Episode 1265 Scott Adams： The News, Historians, A Virus Test That'll Make You Turn the Other Cheek
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Summary
Biden and Putin talk about a lot of stuff, but this is probably the most interesting thing that came out of it. Plus, why is crime so low in the French Polynesian lagoon? And why does it have to do with the moon landing?
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in, come on in. It's time. Yeah, it's time for a coffee with Scott Adams.
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Best time of the day, every single time. Now I have to warn you that I'm going to miss
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one morning. I believe it's tomorrow morning. No, it's Thursday morning.
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Hey Omar, good morning, good morning. Get in here, we've got lots to talk about. But before
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we do, what do we do before we talk about all the fun things? It's a simultaneous sip, that's
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right. And all you need is, let's see, all you need is, I'm not cheating, I'm not looking
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at my cheat sheet, I'm not looking to the left. All you need is a cup of mug, a glass of
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tango, chalice, or stein, a canteen jug, a plastic vessel of any kind. Fill it with
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your favorite liquid, I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the
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dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous
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I'm being reminded that tomorrow is Thursday. Let me tell you, I have completely lost all
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track of time. I have this weird condition in which calendars confuse me. Lots of things
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confuse me, but I'm not good with calendars. I'll tell you more about that some other time.
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So, one of the things that, I'm in Bora Bora now, in French Polynesia, if you didn't know,
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and one of the remarkable things about this place is the low crime. And I figured out why
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finally. Why is there such low crime here? There could never really be any kind of underground
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mafia here, because the water is so clear. If you took a body and you put them in the bottom
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of the lagoon, people would be walking by the lagoon and they'd say, hey, there's Mark.
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Oh, oh. Because you would see them so clearly, it's like they're not even underwater. So, it'd
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be hard to dispose of your bodies out here. That's my take on why the crime is so low.
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All right. So, it turns out that Biden is describing his vice president, Kamala Harris,
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as, quote, she's going to be the final opinion he listens to before making his big decisions.
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So, not only will Kamala Harris not have a portfolio, which is what you do with vice presidents when you
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want to keep them as vice presidents, but she's going to be the last person he talks to before he
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makes a big decision, which is a lot like she's making the decision, isn't it?
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Now, he didn't say, I'm going to talk to her last, and then I'm going to ignore her advice.
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I feel as if he's just moving us a little bit closer every day to her taking over, but he doesn't
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want to say it directly. This is sort of a version of the cats on the roof. Well, let me break it to
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you slowly. I'm not going to say she's the real president. I'm just going to say she doesn't have
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a portfolio she's working on. I'm not going to say she's the real president. I'm just saying I'm a
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certain age, and I don't think I'd run for a second term. I'm not saying that she's the real president.
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I'm just saying she's the last person I'll talk to before I make a big decision, which is totally
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different. Do you see it? Every little move is just a little bit more in that direction.
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So that's fun to watch them manage us with the propaganda. So an interesting thing happened
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at the end of Biden's remarks, I guess at a press conference, in which Fox News's Peter Doocy
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asked him what he talked about when he talked to Putin. So I guess Biden and Putin must have had a
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phone call. And Biden's answer was, his answer to the question, what did you talk with Putin about?
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Biden said, you, ha ha ha ha. So he just joked at Peter Doocy and then, you know, left the room.
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Now that's the second time he's used the same joke on Peter Doocy. So I forget the context of the other
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one, but I think when he was riding his bicycle, Biden was, and Peter Doocy asked him a question,
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and he, and Biden looked at him and said, you. So he's basically used the same joke twice,
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which isn't much of a joke. But here's what I think you ought to look for. It could be that he's
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just treating Peter Doocy like a, somebody from Fox News. So he's doing the same thing that Trump did
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to CNN. So it might be nothing but, you know, the way he's treating Fox News, which would be
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not unexpected. But I'd also look for the fact that he might be covering some memory problems.
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So look for this pattern going forward. Look for situations in which Biden, asked to recall
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something from memory, makes a joke instead as a cover up for maybe not having so much memory.
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Because if Biden is asked what his policy is, then that's probably something he's practiced a lot.
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What do you think of the Paris Accord? And then he'll say, blah, blah, blah, we have to lead the
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world, blah, blah, blah, Trump is bad. But when you ask him a memory problem of, you know, what did
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you do then? He hasn't practiced that. Because why would you? You wouldn't think to practice your
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memories. You would think to practice something like a policy decision, you know, something to
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describe. So look for him to have to cover any memory related questions by making a joke. We'll
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see if that happens. So it's a semi prediction slash pattern to look for. You probably saw the
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humorous video going around of Jen Psaki, Biden's spokesperson, who apparently has used the phrase
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I'll have to circle back a lot of times already. She hasn't been on the job long, but a lot of
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circling back. So when you see all the times that she says that, it puts the lie to the statement
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that they were going to be the honest and as CNN says, refreshing, refreshing communicator.
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There's going to be a lot of stuff she's going to circle back on, if you know what I mean.
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So my favorite CNN demon, propagandist, you know, I realized today that calling people opinion
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people versus news people isn't really enough detail, right? I don't think anymore you could
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call everybody who works at CNN an opinion person or a news person. There's another category.
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Which is propagandist. And I don't think you can call the opinion people opinion people
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when they go so far into propaganda that it's just ridiculous, right? Now, of course, you could make
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the same argument about some people on the right. So I'm not saying this is limited to one side.
