Episode 1263 Scott Adams： Congress and the Media Compete to be the Most Disrespected Institution on the Planet
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Summary
Scott Adams joins me to talk about a new survey that says the U.S. mainstream media has reached a new record low in trust, a new study that will be debunked in 10 seconds, and a new theory about vitamin D.
Transcript
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in I'm on the other side of the
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world today for a few more days and even so is that a reason to skip coffee with Scott Adams no
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no it's not in fact it's better every time every single time and what do you need what do you need
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to make it special I don't remember either because I usually read it but I think it's about something
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about a cup or a mug or a glass a tankard thing thing and then fill it with coffee and then drink
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it I have to admit that I get up just before I do these things so I'm usually kind of a little bit
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tired haven't had my coffee but I know that you will join me now for the simultaneous sip you ready
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you ready it's happening now go oh that's good that is the good stuff so anything happening yes there
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there are things happening and we're going to talk about them it turns out that there's a new survey
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it says the American mainstream media has reached a new record what do you think the record is
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that the mainstream media in the United States has just achieved well it's a record low trust
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there's a record for you so only 18 percent of Republicans say they believe journalists just
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believe journalists that that's the only statement only 18 percent of Republicans believe journalists
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doesn't even matter the journalist they've reached the point where it's not even do you believe the
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journalists on the left do you believe the journalists who lean right nope just uh 18 percent of
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Republicans or all this left who trust journalists uh on the other side apparently Democrats um 56 percent
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of them believe that journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead wait no uh
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uh whatever the number is the number of Democrats by a by a majority actually think that the news is real
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I don't know what to say about that how could you how could you be paying attention to anything
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and think that the news is real in 2021 I don't know how you would come to that conclusion based on
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anything that we've been watching uh so that's so that's uh journalism so they're at uh an all-time low
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in trust now as Megyn Kelly tweeted do you think that journalists and the news business do you think
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they take any responsibility for the fact that they have the lowest trust of all time I doubt it I doubt
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it I'll bet every one of them thinks it's President Trump's fault or partly my fault for saying bad things
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about uh the news so how do you think the news will report the story about their own lack of credibility
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will the news business say hey there's a study that says nobody believes us I guess there's a good
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reason for that and let us report to you all of the hoaxes that have been perpetrated through the
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journalists and you can see exactly why people don't trust us probably not probably won't do any
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honest reporting on themselves um although was the UK the the daily uh the daily mail that reported
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on this so oddly enough the one thing I trust that's in the news is news about how you shouldn't trust
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the news and maybe I should reassess that maybe I should just don't trust anything that would be easier
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all right there's a new study that will be debunked in 10 seconds probably this is me looking at my
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watch even though my watch is nothing but a naked wrist the universal let me look at the time symbol
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if you're a certain age you don't know why people are looking at their risk risk to determine the time
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it makes no sense unless you have apple watch all right so there's a study that says that uh there's
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a high correlation between the spikes and surges in the coronavirus in Europe and latitude and the
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implication is that latitude is important because vitamin d from the sun is uh very correlated with
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latitude so as the earth is rotating during the year the different parts of the sun will get more
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you know sun exposure but here's the thing that most people don't know and maybe I don't know it
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either because when I tell you this I might be getting it wrong but the idea is that uh you think
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that if the sun is out all year long that you just have to go out in that sun even if it's the winter
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and it's the sun hey the sun's the sun but it turns out winter sun is almost useless for vitamin d
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did you know that did you know that getting sun in the winter doesn't help that much for vitamin d
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so it has to do with a little latitude blah blah but uh getting getting say 20 minutes in the middle of
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the summer it's not just because it's hotter or whatever it's a it's more direct vitamin d hit
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during certain seasons so this study showed that or it tried to show uh of course it was debunked in
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about a minute and a half doesn't mean the debunk is right it just somebody had some complaints with
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it and it purported to show that the vitamin d levels as highly correlated with latitude and time of
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year would be more of a reason for the spikes than some other other factors what do you think of that
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here's what you should say here's what i'm saying to myself here and this is the way you should look
