Episode 1279 Scott Adams： Lots of COVID-19 Good News and How to Deal With the Insurrection Hallucination
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Summary
Join me for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, as I deliver all the good news you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic, including a new drug that could reduce the risk of hospitalization by 90%.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in, come on in. Thanks for getting here early. You know who you are,
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all you early birds. Appreciate it. Today will be one of, one of the best coffees with Scott Adams
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you've ever seen. Yep, there have been hundreds of them, but this will be one of the best.
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I promise. And if you'd like to make this a better one, like even better than it's going to be,
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and you wouldn't even have to do this. I mean, this is just extra. You wouldn't even need to
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have the simultaneous sip today, but don't worry, you'll have one. And all you need is a cup or mug or
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a glass of tank or chalice or stein or canteen jug or flask with a 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 of the dopamine
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hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the coronavirus. Got some good
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news today. Go. Yeah, I can feel the pandemic receding. So let's start with the good news.
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Do you want, how about all good news today? I think I can deliver that actually. I think I might actually
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be giving you all good news today. I think. No, that's not true. But let's start with the good
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news. Israel has shown that the viral load from COVID was reduced fourfold on average for people
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who had already gotten the vaccination. So big question was this, the big question. If you get
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the vaccination, are you still a carrier of the virus? And the answer is yes, but not so much.
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So it matters how much. And the good news is that the vaccination does exactly what you would think
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it would do. It greatly reduces the amount of virus in the person and therefore presumably would
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greatly reduce the amount of viral infections. So not only will the vaccinations reduce the number
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of deaths and hospitalizations, but it will also decrease the amount of spread. Apparently a lot.
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We don't know the exact number, but if it's a fourfold decrease in virus, that's probably a lot.
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Probably a lot. Here's the other good news. There was a randomized controlled study.
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That's the good kind, the kind that you should pay attention to. Now, if there's only one of them,
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you still would like to see some confirmation from at least one other study. But having even one
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peer-reviewed randomized controlled study is better than none. Better than none. And one of the things
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that they found is that this drug called budesonide looks like it can reduce the risk of hospitalization
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by 90% if you get it early. Did you just hear that? There's a common already available drug.
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How available is it? I have some right here. Now, this is a prescription and I use it for a different
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purpose. What I use it for is I had sinus surgery last summer. And to keep my sinuses open,
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it's a kind of a cordosteroid thing, I think. And it just keeps polyps from forming in my sinus.
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So I use a different form of it. I don't use the inhalant. I use a liquid form that I put in a
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neti pot, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, this is a common drug that asthmatics use. I don't use it
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for that. I have asthma, coincidentally. But if this is true, and it is a randomized controlled
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trial, right? And randomized controlled trials are pretty good. And even if it were not randomized
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and controlled, if you get something like a 90% difference, I mean, you don't even need many
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controls to know you got something if you've got a 90% difference. If you had a 20% difference,
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then I'd be worrying about the quality of the study and, you know, all the details. But a 90%
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difference? A 90% difference in a randomized controlled trial? I don't know how that could
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be wrong. I mean, anything's possible, right? But it's hard to imagine that could be wrong.
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So, here's the good news for the country. The good news is, we may have a widely available
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drug that takes 90% of the risk away from people who have early symptoms,
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which in conjunction with the vaccinations, this is the best place we've ever been.
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This is the best place we've ever been. Somebody's saying that Budesonite is sold under the brand
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name Pulmacourt. That sounds right. I think that's right. So, here's the bad news. I already take
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some just prescription meds, like one for acid reflux, etc. And some of my meds were very restricted
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for the past year or so, because the pandemic made it hard to get meds. Now, I don't know where
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this is manufactured. The company is CIPLA. Let's see if it tells me somewhere where it's manufactured.
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This drug, Budesonite, now this is the suspension type, so I assume that they also make the inhalant,
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but at least they have access to the drug. A company called CIPLA, C-I-P-L-A.
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And if it's true that this can reduce, you know, the risk of hospitalizations by 90%,
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this is made, manufactured for CIPLA, wait, manufactured by CIPLA, so it's an American
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company, but it's manufactured in India. Manufactured in India, but an American company.
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So, can an American company control how much we get from India? I would imagine India is
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going to clamp down on their control now. So, what we don't know is where the raw materials come from.
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Maybe that's a problem. The precursors would be a problem. You know, the chemicals that go into
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making this chemical, they might come from China, so we'll see. But at least it's a friendly nation,
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India. So, that's better than China. All right. I mean, this is the best day. It is the best day
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for the pandemic. It's the best day. This is the day that it looks like a human ingenuity
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just built the nuclear bomb. It's like World War II, and the Manhattan Project just came in.
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So, the vaccinations were kind of the Manhattan Project, but they needed this other thing. What
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you really needed was something that would also treat the people who got it, not just the vaccination.