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But my favorite propagandist is CNN's John Avalon. And I don't know what makes me so entertained by him.
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I think it's because he's smiling when he's being evil. And the combination of the smile and the evil
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makes it look different than if he were just being evil or just smiling. You know, those two things
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shouldn't be paired. That's demon territory. So he was mocking, in an opinion piece on video,
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John Avalon was mocking Rand Paul for saying that Biden's speech, calling for unity, was actually
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thinly veiled suggestion that Republicans are white supremacists. So Rand Paul says that Biden is
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essentially suggesting that Republicans are really white supremacists. How does John Avalon,
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the propagandist, the propagandist, treat that? He says, huh, why is Rand Paul worried about this?
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You see that? Huh, why is Rand Paul worried about being called a white supremacist? He's literally
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suggesting that Rand Paul is a white supremacist. So in his propaganda piece, in which he's mocking
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Rand Paul for thinking that Biden is somehow suggesting he's a white supremacist, John Avalon
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clearly suggests, clearly, I mean, there's no ambiguity there, that Rand Paul is a white supremacist,
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right on TV. No evidence, no reason for it. He just puts him in the same category as a white supremacist.
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You don't need reasons, apparently. But it gets better. I'm sorry, John Avalon, and I've seen other
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people at CNN and in other places use this phrase, the big lie. Do you know what they refer to as the
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big lie? Well, it turns out they've branded the idea that Trump's claim that the, and other people's
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claim that the election was rigged. So they're calling that the big lie. What does the big lie
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remind you of? Is there some thinly veiled suggestion? When you use a phrase like the big lie, where did
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that come from? Yeah, it's a Nazi phrase. The big lie, correct me if I'm wrong, refers to the Nazi
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propaganda process. Yeah, I think it was Goebbels. Goebbels, I never know how to pronounce his name.
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Goebbels. He was the one who said that a big lie is easier to sell than a small one.
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So the phrase big lie is associated with Nazis. So again, John Avalon clearly branding Republicans
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and Trump as a Nazi. And he's doing it right on television like that's an opinion. Now, an opinion
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with some detail behind it might be one thing, but this is pure propaganda. It is Nazi propaganda,
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just like it, just like it, in which he's branding a class of people, a class of people who should
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be, let's say, treated differently by society and not well. And that's what he would like you to think
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of Republicans. Quite amazing, quite amazing to watch actual Nazi-like propaganda that's being sold as
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ordinary opinion. It's just an opinion that these people should be treated as second-class citizens.
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So here's some other shocking things. There's Tom Cotton's writing an opinion piece saying we
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should remove these 7,000 remaining National Guard that apparently were going to remain in the Capitol.
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To which I said, am I missing something in this story? Is there some reason we need a standing
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defensive army in Washington, D.C.? I understand the Capitol was assaulted. I understand there's
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probably more chatter on the internet. But really? Right now, we need 7,000 people guarding the Capitol?
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Well, we don't have enough police to take care of whatever might happen? Because you get a lot of
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warning if a lot of people are going to show up, don't you? I feel as though, I feel as though that
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whole, what was it, Stop the Steal movement that became the, at least some members of them, or at least
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some people who attended the larger event, you know, got into the Capitol building, and nobody's in favor of
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that. Or at least I'm not. You can, you can judge it yourself, but I hope you're not in favor of that
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either. So why do we have troops? I think I've got to agree with Tom Cotton here. It's time to get rid
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of the troops and thank them, thank them for their work, and not put them in parking garages. I forget
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if I told you this yesterday, in some publication called the College Fix. It reports that researchers
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plan to revise a study on YouTube echo chambers that labeled the Dilbert cartoonist as far right.
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I still laugh at that. I bet it's, we live in a world in which people can't even conceive
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that you might be able to criticize both sides for different things. It's like it's not even a thing
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that you would imagine that maybe just because I am in favor of some things or opposed to some
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things that, that you could just, you know, label me as far right. I label myself as Lefta Bernie.
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So there you go. There's a story about a literary agent who was fired by the, the agency that employed
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him. And here's, here's the reason he was fired. Because he has an account on Gab and Parler.
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That's it. He got fired for that. He got fired for using social media companies that lots of people
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use. But more people associated with the right use them. And so just the fact that he was using
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those two platforms, independent of whatever he was doing on there, that's it. He got fired for it.
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And he got fired because somebody called the, called the downs. Somebody, you know, on social media
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said, hey, do you know that one of your employees or agents, one of your agents has these social
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media accounts? And he actually got fired. Wow. Now, I hope what happens is that anybody who does
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that sort of thing, the firing, I mean, ends up taking a hit. Now, of course, it's a public story.
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And who would do business if you were on the right? Who would do business with this person
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who just fired somebody for having a social media account she doesn't like? Who would do
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business with them if you were a Republican? I wouldn't. I mean, that would be, that would
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be a hard no, right? It wouldn't matter. As long as there's some competition, why in the world
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would you deal with somebody like that? There's an interesting story that China has developed
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some kind of an, this is not a joke, by the way, what follows is not a joke. China has developed
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an anal coronavirus test. Now, I don't know the details of it, because I didn't want to delve
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into it, if you know what I mean. But it is sort of a turn the other cheek situation, as
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opposed to the cheek swabs that you were doing in your mouth. Apparently, your other cheeks
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will get involved now. And I'm just putting that out there, that there's an anal coronavirus
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test. Well, I'll use that as a segue for some other stories about things that China is trying
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to shove up your ass. So, the coronavirus test is the first thing that China is trying
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to shove up your asses. The second thing is a story about the World Health Organization.
