotion.
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I can't read his mind, but it looks like emotion.
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Because somebody who cares this much about this topic,
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you would feel that that same person who really thinks this is a big, big issue,
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And yet, everything we know about our current system
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it's interesting that you'd be offended by something you don't want to fix,
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they were screeching at Mark Zuckerberg on the show today,
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I can put pictures in a lot of different places,
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I'll go to check to see if something about my stepdaughter is there,
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I don't even know what the point of Facebook is.
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I feel as though if a billion people are using something every day,
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can get you exposure if you're in the political world.
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a photo album for your political conversation just feels like the wrong tool anyway.
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At least Twitter feels like exactly the right tool for this stuff.
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So when I go to Twitter or anything like Twitter,
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it feels like at least I'm doing something useful.
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But it's interesting to see the left go off on Facebook.
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And Facebook is one of the few things that I have not invested in that have a monopoly position.
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the big derivatives bubble that took out 2009's economy?
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Warren Buffett would look at the derivatives and he'd say,
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I don't get why anybody would own these things.
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I just don't understand why people use Facebook other than they're sort of addicted,
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Looks like Biden's going to shut the Keystone project down.
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Do you think you'll see any reporting on the left about the number of jobs that will be lost?
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Do you think you'll see any reporting on the left about the impact of making a deal with your most trusted international trading partner and then just breaking it?
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And Canada spent a whole bunch of money to get ready for their end of the Keystone project, as I understand it.
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And now that they're all worked up and excited about it, we're going to yank it away from them?
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Even if you think we should yank it away from them for environmental reasons,
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If you want to be that country who can make a deal and then just cancel it on your closest trading partner, Canada?
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you've got to really know that you want this to do that.
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yeah, it's bad in the short run with jobs and whatnot,
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but in the long run, it will save people hardships.
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The most official UN-sanctioned prediction of what will happen if we don't reduce our fossil fuels
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is that our rate of growth will be a little less than spectacular.
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Our rate of growth will still be spectacular over the next 80 years,
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but it will be a little less than it could have been.
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So anybody who is reading the news and thinks that fossil fuels will lead to greater hardship
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doesn't even know what the official Green New Deal friendly people are saying.
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They're not saying anything even remotely like that.
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They're saying things will be terrific in the future no matter what,
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but a little less terrific than they could have been economically.
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I thought everybody said it's going to be the end of the world in 12 years.
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but there are no official bodies working on any of this full of experts who say anything like that.
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The only officials who are experts in the Green New Deal,
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even the ones who say it's the worst case scenario,
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are saying it's just that's a little difference in 80 years.
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is that there's probably something real there that we do need to pay attention to.
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And we're paying enough attention to it that over 80 years will be fine.
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for saying a bunch of things that Twitter believes not to be true enough, I guess.
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And I guess anything that would have suggested that he did violence would be a violation of the terms of service.
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But it's not clear what exactly she said they got her banned.
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That she's being smeared on CNN for her prior conspiracy theories, according to them.
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So she was a believer in Pizzagate, apparently, reportedly.
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But she also claimed, according to CNN, incorrectly,
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that the Charlottesville Fine People rally was an insider job.
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Some kind of an inside job, false flag kind of thing.
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Now, there's no reporting to confirm that, right?
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So the way the news reports baseless claims is that they're proven not to be true,
00:27:06.320
It doesn't mean you've proven it didn't happen.
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So let me acknowledge that I'm not aware of any evidence
00:27:13.980
that would suggest the Charlottesville thing was an inside job.
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Take another example of right-leaning people doing something en masse.
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What are we watching happen with each of the identities
00:27:40.020
because they didn't have masks for the most part.
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We're watching each one of them being identified easily.
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Do you remember what happened after the Charlottesville fine people march?
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Do you remember how similar it was with all the facial recognition
00:28:13.380
Do you remember how all of those people who were marching
00:28:15.580
were tracked down, and then there were lots of stories
00:28:21.260
so that you could see that they were real Americans
00:28:24.760
who just organically got together, with the leaders,
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but got together and that this was an actual legitimate march?
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Years later, we don't know anything about any of the people
00:28:44.820
And yet, we still have facial recognition software.
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Now, I'm not saying there's any evidence whatsoever
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I'm just saying that's a big notable difference, isn't it?
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you're digging down to find the actual identities of these people,
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and the other one, you just don't do any of it?
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A bunch of pardons coming, according to the news.
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and they're probably all going to make people mad.
00:29:44.780
You know, there's nothing to this pardon story,
00:29:46.780
except if it's legal for the president to do it,
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Because Trump will just take a bigger risk than other people will.
00:30:02.420
You know, he just takes everything a little bit farther.
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I'm not saying I agree with any of them or disagree with any of them,
00:30:12.440
But I think we either have to live with it or change that rule that presidents can do it.
