Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 16, 2021


Episode 1315 Scott Adams: The Newest HOAX From the Washington Post, CNN Turns on Biden, Shocking Poll


Episode Stats


Length

55 minutes

Words per minute

142.6944

Word count

7,891

Sentence count

603

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Is it ever okay for a man to wear a v-neck t-shirt? And who would win in a fight between Elton John and the Pope when it comes to same-sex unions? This episode is brought to you by DIVE Studios and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 La la la la la. Hey everybody. Come on in. Yeah, it's time and you found the right place.
00:00:09.720 Congratulations. You're doing great today. And may I mention, because I don't know if
00:00:16.240 anybody's said it yet, but you look great today. Have you lost weight? I don't know.
00:00:23.040 You just look healthier, younger, sexier. And it could be because you've been enjoying
00:00:30.280 a little thing that's good for your health. You know what it is. It's called the simultaneous
00:00:35.080 hip. And it's going to happen now. But only, only if you have a cup or mug or a glass, a
00:00:42.080 tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a glass, a vessel of any kind. And only if you
00:00:46.520 filled it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the dopamine hit
00:00:52.460 at the end of the day. The thing that makes everything better. Yeah. It's called the
00:00:57.620 simultaneous sip. Have you heard of it? It's big. It's all over the world. And it's happening
00:01:02.960 now. Go. Suddenly, I feel a psychic, if not a spiritual connection to every other simultaneous
00:01:19.320 sipper everywhere in the world. But what about the people who did not sip? They're dead to
00:01:26.740 me. It's like they don't even exist. But I'm sure they'll get with the program. Well, let's
00:01:32.820 talk about the most important thing of the day. I just tweeted a poll for Women Only. And
00:01:39.220 I'll ask the same thing here. So Women Only, answer me in the comments. 1.00
00:01:44.540 Is it ever okay for a man to wear a v-neck t-shirt? This looks v-neck because I'm wearing
00:01:54.920 a microphone, but it's not. So that's the question. Is it ever okay for a man, women only, only 0.85
00:02:03.300 women, only women? Is it ever okay for a man to wear a v-neck t-shirt? Answers are overwhelmingly 0.99
00:02:11.920 yes. Somebody's wife says no. Sure. Yes, yes, yes. No. I love them. Yes, yes, yes. Sure.
00:02:23.080 Prefer them not to work, somebody says. Well, I've heard it depends on the guy. So I've heard that
00:02:30.200 if your chest area and your arms are in reasonably good shape, you can pull it off. But if you're
00:02:36.820 kind of hairy and you haven't worked out, maybe you shouldn't. All right. Well, we settled that.
00:02:41.380 Let's talk about something else. I put a micro lesson on reframing, how to reframe your experience
00:02:49.880 on the Locals platform. It's a subscription platform for seven bucks a month. You get all of my wisdom
00:02:56.160 that you can't see anywhere else. And I was looking at the responses to it, and it looks
00:03:04.000 like it's life-changing. And I hoped it would be. But the idea of just looking at things differently
00:03:10.460 and then how that will change how you feel about things and how you act is a really powerful
00:03:16.100 thing. So a lot of people are saying it's just literally life-changing. But in other news,
00:03:22.820 Elton John has condemned the Pope for ruling that same-sex unions are sinful. And I thought to
00:03:30.800 myself, that's kind of a fair fight, isn't it? Elton John versus the Pope. In many ways, they're the
00:03:39.420 same person, aren't they? If you hold it, you had Elton John. Just do this exercise. Just imagine
00:03:47.060 Elton John. And then just think sort of generally about Elton John's vibe. You know, just feel him
00:03:55.800 just generally. Hold that in your head. Now think of the Pope. Same guy. It's the same guy. Wouldn't
00:04:03.640 you like to see them have a cage fight and the winner gets to decide who gets married? I'd like
00:04:09.360 that. I mean, it's two people who like flamboyant clothing and being in public. And I was trying to
00:04:17.140 imagine who could referee this fight. And obviously, God would be the best referee. And so I'm imagining
00:04:26.600 the Pope praying over this and praying to God. And unlike regular people, if you pray to God,
00:04:34.020 you don't feel him actually talking back usually. Maybe some of you do. It's more of a feeling,
00:04:41.800 right? But if you're the Pope, it's more like a phone call. And he's like, hey, God, you know,
00:04:47.080 I've got this situation. Elton John is mad at me because of this same-sex union thing. I came out
00:04:54.480 against it. And God would say, wait, who? Who's against you? Elton John. Elton John, I love Tiny
00:05:06.080 Dancer. And the Pope would be, okay, let's not get sidetracked. Just a question about these sinful 0.97
00:05:13.120 same-sex unions. Who's right, Elton John or me? And God says, have you heard Levon? It's amazing.
00:05:21.940 I play it all the time up here in heaven. And the Pope would be, can we stay on the topic?
00:05:27.640 So anyway, I think Elton John would probably get the nod if it came down to that.
00:05:32.480 Did you see the shocking video of a small plane in Florida crashing into a car
00:05:38.720 on the ground? Apparently, a few people died. Yeah, I guess a few died. It's a shocking-looking
00:05:46.980 thing. But you have to have really bad luck. I'm not making fun of this. I'm just saying,
00:05:52.680 you have to have really bad luck to die because a plane hit you while you were driving in your car.
00:06:00.280 Again, I'm not making fun of it. But that is really bad luck.