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at a study like this can you personally look at that study and determine it if it had been done well
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nope but you can't even if you're a scientist i'll bet you can't read a study and say it's good or bad
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just by reading a report you can't do that so what percent odds should you put on something
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that's a report it's a scientific it shows its work low you know i think 50 percent of published
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papers eventually get debunked so the highest credibility if you put on it would be 50 percent
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and then start subtracting from there based on any other factors so here's the other factor that i put
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on it how much would i having talked about vitamin d from the beginning being being an important thing
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how much would i like this study to be true and the answer is it'd be great for me personally
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might be great for the world as well if it gives us you know some other tools for fighting the infection
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but my bias is this since i am on record for publicly talking about the likelihood that vitamin
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d would be a big factor wouldn't i love to be right i would right i want this study to be true
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so the first thing you should say to yourself when you're looking at information that agrees with you
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the first thing you should say is why do i think this is true do i think it's true because i can read a study
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like this and i can personally understand that it's credible no no i look at it and i want it to be true
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and i think it should be true so therefore i you know i'm willing to to buy into a thing that has no better
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than 50 percent credibility and probably lower after people have looked at it and debunked its
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methodology so i wouldn't put too much credibility in there but that's just one thing that's out
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there all right here is the most fascinating example of cognitive dissonance i've seen in a while
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and you're almost going to have to look at this yourself to believe that i'm telling you the truth
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and it's a little bit of one of these yanni and laurel things where there's an actual uh an illusion of
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some kind that's in this story and you're going to see it and it's fascinating so there's a tweet by
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vox.com writer aaron rupar and you've probably seen him on uh seen him on social media he's pretty
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big presence on social media and he's a big anti-trumper uh etc and so here's what he tweeted
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um or was this what he was talking about was either what he tweeted or was talking about i asked
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about trump's this is a face the nation did an interview with dr burks and face the nation asks
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asked dr burks about that episode in which president trump was accused of suggesting drinking bleach
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to to fight the coronavirus which don't do that it would kill you but of course he never said
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drinking and he never said bleach he did say injecting disinfectants in the context of light
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as the disinfectant so uh face the nation interestingly when they when they asked the question about this
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they actually framed it correctly i was not expecting that so face the nation actually
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couched the question as a discussion about light as a disinfectant i think it's the first time i've seen
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it have you seen anybody else correctly say that he was talking about light so so face the nation gets it
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right and they talk about light and they don't say bleach they don't say drank because none of those
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things happened in any reality so the first thing i'd like to say is shout out to face the nation
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you got you got something wrong that almost all the other news organizations to this day still get
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wrong so you know shout out to you so what does aaron rupar say about that um he said the asked about
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trump's infamous comments suggesting bleach injections could be a treatment for coronavirus so this is
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aaron rupar describing what i just described except he refers to it as suggesting bleach injections
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which is not in the story right um brooks tries to push back against the notion that she became an
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apologist blah blah blah so the night tweeted i said face the nation correctly describes trump's
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disinfectant question to be about uv light and aaron rupar still buys into the bleach hoax so i was trying
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to call out aaron rupar on twitter for buying into the bleach hoax and this is the interesting thing
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the thing that he pointed to never mentioned bleach wasn't a word so once i called him out and a lot of
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people piled on uh he defended himself and he defended himself by retweeting an article that also did
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not have bleach in it and also didn't have anything like that in it so the the cognitive dissonance you
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have to see that if you go to my twitter feed for uh yesterday you'll see that exchange and you'll see
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that even after it's pointed out that there's nothing in the video that says anything about injecting
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bleach he tweeted the clip to me and said there you go there's the thing proving that i'm right
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and it's not in there he actually still has i think it's a hallucination that there's something about
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bleach in there because he and much of the people on the left have been told so often that the president
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said bleach that he thinks it's there on a video clip that he he tweeted as evidence of his claim
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and it's just that word isn't even there so it's actually kind of amazing to look at it when you can
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see how clearly somebody could read you know nothing about bleach and then say look look i just proved