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Top officials said that in a recent press conference that it is, quote, definitely too early to conclude
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that the coronavirus originated in China. Okay, it's way too early, people. Do not assume
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that the coronavirus originated in China. But there's a trick to this one. That's sort
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of the headline. So, what I told you was the headline. When you hear that the World Health
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Organization is saying, we're not sure where this started, you know, be open-minded about
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it, it doesn't sound good, does it? But then the rest of the story kind of clarifies, which
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is that the World Health Organization is backing some scientists who are going to study the origins
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of the virus. So, in the context of your organization backing a study about the origin of the virus,
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should you say in advance what the origin of the virus is? No. No. You should act as though
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you're open-minded, even if you're not. So, under this specific situation, the World Health Organization
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executive is perfectly correct in saying, let's be open-minded and see where the data goes.
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If he had been speaking as just a citizen, he probably would have said the same thing that
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you would say, which is, I'm pretty sure it's China. Pretty sure it's China. But because he's
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associated with some research that just began into looking about the origin, then he should say,
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let's be open-minded. Otherwise, what's the point? You know, why are they doing the study if he
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already knows the answer? So, I think that was the right political answer. Who knows what he really
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believes? Here's an interesting question. So, I guess the Olympics coming up will be in China.
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Yeah. But the United States, or at least Pompeo, designated China, what did they say? That
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they're committing genocide in Xinjiang? No. Yes. Yeah. So, the idea is that if the United States
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has labeled China as committing genocide against the Uyghurs, somebody says Japan.
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That's not right, is it? Why is there a major story? Why is there a major story about the Olympics
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in China if all of you think the Olympics are in Japan? What's happening right now? So, I guess it's
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the difference between the 2022 Winter Games versus whatever Japan is doing.
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Summer Olympics are in Japan. The next Winter Olympics, I'm just reading the comments now,
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the next Winter Olympics will be in China? Okay. So, I think we cleared it up. Japan will be the next
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Summer Olympics. Next Winter will be China. And can we really send our Olympic athletes to a country
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we've designated as being involved with genocide? Can we? I feel as if the Olympics have run their
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course. I don't think the Olympics are useful anymore. In pre-internet days, I think the Olympics
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were really, really good because it got all the countries competing in a friendly way instead of
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an unfriendly way. But with the internet and, you know, our connectivity and the way we trade with
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each other in the modern times, do you need an Olympics? Because I don't care about the Olympics.
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And by the way, I think the Olympics are terrible for athletes. Just terrible. Because for every person
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who makes it to the Olympics, you have, what, thousands of people who dedicated their entire
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youth to trying to get in the Olympics and failed. What a waste. What a waste. The Olympics, I believe,
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are not a positive force in the world. They don't add enough, but they definitely subtract
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for all the thousands of athletes who wasted their youth trying to train for something that didn't
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happen for them. Just so a few can win some skiing and shooting and lifting contests that you don't
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care about. I mean, why does any of this matter? It's ridiculous. So I don't think we should send our
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athletes to the Olympics in China. I think that China has not met what I would call a minimum requirement
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to host something that is meant for, you know, peace, right? The point of the Olympics is everybody
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gets along. I don't think China met the basic criteria for that. Now, this would be, of course,
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a tragedy for the athletes who have trained and qualified for the Olympics, but let them join the
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other people who didn't make the Olympics, right? If there are thousands of other people who trained all
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other, you know, they trained and trained and didn't make the Olympics, if you throw a few
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hundred more into the mix who also trained and don't get to go to that Olympics, it isn't that
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different. But it would be sending a signal that we're kind of okay and normalize the genocide
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against the Uyghurs. Let me put it this way. If we attend the Olympics, we have normalized
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genocide. We would have normalized genocide. Don't think, I don't think we can send our
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Olympic athletes there, but I think we will, unfortunately. Maggie Heberman is reporting
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that Trump has a list of Republicans he wants to punish. Governor of Georgia, Liz Cheney,
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somebody else is on the list. And I told you before that one of Trump's superpowers is that
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he makes the biggest difference between how he treats you if you're good to him and you help him
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versus how he treats you if you're not good to him and you're on his bad side. That's one of the
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tricks of power, is that you want to make the biggest difference between being on your side and
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not being on your side. Because then when people make choices, they say, I don't want to get that guy
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mad. Or I do want to make that guy happy, guy or gal. So on one hand, you could certainly see it as a
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flaw that he's out of office and looking for revenge. It's hard to defend being out of office
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and looking for revenge. Like, I'm not going to defend that. But I will tell you that somebody who
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has that characteristic is going to go far in this world whether you like it or not, because that's
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the maximum distance between being on their good side and being on their bad side. And when you
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establish that as your brand, which Trump has quite successfully, gives people a reason to want to be
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on your side. Or at least not to sell you out if you've been on that side.