00:06:04.620 And one of the little insider things I happen to know from hanging around pilots is that the type
00:06:14.600 of plane that this was is called a Beechcraft Bonanza. And it has a nickname. It has a nickname
00:06:22.220 that the company who makes this airplane really doesn't want me to say. But I'm going to say it
00:06:27.600 anyway. Among pilots, they call this plane that crashed, it's nicknamed the doctor killer.
00:06:36.620 Yeah, I can see it in the comments. Somebody already knew that. Yeah, pilots call that type
00:06:41.940 of plane a doctor killer. And the reason is that rich people, and doctors just being an example,
00:06:49.640 will often get this plane and not realize that it's a little bit hard to handle. It's a little
00:06:56.440 bit more powerful than an average plane in that class. If you were to compare this to, say, a Cessna,
00:07:03.880 this is just stuff I hear from pilots, that a Cessna wants to land. If you get a Cessna anywhere near
00:07:10.800 an airport and take your hands off the controls, the Cessna will just sort of land. Now, that's an
00:07:18.300 exaggeration. You really have to land it. But it lands really easily. Whereas the high performance
00:07:23.780 planes come in at a much higher speed, and they're built for performance, they're not built for the
00:07:29.000 subtleties of landing. And so they're kind of difficult to land. This one is in the slightly
00:07:34.660 difficult to land category. But I'll tell you what really struck me about it, no pun intended, is that
00:07:40.940 when you see the video, the plane comes in at an angle like this and actually hits nose first.
00:07:46.820 Now, I feel like it's almost impossible to hit nose first if you're still flying. So either he lost
00:07:55.740 flight control or the pilot was unconscious, because there's almost no way that even if you lost all
00:08:04.100 engine, you still wouldn't hit at that angle. There had to be a steering problem, I think. So when it
00:08:10.240 comes out, we'll find out. All right. This, I almost canceled everything I was going to say today,
00:08:20.260 just to go on a swearing, cursing streak about the next story. And this just happened. I guess
00:08:29.200 Joy Reid was interviewing Governor Newsom about who he's going to appoint to replace
00:08:35.260 if Senator Feinstein were to retire. And Joy Reid asked if he would appoint a black woman to the 0.98
00:08:45.840 U.S. Senate if Feinstein retires. And his answer was, I have multiple names in mind, and the answer
00:08:52.820 is yes. So the governor just said that if you're white, you're not in consideration for the job.
00:09:01.200 If you're Hispanic, Hispanic American, you're not in consideration to be a senator. If you're 1.00
00:09:10.800 Asian American, you are not considered to be a senator by the governor of New York who gets to make the
00:09:21.940 decision. Now, I'm trying really hard to not curse. But isn't this everything that the United States
00:09:34.640 isn't? This is everything we're not. You've probably noticed that I've been relatively, compared to a lot of
00:09:48.260 people, relatively not much of a critic of Governor Newsom. I think he's got some explaining to do,
00:09:55.100 right? There's some things he needs to explain. But I also generally thought, you know, he was sort of
00:09:59.600 a well-intentioned, and he's certainly smart, right? So he has some qualities. I'm not going to ignore
00:10:05.600 that. And I was forgiving about, you know, coronavirus decisions, because I've said everybody's guessing on
00:10:14.920 that. And even immigration is just a tough place to be, right? Because if anybody had like a great
00:10:24.140 solution for immigration, it would have been done by now. So I'm not even too hard on him on the things
00:10:30.740 that clearly he seems to be failing on. Everything from forest management to energy management, a lot
00:10:37.600 of failing. But I've been relatively okay. Well, not okay. But as a critic, I've been holding back a
00:10:45.980 little bit. I don't know if you've noticed it. Seems like almost everybody is harder on him than I am.
00:10:52.100 And then this happened. Alright, I'm not going to get through this without swearing. So here's your
00:11:00.620 official warning. If you've got kids in the room, probably want to put the earmuffs on them right
00:11:08.320 now. When you tell me, Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry, not Mayor, but Governor, that I'm not qualified for a job
00:11:19.960 because of my skin color. Well, at that point, let's just say, you've gone too far. Now, I would 0.96
00:11:33.340 act exactly the same way if he'd said, he didn't, but if he had said, I won't appoint a black person to
00:11:42.560 be senator. Imagine that. How would you feel about that? Well, I'd be pretty pissed, because that's not
00:11:48.920 the country I don't live in, right? Would you want to live in a country where your governor said, no, I'll
00:11:54.800 definitely not appoint a black person for this senator job. You won't get even considered if you're 0.99
00:12:01.980 black. Well, immediately, he would lose his job, of course. But you should be really, really mad. Like, if that 0.99
00:12:11.600 happened in your country, the whole point of the fucking country is that we don't do that. Let me say
00:12:19.840 it again. The whole fucking point of America, the whole fucking point is that we don't do that.
00:12:30.020 That's the thing we don't do. You can do every other fucking thing. Everything. You can murder
00:12:38.520 people. You can do all kinds of terrible, terrible mistakes. But in America, that's the one thing we
00:12:47.800 don't fucking do. If you get that wrong, the whole experiment, you might as well just throw it in the
00:12:56.580 fucking toilet. Like, the moment you can sit, the governor can go on television and say right to our
00:13:03.940 faces, that your ethnicity will disqualify you for one of the top jobs in California.
