Episode 1337 Scott Adams: Fake News Guilty of Third-Degree Murder, Imaginary News, and Lots of Surprises
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
145.63863
Summary
If there was a button that could make your life substantially better, would you push it? Plus, the latest on the Tiger Woods crash, the border wall, obesity, and more. Guests: Scott Adams, host of the podcast and co-host of the morning show joins me to talk about it all.
Transcript
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Hey, everybody. Come on in here. It's time. Yeah, it's time for a coffee with Scott Adams.
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And you're all here for it, which I think is pretty, pretty special.
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And here's a philosophy question for you, which might have some practicality in your real life.
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So, hypothetically, if somebody invented a button that you could push and it would make your life substantially better, would you push it?
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In the comments, tell me, if you know this for sure and there's no trick to it, right?
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There's no trick. There's a button, if it existed, and you pushed it, it would make your life better with no downside.
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Well, let's find out, because there's a little button on the bottom of your screen called Notifications.
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And if you were to push that button at the same time as you did the simultaneous sip, it would make your life better.
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But if you'd like to fully enjoy pushing that button and having the simultaneous sip at the same time,
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you need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice of thine, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind,
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filled with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,
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the Turbo Simultaneous Sip, which comes with a button press for some of you.
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I guess the Tiger Woods cause of his crash will be revealed today or tomorrow.
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So the news says that we will know the result of the cause of the Tiger Woods crash.
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But I feel like we're going to look at that report and we're going to say something like this.
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Do you really think we're going to find the cause of the crash?
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And that Tiger will say, oh, yeah, that was the cause.
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And you'll look at it, you'll say, yeah, that looks about right.
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I don't feel like that's going to happen, but we'll see.
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Apparently, there are a couple of suspected terrorists who are on the list came over the southern border.
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Well, I don't know how many suspected terrorists come over the southern border, but two is way too many.
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Now, what I don't know is if border security could ever stop terrorists.
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I feel like terrorists would just find some other way to do it.
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So I think the border wall has a lot more to do with immigration in general and probably has a little limited value for stopping terrorists, but it's part of the story.
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There's a different level of motivation for the terrorists, and there are fewer of them, so it seems like they could get across no matter what.
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Now, I would like to talk about the things I've been right about lately.
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Do you remember that I predicted that Biden would be forced to beef up security at the border?
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No matter what he wanted to do, no matter what philosophically he thought was right, that he was going to kind of have to keep building it.
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But they're going to play it down because he's just going to fill in the gaps.
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Do you know what the Trump administration was doing?
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Because the gaps are exactly where you would put a wall first.
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Would you put a wall where there's already a perfectly good wall?
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Or would you put a wall in a part of the border where nobody was crossing anyway?
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No, you would put the wall where the gaps are, the gaps that might actually be used for crossing.
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So it's sounding suspiciously like exactly the same policy in effect, not in the details, but in effect as Trump.
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There's a new study that said exhaled aerosols, increases with COVID-19 infection, age and obesity.
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So if you're old and overweight, you're more of a super spreader, at least in the specific sense of exhaling more virus.
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But I think the best part of this story is where this study was published.
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It was published in a publication whose initials are P-N-A-S.
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So, there's a gigantic penis study about aerosols.
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I'm not going to say that I'm necessarily right about that, but I feel like I'm creeping toward being right that the super spreaders are the older obese people.
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And wouldn't it have been nice for our medical experts to tell us that so we knew especially who to stay away from?
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And don't tell me that we were doing social isolating in general so that covered everything, because it doesn't.
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You don't try exactly as hard, but if you told me, you know, kids under 12 are totally safe, and people over 50 with more weight are not so safe, I would definitely act differently.
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Well, here's something else I was sort of right about.
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Well, I said that in the George Floyd trial, they should put video evidence on trial in general, not just the video evidence for this case, but they should make the larger point that video evidence is misleading commonly, commonly misleading.
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And the defense did that, put an expert on the stand who was looking at where the knee was placed on top of George Floyd, where the officer's knee was.
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And I guess the defense, Nelson, asked one of the witnesses if he'd ever heard of, I think it's camera bias or something like that.
