Episode 1291 Scott Adams： CNN Goes Full-Racist, AOC Starts Her Presidential Run, And Delicious Coffee Too
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Summary
On today's episode of The Daily Show, Sarah Palin is joined by Sarah Palin to talk about the coldest day of the year in Texas, CNN hires a permanent fact-checker, and Joe Biden gets booed at a town hall.
Transcript
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Ba-ba-bum. Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. This is the time. You made it.
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Congratulations. The first thing you were trying to do today, for many of you,
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you got it right. Yeah, you're here, on time, ready for the simultaneous sip.
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And being ready isn't just a state of mind. No. You also have to have a cup or a mug or a glass,
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a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with what?
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That's right, your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of
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the dopamine here today, the thing that makes everything better, including the temperature
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in Texas. Yeah, it's working. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now. Go.
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Oh. Mmm. Now, the coffee doesn't warm Texas by itself, because science, right? Science.
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You also need Ted Cruz to not be in Cancun. Suppose you only had coffee, but Ted Cruz was still in
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Cancun. Would that warm Texas? No. No. Not even a little bit. But if you have the simultaneous sip,
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you also have Ted Cruz leaving Cancun like a hero. Really, a hero. Comes all the way back to the
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United States. The temperature immediately turns around. Today, it looks like we'll be above freezing
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in many places in Texas. The power is being restored to all but 18,000 people so far.
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I don't know if it's too early for some kind of presidential medal of freedom or something for
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Ted Cruz. But what did you do? Did you do anything to help in Texas? Oh, sure. Some of you sent money,
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and yeah, you did things like that. But did you do what Ted Cruz did? Left Cancun, came back to the
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United States. Boom. Problem solved. That's the way you do it. Did you see any Democrats doing that?
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No. No. There was not one Democrat who came back from Cancun to the United States to help Texas.
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I'll bet there were Democrats in Cancun, don't you think? There must have been a few. None of them
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came back to warm up the state. Disgraceful. Well, one of the funniest things happening right now
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is that, as you know, CNN hired a permanent fact-checker named Daniel Dale. And he was there
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just fact-checking the crap out of President Trump. Oh, he was so busy fact-checking and fact-checking.
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But what do you do when Trump's out of office? And you hired a fact-checker. Now, they didn't say
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he's the Trump fact-checker, in which case you'd say, well, he'll need another job. He was the fact-checker.
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So you can't really fire the fact-checker on the same day that Biden is inaugurated, can you?
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That would be a little bit too on the nose, wouldn't it? So you've got to kind of, you're kind
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of trapped. Bureaucratically, you're kind of trapped. And they're probably sitting there saying,
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oh, crap. We can't really fire the fact-checker the first day we get the new president.
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Everybody would know we were just doing it to get Trump. So he keeps his job.
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But if you have a job, you cannot do it. You've got to do some fact-checking. Now, what would
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Daniel Dale's career look like if he came to work every day and said, well, it's another day of Joe
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Biden not telling a single lie? He wouldn't have a job anymore, right? So in order for Daniel Dale to
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keep his job, he's going to have to do a little fact-checking on Biden. And so there's now a video
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package that's, you know, on top of the fact he's already fact-checked Biden's town hall, but now it's
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a video package. Now, it doesn't get a lot of play on the CNN website. I mean, but it's there.
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So he's plugging along doing his job and debunked, I guess, several numbers, statistical claims that
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Biden had completely wrong. And to me, this is just the funniest part of the whole thing
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is that they desperately, I'm guessing, right? I'm just speculating and mind reading right now.
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But don't you think that the management of CNN wishes this guy didn't have his job anymore?
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Because what can he do? He can't not fact-check him. He's the fact-checker. So they're a little
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bit trapped. All right. News today is that Kanye is divorcing Kim Kardashian. So if you had voted for
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Kanye for president under the hopes that your first lady would be Kim Kardashian, apparently that would
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have been a bad move. Although, has there ever been a first lady who got divorced or called for a divorce
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while being first lady? I feel as though if Kanye had made it to the White House, that maybe Kim
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Kardashian would have said, well, I'll postpone this a little bit, a little bit. But what would have been
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more fun? Just hypothetically, of course, it wasn't close to happening? But I'm just saying, what if
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Kanye had been president and then become single? What would single president Kanye be worth in terms of
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entertainment value to the rest of the country? Oh, oh, a lot. A lot. Can you imagine anything more fun than Kanye as
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president and single? Seriously? Come on. You would vote for him just to see that? I mean, I like the country to do
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well and all that. And I actually think Kanye could do a pretty darn good job as president. Like, literally,
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genuinely, truly, I think he could do a good job as president. No, hyperbole, no joke. In case you think
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it's a joke. It's not. I think he could actually do the job well. But damn, would he be entertaining?
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Oh, my God, I want that to happen. I don't think it will, but I want it. There's good news about vaccines.