00:13:15.220 That's not the country you want to live in. And it has nothing to do with the fact that which
00:13:20.940 ethnicity he decided to prefer for this. It has nothing to do with which one he picked. Exactly the
00:13:27.440 same, no matter what he said, as long as he was saying some people can't be senator. Now, I get
00:13:33.360 that diversity is important. And if you gave me a choice of having more diversity or less, I would
00:13:43.060 take more. Certainly in a representative government, I think that's just healthy. So I want more, but not
00:13:50.040 like this. Not this way. Is this the way you get it? Oh, my God. And the fact, the shocking thing is
00:13:58.780 that he could say this proudly. He didn't say it like, well, you know, sheepishly, I might have to
00:14:07.920 go this way. No, he said it like everybody should be patting him on the back and giving him a raise and
00:14:14.200 reelected him. Yeah, I'm going to discriminate by race. It's amazing. And so I would say that this 1.00
00:14:24.280 turned me from being, well, if Governor Newsom, you know, survives the recall, you know, so be it.
00:14:33.540 That's what the people wanted in the state. But now I feel like I have to end him politically.
00:14:38.940 Now I feel like I can't ignore him anymore. Like he went from, it's hard to ignore, but I can do it
00:14:46.680 to I can't ignore this. I can't ignore this. It's way over the line. CNN held a focus group of
00:14:56.240 Republicans who are hesitant about getting the vaccinations. And they wanted to sort of see what
00:15:02.340 was in their heads. Like, why is it you'd be hesitant? And Anderson Cooper, who was talking
00:15:08.940 about the segment, acted very surprised that the Republicans on the panel were being persuaded by
00:15:18.120 science as opposed to politics. That's right. Anderson Cooper was actually surprised that the
00:15:28.380 Republicans sounded rational. And when they said when the vaccinations, you know, first were
00:15:34.520 announced, we were more skeptical, because we wanted more science. As more science comes in, and you know,
00:15:40.980 we can watch the experience and get more and more information. We're more persuaded to take it,
00:15:46.840 because we have more scientific information. And Anderson Cooper acts like he's fucking surprised
00:15:54.000 that Republicans would be persuaded by information and science. Now, here's the thing. Are you surprised?
00:16:08.760 I wasn't surprised, because I don't think there's anybody who isn't who isn't persuaded by additional
00:16:16.980 information and science over time. Right? And I think he thought that it was Trump or just
00:16:24.820 republicanism or something that was causing these people to be skeptical, as opposed to being completely
00:16:30.960 smart, and simply being cautious, and wanting to have as much information as they could. So it's
00:16:37.760 amazing that he's amazed, I guess. There's a story today, because the press is just so bored without
00:16:45.960 Trump. They have to reach into the past and try to pull something back to the present to make a story
00:16:52.840 of it. So I guess when Kushner, his last trip to the Middle East, or Israel, talking about the Abraham
00:16:59.420 Accords, and he ran up a hotel bill of over $25,000 for room and board. And that's a big story. Do you know
00:17:08.980 why that's a big story? Because the public doesn't know what first class hotel accommodations cost.
00:17:17.860 It's about that much. Something like that. So, you know, could he have traveled more cheaply? Yeah,
00:17:26.460 probably. Probably. Did I mention that Jared Kushner has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
00:17:32.760 for the good work he was for the good work he got done on these trips? You could argue that he could have
00:17:39.120 traveled cheaper, but you can't argue that he didn't do something worth it. In fact, I would argue he's the
00:17:47.500 only person who, you know, he and Avi Berkowitz might be the only people in the government who deserve the
00:17:55.320 amount of travel accommodations that they received. They got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:18:02.920 It's amazing. So I certainly don't care about his hotel bill. David Boxenhorn on Twitter tweeted an
00:18:12.060 article from the Times of Israel saying that they got their R factor down to 0.78. I don't think anybody
00:18:18.960 could really measure that. Do you think any country can really measure their R factor accurately?
00:18:25.480 But maybe they can get in the range. So if you were not up on what the R factor is, if your R is one or
00:18:33.980 greater, it means that each person, you know, might be spreading it to enough people that it will
00:18:40.480 spread. That's the worst explanation ever. Let me try it again. If your R is over one, it means the virus
00:18:47.980 can spread. If it's under one, it will probably die out naturally by not having enough people to spread
00:18:53.420 two. And we're not being, you know what I'm talking about. I don't have to do better than that. But Israel's
00:19:01.020 already under one, reportedly. I don't know how reliable that is. I wouldn't say that's the most reliable
00:19:07.400 kind of thing. But it's not way over one. And if you're looking for any positive signs, this one's a
00:19:16.420 good one. Because Israel's doing well on the vaccinations, and they're getting the outcome 1.00
00:19:21.920 that is predicted. So anytime your science says, if you do this, you'll get this outcome. And then you
00:19:28.560 do this, and you get that outcome. That's pretty good news. All right. In the George Floyd case,
00:19:36.400 Jack Posobiec reports that juror number 51 admits she cannot be impartial after hearing that the city
00:19:45.820 awarded George Floyd's family a record 27 million dollars. Now, shouldn't they all say that? Is there
00:19:55.600 a juror? Now, presumably all of the jurors know about this 27 million because one juror talked about
00:20:02.820 it in front of the other jurors. So if they didn't see it in the news, they heard about it in the courtroom.