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And we might have it. We might have it. Now, the bad news is, if this drug is unavailable to me,
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I won't be able to breathe for the next year. So, the quality of my life may have just decreased
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substantially. But the quality of the country will be substantially improved, and I'm willing to
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I hope it doesn't kill me. All right. Biden has a plan, apparently, to open only half of the schools
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in the country, and only one day a week by the end of April.
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Does that sound good enough to you? All right. I keep seeing in the comments people saying
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hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine did not have a randomized control trial.
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If hydroxychloroquine had a randomized control trial, then we'd be talking about that. But we'll
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see. You know, if you're being, if you're critical of the Budesonide story that it might turn out not
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to be true, you could be right. It could turn out to not be true. But I'm going to go with optimism
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for today. So Biden's plan is to open half of the schools by April one day a week, which is not
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nearly enough. Doesn't really even address, I would say it doesn't address any of the problem, does it?
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Do you think your kids are suddenly going to get healthy and smarter because school is open one day
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a week? Not really. Somebody says CIPLA is in fact an Indian company. Well, I'm going to read the,
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oh, you know, you might be right because the packaging is cleverly ambiguous. Here's what it
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says. Manufactured for, colon, CIPLA USA. So it's manufactured for CIPLA USA. Does that mean it's
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a U.S. company? Somebody say here's an Indian company. Could an Indian company just make the
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name of their company, CIPLA USA? I think they could, right? There's nothing that would stop them
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from doing that. So somebody says it is a U.S. subsidiary. Manufactured for an American subsidiary.
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Well, so, okay. So it's something like that. We'll figure it out by the end of today. So I'm
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wondering if Biden's plan, being very short of what the public wants, I mean, not even close to what the
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public wants, I wonder if it's because of a lack of PPE and protective stuff. Is it a lack of funding?
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Is that what the problem is? Because if so, then I think you could put some of that back on
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the Trump administration, couldn't you? Because it's not today that they find themselves unprepared.
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They've probably been unprepared for months. So if the reason that Biden can't open things is
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because the schools are not funded well enough to have the preparations, that's a Trump administration
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issue. Because they should have been ready by now, you know? And if they didn't give funding,
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you've got to blame the boss. So Biden and Trump, I think, have to take some equal measure of this
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being a complete failure. And I would say that the school reopening issue is a complete failure of
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government. It's a complete failure of government. Because it's the teachers unions, as you know,
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who are keeping schools closed, doing a good job maybe for their members. I can see why a union would
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want to act that way. But the country is just getting strangled. If you have not observed yet a child
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breaking down because of the current lack of social structure, where do you see it in person? Where do
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you see what it's doing to kids? It's really messing with people. I would say that this week,
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I like to consider myself mentally strong. And even if I'm not, I like to have that as my view of
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myself because I think it maybe helps make me mentally stronger. If you believe you're mentally
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strong, I think it helps be mentally stronger. But I got to say, this pandemic is starting to get to me.
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I've had good days and bad days. But I got to say, if the pandemic is getting to me,
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it's really messing with people who are not as, you know, I guess I'm complimenting myself here.
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I feel like I am mentally strong. And if it's getting to me, I can only imagine what it's doing
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to people who are in a worse situation. I mean, yeah. Tell me in the comments. Show me in the
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comments where you're at. And let's say mental health wise. Where are you at mental health wise?
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I'm seeing lots of comments asking me to talk about ivermectin. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine,
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it's the same story. There are reports that it's good, but we don't have the randomized controlled
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trials to know. So I would not be betting anything on ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine at this point.
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If either of them were the big deal that we hoped they were, we would know it by now. And we don't.
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Oh, look at that. I'm looking at your comments and I'm actually impressed at how many of you are doing well,
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but not all of you. Somebody's a 6 out of 10. Somebody says they're broken.
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Somebody says about to break. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. We'll get through this.
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So if you're close to breaking, hold on. You'll be glad you did. 7 out of 10, fine. Worse I've been so far.
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Hmm. Sorry about that. If I wasn't crazy, I'd go insane. Yeah. Imagine being poor and living in a
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cramped inner city housing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I try to imagine how this is for people who are not as
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fortunate as I am to be able to ride this out in relative luxury compared to other people. And I
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almost can't imagine it. It's almost beyond my ability to imagine how bad this must be
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for a pretty big segment of the country. Almost can't imagine it. I mean, but we're heading in the
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right direction. All right. Here's my favorite story of the day. And I'll give you some background on
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this. I think that we don't appreciate enough the value that our billionaire class brings to the
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country. Because it's easy to hate the billionaires, right? Oh, the hedge fund guys.
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The billionaires. Still know our money. So there's sort of an automatic reflex to be anti-billionaire.
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I get that. And certainly not all of our billionaires are helping. But it is true that people who started
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without money and made themselves billionaires doing, especially if they've done more than one
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thing, right? If you've done more than one thing and it got you to be a billionaire, like, you know,
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Elon Musk, perfect example. They have essentially proven themselves superior, let's say, observers of
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reality and understanding how things work. That's how they became billionaires. Now, not all of them.