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Apparently, Mayo Clinic has determined that if you get the vaccination, they were worried that you
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could also be a carrier, that you could have some kind of low-level infection that doesn't bother you
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necessarily ever, but you might be able to spread it. And now they think it's upwards of 80% effective
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in preventing infection in the first place, which makes sense to me. I mean, it kind of makes sense
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that it would do that. So now we've got the single dose coming. We've got new news that the vaccination
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is better than we thought. Things are looking good, except for that we're approaching in the United
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States. Now the number of deaths from the regular flu is reported to be around 10% of that. So is there
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anybody left who says this is just the flu? Now that it has killed, allegedly, and I don't believe the
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number of deaths from the regular flu, but it's reported. It's in that 50,000 range, I think between
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30 and 80,000. Let's say 50,000. If we hit half a million on the coronavirus, it is 10 times as deadly.
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Is there anybody left who still says it's just the flu? 10 times as deadly. Now I know some of you are
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saying, but they're counting it wrong. It's not really half a million. It's a smaller number. Even
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if it's a smaller number, it's three times as bad or something. Yeah. So people say, I don't believe
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the number of deaths. Well, let's get to that. Speaking of fake news. Actually, we'll do that next.
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So CNN has decided to go full racist. And see if this is too strong. Okay? So I'm making the claim
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right now. The CNN's coverage last night was fully, transparently, obviously, just racist. Like seriously
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racist. Like as racist as you can be. I'm not talking about the woke kind of racist. You know,
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where somebody offended somebody, but you're not sure there was any racist intent, or even maybe
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racist outcome of any serious kind. I'm not talking about the woke stuff. I'm talking about the real,
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like classic, worst stuff you can have kind of racism. Now I'm going to describe what they did.
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And then you tell me if I'm over-interpreting it. Have I gone too far? Is this hyperbole?
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Let me tell you what they did. So their reporting is that there are a number of state laws being
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floated to restrict voting, restrict voting in a variety of ways, such as limiting the use of drop
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boxes, eliminating Sunday voting, requiring IDs for mail-in voting, et cetera. So things along those
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lines. Now, every one of these has the effect of decreasing the number of people who are likely to
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vote. Because every time you put any friction on something, what happens? Anybody? Have you ever
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listened to me talk about friction? Whenever you add friction, less of something happens. That's how
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friction works. Whenever you remove friction or reward something, you get more of it. So wouldn't
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you expect that if they restrict voting, you'll get less voting? That doesn't sound good, right? Even
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though what they're trying to stop is the illegal voting. But you would probably go beyond that,
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wouldn't you? There's no doubt about it. There's nobody here who's an adult who doubts the fact
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that these things would decrease the number of black voters. Is there anybody who would doubt that?
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Does anybody think that it wouldn't decrease the number of black voters? Of course it would. Because
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it would decrease, wait for it, all voters. It would decrease all voters. Now, let me ask you this.
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In Georgia, Georgia is one of the states that's being looked at for doing exactly this kind of
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stuff. I don't know the demographics, but wouldn't it be true that there are more poor white people
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still than poor black people? Check my work on this, because I'm not positive that when I get to my
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ultimate point, that I haven't missed something, okay? So I'm going to give you this statement with
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a 65% level confidence on my side. It goes like this. If you do something to add friction,
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and it's the kind of friction that will grind on people on the low end of the economic spectrum,
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so I would say that every one of these voting restrictions would hit hardest at people who
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are on the low end of the economic ladder. You'd agree with that, right? Pretty much any kind of
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friction on voting is, you know, it's going to hit the low economic group harder. They may not be able
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to take the day off to vote unless they get a Sunday. They may not be able to drive, might not even have a
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car. So if you can, you know, it might not even have a bus fare. So if you can drop off your ballot
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at the drop box, more likely to do it. Requiring ID, if you're low, low economic situation,
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maybe you're less likely to have ID. So the things we can agree on so far is that poor people would be
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hit the hardest with any restrictions, at least these kind. Everything we're talking about hits poor
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people the hardest. Number two, fewer black people would be expected to vote because among the
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category of poor people, you have a number of black people. And percentage-wise, I think this is still
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true, right? Percentage-wise, the percentage of black people in the bad economic situation would
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be a higher percentage than, say, white people. So far, that's all true, right? Have I said anything
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that's not true yet? But here's the part I'm wondering about. You don't vote for president
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with a percentage. You don't say, hey, somebody won a percentage of the black vote so they can be
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president. You still have to win the most number of votes, right? You don't get to be president unless
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you get the most number of votes. It's a quantity thing. It's not a percentage thing.
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So aren't there way more poor white people everywhere? Or is that different, say, in some
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Georgia cities, for example, where maybe it's important to the electoral college process?
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So the question I'm asking, somebody's pointing out the electoral college, right? So there might be
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some places, such as some individual cities, in which you would exactly have the impact of there are
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more poor black people there, quantity-wise as well as percentage, and therefore maybe that could
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change the vote. But basically, CNN is making the case that anything that affects poor people's
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voting will affect black people more. That's racist. That's like pure racist. That's not even a
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counter-argument on the other side. I don't even know what the counter-argument would be. I'm not
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even saying the counter-argument is right or wrong. I don't think there is one. If you're saying that
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poor black people have less capability, this is what CNN is saying, effectively, effectively saying
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this, that a poor black person would have less capability to solve how to vote than a poor white
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person. That's what they're saying, effectively. They don't say that directly. But by saying that
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it's racist to make these changes, you are saying that somehow poor white people have this extra
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capability to figure out how to vote on a Sunday or to get an ID? I don't know that there's any date
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that backs that up, is there? And again, I will accept the idea that as a percentage, it would be
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a bigger percentage hit on the black population. But we don't elect presidents based on percentages.