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that he said something about bleach it's freaky it's actually freaky now if you do not have a background
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in say hypnosis and most of you know i do uh you would say i think there must be some other explanation
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for this like people can't just look at something and actually literally hallucinate the answer is yes
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yes yes they can look at stuff and literally see words that aren't there that is a thing and it's
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easy and it's common and it's almost universal it's ubiquitous we're doing it all the time we just don't
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know it but when you see a clean example like this where you say give me the article that says bleach
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and somebody says here it is and it's not in it that'll freak you out the first time you see it
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after you see it enough you realize it's the common way we operate if there's nothing wrong
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with let me say this let me say this directly there is nothing wrong with aaron rupar's brain
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nothing there's nothing wrong with his brain there's nothing wrong with his
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how much information he has there's nothing wrong with the level of knowledge he has there's nothing
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wrong with his thinking this is normal that's the freaky part the freaky part is that he's normal
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completely normal capable high functioning person in society right if you gave him an iq test he'd do
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great if i checked his educational credentials i haven't but i imagine they'd be real good i don't know
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but i imagine they would be so if you think this is something about somebody who's dumb it isn't
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nothing to do with iq if you think this this cognitive dissonance thing is because somebody is
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uninformed it's not it's nothing to do with your intelligence or how much information you have it is
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purely whether the thing you believed comes in conflict with the thing you observe and when that
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happens you have to paper them together with a hallucination and this is this looks like an
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example now to be fair we can't know what he's thinking right it just looks like that could i be wrong
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all right um the most interesting thing that dr burke said i guess she got kind of shut out from talking to
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trump for the last i don't know nine months of his presidency or something so that's not good
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but he said she said i saw the president presenting graphs that i never made so i know that someone was
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creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president i don't know to this day who
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now i shouldn't laugh because it's it's not good but apparently the president had at least two
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opposing sources of data uh somebody's saying fauci but i don't think i don't think it was dr fauci
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somebody says to be fair vice president pence was in charge of the task force that's fair
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that is a fair comment but still the boss is the boss um i see some suggestions dr atlas
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peter navarro people are suggesting but they wouldn't be the source of the data i mean ultimately
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they would you know if anybody was passing along they'd be passing along they wouldn't be making
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it up now what have we learned about data if if president trump had used only dr brooks's data
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what would be different anything i don't know is dr brooks's data accurate i don't know how about the
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alternative data that trump used was the alternative data better or worse than what dr brooks would have
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presented i don't know do you do you have any reason to believe that dr brooks's data would be better
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than whatever the other source was well it depends what the other source was right no it doesn't it
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doesn't depend what the other source is because we live in a world in which all data is unreliable
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all of it dr berks's data would be just as unreliable because almost everything we've
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learned about the coronavirus has been wrong can you think of a counter example almost everything we've
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learned about the coronavirus has ended up being wrong would dr brooks have data would be which would
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be the the only exception to that i don't know then here's the other thing you have to take into
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account if dr brooks was passing along data was that mean that she is the one who originated the data
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no and if she passed it along in a certain context would it have essentially a story or a narrative to
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it would it be framed or filtered in a way that it's not just the information
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but it's what you say about the information and what you compare it to and what context you put it
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in right because that's what makes your decision so if dr berks had done a good job of being the only
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source of data i'm not saying she didn't do a good job but if she had been the only source of data for
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the president would that guarantee or even give you a high likelihood that the president was getting good
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clean actionable data and it was telling him what to do no nothing like that could have happened
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i'm not saying nothing like that did happen i'm saying it couldn't have because the president has no
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way to see science he only has a way to see the people who are talking to him about it and they're not
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the ones who did the science they're just talking about it they're interpreting it they're putting
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it in a context are scientists the ones who always put things in the right context no