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And then he showed him side-by-side pictures, one that looked like the knee was on the neck and one that looked like it was on the shoulder blades.
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And I guess there were multiple pictures that make that here.
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Anyway, so in a way, the defense did put video evidence in general on trial.
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Because you have to get the jury to the place where they would at least imagine the video evidence could be real.
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Now, it probably would have been a great distraction to bring in these examples that I'd mentioned, like the fine people hoax and the bleach hoax,
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because the people in the jury probably believe those things to be true, so they wouldn't work as examples, even though they're not true.
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He used exactly the camera angle that was relevant to the case.
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He made the larger point that not only is it possible to be fooled by video, but there's a word for it.
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But have I told you that when there's a word for it, it carries more weight?
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Somebody's calling me a super spreader out here, which is pretty funny.
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But I've had so little contact with humans that I doubt it.
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Did you know that the Greg Gutfeld show is five days a week at night?
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It's competing in the 11 p.m. slot in the East Coast and 8 p.m. on my coast.
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And apparently the first night of ratings for the Gutfeld show, how do you think he did on the first night?
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On the first night, he beat all the other shows at the 11 o'clock thing.
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Now, it's a little bit of apples and oranges because Gutfeld runs it two times.
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You know, technically he's dominating late night on the first night.
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And by the way, if you haven't seen the clip that's a parody of CNN coverage, it's really good.
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Actually, a few people alerted me to the fact that Ron DeSantis has apparently adopted the Trump body language.
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And when I first heard it, I thought, well, it doesn't look, I'm sure it doesn't look exactly like Trump.
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It probably looks, you know, maybe reminds you of it.
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It's exactly, it looks like, I mean, I can't explain why, but it looks like actually an imitation of Trump.
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I've never seen, I don't think I've seen anybody do it before.
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Because I thought it would be sort of obvious whether he was doing it intentionally or not.
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It could literally just be influence, and he picked it up, and he doesn't know why.
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Somebody smart suggested that Ron DeSantis should lower his speaking voice to have more authority.
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What do you think of DeSantis lowering his voice just a little bit to get a little more weight?
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And I think in the same suggestion, there was a suggestion that he's speaking from his diaphragm, which makes him sound a little less literally.
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And he should be speaking from the bottom of his stomach instead of the tight part.
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So I do think that he would benefit from voice, the little voice technique.
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If you'd like a really quick technique to tune your voice, you hum the first part of Happy Birthday.
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You hum it, and you feel it in what's called the mask of your face, the front part.
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And if you can hum so it vibrates in the front part of your face, then you stop humming.
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The very next thing you speak will be close to your perfect speaking voice.
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And now my voice would be just about my perfect speaking voice because it tunes me and it relaxes me, puts the voice up in the right mechanism.
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So I think Ron DeSantis could benefit from a five-minute voice lesson, really.
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And by the way, I'd like to thank all the people who send me suggestions and stuff because it really helps.
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He asked the question, do you trust political news you are getting?
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Now, here's one of the reasons that you can't do polling questions,
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It's really hard to ask a question that doesn't get a misleading answer, you know, that people interpret differently.
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Do you trust the political news you are getting?
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And if they had not added the you are getting at the end of that, it would completely change it.
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Because trusting that all the news is accurate is different from trusting that the news you choose to consume is accurate.
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So liberals said 55% said they do not trust the political news they are getting.
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55% of liberals do trust the political news they are getting.
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You would have to be asleep for years to trust the news, wouldn't you?
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Even your own news, even the news that you've decided is the best of the best.
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Wouldn't you have to be asleep for years to think that's true?
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Let's say if you believed that the Russia collusion thing was an honest mistake by the news.
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Even if you believed it was an honest mistake, it's still misleading.
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How in the world can 55% of liberals have that opinion?
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What 23% of conservatives failed to notice the fake news?
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Or do they trust it anyway, even knowing that often it's fake?
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How in the world could you be a self-identified conservative
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watching presumably at least some conservative coverage
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Do you remember I told you that on any poll question
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something like 25% of the public will just have a whack response?