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You still have to get the most number of votes. And if there are more poor white people, isn't it
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affecting that more than the smaller group of poor black people? I'm really uncomfortable with this idea.
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That, well, I don't have to say more about it. I find it uncomfortably racist, the way they talk
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about it. But the point of it, I have a complete agreement with, by the way. So, philosophically,
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and in terms of what is good and bad, of course, you don't want to disadvantage one group over another.
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So, of course, you don't want new rules that will disenfranchise any group, if you can do it.
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All right. And look at some of these rules, like calling early voting lists. So, basically,
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the activity of getting rid of voters that you know should not be registered for real reasons,
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It's racist to talk about it as racist, but it's not racist to have an accurate count of who can
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vote. I mean, this is crazy stuff. All right. Let's talk about how to determine fake news. I tweeted
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around this morning that apparently Finland is teaching children as young as six how to spot fake
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news. So, Finland has decided that a national priority is teaching children to spot fake news.
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How cool is that? Can you imagine anything that would be really more useful than that?
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To teach a child? That's just about the most useful, smartest thing I've heard in a long time.
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Right? I can't think of anything that would be more useful as an educational concept. Now,
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obviously, you need to read, write, and do math. But in terms of beyond that, teaching people to spot
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bullshit? That's really important. Now, at the same time, in a weird coincidence, or not, there's an
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article in the New York Times. The same day that I see this Finland story, the New York Times has a story
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about a digital literacy expert at a Washington State University in Vancouver, Mr. Caulfield.
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And he's developed a four-point process for figuring out if news is fake. And I'll tell you his method,
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and then we'll compare it to mine in a moment. So, the four steps of this. Number one, so you read a story,
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and you want to know if it's true or fake news. The first thing you do is slow down to think about it,
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right? So, step one is stop. Don't just read it and move on, right? So, the first thing you do is stop.
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Two, investigate the source. Who exactly is saying this? Good so far, right? Number three,
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find better coverage. In other words, find a new source which you trust more.
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Just fell apart, didn't it? So, in this four-point process, I haven't even got to the fourth point,
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and you know the process doesn't work. Because the third point is find better coverage.
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If you had that capability, you would not be fooled by fake news in the first place.
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You don't know what is the better coverage, do you? Is it CNN? Is it MSNBC? Is that your better
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coverage? Is it? Or is it Fox News? Is it Breitbart? So, by the third of his four points,
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it completely falls apart. It couldn't possibly work in the real world. Because we don't know what the
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better coverage is. Do you know why? The fake news fools us about what the better coverage. We can't
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tell. Now, I feel like I can tell. And so do you, don't you? You feel like you can tell. I'll bet you
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think you can tell. But that's the problem. Some of you are right. Some of you can tell. But can the
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average person? Do you think the average news consumer who is more of a casual news consumer?
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If you're watching this live stream, you're probably in the top 5% of people who pay attention
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to news. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. But the general country, you're not paying attention that
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much. They can't tell which are good sources of news. That's just not something they'll ever be
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able to do if they're casual consumers. But then the fourth one is trace the claims,
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quotes, and media to the original context. So this is good. So the find people hoax, for example,
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if you had traced it to the original context, played the original video, you would have known
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it was a hoax. But who in the world is going to do this? You open up your homepage. There are,
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let's say, on Fox News or CNN, maybe 25 stories. And all of them are reasonably important, you know,
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to the world. Are you going to fact check on your own and, you know, go look for other sources and
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stuff for 25 stories a day? No. No, you're not. There's no human way you're going to do this work.
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But there is one interesting tidbit. So I'm going to ignore the four steps. I don't think they're
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well devised to actually work. But he does say one thing that's good. Don't do a deep dive on
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something that you're not sure is true. Because by the time you're done, you'll think it was true.
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So if you go, if you find a video that's, say, an hour or two long, and it's like this whole
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conspiracy theory, if you take, if you make the mistake of watching the whole two hours,
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and you don't go check anything else to see if it's right or wrong, you will be brainwashed.
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Because that two hours is going to be good. It's going to be really convincing without any
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counterpoints. So anything that you go into a deep well, you basically are brainwashing yourself.
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That's QAnon. You know, QAnon is sort of the deep well. You spend a lot of time on conspiracies
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until you talk yourself into it. So he's, Mr. Caulfield is recommending instead, that instead of doing a
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deep dive, and basically hypnotizing yourself on a topic, you do a, let's say, a shallow dive,
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and then you take it sideways or lateral, meaning that you check what other people are saying about
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the same topic. So that it would be better to spend five seconds seeing what CNN says and five
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seconds seeing what somebody else says, than it would be to spend two hours looking at what one
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person says. And that is math I agree on. That's where we're completely agreed. In my book,
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Loser Think, which would be the book I would give to everybody in Finland who is trying to learn how
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to determine what is fake news. In fact, it's probably the best book in the world on teaching
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somebody how to find fake news. And I have one tip in there that I think is better than these four
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steps and better than whatever Finland is teaching their kids. It goes like this. In this country,
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anyway, I'm not sure it would work everywhere. But in this country, where we have such a siloed
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news from the left, and we have a siloed news from the right, use the following rule.