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no they they have a you know if you looked at all scientists communication and statements and things
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they've said in public they have a bias too you can't be unbiased it's not one of your choices
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you don't get to say hey i think i'll be unbiased today you don't have that option even if you're a
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scientist even if you're dr berks so the point which i say too often is um when people say hey trust
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the science it's not really an option to trust it because i don't have access to it i don't
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i don't know what any science is uh well as i as a non-scientist and also even if i had been a
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scientist i probably didn't work on any specific study that's in the news so you're kind of trusting
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people you're not trusting science you might be trusting a process but even the process of science
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goes from you know guesses to maybe to hypotheses to you know takes a long time to get to fact
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and even then sometimes we change our facts with new information so this idea that there's this
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thing called science and all you have to do is pay attention to it you're going to be fine
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is so simplistic it's childlike and we've been sold this idea that science is like a
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this magic thing and as wonderful as science is i think we're all pro-science right is there
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anybody who's against science no the point is it's all filtered through humans so as long as you're
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filtering science through human beings what you get is human beings you don't get a science
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when it comes out the other end it's just what people told you that you hope is compatible with
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science and you hope the science is right but those are a lot of ifs that said we don't have a better
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process i can't remember if i talked about this yesterday you ever have those situations where
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you can't think you don't know if you thought about talking about it or you actually talked about it at
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length and you don't and you can't remember if you did so stop me if i talked about this
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so uh did you see the uh the interview with ran paul and george stephanopoulos and it was
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interesting because stephanopoulos was trying to get ran paul to say that the election there was no fraud
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in the election and ran paul instead because he's smart would only say we should we should look into the
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claims of the election's irregularities and we should have more transparency now how do you argue
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against more transparency in an election what exactly is the counter argument to that right
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so ran paul is on completely solid ground i mean a solid the most solid ground you could be
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is that everybody wants the election to be transparent and fair and he's saying we're not there
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we're not there and nobody else thinks we're there either really i mean you know at the very
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least even if you think everything was fair at the very least you would like everyone else to
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believe it too right and we're not there so if we could get everyone else to believe it's fair
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that would be great and that's what ran paul is asking for and why isn't that reasonable
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but stephanopoulos being a more of a narrative guy than a news guy uh is just insisting that ran paul
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say in public that the election was fair but here's the problem and that the reason that it was fair is
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because all of the court cases and the challenges uh failed now the problem is this is a a national
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news opinion kind of a person stephanopoulos so his his opinions and the things he does on
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on abc i guess would carry a lot of weight you know it gets a lot of attention etc and he was actually
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going in front of the world and saying that an absence of proof is proof of absence the most common
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uh one of the most common logical fallacies in the world now what would happen if a major person went
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on television and and made a claim of um that the most logical fallacy one of the most common logical
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fallacies that there ever is that just because you don't have uh that the lack of evidence is evidence
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that nothing happened it just isn't a thing it's the it's completely irrational thinking and because
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the public can't tell the difference the public generally is not um educated enough to know what
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is a rational or logical uh you know irrational thing they just accept it they go okay there's no
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proof so i guess that's proof it was good um related to this speaking of that so rudy giuliani finds out
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that dominion voting system is suing him for was i guess over a billion dollars for saying things that
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was bad for business for dominion and here's my question about that now first of all i think dominion
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didn't have much choice right because their business did get really really hurt by all the news from
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but is that something that you can sue somebody for well i don't know much about the law but i'll tell
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you what i do think in defamation suits since you know i'm a public figure so i end up dealing with
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this question a lot my understanding is that defamation suits you're going to have to prove that
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the person uh intended to hurt you uh or somehow knew that they were lying i suppose
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a defense for defamation is that you thought it was true because your free speech allows you to say
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things that aren't true as long as you believe they're true so i think that's a complete defense
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is that rudy believed it now since lots of other people believed it it's pretty good defense right