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Some of them just inherited or whatever. But a lot of our billionaire class are really, really valuable
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to the world and the country. Really valuable. And when you see, you know, Elon Musk recently
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offered a hundred million dollar prize for the best carbon capture. How valuable is that? I mean,
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seriously, he did something the government couldn't do. Because he could. Not only could he, but he was
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smart enough to figure out what is the most important thing I could make a difference on. And then he did
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it with a tweet. I'll give a hundred million dollars for the best carbon capture. And so it's no coincidence
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when you see the billionaires doing things that are smarter than what your government is doing. That's
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not a coincidence. There's no coincidence. That's what made them billionaires, that they can see reality
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a little bit clearer and they're willing to act on it. Another example of this just made me laugh.
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It's the smallest issue, but it again, it reinforces this idea that a lot of billionaires
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became billionaires because they're really, really smart. Right? You know, whatever you want to say
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about Mark Zuckerberg, the one thing you can't say about him is that he's a bad CEO. Right? He's one of
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the best CEOs of all time. One of the best of all time. Even if you don't like what Facebook is doing. His
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capability is just through the roof. It's crazy. And most people would agree with that. But here's my one of the
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day. So apparently the Mavericks basketball team, Dallas Mavericks, they have not been playing the national
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anthem before games. And people didn't notice for something like 12 or 13 games that they just
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didn't play the national anthem. Now, of course, it wasn't a regular spectator situation because it was
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reduced, reduced, you know, people in the stands and stuff. So it was unusual situation, but nobody
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noticed 12 or 13 games. Nobody noticed that there was no national anthem. And then when they noticed,
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the Mavericks admitted that it's a decision and that it was Mark Cuban's decision specifically as owner
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of the team. Now, here's my question to you. For how long have we been, you know, yammering about
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athletes kneeling and everybody's mad and it's making us, it's making us further apart and all
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that? Who, and nobody who owned a team thought of this solution? How about we just don't play it?
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Think about it. Why did nobody think of that solution? Why is Mark, why is Mark Cuban the only person
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who owns a major team who thought of the only solution that's smart? They just don't play it?
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Now, I ask you, what is the purpose? What's the purpose of playing the national anthem?
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Well, one of the purposes is it's part of the propaganda brainwashing mechanism that any solid
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country does. The Pledge of Allegiance is a brainwashing persuasion mechanism that I support
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100%. Just because it's brainwashing doesn't make it wrong, right? It is absolute brainwashing.
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That's what it is. It's invented for that purpose and it works for that purpose. That's why we do it.
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So the flags and the symbols and the patriotism are part of the programming that keeps a country
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unified and strong. You need it. You absolutely need it. You can't get rid of this brainwashing.
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You wouldn't want to. Everything would fall apart without it. But given our current situation in which
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the kneelers are dividing us, meaning some people are anti-kneeler because they take the message as
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anti-patriotism as opposed to a message about the police. And so it divides us. What would be the
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point of having a Pledge of Allegiance? Its entire purpose is to give us better unity, but once it
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stops serving that purpose, why would you keep doing it? Why would you keep doing something for unity
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that has exactly, obviously the opposite outcome at the moment? Now someday, someday they might go
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back to it and that would be preferable. I think that'd be great. But at the moment, Mark Cuban is the
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only smart person in the whole game. I didn't even think of this. Was there even one point that you said to
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yourself, even one time during this whole controversy about kneeling for the National Anthem, was there
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even one time you said to yourself, maybe they should just skip it? Maybe they should just skip it.
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Probably not, right? But Mark Cuban did, and then he skipped it, and it worked out fine. Now,
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some of you are mad because it would sound anti-American, anti-patriotic. It's not. It's not
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anti-American. American is do what makes sense, don't be a fucking idiot. If I could give you one
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explanation of what it means to be an American, it would be the following. Do what makes sense,
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don't be a fucking idiot. That's it. That's like our, our entire national character could be summed up
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in, do what makes sense. Stop being a fucking idiot. That's it. And Mark, Mark Cuban just did that. He
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just did what makes sense. Because it doesn't make sense to do a thing for unity when you know for sure
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it's doing the opposite. Everybody else just kept doing it. And not once did I say to myself,
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maybe you shouldn't. Maybe just skip it. Now, if you're going to say he's being anti-patriotic or,
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you know, agreeing with China or something, that's just crazy. This is just a simple fix to a simple
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problem. Here's how you should handle the impeachment trial. Are you ready for some advice? I usually don't
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give advice because nobody, nobody takes advice. It's like an imaginary process. But here's the
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thing that's getting to me. If you, if you look at CNN, they'll say things usually in the opinion
00:23:08.480
place, but they'll say something that their readers don't know is not news because they can't sort out
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opinion from real news. And they, they say just matter of factly that the president incited an
00:23:21.540
insurrection, just matter of factly, like, well, there's no question about that. The president
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incited an insurrection. We'll just put that out there like it's true. And it's a fact. But here's
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the thing. We're having this national process to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection.