00:20:08.360 Who would be dumb enough to say that they would not be influenced by that? Because of course
00:20:16.960 everybody would be influenced by that. Wouldn't you worry if somebody said they weren't influenced by
00:20:21.920 that? Because it means they already decided. If anybody tells you that they would not be biased
00:20:27.340 by this $27 million award, it's only because they've already made up their mind. That's not the person
00:20:35.040 you want on the jury. And so I ask you this. Why are we bothering to have this trial? Because I don't
00:20:42.660 see any way that the trial outcome could be considered credible or that it wouldn't get overturned by some
00:20:50.100 higher court for saying your trial was ridiculous. There's no chance in hell that Chauvin got a fair
00:20:58.420 trial. So I don't know the, I don't know how this works legally, but shouldn't the judge just cancel
00:21:06.900 the trial and try to find a venue that maybe is, you know, less likely to be this biased? I feel as
00:21:16.200 if they have to, you know, I feel as if they have to end the trial at this point. I don't know if they
00:21:22.120 will, but they have to. Um, so there's a Rasmussen poll result coming this morning. I don't know if
00:21:31.140 it's published yet, but you'll see it. And they asked the question of whether people believe that
00:21:37.000 Joe Biden was actually making the decisions of the presidency or somebody else was making those
00:21:44.340 decisions for him. What percentage of the United States, I don't know if this was likely voters or
00:21:50.860 not, because lots of times they limit things to likely voters, but I don't know if this one was,
00:21:56.220 but what percentage do you think the poll said are people who believe that Biden is not actually in
00:22:02.060 charge? If you guessed 47%, you would be right. It's funny. I'm seeing estimates of like 70% and 60%.
00:22:13.040 Here's what I think. I think those are closer to true. I believe that, uh, Republicans all said
00:22:21.400 Biden is not in charge and the Democrats probably mostly said he is in charge. And, and that, uh,
00:22:29.900 if you actually, if you were to talk to a Democrat privately and nobody would ever hear what you ever
00:22:37.980 said, the two of you, and you get, you get your Democrat, your Biden voter in a, in a closet,
00:22:42.800 you say, look, nobody will ever hear this. Just tell me the truth. Do you think Biden's in charge?
00:22:50.940 How many people in the closet when nobody would ever know what they really said,
00:22:56.440 how many of them would say that Biden's really in charge? Right? I'm not so sure that the Democrats
00:23:05.600 think Biden's in charge. I think they don't care. I think that they think that, oh, maybe it's Obama's
00:23:12.620 behind the curtain or Hillary Clinton, or, you know, it's just the, uh, the technocrats or the money
00:23:18.780 people or whatever, but maybe they're just okay with it. So that's interesting. Uh, there's an, a brand new
00:23:29.940 hoax has been revealed, and this one's a big one. The Washington Post, uh, back in January 9th had
00:23:36.720 reported that Trump had a phone call with the Georgia state elections, uh, with, uh, I guess the
00:23:43.100 Georgia state, whatever, election official. And he reportedly said, but it turns out he didn't,
00:23:50.800 but it was reported that he said, find the fraud. Now find the fraud was interpreted as, even if it's
00:23:59.760 not there, go find it or give me a result that says there's fraud. I don't care if it's really
00:24:05.900 there or not. So that's how it was interpreted. But it turns out he never even said it because an
00:24:11.620 audio of the call was just released, never said it. And it was one of the key pieces of, uh,
00:24:18.860 evidence for the impeachment trial. Think about that. A key piece of the impeachment trial
00:24:25.860 was based on a hoax. Now that's not true. Did I just tell you that a key part of this big public
00:24:34.480 impeachment process was a hoax? Because that's not true. Two hoaxes. Two hoaxes were key pieces of
00:24:47.140 evidence presented. One of them was the fine people hoax, which the Republicans debunked in
00:24:53.420 public. And the other one was this one, which wasn't debunked at the time because we didn't
00:24:58.160 have the audio. But now we have the audio and you know that the president never said find the fraud
00:25:03.920 and the actual things he said were not offensive at all. He was telling them to, you know, look into
00:25:09.140 it and they might find some dishonesty there. Nothing like find the fraud. So, uh, then I have,
00:25:19.020 I said, shouldn't the senators who, uh, perpetrated these two frauds, uh, for impeachment, shouldn't
00:25:26.120 they be impeached? Should it not be impeachable to use hoaxes to try to change the government of the
00:25:33.900 United States? Now, somebody else, uh, on Twitter saw that and said, oh, whoa, there's a difference
00:25:41.720 because those senators who use these hoaxes, they did not know that there were hoaxes when they used
00:25:48.620 them. Do you accept that, uh, explanation? Let's say it's true. Let's say that the, uh, the senators who
00:25:56.980 used both of those hoaxes, let's say they thought they were both true. Is it okay? No, no, it's not
00:26:06.100 okay. Because we don't judge them by what they were thinking, do we? We judge them by what they do.
00:26:13.300 We don't judge them by what they're thinking. Because that's what they were trying to do with
00:26:19.460 Trump. They were trying to say that, well, let me say that differently. When Trump was giving his
00:26:25.820 speech in which he said, go, uh, protest peacefully, people said, yeah, he said peacefully,
00:26:33.820 but he intended to cause more of a riot or an assault. And so the president, they were trying
00:26:41.840 to impeach him based entirely upon what they believe he thought. Um, right. It was based on
00:26:51.780 what he thought, but ultimately it was more about what he did, wasn't it? So regardless
00:26:58.040 of what Trump thought, he would also be criticized by simply doing it, you know, simply getting
00:27:06.140 people stirred up, no matter what anybody thought it resulted in maybe more, more activity or
00:27:12.320 rioting than would have happened. We don't know, but that's a reasonable assumption. And
00:27:17.840 so why should the senators who allegedly did not know these were hoaxes, why should they
00:27:25.840 get a pass just because they didn't know? I think we should judge them on what they did,
00:27:33.720 not on what they knew. Take the, uh, the coronavirus performance. President Trump, uh, allegedly
00:27:42.140 was lost the election because of coronavirus performance. If, did anybody know the right
00:27:50.660 answer? Do you think that the, that the president knew that his actions would have a suboptimal
00:27:58.740 outcome? No. So if the president allegedly made a mistake, but he didn't know he was making
00:28:07.600 a mistake. Does he, does he get a pass? Cause he didn't know he was making a mistake. No,
00:28:13.600 we don't judge people that way. We judge them what they actually did. And what these senators
00:28:18.480 actually did was trying to change the government of the United States on the back of two hoaxes.