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So as I mentioned yesterday, I tweeted cheekily that, you know, given that Trump is being impeached
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after he's left office, I said, is it too late to impeach George Washington for owning slaves? I don't
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see how we can let that slide. How do you think Democrats responded to my tweet saying, why not
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impeach George Washington for slavery? Well, if you think that I tricked Democrats into supporting
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slavery, you'd be correct. I actually had a bunch of Democrats coming in to support slavery.
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Now, the way they did it was they said, Scott, you have to understand that in their opinion,
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what Trump did is probably insurrection and against the law. That's like breaking a law.
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But Scott, you don't understand that in the time of George Washington, it wasn't illegal.
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It wasn't illegal to own slaves. And so the Democrats tell me that George Washington owning slaves,
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Scott, that's not impeachable. It's not even a crime, if you looked at it in a historical context.
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That's right. No joke. I actually tricked. I didn't do it intentionally. It was so I won't
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call it a trick. I trapped accidentally Democrats into defending slavery as not really that bad
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because it wasn't technically illegal at the time. Now, if you've wondered how bad is TDS?
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Could you get somebody to defend slavery just so they can be anti-Trump? And the answer is,
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you don't have to wonder anymore. I did it right in front of you. I didn't do it intentionally,
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but I created an accidental test in the wild, not a randomized controlled test, but still an
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interesting one. Let me give you my most interesting example. So in response to my tweet
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about impeaching George Washington, Larry Charles, you may know him as writer, director. He was one of
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the original Seinfeld writers, and he was also the executive producer on the Dilbert animated TV show
00:26:14.540
for a while, so I know him well from working with him there. And he also went on to direct Borat,
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and he was a showrunner on Mad About You. Very successful guy, right? And very smart, very talented,
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and, but he's very anti-Trump. So he and I sort of went different directions on the Trump thing,
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but I've known him well since he worked on, I mean, at least I knew him well during the time that
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we're working on the show. So here's what he said to my tweet. He said it would be good if at least
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some of the people who make this fallacious argument, talking about my impeach Washington stuff,
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fallacious argument, admit that owning another human being is barbaric.
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What? Let me read this again. Larry Charles says, it would be good if at least some of the people
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who make this fallacious argument admit that owning another human being is barbaric.
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What? What? Was there somebody who was pro-slavery? Somebody thought owning another person in the year
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2021, somebody thought that maybe that was just okay? What are you imagining, Larry? Now, here's what's
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interesting about this. You're all used to seeing people make crazy, TDS, you know, Trump derangement
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syndrome comments on the internet. But usually, it's people you don't know personally, right? It's
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usually just some rando, and you say to yourself, oh, I know the problem here. The problem is the person
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making the comment is stupid, or they're uninformed, or they're intentionally lying, or so you have a
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theory about why that person is acting the way they are. Except what happens when you know the person
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personally? Larry Charles is really, really smart, which is why he's also really successful. And here's
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the funniest part. You know how I always mock people online for not understanding a joke?
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Larry Charles writes jokes for a living. He's written jokes with me. He and I have written jokes
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together. And somehow, he's not quite seeing that I'm joking. The point of my tweet of why don't we
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impeach George Washington is not that it's the same situation. I'm not saying George Washington and
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Trump are the same guy who did the same offense. I'm not saying that. How would you interpret it that
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way? That would be kind of a weird way to interpret it. Let me tell you how you should interpret my
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tweet. Impeaching George Washington would be a waste of time, right? Likewise,
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impeaching Trump after he's left office would be a complete waste of time. That's the point.
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The point is not that Trump and Washington are the same guy doing the same things.
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The point is that they're both wastes of time. Now, Democrats will argue they're not wastes of time
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because it might prevent Trump from running in the future. To which I say, that's not going to happen.
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In what world do you think Trump could successfully, and the successfully part is the part that
00:29:50.660
matters, in what world do you think he could successfully run for president again? I mean,
00:29:56.080
he could run, but successfully? That door is really closed. Would he run for, you know,
00:30:03.520
some people are just for fun or speculating he would run for the Senate in Florida. He's not going to
00:30:09.860
run for the Senate after being president. Nobody does that, right? And certainly he's not going to
00:30:16.380
do that. So any notion, somebody says, don't count him out. Let me acknowledge this.
00:30:23.600
He does have a way of coming from behind, et cetera. So he's definitely a comeback kind of
00:30:32.780
personality. And so if you say, don't count him out, I get what you're saying. You know, I get it
00:30:38.720
as a concept. But there are way too many people who supported him before who would say, I think he's
00:30:46.440
aged out. You know, I think the way things ended, the coronavirus situation, for example,
00:30:53.740
just makes it impractical for him to run again. So given the impracticality of it, it's just a
00:31:00.620
waste of time to impeach him. It's nothing but revenge and trying to basically paint all Republicans
00:31:08.900
as insurrectionists. So I see the impeachment trial as a way to impeach citizens. I don't think
00:31:17.740
it has much to do with Trump. It's a way to impeach Republicans for having supported him. That's what
00:31:23.420
it feels like to me. So in a sense, the Senate is impeaching me and impeaching anybody who may have
00:31:35.060
ever supported Trump about anything. So I feel like I'm getting impeached quite seriously.