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But yet, obviously, there was no insurrection. Where, where was the insurrection? I know what
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happened on January 6. I've seen the video, seen all the descriptions. I've seen the, you know, who's
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been charged with what, but I haven't seen any insurrection. I haven't seen a coup attempt. Where was
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that? Did you see what? What I saw was a guy in a Viking hat, some guy with some twist ties.
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They took over an empty room. Because what were they protesting in favor of? The current system
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being used properly, meaning a transparent election. Was there anybody there who said,
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we don't care what the elections say. We don't care what the voters want. We want our leader in
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place no matter what the vote was. There were none of them. All about you, there was not one person who
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entered the Capitol building who, if you asked them, hey, look, if we could prove to you that
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Biden got more votes and he got them in the right places, if we could prove it to your satisfaction,
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would you be okay with him serving as president? I'll bet you 100% of the people who entered the
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Capitol would have said, oh yeah, because we like, we like the Constitution. That's why we're here.
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Because we like the Constitution. We're not trying to get rid of it. We're not trying to destroy the
00:25:10.500
country. We're trying to make sure the country is running the way it was designed, which is you know
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who got the most votes and then that person serves as president. So you had a bunch of people who
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unambiguously were doing the opposite of a coup. They were trying to stop one.
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Now the coup that they were trying to stop could have been imaginary. Could have been imaginary.
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In other words, they imagined that the vote was rigged and that would have been a coup.
00:25:40.320
Would it not? If the vote had been rigged in favor of Biden and there's no court proof of that
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happening, I have to say that so I don't get banned, there's no court proof of any rigging of the
00:25:51.600
election at a scale big enough to change it. But what if it had? There were a lot of people who
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believed it and they were trying to make sure that the system had not been corrupted. So a bunch of
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people tried to make sure that the current system, exactly as it's designed, is working properly,
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explicitly. That's what they all wanted. They just wanted a little time for an audit,
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make sure we got the result that we wanted. And that is being reported by the press,
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and now the Democrats who are doing the impeachment thing, as an insurrection. Nothing like that
00:26:27.400
happened. In your world, there was no insurrection. Not even close. Nothing slightly like one.
00:26:35.340
Somebody says, this is such a disingenuous spin, says Kyle. So Kyle, I'm going to talk about you and
00:26:46.300
people like you next. If you're trying to figure out what is the right take or way to, let's say,
00:26:54.820
communicate about the current impeachment, it should be mocking. Because you should be mocking the
00:27:01.460
people who imagined something that didn't happen. There's a whole impeachment process over a thing
00:27:07.320
that you know didn't happen. You don't even have to wonder. It's all on film. You could interview
00:27:15.260
anybody who went there and ask them the following question. If you knew that the vote had been accurate
00:27:21.600
and Biden got the most votes, would you accept him as your president? I'll bet they'd all say yes.
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Is that an insurrection? We want the person who got the most votes to be president. Is that an
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insurrection? No, that's the opposite. It's literally the opposite. And it's obvious. I don't have to spin
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anything to say it's the opposite of that. It's obvious. Kyle, who thinks I'm being disingenuous with my
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spin, you have been hypnotized. Now, when I say you've been hypnotized, I mean that literally.
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Literally. You're actually seeing something that isn't there. You're literally hallucinating. I don't
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mean in the, I'm not talking in some like artistic way. You're actually having a literal physical
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mental hallucination. Because you think there was an insurrection, you can't find any of it.
00:28:21.840
It's not on video. There are no people who would say that they were there for that purpose.
00:28:25.880
They did not bring tools that could have done it. They didn't do anything that could have caused
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a change of government. They controlled a room for an hour. That's it. Now, I've heard people say,
00:28:37.920
but what if they'd gotten all the way to Pence and Pelosi? What if they'd actually, you know,
00:28:43.160
got to them? To which I say, what do you think they would have done? Now, if some bad people were in
00:28:49.980
there, they could have done illegal bad things and nobody wants that. But even if they'd captured
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Pelosi and Pence, was the rest of the country going to surrender? What would make that a coup?
00:29:03.800
It would make it a crime that should be punishable by the maximum force. But how do you control the
00:29:11.620
whole country by taking one person or two people hostage? That's not a thing. It's not even slightly
00:29:19.400
a thing. And how would you keep them and hold them hostage with your twist ties and your Viking hat?
00:29:26.860
Now, I'm sure some people were armed, but did anybody bring out a gun? Obviously, they didn't intend to
00:29:32.840
use weapons because they had them. They didn't use them. And they had every reason to want to use them if
00:29:39.640
if it had been an insurrection. If it had been an insurrection, they would have used weapons.
00:29:45.820
You mean actual guns, weapons. But they use clubs. You can see a riot getting out of control.