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It will just look like they're not even human beings
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I don't know if you'd ever meet anybody like that.
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If you spend your whole life, do you think you'll ever meet somebody
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who says, yeah, I'm a conservative and you know what?
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23% is enough that you would have met somebody with that opinion, wouldn't you?
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I think some people just interpret the question differently.
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If you said to a bunch of conservatives, do you trust the political news you are getting?
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I believe that 23% probably thought, you know, I can't read their minds, of course,
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but probably something like 23%, well, the conservative news that I choose to follow is the good stuff.
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Yeah, they could get it wrong, but, you know, I trust them in general.
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So I think maybe that's just a question interpretation issue.
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So as of today, there's really no chance he's going to get convicted of murder.
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But based on the testimonies and the trial facts that came out yesterday, the odds of a conviction of Derek Chauvin,
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Like, you could say, well, anything's possible, but I don't know in this case.
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Now, what do you think CNN reported when the Minneapolis police use of force expert,
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the actual training expert, this is the guy who trains the police on use of force.
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They said that this fellow testified that Derek Chauvin's kneeling on George Floyd's neck
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Do you think CNN got everything you needed to know about that situation right in that headline, right?
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Because it kind of sounds, if you read that, that doesn't make any sense
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when I just told you there's zero chance he's going to get convicted, right?
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And somebody in the comments is saying, same on ABC News.
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Now, the only reason I know what actually happened
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is that I'm reading a blog site called Legal Insurrection.
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And Andrew Branca is live blogging this and gets into the details.
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Now, if you read what actually happened at the trial,
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it's closer to the opposite of what CNN reported.
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Because this use of force training guy absolutely destroyed the narrative.
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When the prosecution is talking to this use of force expert,
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that the use of force guy is answering on a sort of hypothetical, technical way.
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So one of the questions, and this is a general example, right?
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This might be a little off, but the general example would be this.
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Expert, do you think that, is it appropriate to continue applying force
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Is it appropriate to continue applying this hold when the danger has passed?
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Well, I imagine he'd answer, if there's no danger,
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and again, I'm paraphrasing lots of stuff into a little summary.
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Then the defense says, well, is every situation the same?
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says that if you consider all of the variables,
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and this is, most of this is cribbed from the legal insurrection blog,
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which I recommend for the best thorough look at this.
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So Floyd had a drug dealer who provided him the drugs,
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and apparently the autopsy showed that Floyd had three times the amount
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that might be enough for an overdose, three times.
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And I told you that that seems like a third-degree murder charge could be applied to the dealer.
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And I recommended that the defense, you know, try to get that going,
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because if somebody else is being tried for the same murder,
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that's kind of some reasonable doubt, isn't it?
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If two people are being tried for the same murder for different circumstances at the same time,
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how in the world can one of them find him guilty?
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That's the most reasonable doubt you could ever have.
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Well, it turns out that the lawyer for the drug dealer
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has testified that he's going to take the fifth and not talk at trial
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because it might incriminate him in a possible third-degree murder,
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you seem to know absolutely nothing about the law
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because it would be ridiculous to charge the drug dealer for the death.
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Otherwise, all the ODs in the country would be somebody to be getting charged with the death.
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So if you're a dealer and you give somebody fentanyl,
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that the drug dealer should be on trial for third-degree murder
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and that the circumstances completely justify it,
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if you're looking at two possible causes of death,
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I thought it was a real good way to lay it out.
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Certainly, if I had to choose between two situations,
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from somebody who knows what they're talking about.
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And the expert answered that he personally had done so,
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I don't know if there's any precedent for this,
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and with whatever was happening to him mentally,
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that the police are trained to what to do about it,
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it was proper to keep him down in that position.
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I mean, what's left of the prosecution at this point?
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you have more flexibility for keeping them under control.
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when asked explicitly if any of the video of the event
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which in this context means a respiratory choke,
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oh, was it, was he being subject to a carotid choke,
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He wasn't putting pressure on both sides of the neck,
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the common name for this carotid choke or whatever.
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that he probably would have popped back in 10 seconds.
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So all the experts talking about their blood chokes.