Episode 1350 Scott Adams： Chauvin Persuasion, Social Media Tightens its Grip and More
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Summary
On this episode of 420: Bigfoot gets a new home in California, Ron DeSantis becomes president, and a politician says the dumbest thing you'll ever hear in public that makes you laugh. Plus, a new documentary explores whether Bigfoot murdered some Northern California pot farmers.
Transcript
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Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. It's all about to break loose. Yeah, there's stuff
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coming at us. Let's see if we can get ready for it. Happy, what's the day today? April
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20th. Happy April 20th, which has no significance whatsoever. I say that so I can remain on
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social media. Now, would you like to enjoy this experience to the best possible extent?
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Well, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen,
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a jar, a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it 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, the thing that
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makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, but it's going to happen right now. Get
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ready, get ready, get ready, go. Savor it. Savor it. Okay. Well, the most important news of the day,
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and I don't say this lightly. If you haven't heard this news report, let me be the first
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one to tell you. There's a new documentary that investigates whether Bigfoot murdered some
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North, Northern California pot farmers. No, I'm not making that up. There's an actual documentary
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looking into whether Bigfoot murdered some Northern California pot farmers.
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And the investigative journalist heard a story that still haunts him about a savage Bigfoot attack.
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So that seems credible enough. It's in the news. In related news, CNN will host a special of its own
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to determine if racism is the cause of Bigfoot's attack. No, that's not true. No, just the CNN part's not
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true. The other part's true. There's a documentary about Bigfoot killing people in my state.
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I don't know how far away this happened, but I am in the same state as a murderous Bigfoot.
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And if you think I'm happy about that, one more thing to worry about. I wake up this morning and I'm like,
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Well, it's climate change. It could be some riots. What? Murderous Bigfoot somewhere on the loose in my
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state? And how many of them are there? And did the Bigfoot have any accomplices? Right? These are the
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things we need to know on 420. All right. In other news, Ron DeSantis just became president in 2024.
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You need some details on that? Yeah, Ron DeSantis just became president in 2024. He's not, you know,
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we're not there yet. But he did something, he did something this week that if this doesn't guarantee
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it, just guarantee he'll be president. Let me tell you what it is. And in the comments, I want to see
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if you get it. It's not a headline, but it will be. It will be a headline. It goes like this. This is
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actually so clever that it's funny. You ever see somebody just does something that's so smart
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that it actually just makes you laugh because you didn't think of it? Here you go. So there's a new
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law. I guess he just signed it in Florida, DeSantis Estate, and that grants civil legal immunity to
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people who drive through protesters blocking a road. You see it? It's over. It's freaking over.
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Are you not laughing? Seriously, how many of you are laughing out loud? Because why did he think of this?
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Nobody else thought of this? Oh, somebody says a few states have that now. But even so, the fact that
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he would make this change, or at least sign it, who knows who was behind it. But he signs this thing
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just at the perfect time. I can't think of anything that would be more on point than this.
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I'll tell you, he just won the presidency. It's over now.
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Let's see. Meanwhile, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, or Frey, I don't know. He said this in
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public. Compare these two political actions. All right. The Ron DeSantis one, one of the smartest
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things you'll ever see politically. Now, here's the dumbest thing you'll ever see from Mayor Jacob
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Frey. He said yesterday, in public, he said this. That's the funny part, isn't it? He said it in
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public. Regardless of the decision made by the jury. Regardless of the decision made by the jury,
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there is one true reality, which is that George Floyd was killed at the hands of police.
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Now, that's like the dumbest thing a politician ever said in public. Now, I happen to think he's
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right, right? So, from a purely factual standpoint, I think he's probably right. I think it would be
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fair to say that he died at the hands of police, which is not funny. Just the way this idiot is
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treating it is funny. So, let me give you my final opinion on Chauvin and George Floyd. Now,
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of course, we've all had preliminary opinions, which maybe in some cases we've revised as the
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trial goes on. Just the way things should work, right? The trial should change your mind or solidify
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your opinion. That's why we have them. And I would say that my opinion has drifted from the beginning.
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So, here's my final opinion, having seen, I think, enough of, I haven't watched every minute,
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but I feel like I saw enough of the defense and the prosecution. My final opinion is this.
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Chauvin's actions probably were a deciding factor in Floyd's death. Probably. In other words,
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in my opinion, probably, Chauvin's actions killed Floyd. Now, I think that there's a good likelihood
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that there are other factors, which would add to the reasonable doubt question. But on the question
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of what's most likely, most likely what he did had some effect, probably an important effect,
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on the end of Floyd's life. Did he know it? Well, that's a separate question. We'll talk about
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that in a minute, whether he knew it. But certainly the thing he did, in my opinion, and again, we have
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to have only an opinion here, because we're not doctors, and there's some difference of expert
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opinion, right? But in my opinion, it's more likely that Chauvin did end the guy's life.