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if you're on the jury and you saw rudy say you know i actually thought it was true and lots of
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people thought it was true and here's why i thought it was true and here's my sources i think i'd believe
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he thought it was true because i don't get a sense that he's the kind of guy who would have taken that
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case unless he believed it was true it doesn't feel like the sort of thing you know based on his
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history and what we know about him it doesn't seem like something he would have done as just a technique
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to just like make up a wild story defame some company that would be you know essential to our
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election systems just to win the you know win the day for trump i don't feel that rudy is that guy
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so if you put me on the jury how in the world am i going to believe that he did this and if anything
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except believing it was true now should he have believed it was true well if you're talking about
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the venezuelan stuff i told you from day one that doesn't look true if if you've been with me for a
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while can you uh in the comments can you maybe confirm that just on the surface of it i told you it
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wasn't true the moment i heard it i said whoa that is a thing that is exactly like something that's
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not true and and then of course we have not we've got no confirmation of it it feels like that's
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something that could have been confirmed by now if it had been true so i will i will take some credit
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for getting that one right by the way i do plan to do a report card on myself to see how my predictions
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have been let's say through the the trump era because it would be a good time to do it um and
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i don't know if i can because i thought about it and i thought okay the first problem i'm going to
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have is i'm going to forget all the times i was wrong right the most normal thing you do you remember
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when you're right you forget when you're wrong so i so being complete would be a problem so i'd have
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to rely on the the public to remind me what i said that was wrong but my experience with that is that
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when people remind me what i predicted that they say was wrong they always remember it wrong and if i
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go look back i said something kind of different than that so it's really hard to know what you said
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and then it's also hard to score them because a number of things i might score as an accurate
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prediction that a totally reasonable person could say i don't know i wouldn't score this as accurate
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so i don't know how you could do it exactly but i'm going to take it i think i'll take a run at it
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with the understanding that it's more of an exercise than some kind of accurate data
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i think it's a good exercise you should do it yourself you should you should every now and then
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literally write down what did you predict did you get it right and then you would know
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i see somebody saying that i score seven and a ten correct that's about what i would guess
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if i if i had to guess where it would come out say something like seven and a ten
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then further i would say that the average person might get five and a ten you know if you were to
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compare me to just all citizens and pundits in general i think five and a ten would be the average
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of most people and i think i think i'm higher than that i'm nowhere near nine and a ten but seven out of
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ten would be ridiculously good if i actually if it's actually seven and ten but we don't know that's why
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we'll check but i'm sure that i'm biased so i i may be giving myself too much credit here we'll see
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so here's my other question about rudy and this lawsuit and maybe i need a lawyer to answer this for
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me if dominion sues rudy for claims he made about the voting system being rigged and as far as i know
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there's no proof of such a thing would that give rudy the ability to look at their uh code and to
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and to bring a case against them in the process of defending himself or will dominion to be smart
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enough to limit their claim to this one venezuelan thing which they don't have to show their code for
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that they can just say show us any evidence that we have a venezuelan connection if you can't
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then that's defamation or that that would be their argument it would be defamation they still have
00:30:57.740
to prove intent i think again i'm not a lawyer so check with your lawyer yeah so would the discovery
00:31:05.580
phase include looking at the code if the thing they were suing him for didn't really involve the code
00:31:13.420
because the claims about the venezuelan connection i don't know that they would have to show the code
00:31:21.340
to defend that so that would be interesting if and i can't imagine that dominion would have such bad
00:31:30.140
lawyers that they would put themselves in a situation where if they had something to hide
00:31:34.860
uh that it could be shown so i would say it's probably a strong play from dominion to do this
00:31:40.860
lawsuit because it especially if there is some risk of discovery because then it shows some confidence
00:31:47.900
on their side i think they have to do that there's there's there's no way around it they kind of had to
00:31:52.620
they kind of had to sue him no matter what they kind of had to do it for the purpose of their business
00:31:58.380
so uh i don't like to live in a world where everybody's suing everybody but in this case
00:32:03.420
they kind of had to do it i feel like and i'll be interested to see how that comes out and if rudy
00:32:09.020
gets gets into their code they won't be happy if that happens all right it won't be happy just
00:32:15.420
because it's proprietary um so biden's already having some trouble getting his relief package
00:32:23.980
passed i guess he's going to delay it um and at this point don't you think that it is a fair statement
00:32:32.460