00:29:51.740
And those people need to pay for their crimes. But we should not treat this like it's a serious
00:29:59.360
matter of an insurrection. No insurrection happened. No coup attempt happened. None. We should treat the
00:30:07.740
people who are having this hallucination as people who are having a medical, mental problem. You should
00:30:14.460
laugh at it. You should mock the people who believe that the president should be held accountable
00:30:22.980
for an insurrection. Now, he should be held accountable, he should, for his actions. In other words,
00:30:31.020
the president's lack of action to stop it, I think is fully worthy of criticism. I wouldn't push back at
00:30:39.080
all on that. So we should stop treating this like there's any doubt about whether there was an
00:30:47.800
insurrection. There's no doubt. Nothing like that happened. You can't see it, can't find it, can't taste
00:30:54.800
it, can't smell it, can't find any evidence of it. So the people who believed that, well, we have lots
00:31:03.880
of examples of people on both sides of the political divide, believing things that are just crazy,
00:31:09.600
just absolutely crazy. And we know that people can hallucinate and believe pretty much anything,
00:31:16.140
just anything. People believe that the president of the United States once stood in public and called
00:31:21.760
neo-Nazis fine people. People think that actually happened. It didn't. He said the opposite, if you
00:31:29.340
watch the whole video. So the right play for this is to treat it like the people who are having this
00:31:38.160
are having a bad mental problem, that they're imagining something and they think that the president
00:31:43.400
should be punished for what they're hallucinating to be true. So that was for you, Kyle. You were
00:31:51.500
hallucinating. And if you're wondering, how can you tell if you're hallucinating?
00:31:59.740
One way would be to look for evidence of that thing that you think happened.
00:32:06.000
See if you can find any. You won't. You won't. You won't find anything that looks like an insurrection.
00:32:13.080
Nothing. And you can look as hard as you want. There won't be anything there. There will only be people
00:32:18.160
telling you they see it. If enough people tell you they can see it, it makes you see it. But that's
00:32:25.140
what's happening. It's not there. There's nothing there. Somebody say, the cop's funeral. What about it?
00:32:36.320
Did he just get blocked? No, I didn't block him for that. All right. Then let's talk about
00:32:43.540
Trump's lawyers. So Bruce Castor was the first lawyer. I've never seen lawyers do a worse job. Have
00:32:55.960
you? If you watched Trump's first lawyer, Bruce Castor, that was the worst job I've ever seen of
00:33:03.300
lawyering in my whole life. It's not like I've seen a lot of lawyering, but I've never seen a worse
00:33:09.240
lawyer. The whole time I was watching him, I was imagining what Trump was doing because you know
00:33:19.360
he was watching, right? I was imagining Trump at home watching this on TV. It's like, okay, here he
00:33:25.200
goes. All right. He's wandering a little bit, not getting to the point. All right. He's going to get
00:33:30.780
to the point now. Bring it home. All right. He's telling a personal story. Doesn't seem terribly
00:33:35.920
relevant, but this won't last long. All right. Now get to the point. Defend might. Okay. It seems
00:33:40.540
like he's rambling again, but I know he's not going to keep rambling. Pretty soon he's going to get to
00:33:46.160
the defense. Then, then, okay. He's still rambling. He's still, he's not talking about anything that
00:33:54.760
seems even related to the case. I, I, I'm starting to drift off. Can you imagine how mad Trump was
00:34:05.600
when he watched that? Imagine that your life is on the line. And this, this guy goes all,
00:34:13.340
it was so bad. It was actually just funny. Uh, but I hope, hope it doesn't change things in a bad way
00:34:23.980
for the president. Now his second lawyer, I guess, did a better job, uh, making the constitutional case,
00:34:30.220
but there was no point in even being there really, because it wasn't as if there was anybody who was
00:34:35.520
going to change their mind. I guess one Senator changed size or something, but it wasn't going
00:34:40.400
to matter. It's a political process. So arguing the, the law during a political process, it's just a
00:34:47.540
waste of time. So the Senate decided to vote that they do have jurisdiction.
00:34:51.820
Is that how it works? Can the Senate simply take jurisdiction for something the constitution does
00:35:02.180
not give them jurisdiction over? Can they just vote that they have it? Well, that's what they did.
00:35:07.660
How do you vote yourself jurisdiction? Okay. It seems like jurisdiction has to come from a higher,
00:35:14.020
a higher source, doesn't it? Like, how can you give yourself power? Ah, there's something wrong with
00:35:22.500
that, right? I could see how a higher authority could give you power, but how do you give yourself
00:35:29.520
power and jurisdiction specifically? So that was sketchy, but again, it doesn't matter. You know,
00:35:37.860
I could argue how it's illegal or non-constitutional or anything. None of that matters. Once you say
00:35:43.860
it's a political process, then you don't need to be legal. You don't need to be constitutional.
00:35:50.400
You don't need to make sense. You don't need to use the facts. You don't need to argue with reason.