00:30:18.280
But complaining about it isn't going to help us too much.
00:30:20.900
Here's another question about the dog not barking.
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If you believe that the assault on the Capitol was inspired by QAnon,
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why are we not currently obsessed with finding out
00:30:40.260
who was sending the most recent QAnon messages?
00:30:44.140
Let's say recent over the last couple of years.
00:30:49.820
And can you tell me that with our NSA that can track basically any digital communication,
00:30:56.460
are you telling me that our government, our intelligence agencies,
00:31:06.720
Now, my understanding is that the way Q started was more of a fun hoax.
00:31:14.780
It was a little bit more for entertainment, a little bit for persuasion,
00:31:21.740
Reportedly, I don't know what credibility put on any of the Q stuff,
00:31:26.120
but reportedly it might be run by different people who originally started it.
00:31:32.380
But why in the world are we not even asking that question as the number one question
00:31:42.160
that the two, let's say the two causes of the, or maybe three,
00:31:47.620
three causes of the assault on the Capitol were what the president said,
00:31:54.800
and what various news and social media people said.
00:32:01.880
We're talking obsessively about what Trump said and should.
00:32:08.520
Why aren't we talking about how Q is and how close we are to finding Q?
00:32:20.300
Over the long term, you should expect intelligence agencies to get control of anything that matters.
00:32:31.700
In the short run, you can't tell if it's happened yet.
00:32:35.020
But in the long run, it should be 100% predictable
00:32:39.060
that intelligence agencies, either your own country or somebody else's,
00:32:52.480
Because if they don't, they're not a very good intelligence agency.
00:32:55.920
So one of the things that intelligence agencies would want to control in the past,
00:33:03.540
So you see a lot of patriotic movies when the intelligence agencies want to
00:33:07.740
beef up the feeling in the United States about who we are and our patriotism, etc.
00:33:16.640
So we know that the intelligence agencies want to have control over enough of the media
00:33:26.860
Why would the intelligence agencies not want to control Q?
00:33:31.680
Why would they not want to control social media?
00:33:35.840
Do you think that social media is not already controlled by intelligence agencies?
00:33:49.120
I don't think there's any way that can not happen in the long run.
00:33:54.880
Because if you assume that they're all trying to get control, of course they're trying.
00:33:58.620
If we are not trying to get control, meaning our intelligence agencies are not trying to get control
00:34:05.520
of other countries' social media platforms and communication, what are they doing?
00:34:15.660
Because I feel like that's pretty basic to the job, is controlling the message and the communication.
00:34:20.360
So I have no reason to believe that Q is controlled by any intelligence agencies.
00:34:27.240
I'm just saying that if Q continued on for, let's say, a few decades, it would happen guaranteed.
00:34:33.980
You just don't know which intelligence agency would do it.
00:34:42.620
So apparently the Pentagon's fearing there could be an insider attack at the Biden inauguration.
00:34:47.620
In other words, somebody involved with the police or the National Guard, who maybe is
00:34:53.540
not there to just guard things, but might be a bad actor who gets inside.
00:34:58.460
And apparently, at least, you know, we've seen some ex-military people who are part of the
00:35:02.640
capital assault, and at least one National Guard reservist who had some, sounded like some
00:35:20.320
Do you know how you end up with a secret army like the Revolutionary Guard?
00:35:27.660
This is the path toward some kind of a dictatorship.
00:35:34.440
And I don't think Biden is necessarily intending to be a dictator.
00:35:38.240
I'm just saying that if you had a dictator, and they wanted to become like a dictator for
00:35:44.440
life, the number one thing you do is say, you know, the people guarding me are not as
00:35:56.420
Well, how about I select a hand-picked group of people that will be my more immediate protection,
00:36:08.000
And then how big does that group end up getting?
00:36:10.860
Because they would have, the group guarding the president would have to have more power
00:36:16.320
than the military, at least in terms of, you know, who's got control of a certain situation.
00:36:21.440
Because otherwise they couldn't guard the president, right?
00:36:24.300
The hardest, the highest priority is guarding the president.
00:36:27.580
So they would have to have more authority than any other military over them.
00:36:39.160
You can't have a coup unless you also have that loyal, loyal core army, right?
00:36:45.600
Like, Castro could take over Cuba because he brought an army with him that was loyal to him.
00:36:52.660
You know, George Washington can take over the country because he brought an army with him
00:36:59.520
So without that loyal army, you can't really stage a coup.
00:37:04.080
And as soon as I hear the beginning of, well, maybe we should only have Democrats in our,
00:37:10.560
in our guarding the Capitol if there's a Democrat president.
00:37:13.900
Like, every, every little alarm goes off in my head.