00:28:25.620 It doesn't matter that they didn't know they were real. It doesn't matter. They should be removed
00:28:32.500 from office because they did the thing. They did the thing. That's it. Um, all right. The, uh, here's,
00:28:45.300 I love this story. If you don't mind, I'm going to be a little self-indulgent. I'll tell you about
00:28:53.640 the news here. It's a big story, but I'm going to be a little self-indulgent. Just warning you.
00:28:59.380 Um, there's a big article that you should read in New York magazine by David Wallace-Wells in
00:29:06.080 which he goes through all the various countries of the world and how they dealt with the pandemic.
00:29:10.960 And he's trying to figure out why some did better than others. You know, the big mystery that we all
00:29:15.880 have. Now the bottom line in a very large and article, that's really good. You should read it.
00:29:21.860 I think it does one of the best jobs I've seen of really putting things in context of who did what
00:29:27.540 worked and what worked and what didn't. But here was the bottom line. Nobody knows what worked.
00:29:34.220 That's the bottom line. When you compare countries and one had a good result, one had a bad result,
00:29:40.920 there's no pattern. There's no pattern. You just can't tell that what people did made that much
00:29:48.720 difference. Now there does, there does seem to be a big difference between the Asian countries'
00:29:54.300 performance, which was generally good, and the European, Western, United States, South American
00:30:01.700 countries, which was generally mediocre or bad. But we don't know exactly why. Because even within
00:30:10.980 the Asian countries, Japan did not do aggressive mitigation, but had a great result.
00:30:18.700 So you're tempted to say, well, all the Asian countries did everything right. The other 1.00
00:30:25.400 countries did everything wrong. Duh. Of course the result is different. Except that doesn't hold
00:30:32.020 up. You just look at Japan and you say, they didn't do everything right, and they got a great result. 0.61
00:30:37.760 And then you look at New Zealand, and you say, well, maybe it's more because of being an island.
00:30:43.060 Maybe the island thing makes a difference. So it looked like that the bottom line was that
00:30:49.520 it might be just chance. Just chance. Yeah, there's a big factor of obesity and age. So I think youth
00:30:59.300 and lack of obesity explains Africa. Basically, I think Africa can be completely explained by lack of 0.88
00:31:08.900 obesity and youth, in my opinion. Now genetics, we haven't determined yet how big a factor that is,
00:31:16.160 but surely that's a factor. Surely it is. But I don't know if it's an ethnic factor or a factor
00:31:21.800 within ethnicities. I would say that's an open question. So do you remember that early on in the
00:31:31.860 crisis, I made a prediction that I believe nobody else in the world made? And that prediction was
00:31:40.000 that the leadership decisions would not be determinant of the outcome. Did you hear anyone else in the
00:31:47.920 entire world ever say that? Just me, right? And this article kind of makes that case as well,
00:31:56.200 that now that we kind of know how things turned down, mostly, mostly we know, there is not a
00:32:03.140 correlation between how people acted and how the outcomes were. And we don't know why. The experts
00:32:10.100 are actually baffled. Now, they do know a whole bunch of things that make a difference. We know the
00:32:16.320 vitamin D makes a difference, the weight, probably the genetics. There's a big difference maybe in just
00:32:24.140 where you are located, what kind of travel patterns you have, are you a travel destination,
00:32:29.840 when did it hit your shores, how close were you to Italy. It turns out that proximity to Italy
00:32:36.960 is probably one of the biggest factors. Because Italy, well, you know, was sort of the second hot
00:32:44.080 spot after Wuhan. But there was something else in this article that caught my attention,
00:32:50.700 and I would like to read it to you. Okay? And you'll see why I'm reading it to you. It'll be
00:32:56.980 obvious in a minute. So this is from the New York Magazine, David Wallace Wells writes,
00:33:02.920 By American standards, Cuomo, talking about Governor Cuomo, did move quickly, putting his state in
00:33:08.620 lockdown just 20 days after the first confirmed case, three times faster than Washington State or
00:33:13.880 California. But he waited for cases to arrive on his doorstep to act. And even then, his first
00:33:22.980 instinct was to reassure rather than disrupt. In that, he was far from an outlier. Through the winter,
00:33:31.320 getting to the good part here, through the winter, the guidance from America's public health
00:33:35.560 establishment was clear. Beamed to the public through columns and op-eds, like those in the New York
00:33:40.900 Times, warning, quote, beware the pandemic panic. And in the Washington Post, arguing, quote, we should
00:33:48.260 be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus. Other headlines from the time, quote,
00:33:54.940 we should de-escalate the war on the coronavirus. That was from Wired. Coronavirus is scary, but the flu
00:34:01.400 is deadlier, more widespread from U.S. today. The flu is far bigger threat to most people in the U.S. than
00:34:08.300 the Wuhan coronavirus. That's from Business Insider. And before flu comparisons became a talking point
00:34:16.500 of the pandemic denier right, they were the reassuring focus of the establishment left. So the first point
00:34:25.820 is that the left-leaning people in the establishment were all telling you that the pandemic should not be
00:34:32.520 worried about. Keep that in mind. All right. And here's the money paragraph. Perhaps the
00:34:42.240 short-sighted and self-interested president, meaning Trump, would never have moved more quickly or more
00:34:48.480 emphatically in response to a different kind of warning. But governors might have, and mayors,
00:34:54.700 and the public at large. Instead, the cause of the alarm was picked up not by those in positions of
00:35:02.040 social authority or with the power to enact preparatory measures, but by a rogues' gallery
00:35:09.760 of outsiders and contrarians. Peter Navarro, Trump's personal China hawk, Scott Adams, the Dilber guy,
00:35:19.860 Balaji Srinivasan, a cryptocurrency evangelist from Silicon Valley, Eric Feigl Ding, a nutrition-focused
00:35:29.400 epidemiologist, then affiliated with Harvard, who got a bit out over his skis in a series of panic-inducing
00:35:38.040 tweets, then came in for a professional drubbing by his colleagues. Now, I could not enjoy this more.