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If both of them report the news the same, it's probably true. So if they say there are freezing
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temperatures in Texas and the power is out, and they both say that, it's probably true. But if one
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network says that the president once called neo-Nazis fine people, and you can find another major outlet
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that says it didn't happen, and here's why, which one do you trust? The one that says it did happen,
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or the one that says it did not happen? Always go with did not. And it doesn't matter who said what.
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That's the key point. Doesn't matter if the left says it's true or the right says it's true.
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If the other one, and it doesn't matter which of the outlets, if there's a major outlet
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that says it's not true, and then shows their work, right? They got to show their work. It's not
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true. And if you follow that rule, you'll be right at least 85% of the time. I can't tell you it'll
00:25:17.740
work every time. Now, every once in a while, you get something that Fox News says is true,
00:25:23.560
that Breitbart says is not. Now what do you do? Because they're both associated with the right.
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Fox News says it's true. The fine people hoax, for example, it's opinion people were saying it
00:25:37.140
wasn't true, but the news people were sort of staying away from it like maybe it was true.
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So you weren't quite sure if you were watching Fox News if that was true or not for a long time.
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But if you read Breitbart, also associated with conservative viewers, it said cleanly,
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no, it's not true. And often Joel Pollack would be the one. And he'd show you why. Shows his work.
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Oh, here's the transcript. You can see it's not true. Under those cases, who do you believe? Fox,
00:26:10.200
not so clear. Or Breitbart that shows you their work and says it's not true. Breitbart, right? Now,
00:26:17.100
I'm not saying Breitbart, always better than Fox News. I'm saying that whenever there's one that says
00:26:23.080
it's not true, doesn't matter who it is, left or right, as soon as you see one of them say it didn't
00:26:30.580
happen, it probably didn't happen. Now, it gets complicated when you're looking at the question
00:26:38.520
of did the election, was the election, let's say, fraudulent? So you've got two different networks
00:26:47.920
covering it differently. What do you do? So you've got your CNN, let's say, I'll just use them as the
00:26:53.640
proxy for the left. You've got CNN saying the election was fine, no evidence whatsoever of
00:27:01.040
fraud. You go over to Fox, and it's just nonstop stories about sketchy stuff. Now, it doesn't prove
00:27:08.880
the election was fraudulent, and nor does Fox make that claim. They didn't say we found any proof.
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At least the news part of it didn't. The opinion people went a little bit further,
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but I don't think any of them, well, I don't know, it doesn't matter. What the news people said
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is what matters to the story. Now, if they're a little bit different, what do you do? Well,
00:27:33.120
you've got this weird story where there are two potential fake newses. One is that the election
00:27:40.120
was fraudulent and proven, or that we have evidence that is conclusive, and that's just not true. We
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don't. And the other is that we know for sure it was not fraudulent. Well, that's not true. All we
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know is we don't know. That's it. We know there's no widespread, there's no evidence that a court has
00:28:04.240
accepted that there is widespread fraud. We know that's true. But we don't know no fraud happened.
00:28:11.560
That's a whole different question. So they're both, in a sense, there's a little fake news
00:28:18.680
everywhere on that one. So you have to be careful. All right. So that's my rule. If somebody's saying
00:28:24.420
something didn't happen and chose their work, 85% of the time, they will be the one that's right.
00:28:36.400
What you do is you censor anyone saying there is fraud. Yeah, that will get you to the same place.
00:28:44.020
All right. Other stories. On Australia's version of Sky News, there was a host named Bernardi
00:28:54.400
who just tore apart the American media for basically protecting Joe Biden. And this guy does
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this major monologue on Sky News, you know, major outlet in Australia, saying that it's basically
00:29:09.880
obvious to everyone that Biden is cognitively declined. And he went at it hard. Now, it's one
00:29:18.180
thing. It's one thing to be in this country and making claims like, hey, you know, your president's
00:29:25.260
cognitively declined. Because you automatically think, okay, you know, you're in the battle.
00:29:30.960
Everybody's making accusations about everybody. So you sort of discounted it a little bit in your head,
00:29:36.520
right? Because you say, well, the other team always says your president is crazy.
00:29:40.260
That's just standard. It's like, you know, if Democrats accuse the next Republican president,
00:29:49.460
whenever that happens, of being a racist, how seriously do you take it? Because you know that
00:29:55.980
if they're a Republican, they're going to be accused of being racist. So you just discount it because
00:30:00.460
there's politics within the country. But seeing somebody from Australia, who is just talking about
00:30:07.140
the United States, like he doesn't have a dog in the fight, he's just talking about it, just observing
00:30:13.020
it. And in his view, it's glaringly obvious that Biden is mentally unwell, and certainly not up to
00:30:23.620
the job. It's just obvious. It hits you different when it comes from somebody who doesn't have a dog
00:30:29.940
in the fight. And they're just on the outside, just watching. It's like, oh, guys, a little bit
00:30:36.480
obvious, a little bit obvious. So that, that was interesting. All right. I would say that AOC,
00:30:46.500
who I praise often for her political skill and persuasion, but not necessarily her policies.