that congress working on the impeachment of trump after he's left office is slowing down the essential
00:32:39.260
business of the country we can say that for sure now right now my understanding is that biden wisely
00:32:48.220
got the impeachment postponed so he could get some other business done first
00:32:55.260
now just hold that thought in your head that biden thought that the congress couldn't do the business
00:33:02.700
of the country and impeachment at the same time congress agreed and then delayed it for that reason
00:33:11.260
because they couldn't do the business of the country and the impeachment at the same time
00:33:16.940
so what happens when they when that delayed impeachment happens and then they get to the impeachment
00:33:23.100
have they not told the country that they can't do their regular job at the same time they just
00:33:28.300
told us that they told us that in the clearest possible way they said it directly we're not going
00:33:34.700
to do this now because we won't be able to do the work of the country how's that going to change later later
00:33:41.660
when they do it it's still the work of the country that they're postponing right so every day that goes by
00:33:48.460
that trump is out of office and remains quiet the trap gets deeper and the trap is this
00:33:56.540
congress congress has admitted that they can't do impeachment and the work of the country we saw
00:34:03.500
it arguably we saw it during you know january of 2020 when they were doing the impeachment when they
00:34:09.100
should have been paying attention to the coronavirus problem so the longer you go when trump is silent
00:34:17.340
ish and out of the job he becomes less and less important and what the congress would be doing
00:34:24.220
might not even be constitutional to impeach somebody out of office probably won't succeed
00:34:31.900
because the senate you know is unlikely to go that far is a complete waste of time
00:34:39.740
and they tell you directly they've actually told you that they can't do their job while they're doing this
00:34:45.820
and there's nothing good that can come out of it for the country
00:34:48.780
nothing nothing good could come out of it for the country and yet they're going to do it and it's on
00:34:54.860
the schedule we elected these people and they're going to do something which even they admit is not
00:35:03.100
useful and they're going to do it instead of useful work and they're going to do it right in front of you
00:35:08.460
are you freaking kidding me how much more useless can you get that that's like all-time useless you know
00:35:18.940
olympic gold medal useless that's nobel prize level uselessness speaking of uselessness as you know
00:35:27.500
their democrats are lodged ethics complaints against ted cruz and josh hawley for their role in what they say is
00:35:38.780
i don't know according to the democrats overthrowing the country or something like that
00:35:44.140
their complaint is so stupid that i won't even describe it but i will tell you that
00:35:49.580
josh hawley decided to respond by filing an ethics complaint against the people who filed an ethics complaint
00:35:59.100
against him so i finally figured out why congress has more than one person
00:36:05.820
uh you've you've heard the joke about the uh let's see the the airplane that is so sophisticated
00:36:13.660
that it practically flies itself and all you need to fly it this highly sophisticated airplane
00:36:20.460
is one pilot and one dog it's all you need the dog is there to make sure the pilot doesn't touch any of
00:36:29.020
the buttons because the thing flies itself and if the pilot touches anything he can only make it worse
00:36:34.380
so the dog is there just to bite the pilot so he doesn't do anything well that's what congress has become like
00:36:42.700
so i think the only reason there's more than one person in congress
00:36:46.540
is so the other person can sue them or not sue them but impeach them or do an ethics complaint against
00:36:56.300
them if you only had one person who would file an ethics complaint against that person but if you have
00:37:03.100
two they can file ethics complaints against each other and they can impeach each other so you need at
00:37:09.660
least two people in congress i learned today because you can't really reach the full limit of thorough
00:37:18.620
worthlessness until you're spending all of your time on impeachment and ethics complaints against each
00:37:26.540
other now here's the good part you would think to yourself an ethics complaint wow an ethics complaint
00:37:34.940
that would be something that would involve a violation of let's say ethics to pick you know an obvious example
00:37:43.740
so what would be the ethical violation that josh hawley is being accused of well he's being accused of
00:37:52.540
uh objecting to the electoral vote through a completely legal process that democrats have used in the past
00:38:01.500
multiple times with no problem whatsoever that's considered an ethics complaint so he has bad ethics
00:38:10.780
for doing what is completely within the rules and it's within the rules because the rules were written
00:38:17.260
specifically to put that in there it's not it's not accidentally within the rules they wrote the rules
00:38:24.700
to put it in there it's not a josh hawley didn't use a technicality he used the law exactly as written
00:38:33.900
for the purpose it was written for the reason it's been used before by the democrats routinely everything
00:38:40.540
completely legal normal and in fact i would say desirable and that's an ethics complaint
00:38:47.660
and so that's his argument his argument is if you're bringing up an ethics complaint for doing something
00:38:53.420
that routine i mean completely routine then i will bring up an ethics complaint against you
00:39:00.700
for bringing up an ethics complaint about me that it doesn't have any backing to it
00:39:07.260
completely acceptable i i would say that josh josh hawley has a completely acceptable argument
00:39:13.900
that they are wasting time and being unethical it's a good argument but they don't have any argument
00:39:21.580
against him what what case would they make would they say it was unethical every time we did it
00:39:28.300
no this is what they'll say they'll say the election was not stolen and by the way you've seen that cnn is
00:39:38.060
calling this the big lie with a capital b and a capital l so talk about the election being stolen
00:39:45.980
is described by uh the pundits now the anti-trump pundits as being the quote the big lie which makes
00:39:53.020
it sound sort of sort of nazi-ish right which is why they do it so uh the the fact that the mainstream
00:40:02.940
media has basically formed a narrative around a uh a logical problem let's say an illogical truth
00:40:16.140
is amazing that they sold the illogical truth is that a lack of proof is proof that there's nothing
00:40:22.620
there completely irrational and they call it the big lie if you to believe that a computer system could
00:40:29.660
be hacked think about that think about the fact that the idea that a that a software system could
00:40:40.140
be vulnerable to hacking that that idea which is the most common thing we see we see it with the
00:40:47.180
i mean it's literally the headline that some of our secure systems get hacked all the time
00:40:53.580
but to believe that it happened in this particular case would be a big lie
00:40:59.660
this when you live in a in a world in which this level of uh propaganda is just common
00:41:08.780
uh it's it's just shocking and the thing that the only thing i think is who are these 18 percent of
00:41:16.140
republicans who still trust the media how in the world could you still trust the media in a world like
00:41:23.340
this where they're using a you know illogical thought and calling it the big lie basically if you if you
00:41:33.260