00:35:49.860 Because in this long article about all these world leaders getting everything wrong,
00:35:57.720 I got called out by name as one of the few people in the country who got something right.
00:36:05.540 Now, I would like to make a few comments in the Murray-Gell-Man way. You know the Murray-Gell-Man
00:36:14.640 amnesia theory that you can always tell what's wrong with an article if it's about you or about
00:36:20.560 something you're an expert on. Now, in this case, I have a little insight. So let me tell you what the
00:36:26.300 news may have gotten not wrong, but maybe could have put a little more context on here. Listen to the
00:36:33.560 descriptions of these people. Number one, Peter Navarro, Trump's personal China hawk.
00:36:39.480 Is that how you would describe Peter Navarro as a China hawk? If you were just going to do
00:36:46.240 one description, China hawk? How about economist? How about famous economist?
00:36:55.040 All right. So that's what they left out about Peter Navarro. Then they talked about Scott Adams,
00:37:00.740 the Dilber guy. What'd they leave out? They left out my degree in economics, my MBA, right? I'm just
00:37:12.220 the cartoonist now. I'm the Dilber guy. So the first two people that are listed in the rogues gallery
00:37:18.400 to make us look like we're fringe nuts, they left out that we're both trained economists.
00:37:26.840 This matters because this was a math question, basically. The spread of the virus and how to do
00:37:36.680 risk management, it's kind of closer to an economics question than a medical question.
00:37:42.560 And if you leave out the qualifications of the two people who got it right, you know, being alarmed at
00:37:50.960 the right level of alarm at the right time, they both had the same education. That's not an accident.
00:37:58.300 If you leave that out of the story, it makes it look like we're like lucky, crazy people or something
00:38:04.660 instead of people who had exactly the right training to know what to do in this situation
00:38:11.320 and got it right. Isn't that a big difference in how you see this story? Because it seems presented
00:38:18.280 like, oh, there were some crazy outliers who guessed right or something. And then the next one is even
00:38:24.940 funnier. Balaji Srinivasan, he's described as a cryptocurrency evangelist from Silicon Valley.
00:38:34.060 Now, is that true? Yes, that's a true statement. You would probably embrace it himself. I think
00:38:43.020 Balaji would agree that he is a crypto evangelist and he's from Silicon Valley.
00:38:48.280 True enough. Here's what they left out. Calling Balaji a crypto evangelist is like calling Einstein
00:39:00.100 Jewish. Well, actually, I don't know if he's officially called himself Jewish, but it would 0.99
00:39:07.840 just be like picking one little thing out of somebody's life that might be the least important
00:39:14.460 thing about Balaji. Now, I won't get too much into Balaji's qualifications. But let's just say that if
00:39:23.440 you added up all of the brains of the people watching this, and all of your skills and all of
00:39:28.780 your talents, and you could somehow sum together all of our skills and intelligence, it would roughly
00:39:36.160 equal one equal one Balaji. Right? He's not normal. Like when you just refer to Balaji as a crypto guy,
00:39:46.100 you're missing the story. He's not a crypto guy. He's a guy who knows more than you know about more
00:39:55.860 things than you know even exist. He's not normal smart. He's like the kind of smart where it's,
00:40:03.940 you know, I'm the dog talking to a person. Like if you talk to Balaji for five minutes, 1.00
00:40:10.020 the recording that starts playing in your head is, I don't think I'm the same species.
00:40:15.060 I can't be the same species. Because I'm not that smart. And so they leave that out. Literally,
00:40:24.260 Balaji is literally famous in Silicon Valley as being one of the smartest people on the planet.
00:40:29.700 Right? And they just call him a crypto guy. Somebody said spell his name. So I will. First name is
00:40:38.720 Balaji. B-A-L-A-J-I. And Srinivasan is S-R-I-N-I-V-A-S-A-N. Yeah, you should follow him on Twitter.
00:40:54.040 Sure. So, God, I want to make some news here, but I'm not sure if I should.
00:41:05.700 Yeah, what the hell? What the hell? Do you want to hear some news? I don't know if this will get
00:41:12.900 outside of my little atmosphere here. So here's something that you've never heard reported.
00:41:19.480 I probably shouldn't even tell you this. Let me think about it.