00:30:55.780
Now, one of the hits against AOC is that she has like wild, crazy policies about
00:31:02.380
the Green New Deal, and it's all impractical. I don't, I don't criticize her as much as you do
00:31:12.660
for that. Because you know who else had a plan that was crazy and impractical? Trump. When Trump ran
00:31:22.700
for office, he said he was going to literally deport the, what, 11 million people living here
00:31:31.900
without citizenship, or 25 million, or whatever it was. And the entire time that Trump was running,
00:31:40.460
I said, don't worry about that. That's not going to happen, because it can't happen. It's just
00:31:45.000
not practical. There's just no way to do it. Then sure enough, when he became president,
00:31:49.480
the very first thing he did practically was say, well, not so much deporting people who've been
00:31:54.960
here a long time, but let's just work on the border. Now, I said from the beginning, it was
00:32:00.540
always just a big first offer to make him look like the baddest badass on immigration. And that once
00:32:07.260
he had established that, he, he, you, you would be in a position to negotiate something more,
00:32:12.260
more reasonable, but still tough on immigration. So I say the same thing about AOC and the Green New
00:32:20.580
Deal, which is there are elements of it, which you have to know she knows are not 100% practical.
00:32:27.540
But she does the big ask, just like Trump, gets all the attention, just like Trump,
00:32:34.820
weaponizes that energy and the attention to take her to the next level, just like Trump.
00:32:41.100
Trump. So in terms of just technique, the similarities are striking. It's the same game
00:32:47.520
plan, just different politics. And so get used to the fact that I will be saying good things
00:32:53.520
about her technique, not her policies. Although sometimes I might agree with them. Here are two
00:32:59.840
things that she's doing right now that, in my opinion, are brilliant politically. So they're,
00:33:07.440
I'm not saying they're brilliant in a real world way, but politically, they're brilliant.
00:33:13.800
Two things are that she is, she raised, I guess, $2 million to help in relief and distribute supplies
00:33:22.940
to the people in Texas who are suffering under the cold temperatures. Now, because she's a
00:33:28.620
representative of the Bronx and Queens, people say, hey, shouldn't you be helping your own district?
00:33:35.320
They got problems too. Why are you helping Texas? I'll tell you why she's helping Texas.
00:33:42.980
Because she's going to run for president someday. So she is establishing herself as someone who will
00:33:48.720
reach across the political lines and even the state lines, because she's looking at things from
00:33:54.440
the big picture way. I hate to tell you, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Because, you know,
00:34:03.460
it's Ted Cruz's state, it makes Ted Cruz look bad for going off to Cancun. So she sets up a contrast.
00:34:11.820
Bad, bad Ted Cruz goes to Cancun. Good AOC. She'll help any state. You, even if you're Republican,
00:34:19.120
she'll help you. That's really, really good. That's like A plus political material. All right.
00:34:26.500
Now, Texas is also sort of on the bubble, isn't it? You could imagine, maybe not yet,
00:34:36.720
but you could imagine Texas voting for a Democrat for president. Because it's getting close, right?
00:34:43.980
I mean, it used to be real Republican, but shrinking that margin now? Weren't so sure that Trump was
00:34:50.320
going to win Texas, were you? It was close. So AOC picked exactly the right state with exactly the
00:34:58.140
right play politically. On top of that, apparently she's, I was looking for the story, but I think it's
00:35:05.120
true, that she's backing an investigation of Governor Cuomo on the nursing home stuff. Now, if that's true,
00:35:12.700
this is her turning against, you know, a major Democrat political figure, because it's the
00:35:19.840
right thing to do. Now, the more times that AOC does something that you could describe with these
00:35:29.400
words, because it's the right thing to do, meaning that it's not purely political, although it is,
00:35:36.440
right? It's so political that it doesn't look political. That's how well done it is. It looks
00:35:42.280
like she's just crossing the line and, you know, doing something for the other side and just doing
00:35:47.400
the right thing and ignoring politics. But the way she ignores politics is the best politics you'll
00:35:54.080
ever see. In the same way, by analogy, when ex-President Obama ran for office the first time, he did not run
00:36:05.760
as a black guy. He was a black guy, but if he had made that some kind of advantage that he was selling
00:36:13.540
for why he should be elected, it would have worked against him. So his politics, Obama's politics, were
00:36:20.580
next level. So by ignoring the racial part that is our normal politics, he just put himself above it.