00:35:55.980
You don't need to do anything. As soon as you agree it's a political process, everything else is
00:36:02.540
bullshit. And yet they have to present it like it's not. It's like, oh, maybe it's sort of like a legal
00:36:09.780
process. Do you believe it? No. Hey, maybe we'll change people's minds with our clever arguments.
00:36:18.580
No, no, that's not happening. So there's nothing, it's complete theater that has nothing to do with
00:36:25.960
how anybody will vote or what will happen to the country or anything. And they're running this theater
00:36:30.560
instead of doing their work. But yesterday, even Fox News was reporting that work continues on the
00:36:39.740
on the stimulus. Do you think it is? Do you think that that Congress has no impact on their other
00:36:49.320
business to take two weeks out and just work on this? Because if this doesn't affect their other
00:36:57.620
business, then maybe we should cut their pay. Because if they can take two weeks out, and it doesn't
00:37:03.940
affect anything else they're doing, what the hell else were they doing? Because if I take two weeks out
00:37:09.540
of my job, it's going to make a big difference in my deadlines and the work backing up. If you take two
00:37:15.540
weeks off of your job, and you don't have somebody filling in for you, isn't that a big problem?
00:37:21.660
Don't you have a lot of work backed up when you come back to work? But Congress doesn't have that
00:37:26.380
problem? They can just take two weeks out, and it won't affect the other stuff they're doing? Come
00:37:30.660
on. Come on. They're doing theater instead of their job, right in front of you. And they're not even
00:37:39.120
really pretending that they're not doing that. Any observer can see that it's pure theater.
00:37:45.760
And it's obvious it's affecting their other work. And we're okay with that. We're like,
00:37:49.400
oh, okay. It's entertaining. Oh, let's watch it. I enjoy it, though.
00:38:04.960
Have you noticed that your spam phone calls all sound like evening crickets for the first five
00:38:24.960
seconds? You answer the phone and you hear just like silence and crickets? Like actually crickets.
00:38:30.640
Do you wait for the crickets to be done? Because you know it's going to be spam, right? If it's a
00:38:36.260
real person, they say hi right away. So let's see what else we've got going on. Here's the simulation
00:38:48.880
winking at us. The head of the AFL-CIO union, his name is Richard Trumka. T-R-U-M-K-A.
00:39:01.300
Trumka. It sounds like Trump and Ivanka put together. Trumka. Weird coincidence, I guess.
00:39:12.340
And he sided with Biden as Biden was reducing jobs in his union. What? That's right. His job is to
00:39:23.400
make more, you know, the union head's job is to make sure that his union is taken care of,
00:39:28.940
and that, you know, they get jobs and benefits and stuff. And he sided with Biden in reducing the
00:39:35.860
number of jobs in his union. And people have wondered, huh, what does it mean to be the head
00:39:45.060
of a union? If you're not fighting for jobs for the union, but you're fighting for the person who's
00:39:51.860
fighting against that? Now, here was his statement when it was pointed out to him in an interview
00:40:00.560
on Axios, I guess, Axios. Here was the way he presented it. He said, quote, Richard Trumka did,
00:40:10.360
I wish, talking about Biden and his XL pipeline decision to cancel that project. He said,
00:40:19.060
I wish he hadn't done that on the first day, because the laborers' international union is right,
00:40:23.860
Trumka told Axios. It did and will cost us jobs in the process. Here's the fun part.
00:40:31.580
Watch how he spins this. He goes, I wish he had paired that more carefully with the thing he did
00:40:37.760
second by saying, here's where we're creating jobs. So the head of the AFL-CIO, who knows that he just
00:40:46.100
got stabbed in the back for supporting Biden, and then Biden cuts a bunch of union jobs.
00:40:53.420
He's still defending the guy. And the way he's doing it is saying, gosh, I wish he'd been more
00:40:59.340
careful in pairing these new jobs with the ones that are being lost, you know, because if he'd paired
00:41:05.900
them better, we'd be fine. It doesn't really work that way, does it? It's not like those same jobs,
00:41:14.200
you could just take these steel workers or pipe fitters or whatever the hell they are and just
00:41:19.000
put them in there. It's like, ah, you're fine now. You might have to relocate. That's kind of a big
00:41:25.240
deal. Well, you're going to have to move away from your whole family if you want a new job.
00:41:31.920
So watching him do that was funny. But why is it that Biden can bitch slap the AFL-CIO and make
00:41:40.420
them thank him for it? Not only does he abuse them, but he makes them be nice to him anyway.
00:41:46.840
Why can't he do that to the teachers' unions who are preventing kids from going back to school?
00:41:52.600
So he can throw this union under the bus, but he can't throw the teachers' unions under the bus.
00:41:57.840
Now, part of the problem is that there are more of them. You know, the teachers' unions are local,
00:42:02.540
so there may be just too many of them to find anybody to bribe. Now, I'm not going to suggest
00:42:08.460
that I do not suggest that the head of the AFL-CIO has been bribed in some way, but others are.