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I won't say the guy, because we'll treat him with more respect. Let's say George Floyd's life
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was ended, probably had something to do with Chauvin. However, do you go to jail because you
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probably were part of it? Well, that's where it gets a little tricky, right? So I do agree that
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Jacob Freyer Fry, the mayor, is probably right that it was homicide. I think that part is sort of
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tactically true. But to say that out loud when things are so sensitive is just dumb. This is just
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dumb politics. All right. We're going to talk more about the trial. Have you noticed that the trolls
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are out? Sometime this week, and yesterday I noticed it when I was talking with Ari Cohn,
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a bunch of somewhat obvious trolls, the ones who have zero followers, and they don't have a profile
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picture, and they just signed up, that sort of thing. So a bunch of trolls that I'd not seen for
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quite a while in the political process. They'd gone quiet for a while. But they came out recently,
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and I just got hammered on some tweets about the Chauvin-Floyd case, and it looks like most of
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them are paid trolls. Who's paying them? Who are paying all the trolls who are talking about my
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comments about the case and saying that no matter what I say about it, that therefore it's proof I'm a
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racist? What kind of troll would do that? And who would pay them? Would they be independently operated?
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It could be. Could they be democratic operatives? Maybe. Could be. I mean, that would be consistent
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with what we've seen. And we have a history of that, Democrats hiring trolls. We know that's a thing.
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That's a genuine, confirmed, no doubt about it thing. Democrats have hired trolls for social media
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purposes. But is this what's happening? Here's another hypothesis. And it's just a hypothesis.
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China already controls our media, both news and social media, via artificial intelligence.
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So this is the hypothesis. So this is the hypothesis. Now, how could you prove it? Well, I don't know of a
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way directly. So, you know, short of some kind of cyber magic where we can actually determine what's
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happening. Don't know if that's going to happen. But here's what to watch for. How often will our news
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media and social media create a narrative which is exactly what China would want us to create?
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If it happens over and over again, that our narrative corresponds exactly to what China wants
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it to be, at some point you have to ask yourself if that's a coincidence. Now, let's take the Floyd
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trial. We'll take this as one data point, which does not prove the hypothesis, right? So understand
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that anecdotal stuff. Any one situation doesn't prove anything. But it's what to watch for, right?
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To see if this was repeated enough where the pattern becomes, you know, hard to ignore. So what would
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China's, if you can imagine, what would be their best interpretation or narrative that they would want
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the United States to adopt as its main one? Well, they definitely would not want us to say
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that fentanyl was a big cause. Do we all agree? China is intentionally sending fentanyl in large
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amounts to the United States to kill our citizens. We know this to be true. This is not in any kind of
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doubt. Do they want us to get really, really mad and understand this is what's happening? China sending
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fentanyl and killing tens of thousands of people a year? Do they want us to think that and really
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focus on that? No. What would China like us to focus on instead of focusing on China sending us
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fentanyl? Racism. The number one thing, and there's no doubt about this, right? The number one thing China
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wants is for the United States to think racism is the dominant theme in America, and that's what we
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should be focusing on because it'll tear us apart. And it also makes it easier for them to put Uyghurs
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in prison camps, right? If you're China, you want the United States to have a whole bunch of
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racism problems so that they can do anything they want with their Uyghurs and say, look, hey,
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you know, you can't talk. You know, we're not going to even address what you're talking about,
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but you can't say anything. Right? So when you see that the official narrative of both the news and
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social media, at least the left-leaning portions, are solidly, solidly identical to what the Chinese
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narrative would be for us if they wanted to give us a narrative, it's exactly what's happening.
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Is it the reason it's happening? What do you think? Do you think that China already has the ability
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to do what I just described, use AI, maybe TikTok, social media, trolls, etc., maybe direct payments
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to some people, maybe some people are just agents working for our media. Do they have the power
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to create this narrative, and did they do it? Are we watching it happen right now?
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There's no way to know, is there? But if I had to bet without knowing, but somebody said,
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you know, gun to head, you just gotta, you gotta bet, I would bet probably, I would bet probably
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what we're seeing is Chinese, China the country, not the people. Every once in a while, I like to stop
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and pause. Chinese people, I love. Like, I love Chinese people. Americans in China, wherever
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they are. But the Chinese government, we've got a problem with. So just to be clear that we're
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always talking about the government when we talk about China in a negative light.