00:31:43.120
All right. So just wrapping up on the Larry Charles thing. Larry Charles is one of the greatest guys in
00:31:49.640
the world. Let me just say that as clearly as possible. When I talk to anybody who's ever worked
00:31:55.200
with him, they freaking love this guy. And so did I. I mean, I do. I mean, I just love the guy. He's just
00:32:01.660
a really good person, in my opinion. But he doesn't like Trump. And I think that may distort his
00:32:06.900
perceptions in an interesting way. But he's a great guy. Rand Paul gave a terrific speech in the
00:32:16.000
Senate, in the Senate trial. And I saw some real leadership there that I liked a lot. And the point
00:32:25.240
he made, if I could just summarize it, is that no Democrats were asking if Bernie Sanders said
00:32:32.800
something that incited violence. And he gave examples. And nobody said that, well, I guess
00:32:41.660
Bernie Sanders says things that you could interpret as inciting the person who shot Steve Scalise.
00:32:49.240
Luckily, he survived. And then he went on saying, no Democrat will ask whether Maxine Waters incited
00:32:57.000
violence when she literally told her supporters to confront Trump officials in public. I mean, that's
00:33:02.000
pretty direct. That's pretty direct. And so he goes through the, you know, the complete hypocrisy. And
00:33:11.900
when he was done, I thought that was really good. I really liked the way he took it. Because his point
00:33:18.700
was not that we should impeach these Democrats. The point is that we should treat it the same and
00:33:25.280
live in a world with free speech. And if you don't live in a world with free speech, you're in big
00:33:30.540
trouble. So the bigger, the bigger principle is not to punish each other, but to live in a world with
00:33:37.380
free speech. I love the way he presented it. His presentation was strong. Lots of leadership said
00:33:45.980
the right thing. But have I ever told you that the hypocrisy argument is not persuasive?
00:33:55.020
I say it a lot. The hypocrisy argument has no persuasive power. It's just an observation.
00:34:03.220
You should definitely make it. You should definitely make the, you know, point it out when somebody is
00:34:09.100
being hypocritical. It's part of the mix. But nobody ever changed their mind because hypocrisy had been
00:34:15.280
pointed out. He needed some little extra juice on that to put it over the line. Because as I
00:34:23.200
understand that, five Republicans joined the Democrats to kill his point of order that would
00:34:29.300
have stopped the process. So the people who objected, the ones you would imagine, Susan Collins,
00:34:34.480
Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey. So people who are known to be mildly Republican
00:34:41.280
went to the other side. So it didn't work out. But I thought it was some of the best leadership I've
00:34:49.860
seen. And it's too early to back somebody for president for 2024. But he's on the short list.
00:34:57.880
I think Rand Paul is, I've said it before, one of my favorite reasonable politicians. And unfortunately,
00:35:06.720
he might be too rational to be president, meaning that the public won't understand a person who's
00:35:14.200
trying to follow the data and speak logically and speak to principle. I don't know if the public can
00:35:21.140
even appreciate that anymore. It's like it doesn't exist as a path to the presidency. It's almost as if
00:35:27.660
you have to lie to the public and you have to be irrational to get anything done. And, you know,
00:35:33.700
of course, I've argued that forever. I've seen a number of people suggest a ticket of Rand Paul and
00:35:41.040
let's see, let me just look at who said this. And as user fartstorm just said, of course, I had to
00:35:50.820
look up your name and it happened to be fartstorm. But it's with a PH, fart. But Tulsi Gabbard as a VP.
00:35:58.360
Now, of course, let me say what every woman who just heard that will probably say, quite rightly.
00:36:06.420
Why would it be Rand at the top of the ticket and Tulsi as the vice president? Why don't you
00:36:12.520
reverse that? Perfectly good question. And I have nothing to add to that. It's just a perfectly good
00:36:21.300
question. So that would be a strong ticket. That would be pretty strong.
00:36:28.360
Whichever way they went, that would be a strong ticket. Alan Dershowitz has weighed in on this
00:36:34.600
question of whether the president can be impeached after leaving office. What do you think he said?
00:36:40.860
What do you think Alan Dershowitz says about whether Trump can be impeached after leaving office?
00:36:48.500
Well, Alan Dershowitz does this thing. I didn't even know this was fair, but apparently he did it
00:36:55.640
and you can get away with it. I can't believe it, but this is weird. You're not going to believe it
00:37:02.080
when I tell you, but he read the Constitution. Did you know you could do that? That you could read the
00:37:09.340
Constitution and then it's got words in it? And if you read the words, you'll know what it means?
00:37:14.840
I didn't even know that was a thing. But thanks to Alan Dershowitz who did read the Constitution
00:37:21.200
and he tells us this, you know, and of course I literally had never looked at the words
00:37:26.640
that are relevant to this point, so I'm glad that Dershowitz did. He says that the Constitution says
00:37:34.460
something like this, quote, that the president shall be removed from office on impeachment
00:37:39.780
and conviction, not by the expiration of his term before the impeachment. And then he also says
00:37:47.720
that it mandates that, quote, judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to
00:37:55.560
removal and disqualification. So the Constitution refers to removal and disqualification.
00:38:04.460
What does the word and mean? It means both, right? This and this. If it meant one or the
00:38:15.940
other, what would be the word that they would use instead of and? It's a word or. If the Constitution
00:38:24.320
had allowed you to remove somebody from office and or disqualify them, then you would have
00:38:34.440
you could have the and which would be both or optionally. You could have the or so that you
00:38:41.900
could have just one or just the other. But it doesn't say and or. And it doesn't say or. It says and.