00:42:17.000
Others are alleging that he must have been paid off or he has some benefit there because they don't
00:42:22.840
quite understand why he's doing the opposite of his job, which is to protect jobs in the union.
00:42:29.060
So I have no reason to believe that he was paid off, but I do ask this question. Would that work?
00:42:36.260
Would that work? Because if it works to bribe union leaders, why aren't we doing that?
00:42:45.320
Can't we just bribe the teachers' unions? Are there too many of them? Maybe if you get the big ones.
00:42:50.520
Now, I know it's probably, or is it? Is it illegal? Would that even be illegal? Can you bribe a teachers' union?
00:42:59.060
You can't bribe an elected politician, and it would be illegal to bribe a foreign company, right?
00:43:11.040
So you can't pay bribes overseas. That would be illegal in the United States to pay a bribe overseas.
00:43:17.800
But could you bribe a teachers' union representative? Could you do that?
00:43:23.380
I mean, could you legally just say, look, you're ruining the whole country. I'll tell you what.
00:43:30.460
We'll throw a couple of Bitcoin your way. One Bitcoin for your vote. That's it.
00:43:36.220
We've got some billionaires. They want the schools open. The billionaires will pay it.
00:43:40.440
So we'll just pay you to change your mind. Would that be illegal?
00:43:44.940
Well, suppose you did it overtly. Could you do it publicly and say, look, all you teachers' unions, we will give you directly some money.
00:44:02.840
Somebody says, you're not very good at hypnosis, dude.
00:44:06.420
Well, Ronald, did you think I was hypnotizing you right now?
00:44:10.140
Is that why you were hallucinating? Was I hypnotizing you and it wasn't working?
00:44:16.160
Let me tell you something about hypnosis, Ronald.
00:44:21.240
If I were hypnotizing you, you wouldn't know it.
00:44:33.220
Here's another issue. Apparently the stimulus package is going to wrap into it also.
00:44:38.200
A $15 an hour minimum wage, which on Fox News, the headline says, it will cost 1.4 million jobs.
00:44:47.200
So if you're reading Fox News and you read the headlines, you'd say, well, that's pretty bad.
00:44:54.900
Well, I suppose that's good for the people who get the wage, but it's going to cost 1.4 million jobs.
00:45:07.380
It was the CBO who said it would cost those jobs.
00:45:10.480
And the CBO also says it would lift roughly 900,000 Americans out of poverty.
00:45:16.080
If that's not in the headline, you are being fed propaganda.
00:45:21.820
So Fox News is giving you propaganda that $15 an hour minimum wage will cut 1.4 million jobs.
00:45:28.720
It's completely true, true that it was estimated, not true that it will happen, but true that it was estimated by the CBO.
00:45:35.300
But you've got to kind of put in that, the benefit, right?
00:45:39.360
If you show the cost and then you put the benefit like way down in the story, that's propaganda.
00:45:48.440
So if you think that CNN is giving you the propaganda and Fox News is giving it to you straight, that's not happening.
00:45:57.240
If they were giving it to you straight, they would have told you both things at the same time.
00:46:01.260
Reduces 1.4 million jobs, lifts nearly a million people out of poverty.
00:46:09.040
So do you believe the CBO, that it will cost 1.4 million jobs, 1.4 million?
00:46:22.580
Do you think that they can actually estimate that?
00:46:27.340
That's not really something that you can estimate, you know, down to some kind of precision.
00:46:32.560
So if you have nearly a million people who will be lifted out of poverty, and you have maybe, and it's a big maybe, another 1.4 million who might lose their job, what would happen to the 1.4 million who lose their job?
00:46:51.280
Well, if the economy is growing, I would expect all of those people to get better jobs, just different jobs.
00:46:57.840
And those different jobs would pay them $15 an hour.
00:47:00.780
So when you see that it would cost 1.4 million jobs, do you think that's forever?
00:47:09.140
And if it's not forever, shouldn't that be in the story?
00:47:13.400
Because if it costs you 1.4 million jobs for only one month, and then those people go get different jobs at higher minimum wage, is that really so bad?
00:47:28.400
If you believe that economists can model this accurately enough to know which of these two things is better, the people lifted out of poverty versus the loss of jobs and some of those companies probably closing, which is the better thing?
00:47:49.240
Do you think economists can actually model that?
00:47:53.920
It's their job to do it, so they'll produce a report because it's their job.
00:48:13.240
But these estimates are useful for giving you sort of an idea of what the range of possibilities is.
00:48:21.620
And what they've told us is that the range of possibilities is in this million-people-affected kind of level, and of 370 million people in the country.
00:48:31.240
If I put it to you in that context, and I said $15 minimum wage, something like a million out of 370 million will be affected, but only temporarily, and then later they'll just get higher pay because they'll eventually get a job.