00:36:27.880
And then when people said, okay, you are kind of putting yourself above it, that's okay. You know,
00:36:33.520
we want a president who's, you know, above that and he's not running because he's black, right? And that
00:36:41.840
allowed people to cross the lines easily. So what AOC is doing is making it easy for some Republicans in
00:36:49.640
the future to say, you know, that's a lot about her I don't like, but she does have a pattern of being
00:36:56.780
able to do the right thing in the bad situations, the Cuomo situation, the Texas situation. And she's
00:37:04.880
willing to go against her own party when it's the right thing to do. That's really good. That is
00:37:14.320
really good. I've always often said that one of the things that helped Trump is that he had once been
00:37:19.780
a registered Democrat and he had, you know, he had lots of Democrat kind of leanings. He was more
00:37:26.760
pro-gay marriage, pro-gay than past Republicans, et cetera. So I think that Trump had that going for
00:37:34.120
him too, which is that he would take what he thought was right and he could, you know, sometimes
00:37:40.620
disagree with his own party, not too often. Matt Taibbi, who I mention often because he's in that
00:37:49.080
rare group of, I guess he'd be called a journalist. I don't know what title he would like to go by.
00:37:54.820
He's got a popular podcast as well. Author, maybe. But he has this problem. I, when I track him,
00:38:05.160
you know, I've just followed him on Twitter where he'll say something smart and reasonable
00:38:10.840
and people will just be triggered into cognitive dissonance because you don't expect people to be
00:38:17.560
smart and reasonable. And that alone triggers people into cognitive dissonance. Just the fact
00:38:23.760
that he can talk objectively without the political filter about pretty much anything. He has that
00:38:30.540
special skill. It's very rare, or at least rare that people will exhibit that skill in public and
00:38:36.780
he does often. So watching him have to deal with the fact that he triggers people to hallucinate
00:38:42.080
is fun because that's what I do. If you've ever watched my Twitter feed, it's just full of critics
00:38:50.100
who have misinterpreted something I said and they're really mad at that hallucination that exists only in
00:38:58.000
their head. It has nothing to do with anything I said or did, nothing to do with my opinion, nothing to
00:39:03.080
do with my effect on anything. It's a pure hallucination. But they're coming after me because their
00:39:10.620
hallucinations suggest that I've done something that literally never happened. Said something I
00:39:15.880
didn't say, meant something I didn't mean, something like that. And for a long time, I thought it was
00:39:22.260
just something about me or the way I talk or the way I word things. So I thought, I'm just triggering
00:39:29.220
people. You know, I can't even turn it off. If I knew how, I'd turn it off, right? But watching Matt
00:39:35.260
Taibbi do it, you know, a different person, completely different situation for me, and you
00:39:40.260
can see, it's more clear when you see the pattern. The pattern is there's a certain segment that can't
00:39:47.280
handle it if you can see both sides of a topic. That's it. If you can simply see and describe
00:39:55.060
the argument on both sides of a topic, it doesn't mean you even picked one. You can simply see them.
00:40:01.700
You can just describe them accurately. That alone will trigger some percentage of the public
00:40:08.980
into actually hallucinating, like literally imagining they saw or heard something that
00:40:15.760
didn't happen or read something that didn't happen. And so I'm glad it's not just happening to me,
00:40:20.780
but it's literally that's all it takes to trigger cognitive dissonance, acknowledging the other
00:40:26.280
argument. That's it. That's all it takes. Woody Allen is going to have a bad month. I guess there's
00:40:33.460
some new Woody Allen documentary called Allen vs. Pharaoh coming out on Sunday, and that it goes,
00:40:42.460
it says it goes beyond the scandalous headlines and makes an argument that Woody Allen got away with
00:40:49.340
the unthinkable in a number of ways. So I think they mean unthinkable child sexual accusations or
00:40:59.880
something. I'm not exactly sure the details of it. But here's what I would say about this. Do you
00:41:05.720
remember? I was talking about the four steps for recognizing fake news from Mr. Caulfield,
00:41:11.780
and he warned you, don't do a deep dive on one topic. If you watch this documentary,
00:41:19.740
this will be the thing he warned you not to do. If you watch this documentary, which apparently its
00:41:26.160
point of view is that Woody Allen is guilty of unthinkable acts, will you come away believing it was
00:41:34.480
true? Yes, you will. Because if you do a deep dive, you're going to be sort of living in it, and you
00:41:42.980
won't see any counterpoints. You will only see what the documentary wants you to see, and you will believe
00:41:49.460
that Woody Allen is a monster. Is he? How would I know? How would I know, right? I mean, he's been
00:41:57.800
accused of some bad stuff. I wasn't there. But I do know the Murray-Gell-Mann amnesia theory,
00:42:06.900
which says that if you're watching news that you personally know the truth of, let's say it's news
00:42:13.020
about you, and you personally know what's true and what isn't, which is rare, you know that the news is
00:42:19.180
fake. But as soon as it's about something you don't have personal knowledge of, you imagine it might be
00:42:24.720
true. There's no reason to believe that. Now, here's a caution I give you. If you really want to
00:42:32.080
screw with your own brain, go Google the two recent documentaries about Michael Jackson.
00:42:40.460
One documentary shows two accusers who are very credible, saying that he did horrible things with
00:42:48.040
them when they were children. And if you do a deep dive on that and spend the length of the documentary
00:42:53.840
looking at that, you will walk away thinking that could not be untrue. I mean, that's really,
00:43:00.300
really convincing. Really convincing. And that's certainly the experience I had. I watched that
00:43:05.520
thing and I said, you know, that puts the rest all doubts. Like if anybody thought maybe Michael
00:43:11.920
Jackson wasn't doing terrible things, you just watch that documentary. It's pretty obvious.