00:41:29.840 No, I'm not going to tell you. I can't tell you. All right. Sorry about that. I apologize for that.
00:41:37.500 All right. There's a story about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister.
00:41:42.040 And apparently she's responding to the Biden administration. And she said about the Biden
00:41:49.780 administration, if it wants to sleep in peace for the next four years, it must refrain from
00:41:54.520 causing a stink as its first step. And I thought, I wonder if this is just how North Korea opens up a 0.91
00:42:01.540 dialogue. It looks like I made everybody mad. I'm looking at the comments.
00:42:12.040 All right. I'll tell you. You want me to tell you? All right.
00:42:23.380 When the news first came out that the coronavirus had broken out in Wuhan, and we started to see the
00:42:33.260 video of what the Chinese were doing, as you might imagine, the White House was trying to decide what
00:42:41.700 to do. No surprise, right? There was also, you might not be surprised, this would not be news,
00:42:50.040 that there were two sides. There were factions within the White House who were arguing we should
00:42:55.880 close travel with China. And there were factions who said, no, no, no, that's, you know, it will kill
00:43:01.680 the economy, etc. Travel especially. And here's the part you don't know.
00:43:10.660 Somebody at the White House, who shall remain nameless, contacted me and said, we're having
00:43:16.560 this discussion in the White House. And a lot of people in the White House watch your show.
00:43:21.260 How can you make your argument, basically? So the White House did ask me to weigh in to try to
00:43:30.220 influence the internal debate by having somebody external to the White House lay it out in a way
00:43:37.560 that, you know, is outside of the system. So that it's no, it's, you know, it wasn't Don Jr.
00:43:43.680 And so I did. And some of you probably watched live the day that I came on, I just came unhooked
00:43:54.020 on closing travel from China. And it was soon after that that the president, just a few days after
00:44:00.420 that, the president actually closed travel from China. Now, when you first heard me talking about
00:44:06.540 it on live stream, did you say to yourself, that's never going to happen? Because the first time you
00:44:14.200 heard somebody say, we should close all travel to China, you might have heard it from me. You know,
00:44:18.980 if you were watching this, I probably was the first person to, to talk about it. And even when I was
00:44:26.700 saying, I was saying we absolutely have to close travel from China and have to do it right now.
00:44:31.640 But even as I said it, I didn't think it could happen. Honestly, I just didn't think it could
00:44:37.320 happen. But I knew it had to, like it was important. I'm seeing in the comments, people are
00:44:44.140 guessing, you know, famous names that you know who work there. It's not one of the famous, you won't be
00:44:50.040 able to guess it based on somebody who's in the headlines. I'll just tell you that. Okay. So it turns out
00:44:57.720 that a number of the people in the White House follow, follow this live stream, or they did in
00:45:03.140 that administration. And occasionally, and by the way, this is not that unusual. It wouldn't be
00:45:10.200 terribly unusual for factions within any administration to reach out to somebody, you know, in the public
00:45:18.100 to get an assist. Pretty normal stuff. So it was fun to see that this article in the New York
00:45:27.400 magazine sort of called me out on that. But they don't know the real backstory. So there you have it.
00:45:35.560 Was that news?
00:45:41.240 Yeah, they do it all the time. It is a normal process. And I don't know who else was part of that.
00:45:47.300 But yeah, there's, there's more of that story. All right. CNN looks like they're doing this slow
00:45:58.000 turn on Biden, because they have to have some bad stuff to say about him so they can produce news.
00:46:04.300 And Stephen Collinson, who's the designated Trump hit person who does, you know, frequent articles that
00:46:12.160 are all anti-Trump forever. This is what he said about Biden's handling of the child migrant surge.
00:46:20.040 So this is CNN coming down hard on Biden for basically kids in cages, but without the cages.
00:46:29.180 And this is an exact quote from CNN. But it's hard to argue that the Biden administration's
00:46:34.320 handling of the politics of the child migrant surge has been adept. That's pretty, pretty biting. 0.89
00:46:42.160 Compare that to things he said about Trump. Now let me read it again. If this isn't the weakest
00:46:51.300 criticism you've ever seen, I don't know. All right. But it is hard to argue. Why do you have to,
00:46:59.660 why do you have to soften the first part of the sentence? It's hard to argue that the Biden
00:47:05.140 administration's handling of the politics of the child migrant surge? Oh, oh, it's not a problem with
00:47:14.400 the surge itself that Biden caused. It's not a problem with all the children who are being,
00:47:21.700 you know, in this bad situation, which I thought was the whole point, that it's bad for children.
00:47:26.820 No, no, no, no. It's hard to argue that the Biden administration's handling of the politics of the
00:47:34.980 child migrant surge has been adept. It's hard to argue that it's been adept. Biting, biting commentary. 1.00
00:47:45.580 I don't know how the Biden administration will be able to sleep at night after this takedown by CNN.
00:47:50.600 So it looks like there's reports that Senator Rick Scott is preparing some kind of a DACA amnesty deal
00:48:02.360 that would, if we can build the rest of the wall, a bunch of people could be given citizenship.
00:48:11.980 That doesn't have any chance, does it? Is there any chance for a bipartisan anything in this country?