00:38:53.400
How do you interpret and as anything but both of them, right?
00:38:57.920
And given that that's not an option to do both of them because he can't be removed from an office
00:39:03.800
he's not in, doesn't the Constitution quite clearly and unambiguously say, as Dershowitz apparently is
00:39:11.720
arguing, that you can't you can't remove from office somebody who's gone and therefore you can't
00:39:17.380
satisfy the and. Therefore, the framers did not intend it to be something after office.
00:39:23.420
Sounds like a good argument to me. And as I've said many times, if Dershowitz has an opinion,
00:39:32.020
just just stop having your own opinion. Just take his opinion. It's just it's going to be better than
00:39:36.880
your opinion. Right. He does this. Well, you don't just wait for his opinion and just adopt it. He's one
00:39:44.500
of the few people who is willing to take an opinion on any political side by following the law.
00:39:50.680
So once you find somebody who can do that. Oh, and by the way, I would add him to my list
00:39:55.920
of people you should look to to know if the news is real or not.
00:40:05.260
Here's a here's a question. How do you think historians will describe the 2021
00:40:12.980
one, let's say, assault on the Capitol? Do you think that when time has gone by
00:40:20.180
and that the serious historians, not not biased people, just serious historians who just want to
00:40:26.940
get it right? They don't have a political bias. Few years have passed. Nobody nobody's going to win
00:40:33.580
or lose anything because of their opinion. What are serious opinion serious historians going to say?
00:40:39.600
Are they going to say it was an insurrection? Are they going to say it was a coup? Or are they going
00:40:46.540
to say things got out of hand and people people did some things they shouldn't have done? I feel as if
00:40:54.140
no historian is going to label this as an insurrection. And if they do, I don't think you
00:41:01.700
could ever trust history again. Well, you probably shouldn't trust it now. You know, history is always
00:41:06.360
written by the winners. But will it matter, say in 10 years from now, if a historian is just trying
00:41:14.620
to get the story right? I don't think they're going to take a political position on it and call it the
00:41:20.120
big lie. I don't think they're going to call it anything but a protest they got out of hand. Because
00:41:25.980
what is the argument for it to be an insurrection? Who goes to an insurrection and thinks, yay, if we get
00:41:36.020
control of this empty room, we rule the country? Was anybody thinking that? And suppose the worst case
00:41:43.400
had happened. Suppose they'd taken a hostage. And suppose the hostage had been, worst case scenario, Mike Pence
00:41:51.680
or Nancy Pelosi. Nobody wants to see any of that kind of stuff happen. But what if it had? Would that
00:41:59.120
group have then been in charge of the United States? No. Literally nothing works that way. You can't
00:42:09.880
conquer a country by controlling their empty rooms and one or two politicians. That's not a thing.
00:42:18.200
The beauty of living in a democracy is that you could take the leader of the country. You could
00:42:25.260
have kidnapped the president. And it wouldn't change the nature of the country. Because the
00:42:30.840
leader is not the country. Now, if we'd been a dictatorship or something, maybe removing the
00:42:36.900
dictator, that would be an actual coup. But since we don't have a dictator, you could remove
00:42:44.600
all of them. And the country would just go on ticket. We would just elect some more and just keep on
00:42:51.660
going. We would just pretend the insurrectionists didn't exist. So how do historians call that
00:42:58.680
any kind of an insurrection? It's going to be pretty ridiculous. So there's a bombshell story from
00:43:05.900
Seth Abramson. It's a bombshell. You're not going to believe this story. It was a shocker. And
00:43:14.960
everybody's buzzing about it. And it goes like this. On January 5th, at the Trump International
00:43:21.820
Hotel, and you're not going to believe this, a number of people got together.
00:43:35.880
Did you believe it? Bombshell. Whoa. Yeah. Some people got together in some rooms. They talked
00:43:46.720
to each other. And I don't think we can let this stand. That's the kind of bombshell reporting
00:43:57.080
that we're looking for from our journalist class. So Seth Abramson, I think you've done a solid
00:44:05.480
thing for the world by revealing, and it's shocking, it really is shocking, that there were people who met
00:44:12.820
and I don't even know how to say this, but they talked to each other. Yeah, they did. They talked
00:44:23.580
to each other. There may have been questions and replies. It could have gone that far. It could have
00:44:30.220
gone as far as people asking questions or offering opinions and then people replying. That's how bad
00:44:36.960
things got in the meeting where a few people got together and talked. And I feel as if something
00:44:44.740
must be done about this. Now, Seth, of course, added some extras to the story to make it a bombshell.
00:44:53.360
And one of the extras is, what if, what if, and by the way, there's no evidence of this,
00:45:00.600
but what if the people who were talking had suggested or communicated with some of the
00:45:11.420
protesters who ended up in the Capitol and told them, you're going to have to get inside
00:45:17.140
the Capitol? Because as Seth Abramson points out, what would be the point of a protest where
00:45:26.780
people are just standing around saying what they like? How is that going to change the outcome
00:45:33.580
that was the process that was happening at that moment inside the building? And so Seth
00:45:41.100
Abramson assumes, or not assumes, but let's say he speculates that there's a possibility,
00:45:47.940
a strong possibility, that there's a smoking gun in here and that somebody in that room,
00:45:53.980
they may have talked to each other and decided to send a message to maybe Ali Alexander. There's some
00:46:01.380
reporting that Kimberly Guilfoyle may have placed a phone call to Ali Alexander, who was organizing the
00:46:08.760
Stop the Steal. Now, because that's reported, how likely is it true that Kimberly Guilfoyle
00:46:18.720
placed a phone call that evening to Ali Alexander? What should you assume about the likelihood that
00:46:26.460
that's true? It's reported by a notable national journalist type. I would say coin flip, 50-50.