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And you can see that I riled up the obvious trolls today. So look at my Twitter feed, and look at the
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troll activity, and ask yourself if those trolls look to be speaking proper English. So the first
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question to ask is, is the way they phrase things, does that look like it came from an American? They
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have to be careful, because there are lots of Americans who don't have English as a primary
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first language. But just ask yourself. You know, it's just part of the fact pattern. All right.
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Here's a little rule I would like to put out there, just to play with it. Whoever tries to control
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the narrative wins, if nobody else is trying. Okay? In a situation where there's only one entity
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that even cares how the narrative goes, that they always win. If they're, if let's say they're a
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superpower, or they have some power. That anybody powerful who cares enough can change the narrative,
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so long as there's nobody else trying to change it in a different way.
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In the Floyd case, it feels that, to me, that if there were some entity that wanted to control this
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narrative, that there's not really in some kind of organized pushback. It's just a bunch of us trying
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to figure out what's going on. Really. I mean, I feel as if, even though we politicize everything
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in this country, I feel like at the bottom of it all, the real most important thing that Americans
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are feeling is they want the, they want the court to come to be right. Right? There's probably nothing
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we want more than for the decision to be right, whatever that is. And I feel as if China might have a
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different opinion of what they want to happen. So they might have the only one, the only narrative
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preference that is strong enough, and they have the power to make it happen, that there's no counter
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narrative that anybody's doing in any organized, big, hire trolls, use AI kind of way. Right? I think
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they're just fighting alone. If it were something that had more to do with, let's say, national integrity or
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defense, I would suspect that we have spooks who could push back on the narrative. Right? And then maybe
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there's something like, you know, an even tension there. All right, let's talk about the Chauvin trial. We now
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have both the defense and the prosecution have done their final arguments. And I told you where I come out on
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this is that I think Chauvin is guilty. Well, guilty, let's say not in a legal sense. But I do believe
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that he is likely a cause, at least, at least a major cause of Floyd's death. The question of whether
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there are other factors, whether he knew about it, those are all go to his, go to his defense or guilt.
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But in my opinion, he did something. Now, I heard from Robert Barnes yesterday, I was watching,
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you know, Frey and Barnes on their podcast, which is tremendous, by the way. It's the best. It's the
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best. I hate to say it, because I do a live stream too. But if you're not watching Frey and Barnes,
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F-R-E-Y, and Barnes talk about this case, you're really missing the best analysis of it. And I've
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seen some different analyses. They do the best job, I'd say. And here's where I come in on all this.
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My verdict is that I don't believe Chauvin was completely aware that what he was doing was
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dangerous. Now, does it matter? I'm sorry, I spelled it. I confused the mayor with Frey and
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Barnes. F-R-E-Y. So the correct spelling is Viva, V-I-V-A. F-R-E-I. And I apologize for
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getting that wrong, because I just did the story about the guy with the other spelling.
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All right. So the... Here's my take. I don't think Chauvin was aware that he was doing it. And the
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reason is that he did it right in front of everybody in slow motion. It was compatible enough
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with common police procedure. The other police officers didn't seem to be alarmed or look to
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stop him. There was, you know, there was some distraction from the, um, from the crowd. So
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it's not clear that Chauvin was either smart enough or aware enough to do, you know, CPR when it was
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called for. So my verdict, if it were me, is that reasonable doubt has been clearly established.
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At the same time, I think he's probably a big part of what killed Floyd and probably didn't do what he
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should have done. Can we allow that? Can anybody have a, uh, is it possible to have a reasoned opinion
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that the guy is sort of guilty of something at the same time that reasonable doubt might allow him to
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go free? Can both be true? I think they can, right? So let's talk about where this is likely to go by, um,
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now keep in mind that I don't have a legal background. So anything I say on this, you know, grain is, grain
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of salt, and maybe we can see how dumb I am at the end. So we'll see how it actually turns out. Then you'll,
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you'll have a better idea how dumb I am about legal stuff. But my take is this. I believe that the jury
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has now heard three separate jury instructions. I don't think you'll hear this analysis anywhere
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else. All right. But this is my take. The jury has heard three different jury instructions. And the jury
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instructions are everything in this case. It's everything. For example, if the jury was instructed
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that it doesn't matter what was Chauvin was thinking, it didn't matter if he knew it was
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dangerous or not, well, that gives you one outcome. If the jury thinks it does matter what
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Chauvin was thinking and that he didn't know he was doing anything wrong, well, you might get a
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different outcome, right? Now that my examples might not be perfect, but, um, these are the things which
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are known. We know that the defense was accused of misstating what the jury instructions were.