00:48:18.340 I don't think so. It feels like immigration can't be solved, but with a bipartisan anything,
00:48:24.280 because no, just nobody will do it. So I'm not saying it's a bad play. I think Senator Scott
00:48:32.220 is making exactly, exactly the right move, because you want to see that your senators are at least
00:48:40.060 trying. And, you know, I never, I'm never bothered by somebody putting on a deal offer. You know,
00:48:47.700 you do this, we'll do this. Even if I hate part of that deal, that's what a deal is. So kudos to
00:48:55.960 Senator Scott for trying to be productive. I don't know that this is going to succeed,
00:49:03.280 but at least it's adult behavior. You know, I don't mind people failing, doing the right stuff,
00:49:10.300 and at least bringing up the topic, getting people to talk about it, see what can and cannot be done.
00:49:18.100 I imagine it will fail, but it's, it's adult. And so I appreciate that. As I keep saying that we only
00:49:26.080 have a handful of senators who do anything. Am I wrong about that? Every time you hear somebody doing
00:49:31.840 something, it's the same handful of people. It's going to be, you know, it's, it's Tom Cotton,
00:49:37.060 it's Rand Paul, Senator Scott. It's, it's just like five, six people doing everything.
00:49:43.480 Everybody else is just watching as far as I can tell.
00:49:45.840 All right. All right. Just looking at your comments. And I would like to suggest a following
00:50:03.540 psychological phenomenon. It goes like this. I've told you that we're seeing not much reporting on the,
00:50:13.520 uh, the discomfort of getting your vaccination. Now it was reported by even the people who make
00:50:20.380 the vaccinations that there would be some discomfort, but aren't you surprised that the
00:50:25.600 news business, both left and right, are just not really reporting on that? Really not at all. And
00:50:33.600 that feels like a, um, a decision to make sure that people don't get talked out of doing it.
00:50:40.420 Right. But here's an interesting thing. Even though a lot of people know that they know it
00:50:47.080 hurts. And I've talked to people, uh, personally. So I've had personal conversations with people who
00:50:53.620 just got the shit kicked out of them with the second dose. So I guess the first dose gives you
00:50:58.140 like a sore arm, but by the second dose, you're going to miss work. You know, you're going to miss
00:51:05.240 24 hours recovering. But here's the thing. I'll bet if you talk to anybody who had a really tough
00:51:12.620 time, they're not complaining. And that, that's the psychological part. And you say to me, Scott,
00:51:20.680 you're going to get this shot and, you know, I hate to break it to you, but you're going to have a bad
00:51:26.400 day. The next 24 hours for you are going to be pretty bad. What do I say in reaction to that?
00:51:34.680 Give me the shot. What do I say when I'm writhing in whatever discomfort it is? Not writhing. It's not
00:51:41.460 that bad. But you know, when I'm all, let's say shaky and I don't know, sore or whatever it is the
00:51:47.120 next day, how do I feel psychologically when my body is having all these reactions and I'm not
00:51:53.720 having a good day? How do I feel? Terrific. It's the weirdest thing. But if you could, if you could
00:52:01.360 say right now, I'll give you that second shot, you're going to be writhing in pain. I would only
00:52:07.020 be happy. There's not one part of that that would make me unhappy. Number one, I would know that the
00:52:13.060 pain would be done in a day. And that always helps, right? If you know, there's a, an end date to your
00:52:18.240 discomfort. That, that makes it easier. But the fact that I would feel free or, or soon to be free
00:52:26.120 from the, the risk of the pandemic, that psychological comfort is so much bigger than
00:52:34.580 missing a day at work that people aren't even complaining about it. You know, think about it. In the
00:52:41.480 United States, we'll complain about anything. There's nothing we don't complain about. Zero people
00:52:48.040 I've heard complain about the vaccination taking them out for a day. I've heard nobody complain.
00:52:55.080 I've heard people say it was bad, but even when they describe it, it's not really a complaint.
00:53:02.360 It's interesting. I've never seen anything like this where people can be physically,
00:53:06.480 you know, sickened by something temporarily. And they won't complain. Because we feel so good
00:53:15.060 about getting to this point we've all been waiting for. It's like, give me the shot.
00:53:19.120 It's interesting. Well, I still don't know where I can get the shot. I found out that I'm eligible.
00:53:26.220 Yay for me. I didn't realize that hypertension can get you, can get you there, especially if you're
00:53:32.760 close to the, you know, the age anyway. So I'm bumping up against the age. But I also have
00:53:38.520 hypertension. So I guess that got me in. But I can't get it. As far as I know, there's no availability
00:53:45.200 of this shot whatsoever. For me personally, my health provider doesn't have it doesn't seem to be
00:53:53.120 available anywhere else. So I told you before that people being, let's say concerned about getting
00:54:01.240 the shot would never be the problem. That the problem will only be supply. Because there will
00:54:08.020 always be enough people to use up all the supply. And then those laggards will watch everybody else 0.89
00:54:13.740 get the get the shot and they'll start to convert. And you're not going to have it in the end,
00:54:18.720 I predict you won't have a problem getting enough people vaccinated. Maybe 80%. I don't think we'll get
00:54:26.320 to 100%. Oh, actually, we could get to 90. But we'll never get to 100. All right. Somebody says
00:54:37.920 Mississippi gives it to anyone above 18. But they probably don't have it. It doesn't matter that they 0.90
00:54:44.440 say they will. Yeah, the Alameda Fairgrounds, you need to that's where I would get it. It's the closest
00:54:50.620 to me. But you can't get an appointment. All right, that's it for now. And I will talk to you
00:54:57.160 tomorrow. All right, YouTubers. Walgreens. Yeah, I know that the I know all the places that do give
00:55:08.020 the shots, but they just don't have appointments. All right, that's all for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.