00:48:50.740
Now, of course, how this works depends entirely on the employment situation.
00:48:58.420
So as long as it's still easy enough to get a job, everything's fine.
00:49:04.780
If it's hard to get a job and you lose your job that was less than $15 an hour, well, you're in big trouble because you can't get another job.
00:49:14.160
But if there are plenty of other jobs and you lose your job that's less than minimum wage, you came out ahead because you lost your $10 an hour job,
00:49:24.340
and a month later you got a $50 an hour an hour job, you came out ahead.
00:49:31.000
The company didn't, you know, whoever was paying you was making less money.
00:49:35.760
But the point is, all of the ins and outs of this, and then you have to factor in the people who have more money, are spending more,
00:49:42.140
that stimulates the economy in ways that we just can't model.
00:49:45.500
So it's way too complicated because of the iterative nature of what happens with these people who get the higher wage,
00:49:52.680
then they buy some stuff, and then those people buy some stuff.
00:49:55.600
And it's like this whole iterative thing that you can't possibly model.
00:50:02.440
But I would agree that the total damage is probably in the million people-ish size.
00:50:09.980
That's the only thing you can take out of this.
00:50:18.660
There are some things that don't really require an answer.
00:50:23.080
Somebody says, it's a bad idea, let the market determine the wage.
00:50:28.120
If the market could determine the wage, that would be great.
00:50:32.200
But we do know that the market is not a perfect market.
00:50:39.420
Let me say something that will probably get me in trouble.
00:50:48.580
The people who are working for minimum wage are some combination of young people who will someday make more.
00:50:56.160
And older people who maybe don't have the skills that they could ever make more than that.
00:51:00.660
If you don't have the skills to make more than minimum wage, are you really mobile?
00:51:07.540
Can you just leave your job and go to another one?
00:51:11.420
There's nothing stopping you legally from quitting your job and going to a new one.
00:51:15.340
But I would argue that the adults who are kind of stuck in that minimum wage world, I don't know that they're so mobile.
00:51:24.840
I don't know that they really have that choice.
00:51:27.440
Because it might mean missing a paycheck and not eating this week or something.
00:51:32.600
So I don't know that they have the wherewithal, the ability to change jobs as easily as you would like.
00:51:39.440
So I'm questioning whether the free market is free in this case.
00:51:47.160
Now remember, the free market's a great idea until you get some problems such as a monopoly.
00:51:54.480
Would you agree that monopolies need to be dealt with?
00:52:00.140
If the free market created a monopoly, then the monopoly's fine.
00:52:05.520
Because you would have to have both views, I think.
00:52:07.600
If you believe that the free market will adjust to minimum wage,
00:52:14.340
if you believe that the free market will give you the right wage level,
00:52:19.400
then you probably also should believe that monopolies are fine.
00:52:23.300
Because I don't think you can take a view that sometimes you can tinker with the free market and sometimes not.
00:52:31.020
You either have to say, we're going to tinker with it or we're not.
00:52:35.280
And if you're not, you've got to let everything in.
00:52:38.720
And if you are, this is probably worthy of tinkering.
00:52:45.640
It is one of the reasons that I got out of the restaurant business, by the way.
00:52:49.840
Although restaurants will probably have a different minimum wage.
00:53:00.760
And it looks obvious, fake news, but I'll tell you what it is.
00:53:04.620
That Dr. Fauci was allegedly, and I think this is not even slightly true,
00:53:10.340
was saying that hydroxychloroquine was like a cure for SARS-CoV-2 back in 2005.
00:53:19.260
Number one, if it were true, it would be headline news, at least on Fox News.
00:53:26.420
It would be headline news somewhere in a big news organization, but it isn't.
00:53:40.860
It's a little too exactly like a conspiracy theory that Fauci would have publicly said
00:53:53.300
So if you put those three things together, I would say there's really no chance that this is real.
00:54:02.040
Like, pure fake news, not even based on anything that ever happened.
00:54:06.360
So I think you should treat that as pure fake news.
00:54:10.860
But the World Health Organization got a scientist to look into whether the Wuhan lab was the source
00:54:21.960
A guy who had close connections to the Wuhan lab
00:54:26.400
and also had been helping fund them for years, you know, getting them funding,
00:54:31.280
he says that there's no evidence that the lab was to blame.
00:54:35.780
Maybe it came from packaged meat that was shipped into the country.
00:54:38.980
Now, one of the things that this World Health Organization guy did,
00:54:45.080
and I know what you're thinking, China influences them,
00:54:47.780
so you can't trust the World Health Organization.
00:54:57.100
saying that they were wrong on many aspects about COVID.
00:55:09.160
how can you say that the U.S. intelligence agencies are not dependable?
00:55:14.480
Well, do you trust the U.S. intelligence agencies?
00:55:20.980
They got wrong on the weapons of mass destruction.
00:55:46.360
I mean, if you believe our own intelligence services,
00:56:27.900
I would agree with the World Health Organization