00:37:18.180
It's like, ah, the minute you're, you're being that selective about who's guarding the president,
00:37:26.380
But on the other hand, it could be that since the National Guard will never really
00:37:31.240
morph into any kind of a, you know, I don't see the National Guard ever morphing into a
00:37:40.140
So I don't think it's a big risk at the moment.
00:37:42.600
But just talking about that sort of opens the door for that secret army situation, some
00:37:54.520
I guess Parler is the competitor, or wannabe competitor to Twitter, got shut down because
00:38:04.680
their servers got turned off by Amazon because, and then Apple dropped them from the App Store,
00:38:10.500
They think they're, they have a plan to get back online, but I don't know.
00:38:16.920
There's a conservative-leaning, they call it right-wing, web hosting firm called Epic, E-P-I-K.
00:38:27.000
And Parler is apparently going to move their hosting to this right-wing hosting place, to
00:38:32.820
which I say to myself, okay, great, now we're going to have two internets.
00:38:36.780
We're going to have two internets, one for the right and one for the left.
00:38:51.920
But isn't it nice to know that the free market has delivered an alternative to Amazon?
00:38:57.460
And if Epic turns out to be, you know, a solid company and dependable, why would you ever
00:39:08.120
Because they do have a pretty massive competitive advantage if the only thing they're offering
00:39:16.360
That is a real good competitive advantage in a world in which at least a third of the country
00:39:24.500
And you don't want to have to redo your whole hosting situation.
00:39:41.000
I said on Twitter earlier, and this requires some explanation, I said that you'll get farther
00:39:46.420
in life by learning to spot bullshit than you will by learning to spot opportunity.
00:39:51.860
You'll get further learning to identify other people's lies than you will identifying opportunities
00:40:10.300
We live in a world in which there are tons of opportunities.
00:40:15.240
If you build your talent stack wisely, you can manage your abilities, your skills to have
00:40:24.400
But if you do something that blows up on you and just sets you back for years, you're in
00:40:32.360
So learning to not fall for other people's lies can keep you safe while opportunities are
00:40:42.360
So you don't need to be an expert at spotting opportunities.
00:40:47.400
But you do need to be good at not falling into a hole you can't get out of.
00:40:51.780
And that's the part about spotting the bad ideas.
00:40:55.420
You know, the bad investments, the worst of the worst.
00:41:02.420
But learn to spot BS as your sort of a base skill.
00:41:06.760
If you want to be better at it, you should look at my book, Loser Think, which helps you
00:41:15.920
CNN is tweeting, Oliver Darcy at CNN is tweeting about somebody else on the air, Alex Stamos,
00:41:23.040
who was saying, quote, we're going to have to figure out the OAN and Newsmax problem.
00:41:30.900
Did you know there was an OAN and Newsmax problem?
00:41:35.640
Well, the problem, according to CNN and Alex Stamos, is that they're reporting fake news,
00:41:44.000
And he says, these companies have freedom of speech, but I'm not sure we need Verizon,
00:41:48.240
AT&T, and Comcast and such bringing them into tens of millions of homes.
00:41:53.060
So he's questioning, you know, if you didn't know this, these entities travel over, you
00:42:04.020
And then Darcy says in his tweet, just a reminder that neither Verizon or AT&T nor Comcast have
00:42:10.160
answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN and Newsmax into millions
00:42:17.580
Do they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism
00:42:26.380
So CNN is actually reporting with a straight face that maybe their competition, OAN and
00:42:32.880
Newsmax, should be banned from the internet for having said something that CNN believes
00:42:43.780
What would be more opposite of free speech than this?
00:42:53.360
Let's have a whole national conversation about which news entities have promoted the most hoaxes.
00:43:01.260
And then, of course, you're going to have to rank the hoaxes because they're not all equal,
00:43:07.700
Some can move the whole, you know, nature of the country.
00:43:22.240
We do need, completely seriously, a list of each news network and which hoaxes they promoted
00:43:29.620
for the past, let's say, the past five years, right?
00:43:38.600
Now, of course, it would be difficult to find an independent observer who could rank these
00:43:43.380
hoaxes, so maybe there would be multiple ones or the ones that have some ambiguity could
00:43:48.780
be marked as, well, this is a claim, but, you know, the other side says it's not true.
00:43:53.500
But wouldn't you like to see how long the list is and to see what's on it?
00:43:57.980
Let me give you a brief example of what would be on it.
00:44:04.280
And I'm going to start with the hoaxes on the right.
00:44:06.400
Some of you are not going to like this, but you'll hang in there.
00:44:12.740
So from the right, we've seen some wild election-fraught claims, such as the Venezuela, Hugo Chavez,
00:44:24.680
Now, assuming that those all, you know, in the fullness of time, let's say that we decide
00:44:30.680
that none of those are true, and I think that's where it's heading, that those would be hoaxes
00:44:37.940
You've got your Pizzagate associated with the right.