00:46:37.500
Any story about somebody said they saw something and somebody thought somebody did something,
00:46:44.500
it doesn't matter the source. That's no better than a 50% chance of being true. So if it's a coin flip,
00:46:54.200
it's almost like it didn't happen. Might have happened, maybe didn't. Well, it's not the same as
00:47:00.120
nothing being reported. But the speculation that people who talk to each other may have committed
00:47:10.620
a crime, which would have been inspiring an insurrection to get into the building, which
00:47:15.580
would be the high criminal part. Why is it a bombshell that people who talked might have been plotting a
00:47:24.520
crime? Because isn't that true of every group that talks? Is there any group that talks privately
00:47:30.940
who you could say for sure, who you could say for sure if you weren't in the room, where they were not
00:47:36.480
plotting some crimes? I've been in corporate meetings in which we were plotting crimes.
00:47:44.260
But, you know, I suppose anybody could plot a crime. But that's not a story that people got
00:47:53.580
together and talked. If that's all you know, trying to connect that to some chain of events that would
00:47:59.800
make them all criminals and have to go to jail, that is a stretch. That's a stretch. And it's also a
00:48:09.720
stretch for something ridiculous. Because seriously, seriously, do you think that the people in that
00:48:19.660
meeting, you know, do you think that Don Jr., Eric, Kimberly Guilfoyle, do you think that, I guess,
00:48:28.560
Corey Lewandowski, a bunch of people, do you think that that group of people literally were suggesting
00:48:35.240
that somebody get into the Capitol building? I don't think so. That is the least likely thing that
00:48:44.740
could have happened in that meeting. And it's reported as, oh, there's a good chance X happened
00:48:50.800
when any reasonable person would say, I think I'm a reasonable person. In my opinion, it's the least
00:48:57.880
likely thing that happened. The least likely thing is that they called for that kind of, you know,
00:49:05.880
that kind of approach. Insane. All right. Michael Schellenberger was tweeting that apparently
00:49:15.100
in California, I'm so proud of my state, prisoners, people actually in jail, have stolen 31 billion
00:49:24.880
what? Let me try to finish this sentence. Murderers and other prisoners in California
00:49:33.780
have stolen 31 billion. Okay. If I'd heard that prisoners in California had stolen $31,
00:49:44.480
I'd say to myself, well, that sounds like criminals. Criminals will steal your $31. Don't turn around
00:49:51.900
and leave that on the table because those criminals, they're going to take your $31. If they'd said
00:49:57.600
$31, I'd say that sounds about right. Maybe $3,100. Yeah. Okay. $30,000. I'd say that's a lot, but yeah,
00:50:08.500
maybe that could have been stolen. If they'd said $310,000 they stole, I would have said maybe.
00:50:17.340
Prisoners can be pretty clever. They may have gotten that much. If they'd said $31 million,
00:50:22.880
I would have said, come on, come on. They're prisoners. They're literally in prison. How do you steal
00:50:32.160
$31 million while you're in prison? It wouldn't sound believable to me. And in fact, it's not
00:50:41.860
believable. They stole $31 billion. Billion. And here's the best part of the story.
00:50:51.560
Or the worst. That the person who is in charge, the California Labor Secretary,
00:50:59.400
is who Joe Biden has tapped to be his Department of Labor Secretary. So the person who is in charge
00:51:08.180
of that just got promoted. So there's your news. Perfectly normal. If you let prisoners steal $31
00:51:18.780
billion from you, that's grounds for promotion and the Democrat Party.
00:51:27.100
Apparently in Chicago, there was a meeting of white supremacists. So there were 80 white supremacists
00:51:36.080
who rallied in downtown Chicago. But a researcher for the ADL, which is the, what is the ADL?
00:51:45.420
They look for, they look for people like white supremacists. So they have some authority in this
00:51:51.260
situation. And they said, the good news is that's pretty much the entire membership of the group
00:51:57.080
nationwide. So there were 80 people who came to Chicago white supremacists. But it's probably all
00:52:04.780
the white supremacists in the entire United States who are part of that group. Now, before you say,
00:52:11.280
ha ha ha, there are only 80 in the United States, it doesn't take many white supremacists to do a mass
00:52:18.100
murder. Right? Now, I would imagine most of those 80 people are perfectly peaceful, but have odious
00:52:27.520
opinions. But out of 80 people who would label themselves white supremacists, do you think there's
00:52:35.120
nobody in the 80? If they're willing to publicly label themselves as white supremacists? You don't
00:52:41.460
think anybody in the 80 would do something bad on a big scale? So I would definitely worry about 80
00:52:49.180
white supremacists, especially if they have any kind of organization. But the other context is,
00:52:55.860
this is one organization. And it doesn't mean that there aren't, you know, the KKK, it doesn't mean
00:53:03.940
that there aren't other groups like this. But here's a question for you. How many people are in Antifa?