agree with logic you bought into the big lie and that's the narrative and they actually sold this to
00:41:40.220
most of the public amazing all right um the funniest thing is watching the uh people on the left tear each
00:41:54.380
other apart i was just reading an article uh now bill maher uh who of course had been i'd say taking
00:42:03.100
common cause with all anti-trumpers for the last four years but now that trump is a little bit off the
00:42:09.740
stage um now now the left has turned on bill maher and i'm looking at the things that they're accusing
00:42:17.100
him of and they are ridiculous so one of the accusations is that he used the n-word now when you read
00:42:26.300
that in the story without context what do you think about it well you think well maybe that's pretty
00:42:33.580
bad are you kidding me he used the n-word wow i guess we have to hate him for that and by the way i
00:42:40.620
hate that word so if he if anybody had used that word and let's say it's native offensive way then i'd have
00:42:47.660
some bad feelings about it but that's not the context that he used the word he used the word in talking
00:42:55.580
about the word i believe i believe his context was talking about it or quoting somebody else or one
00:43:01.580
of those contexts he certainly was not using it as just a word right he was using it in a context about
00:43:10.220
the word i i remember i remember reading about it but whatever it was it was completely uh more of a
00:43:16.620
free speech thing he was just expressing his freedom to say the word in the in a non-insulting context
00:43:26.380
but i guess he's not allowed to do that are you allowed not are you allowed to be non-insulting
00:43:34.620
and completely respectful and just use a word and talk about the word you can't do that seriously now
00:43:43.900
i'm not the guy who needs to or defends bill marr's opinion because i've disagreed with him as much as
00:43:50.460
i've agreed with him probably but come on going after him for this is just completely it's completely
00:43:59.100
unacceptable so uh but watching the the left no longer have a common enemy and then turn on each
00:44:06.860
other it was predictable the most predictable outcome is that this wokeness is going to take so
00:44:15.180
many people out in the left that they're going to rethink it and you're seeing that happen now bill
00:44:20.460
marr is kind of a special case because uh i um you know he may lean closer to progressive and stuff but i
00:44:28.060
think he's an independent thinker and he would go where the go where you know he could go wherever
00:44:43.500
so you're seeing now a number of cases where businesses have uh decided that they'd like to
00:44:50.300
in the words of michael jordan uh he would say you know republicans buy sneakers too so my my favorite
00:44:56.940
was the yeah the katie couric one where she was gonna i think she's still going to host jeopardy and
00:45:04.780
made some comments you know anti-republican conservative comments and her employer said uh they
00:45:12.220
watch this show we'd like them to keep watching the show so i don't know if they canceled her
00:45:18.620
i would imagine probably not but it's the kind of pressure that you're seeing and i i told i've
00:45:24.780
been telling you for a while that unless there is uh mutually assured destruction that the wokeness
00:45:32.220
thing you know will just go forever until until we're all dead but of course there will be there
00:45:37.500
there always emerges a counterforce so the reason that things do not become a slippery slope forever
00:45:44.620
is because a counterforce almost always is gonna pop up and the counterforce seems to be this
00:45:50.860
the moment somebody uh insults conservatives in public conservatives stop buying their stuff
00:46:00.220
like immediately right and every time you see it happen you don't need too many examples of it right
00:46:06.860
you just need a few examples where somebody who is let's say associated with a big company
00:46:13.180
insulted a third of the public you know the let's say the republicans and and their uh and their ceo fired
00:46:21.660
them or the board of directors removed them or or they lost their job or something you don't need to see
00:46:28.860
too many examples of that before you know you shouldn't do it right so the the attacks we're seeing
00:46:38.620
against republicans if you're worried that it turns into a full civil war um economics will stop it and
00:46:46.940
you're seeing it happen now the free market just stepped in and said whoa politics is great
00:46:54.940
politics is great but get that out of here so the free market basically just became the police
00:47:03.100
the free market just said yeah you know you can you can do all these political things that um are
00:47:11.100
terrible but uh it's gonna cost you it's gonna cost you more than you want to pay and it's gonna cost you
00:47:20.380
fast you know you're gonna get fired that day so that's where we needed to be um yeah somebody
00:47:28.140
mentioned mike lindell the the my pillow guy that's a special case because the in the case of mike lindell
00:47:37.820
he did wrap himself around the president pretty closely he got he got really into the politics
00:47:45.340
that's different from just saying something in a tweet right so he took it to kind of another level
00:47:52.780
uh but i don't think his pillows should pay for that i don't think his employees should have you know
00:48:01.660
less work because he he got he got politically involved so it's terribly unfair but we live in a world
00:48:10.780
where if you are if you started a company you get into politics it's going to cost you unfortunately
00:48:18.860
so i hope he's okay with that uh his pillows are are excellent in case you wondered um
00:48:28.460
this what's his what is a scott e-vest somebody's asking me a question but i don't understand it
00:48:34.460
all right don't buy ben and jerry's blah blah well i don't know how many republicans it would take
00:48:44.940
to boycott something but it doesn't take much right it wouldn't take much uh if you know if 10
00:48:53.500
of republicans just immediately stop buying something i think any big company would say that's a big enough
00:48:59.260
number that we need to fix us so it doesn't have to be a gigantic number as long as they can see it
00:49:05.900
on the bottom line they're gonna have to fix it uh the scott e-vest is a travel vest with lots of
00:49:12.940
products oh yeah i've seen that uh i have to i have to admit i've wanted it if you travel by plane and i
00:49:20.220
know that's hard these days i i want to think where all of my items that i need go into some kind of a
00:49:25.900
long case that that unrolls and i can just hold it up and it goes you know like an accordion and
00:49:32.860
i could take out the pieces i want and put them back in you know your phone your your uh boarding
00:49:39.100
ticket and stuff um have you tried to watch a hollywood movie lately i mean there there aren't that many
00:49:48.380
new ones but oh my god they're bad i i don't know how anybody can watch a movie anymore i still like
00:49:56.860
documentaries but regular movies are like god they're so boring now and they hurt you know your
00:50:03.820
your typical movie plot something bad has to happen to somebody in the beginning so that you've got a
00:50:10.220
plot for a movie i hate watching fictional content in which something really bad happens to somebody
00:50:18.700
because then that gets in your head and even if it has a happy ending the bad part's still there
00:50:26.620
i just don't want to watch content where i watch bad things happening to people as part of my
00:50:31.260
entertainment that's just sick into entertainment i'd rather you know not um
00:50:42.780
you're rediscovering old ones yeah that's exactly what i'm doing i find i'm rediscovering uh like old
00:50:48.940
movies and uh in i don't know if you're having this experience but i find that youtube is the