00:44:40.800
You've got your QAnon stuff associated with the right.
00:44:47.120
Does, you know, are OAN and Newsmax and Fox News and Breitbart, are they reporting
00:44:58.400
So although there are some conspiracy theories on the right, I don't see the news reporting them.
00:45:07.680
Do you remember any time at which Fox News had the news people as opposed to the opinion people?
00:45:15.020
All right, we're going to make a distinction between the news people and the opinion people.
00:45:19.760
Did any of the news people ever report that Pizzagate was real?
00:45:25.780
I mean, it could have happened, so fact check me on that.
00:45:28.880
But I remember the opinion people noodling about it, but I don't remember any fact people,
00:45:45.200
Do you think any of them ever reported that Pizzagate was real?
00:45:51.880
I don't think they're reporting these things as real.
00:45:59.400
The news on the right has reported that maybe the pandemic isn't so real.
00:46:04.840
That the pandemic is nothing more than the flu.
00:46:08.480
But was it the news people who reported that on the right?
00:46:18.720
Now, I haven't watched all of these networks every day, so I can't say for certain.
00:46:23.500
But I don't know if any news people on the right said the pandemic is probably fake.
00:46:33.720
And then, of course, there was masks don't work.
00:46:39.560
So you could make a list of things which were definitely conspiracy theories on the right.
00:46:46.420
But how many of them were actually reported by the news on the right?
00:46:51.380
I'm not sure I remember any of them being reported by the news.
00:46:57.600
And the left, they're a little bit less clear about who's an opinion person and who's the news.
00:47:12.740
I've had a number of conversations with Jake Tapper.
00:47:27.600
I don't know if he's the news or if he's an opinion person.
00:47:37.220
When you say that that's branded clearly enough,
00:47:40.580
that you're not really confused about Don Lemon, right?
00:47:47.800
You know, I would put him in with the Hannity's and the Tucker's, Tucker Carlson's as opinion people.
00:47:54.780
But because CNN blurs that line, and the people I think are anchors,
00:47:59.640
report the opinion the same as the news quite often,
00:48:05.100
You got the find people hoax, which is the biggest one of all time.
00:48:09.160
The most destructive hoax of all time is the Charlottesville find people hoax.
00:48:14.220
You got the Jussie Smollett, the Covington kids hoax, the drinking bleach,
00:48:18.300
the Russia collusion hoax, which then they tried to change into Russian interference.
00:48:23.660
Oh, why are you saying, Scott, that there was no Russia collusion,
00:48:27.380
when in fact they had those several Facebook advertisements and memes?
00:48:31.920
So they tried to change that from collusion into interference.
00:48:38.740
Well, maybe he does with Ukraine and China, etc.
00:48:45.180
They've reported that election systems basically can't be hacked.
00:49:01.820
And by the way, I would be delighted if that were true.
00:49:06.060
Can't be hacked in any way that wouldn't be detected.
00:49:15.820
They report climate change being an economic disaster,
00:49:24.920
Here's one that would be on your list, but not mine.
00:49:31.740
oh, the left believes that there are multiple genders.
00:49:35.360
And then you would get into this whole gender thing.
00:49:39.580
Number one, I'm more respectful to that entire situation
00:49:45.620
But number two, I think that's just a definition thing.
00:49:52.980
and somebody else wants to call them a different word,
00:50:00.200
There was the Russian bounty on American soldiers hoax,
00:50:11.320
that are reported on the left and the ones on the right,
00:50:14.720
and now subtract out the ones that are just opinion people.
00:50:37.320
because you don't know if they're opinion or not.
00:50:49.680
If you ask me which would the right or the left
00:50:53.100
have more hoaxes reported by their so-called legitimate news sources,
00:51:03.800
Or should you also look at the importance of them?
00:51:06.420
Because some hoaxes cause the capital to be attacked,
00:51:18.500
So you can't really say that all the hoaxes are the same value, right?
00:51:28.160
and then you'd see which news people reported them.
00:51:37.040
to just sort of look at it and know the answer.
00:51:39.460
But I feel as if CNN would be the biggest purveyor of hoaxes
00:51:44.040
compared to the news that they think should be taken off the air.
00:51:58.580
which is that people like Trump are energy monsters.
00:52:03.660
And you could think of this as being sort of the third dimension,
00:52:32.700
When he talks about the size of his crowds at his rallies,
00:53:29.140
He's not dealing with the specific accuracy of claims.
00:53:43.180
even if there's some parts that they don't like,
00:54:36.160
But I would say it's a strategic opening for Trump
00:54:56.500
one of your smarter, most independent thinkers,
00:55:07.460
Now, I'm not sure if it doesn't matter to Trump.