00:43:17.400
Yes. When you listen to these witnesses, they look very credible. Lots of details. And then
00:43:23.720
Google, I don't know the name of it, but there's a, there's a second documentary that came out
00:43:29.660
soon after that, which debunked the first documentary perfectly. Meaning that if you did a deep dive on the
00:43:40.840
debunk, you would never believe the first one again, because the debunk is, it's as strong as
00:43:47.780
the accusation. But if you'd only seen the debunk or you'd only seen the accusation, you would go down
00:43:54.600
that well and you would stay there. If you've only seen one of them, you would be completely sold
00:44:00.140
because they're both that good, but they're opposite truths. One is really compelling that none of this
00:44:06.860
happened. And it can all be explained in, in documented, easy, obvious ways that it didn't
00:44:12.280
happen. And the other one is just as convincing that it definitely happened.
00:44:19.080
Now you watch this Woody Allen movie. This is very, by analogy, it's very similar to the first
00:44:25.840
Michael Jackson movie. You watch this thing and I haven't seen it, of course, but I guarantee you
00:44:32.660
that if you watch this documentary that comes out on Sunday, you will be convinced that Woody Allen
00:44:38.180
is a monster. Don't be. Now I'm not saying he's not, and it's not my job to defend him or anybody
00:44:47.980
else. Personally, I have no knowledge of anything that Woody Allen did or did not do. I know what he's
00:44:54.820
accused of. I know what it sounds like. I just live in a world where stuff about celebrities and
00:45:02.340
in a minor way I'm part of that world is so often untrue that it would be ridiculous to believe it
00:45:09.940
because of just the math of it. Things like that are usually untrue most of the time. I don't know
00:45:18.180
that that's the case in this case. I have no reason to believe it's untrue, but I also have no reason to
00:45:22.640
believe it's true. And I would caution you that as that this advice about going sideways and looking
00:45:30.620
for a little bit from another source that might doubt your source is way more useful than going
00:45:37.180
all the way down the well and having no other well to double check it. So be careful. Now given that,
00:45:46.100
what do you think about the fact that this documentary exists? Because it's either a great service to the
00:45:53.520
world, or it's complete bullshit. Because one of those two Michael Jackson documentaries, I don't know
00:46:05.040
which one. One of them's bullshit, and it looks pretty darn compelling. They both do. So I would not
00:46:13.920
believe anything about the Woody Allen story. I wouldn't believe anything. I wouldn't believe he's
00:46:19.460
innocent. I don't think I have any reason to have that judgment. But I also wouldn't believe that any
00:46:27.460
of the specific claims are necessarily true. You just don't live in a world in which you could trust
00:46:34.280
any of this, not any of it. And somebody's saying that one option is that they're both bullshit. Yeah,
00:46:41.440
you can't rule out the fact that the truth is somewhere in between or on the side or somewhere
00:46:47.360
completely else. So I will recommend the following. When you're trying to sort out your fake news,
00:46:53.440
make sure that all the sources reported the same, or it's probably not true. You should listen to
00:46:59.880
people like Matt Taibbi, people like Tim Poole, people like Mike Cernovich, people like Jack Posobiec,
00:47:10.500
people who can tell you something true or not. And at the very least, they're not lying. Right? They could be
00:47:20.000
wrong. Have you ever seen me be wrong about something? Of course. If you've been watching me for a while,
00:47:25.380
you've seen me be wrong. But I've never lied to you. How would you know, right? How would you know? Yeah.
00:47:33.340
Glenn Greenwald has a long, long history of being able to be on any side of a topic wherever the data
00:47:44.100
takes him. So he's proven he can do that. So you should listen to him. Jonathan Turley. Yes.
00:47:51.880
Alan Dershowitz, I would say. Alan Dershowitz can be on either side of an issue. He will actually
00:47:58.100
follow the news. And you can see some other ones. Yeah, the No Agenda podcast. I would say that would
00:48:05.440
be another excellent example. Jordan Peterson, another good example. He doesn't do politics as
00:48:12.260
much, but that would be a good example. Seeing some other... Michael Malice is sort of a special case.
00:48:21.220
I'll agree that he'll go wherever the facts take him. But because his online persona is designed to be
00:48:31.460
entertaining, that's a special case. Naval doesn't talk politics. So that's a decision on his part. He
00:48:44.000
doesn't want to... He just doesn't talk politics. So if you want to learn how to be successful and have
00:48:51.520
a good life and be happy, follow Naval Ravikant. If you want to know politics, that would be someone
00:48:58.260
else. Yeah, you know, somebody's putting Ben Shapiro on the list. So here's the thing. I don't know of
00:49:05.640
any... Personally, I don't know of any examples where Ben Shapiro has ever taken a side that would be
00:49:11.560
maybe more associated with the left. If he's done it, let me know, but I'm not aware of it.