00:53:11.720
If I would like to know, by official counts, how many white supremacists there are, that's a good
00:53:18.380
thing to know. Any is too many. But I'd also like to know, you know, how many in the KKK, how many in
00:53:26.500
whatever militias that may have bad opinions in the opinion of these people. But I'd also like to know
00:53:33.320
how many people are in Antifa? And how many people in Black Lives Matter who, you know, would call
00:53:39.980
themselves members or so? Wouldn't you like to know that? Let's see the membership numbers of all the
00:53:46.160
groups. Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to run away from, you know, labeling any of them. I'm
00:53:52.520
not going to run away from labeling anybody a white supremacist group if they are. And I'm not going to
00:53:57.480
run away from labeling Antifa as a domestic terrorist group if they are. So let's, let's just get the
00:54:04.460
whole number. Why do we only hear the number of white supremacists? Antifa is an idea. That's right.
00:54:11.440
Somebody say the white nationalists want separation. So you're making a distinction
00:54:19.180
between white nationalists and white supremacists. Are you claiming that the people who went to
00:54:24.700
Chicago call themselves white nationalists as opposed to white supremacists? I don't know what
00:54:30.420
your point is. But there is a difference. I've argued that there's no such thing as white supremacists.
00:54:38.220
Because I don't know of any white person who hasn't noticed that other ethnic groups are doing better
00:54:46.860
than the white supremacists themselves. The weird thing about white supremacists is they tend not to
00:54:54.160
be the people who are super successful in life. And they're looking at other ethnic groups who have
00:55:01.380
members who are completely successful. So how do you have a philosophy that you personally are a
00:55:10.300
supremacist over somebody who's doing way better than you're doing? You know, they're, they're way
00:55:15.160
smarter. If you did a standardized test, they would beat you specifically. You know, forget about any
00:55:21.140
general averages or whatever you think about that. The, the people that you're, you're discriminating
00:55:28.040
against or want to have a lot of people in that group who are killing it way better than you are
00:55:34.200
in every way, right? There are people who have more talent, more brains, better looking, you know,
00:55:40.200
you name it. There, there's no characteristic in which the white supremacists themselves personally
00:55:46.000
are not far outstripped by lots of members of every ethnic group. And so how is it that, you know,
00:55:57.520
how is it that they're supremacists? I don't know. If you, I guess you can find 80 people who will
00:56:03.620
believe anything, but I don't even know how that makes sense. Some say they should be doing better
00:56:10.800
except for, as the commentator is saying, is they're blaming Jews for holding them back. But again,
00:56:17.000
that's the opposite of being a supremacist. That's just being a racist. Now, I'm certainly claiming that
00:56:23.220
there are plenty of racists in the world. I'm not denying that. That's the most, probably one of the
00:56:27.920
most common things you'll find anywhere. But finding people who literally think they're superior,
00:56:33.680
I think that ended some time ago. But there are certainly white nationalists and there are people
00:56:42.000
who are racists of all kinds. The white nationalists are kind of a special category because I do think
00:56:48.680
that you could be a, so this is not my own opinion. I'm just talking about other people here.
00:56:55.400
I do think that a person who is not me could have the opinion that, hey, let's just stop trying to
00:57:03.500
get along and let's be separate if we prefer being separate. That's a reasonable opinion,
00:57:10.480
even if you disagree with it. But it's not practical. We don't have really a practical way to
00:57:15.900
have everybody separated. And the minute you did that, the minute you separated by race
00:57:23.540
and you said to the white nationalists, hey, white nationalists, good news. All you guys can go live
00:57:31.000
by yourself and you will never be bothered by any other types of people. What would happen
00:57:35.540
immediately? Immediately, the white nationalists would find ways to fight with each other.
00:57:43.220
It's just human. You know, they would decide that some are rich and some are poor. They decide that
00:57:49.920
some are Catholic and some are not. They'd find some reason to hate each other.
00:57:55.440
Sure. So imagining that, imagining that you can identify a group and separate them and then
00:58:03.040
they could go live happily ever after without having to deal with other people is a little
00:58:07.860
bit optimistic. I just don't see it's, somebody says I'm guilty of mind reading here. I'm just
00:58:18.020
describing what a white nationalist is by definition. And if somebody wants to live with themselves,
00:58:25.440
you can want it, but I don't know how practical it would be. You would just end up hating people for
00:58:32.200
other reasons. All right. That is all I need to say today. So as I understand it, tomorrow morning,
00:58:40.460
I'm going to wake up and I should have time to do one of these. But the next morning, I will be
00:58:49.500
flying overnight. So I'm going to miss, uh, I'm going to miss one. So if you don't see me,
00:58:55.260
um, that's why. And then I'll be back and we'll be, uh, I'll be live streaming on YouTube, uh, at the
00:59:03.880
same time as Periscope. When I get back, when Periscope goes away, as it will in March, um, I'll be
00:59:10.500
streaming from at least YouTube and I'll add, probably add some platforms. And if the locals platform has
00:59:17.460
streaming by then, I'll, of course, be using that. Uh, sticks. Um, what about sticks?
00:59:30.680
Wear 33 masks. I will. All right. That's all for now. Talk to you tomorrow.