00:50:55.980
about the only form of entertainment that i can handle these days and the reason is that you can
00:51:03.900
watch um you know unlimited seems unlimited number of short form content so that you don't have to
00:51:11.340
commit to a three-hour movie and you get like a nice little hit of dopamine or something you like
00:51:17.100
out of that half hour it could be even five minutes and i would rather watch a whole bunch of
00:51:24.220
youtube clips and they're pretty good at suggesting what the next clip would be
00:51:36.220
um so politico is reporting that biden has trouble remembering his speech stuff yeah i'll tell you
00:51:45.420
everybody who thought i was going to have a bad time after trump left office my critics were
00:51:51.980
mockingly telling me how unhappy i must be and i kept thinking to myself no i have a preference
00:51:59.900
i had a preference but i'm not really feeling unhappy i'm actually feeling
00:52:07.820
surprisingly relieved honestly um i i you know i told you a long time ago that i thought maybe
00:52:16.940
trump should be a one-term president in a positive way the positive way is that he's such a disruptor
00:52:23.820
that sometimes you need the disruption and i and i feel like a lot of the disruption he brought was
00:52:29.820
entirely good um but you can't have that much disruption forever you you need a period of calm and
00:52:38.060
then maybe you get a little disruption later after you've had calm for a while that would be the ideal
00:52:42.700
pattern for a country and so i liked him as fitting into that pattern better than anybody ever has as
00:52:49.020
a disruptor but you just can't do the disruption forever that it pulls the fabric of your country
00:52:55.500
apart and we saw that but i appreciate all the good that came out of it but we have to we have to accept
00:53:01.980
i mean i think you have to be an adult about it and accept that it wasn't all good um
00:53:12.620
yeah we'll see how long uh biden stays in in the office before kamala harris takes over here's
00:53:19.260
something i'm expecting but we haven't seen yet um maybe you can help me if it has happened and i don't
00:53:25.420
know about it there is a there's a bit of a let's say a tradition in which the vice president takes on
00:53:33.420
some specific portfolio so in the case of al gore he was in charge of re-engineering government to make
00:53:41.020
it more efficient you know automating things and getting websites for things and and all that and
00:53:46.460
by all accounts he did a tremendous job by the way a true story al gore
00:53:52.060
um if you haven't heard this story it's worth telling you so years ago um i got invited into
00:54:00.700
the white house uh during the clinton administration and i was getting a behind the scenes tour
00:54:08.940
uh of the uh the facility apparently some of the writers who worked for uh the speech writers for gore
00:54:17.260
were familiar with some of my my work and we had some contact so when i was in town
00:54:22.060
for something else they said hey you stop by and we'll give you a tour of the the white house so
00:54:28.540
while i'm in the white house um the vice president at the time al gore heard i was in the building and
00:54:35.180
he knew of me in fact i think he had a dilbert cartoon on his wall um in fact i knew he did yeah
00:54:42.220
because i i was asked for it and i gave it to him so he and he asked me to help out communicating what
00:54:50.620
he'd done for re-engineering the government which apparently was quite good so i declined i declined
00:54:57.740
helping because i was the wrong person for that but i did hook him up with somebody who did a good
00:55:01.900
job uh who was the right person for that so vice presidents often have a portfolio like that you see
00:55:09.500
mike pence uh in charge of the coronavirus etc what will kamala harris's portfolio be
00:55:16.940
or will she have one this is what i'd be looking for if you see kamala harris get a portfolio that
00:55:25.340
feels like a sort of a make work kind of a thing something like what um al gore had well that wasn't
00:55:33.980
make work uh let me come up with a much better word for that not make work but rather let's say something
00:55:41.020
that's important but not sexy so what al gore was doing was super important making government more
00:55:49.420
efficient really important but not sexy which is why he asked me to help him with the communication
00:55:55.020
because it was just so dry and boring um and and even the coronavirus that's really important but
00:56:03.820
i don't know task force it just doesn't seem like a sexy job
00:56:08.220
so will kamala harris have some kind of a special job that doesn't look like the highest priority
00:56:15.580
in the country necessarily although i guess the covet task force might be
00:56:19.340
um or will they leave her a generalist because what i'd be looking for is if they leave her as a
00:56:27.980
generalist meaning she doesn't have a specific portfolio i feel like they're getting ready for
00:56:34.700
her to take over you know to take the top job whereas if they say hey you're going to work on
00:56:40.220
this special project i feel like that would be people signaling that it's not imminent that she
00:56:47.100
needs this other thing to like build up her resume you know have a little accomplishment as a vice president
00:56:53.180
so that i would look to that as like a little signal of how they're thinking internally about where she's going
00:57:05.500
she'll be in charge of making government more woke somebody says
00:57:08.460
you know i still see see people doing the uh you know calling her heels up harris and referring to
00:57:19.180
her uh let's say her past in which willie brown was a you know i guess they've admitted that she
00:57:26.620
that he helped her politically and they were lovers or whatever i don't think any of that matters and i
00:57:33.100
think that if you think that saying that stuff somehow denigrates her or helps your team i would
00:57:42.060
just leave that alone it just doesn't have any persuasive power and it doesn't it's not a good look
00:57:49.580
if that's the stuff you care about it's not it doesn't it doesn't make you look good as a person
00:57:55.260
who's commenting if if what you care about is her sex life 20 years ago however she got there she
00:58:01.260
got there right everybody who got where they got had some luck maybe did some weaselly things you know
00:58:08.540
maybe his chance you know everybody got there the way they got there and uh it's just this is not
00:58:16.060
relevant and i also think it's super sexist um so there's that uh
00:58:25.100
two two two evangelicals are powerless now somebody says it do you think so evangelicals
00:58:33.660
are powerless now well their person is not in power that's for sure
00:58:41.900
um what's harris's weakness then her weakness well i think her weakness is her personality actually i hate
00:58:50.220
to say it but she has that thing where she laughs at her own jokes too hard and that's she just needs
00:58:56.220
to work on that in my opinion but hey she she got all the way to where she is so maybe she doesn't
00:59:02.940
need to do anything i i recommend somebody says i successfully used my attractiveness and business
00:59:10.140
without regret why wouldn't you everybody should use whatever tools they have right
00:59:20.860
so somebody says it's not sexist because they made fun of john carrey for marrying into uh
00:59:27.500
into ketchup money um yeah i'm not sure those are exactly the same but i take your point
00:59:32.620
um does not debate well blah blah all right i don't have much else to talk about so let me just show
00:59:40.940
you what it looks like outdoors uh i'll be going out in that in a minute and uh it's pretty darn nice
00:59:51.020
nice so that's all for now and i will talk to you tomorrow