00:49:17.640
I don't believe that Ben Shapiro has ever lied to his audience that I know of. I don't think so.
00:49:23.480
Because it doesn't look like there's any intention to do that. There's no reason to do that.
00:49:27.880
He doesn't need to. Doesn't make him more money to do that. Like, I just don't think
00:49:32.000
that has anything to do with any of his motivation. So I would say that Ben Shapiro would be a good
00:49:38.960
example of somebody who would be you could trust to be honest. But I think that his audience locks
00:49:46.980
him a little bit into a conservative position. I'm not sure that you're going to see somebody
00:49:52.120
crossing over as much. But he'll always be honest within the position that he takes.
00:50:00.460
Michael Knowles, I love his show, but I haven't watched enough of them to have the full context.
00:50:06.920
But he puts on a great show. Somebody said in the comments, my wife says everyone lies.
00:50:18.900
I think it's true that everyone lies, but maybe about different topics. Right? So there's
00:50:27.280
probably something that anybody would lie about. You're more likely to lie about themselves.
00:50:33.860
But if you don't have a reason to lie about the other side, that's good.
00:50:43.120
Somebody's saying Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is an example of someone who has
00:50:48.020
a long history of being able to take a side that the data suggests. Yeah, he does have a history of that.
00:50:56.960
That would be a good. Now, but I would give you a caution. Anybody who's appearing on a network or
00:51:05.540
entity that has a real clear audience preference, you know, meaning their left or their right,
00:51:12.300
they're going to have an extra pressure to be compatible with their team. So I would prefer the,
00:51:20.440
you know, the Taibbi, Tim Pool, even me, because we're sort of doing our own thing. We don't have
00:51:27.960
the pressure of the other people telling us what to do. Yeah, Cheryl Atkinson, another good name,
00:51:34.460
Greg Gottfeld. Greg Gottfeld, a long history of being able to, you know, go with the what makes sense
00:51:41.220
and not where the politics necessarily are. All right. Dave Rubin, perfect example. Yes. Dave Rubin,
00:51:53.460
you know, he could be on the left, he could be on the right. He just follows what makes sense.
00:51:58.700
It's rare. Joe Rogan, yes. Bill Maher is interesting. I have real, I have mixed feelings about Bill Maher.
00:52:08.000
I think Bill Maher suffered from TDS, like a lot of people did. But if you took away that,
00:52:16.320
if the only thing you, you know, you dinged Bill Maher for is a little bit too much TDS,
00:52:22.000
if you take that out, he's pretty brave about being willing to go wherever his opinion and the
00:52:29.960
facts lead him. So I'll give him that. And I would say that Bill Maher is, even if you hate him,
00:52:36.540
like, even if you hate his show, you disagree with him, he's, he's very, I don't know, he's,
00:52:43.220
he's on the border of that national treasure kind of category. Like, maybe it's too soon.
00:52:50.300
But, you know, someday, I think people are going to say of Bill Maher, that he was one of the most
00:52:55.180
valuable voices in America, I think. And only because of how brave he is about the way he talks
00:53:03.280
about certain topics. So I think the bravery of it, and the, the freedom of his that that gave him
00:53:10.320
was valuable to the country. I think that that's, I think he's a service to the country. Honestly,
00:53:16.660
I do. Oh, I just got Andy Knows book, I was going to hold that up. But I'll bring that upstairs in a
00:53:24.020
minute. Geraldo, somebody says? Uh, Geraldo, same thing. I have a tremendous respect for Geraldo,
00:53:32.280
uh, even if, even when I don't agree with him sometimes. But I have tremendous respect for him
00:53:37.600
because he also can fearlessly go left or right, wherever the data takes him. It's just kind of rare.
00:53:44.860
So, and we, we probably just mentioned 80% of all the people who can do that, who are talking about
00:53:51.940
politics and whose names you would recognize. So we, that's probably about it. All right. That's all
00:53:58.200
I got for today. It's slow news day. And I will go do something else now. And I hope that you go off
00:54:05.140
and have a great day. I know you will. Oh, I know you will. Take care.
00:54:12.620
All right. All right. All you YouTube people, I just turned off Periscope. Um, I understand that
00:54:22.620
there's a little button that you're looking at called subscribe. And I hate it when the host at
00:54:27.700
the beginning of a, any kind of a live stream or show, they go into their commercial first.
00:54:32.980
Is that the worst? You turn it on, you want to be entertained and they, they start giving you
00:54:38.140
their housekeeping. And if you hit the subscribe button, blah, blah, blah, but let's all throw it
00:54:43.240
on the end. So anybody who wanted the entertainment only can bail out, but it does help this live
00:54:51.060
stream. If you hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified and, uh, that will keep my voice
00:54:58.580
active. So right now my, uh, numbers and follower, well, actually the followers might be up,
00:55:05.600
but I think the monetization just fell through the roof. Uh, I don't know what's up with that,
00:55:12.160
but there are forces that want to, you know, lessen voices like mine. And if you subscribe,
00:55:18.640
it gives me a little, little more, a little more weight in the market. So please do that if you
00:55:26.240
are inclined. And that is all I have for you today. And I'll talk to you.