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So that's two versions. One is what the judge gave, the actual jury instructions. One is what the defense
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claimed they were, which was, you know, debunked. And then there was what the prosecution claimed it was,
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which I believe also was misinterpreted. Now the judge went to solve that by agreeing that he would
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reread the instructions and make sure the jury knew that the lawyers could not introduce new evidence,
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etc., and that they had to listen to the real instructions from the judge, and they should ignore
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anything that a lawyer says about the instructions. I think I got that right, roughly. What do you do if
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you're the jury? Keep in mind that now they've heard three sets of jury instructions, and the jury
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instructions will completely determine how they vote, to the extent that they even follow the instructions.
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All right, so now you've got three sets of instructions, and you've got 12 jurors who are normal Americans.
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Give me 12 normal Americans. Give them three different sets of instructions.
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What's happening during deliberations, right? Have you ever worked at any big company or been
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in a business meeting with 12 ordinary people who have three completely different sets of
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really pretty confusing instructions, and it's a complicated freaking thing.
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Whatever is happening in that jury room has nothing to do with the data. It has nothing to do with
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reason. It has nothing to do with justice, right? It's just a bunch of people who could not possibly be
00:23:19.980
asked to make good decisions under these circumstances. And somebody's life, actually lots of lives if you
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think of, you know, the outcome. There are lots of lives on the line, and they don't have a chance.
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The jurors just don't have a chance. It's way too complicated, and three sets of instructions.
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There's no way they can unwind that stuff and come to some smart conclusion. If you put,
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if you put, uh, if you replace the entire trial with the best lawyer in the world, you know, whoever
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it is, let's, let's put in Alan Dershowitz just for our example, and just say, all right, we won't
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even have a jury. We'll just have Alan Dershowitz decide, because at least he knows the law. He can,
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he can sort out the complications, and you know, he can at least handle the argument.
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I don't even think he can handle this. I think, I think even somebody as qualified as the best lawyer
00:24:19.260
in the world would say, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of a gray area, I gotta admit. Now, all of
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that suggests that the result should be that the burden of proof to a reasonable doubt, beyond a
00:24:34.460
reasonable doubt, has not been met. In my opinion, that standard hasn't, it's not even close, right?
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My subjective opinion, not being a lawyer and not being on the jury, so I didn't get to see
00:24:46.940
everything they saw. So from a different perspective, bias though it may be, I'm imagining I have the
00:24:54.220
same kinds of biases as everybody else. But to my mind, reasonable doubt is easily met. But again,
00:25:04.140
I'm not qualified, nor informed. It's just my opinion. At the same time, I think probably Chauvin is guilty
00:25:13.420
of doing the final acts that killed Mr. Floyd. The prosecution started with an emotional appeal in
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which he talked about the humanity of Mr. Floyd, Mr. Floyd and, you know, how he loved his mother,
00:25:30.380
etc., and he was popular within his family. How much of that has anything to do with the case?
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How much of the emotional appeal has anything to do with the facts of the case? None of it, right?
00:25:43.740
So when you watch the prosecution play obviously to emotion and not even really talk about the facts of
00:25:51.500
the case for a big portion of the closing, how do you feel about that? Because I would like to know
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that the system didn't allow that. I would prefer a system in which the judge said everybody understands
00:26:07.340
that human beings shouldn't be killed. You don't need to make us feel worse about it.
00:26:13.100
Just deal with the facts. You know, did it happen? Is there guilt under the law? How is it even legal?
00:26:21.500
This is a real question. How is it even legal to spend a bunch of time making people just feel
00:26:30.540
especially bad when you know the point of that is to overcome their understanding and their dealing
00:26:37.020
with the facts? How is that even legal? Seriously. Now, I get that you need to do a little bit of it.
00:26:46.860
You know, you do need to establish that we should care about everybody, right? He's not a criminal
00:26:52.780
that you just say, well, we don't care if he's guilty or not. It wouldn't matter. He must be a bad
00:26:57.500
person. So you don't want that. But it's one thing to establish that your person is a real person,
00:27:05.260
you know, worthy of all the protections of the Constitution. And it's another thing to just use gross
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emotional blackmail, basically, or manipulation on the jury while we're all watching.
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So if you're going to say to me, what does a travesty of justice look like? It looks like any of the
00:27:26.060
lawyers trying to convince a jury to use their emotions over the facts. And we saw that right in
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front of us. We watched that happen. How is that cool? I'm sure it's legal. But it's not cool.
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And I got to tell you, if I were in the in the jury, and I had to sit through, you know, one more
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minute of George Floyd was an awesome guy, which I believe is actually true. You know, it sounds like
00:27:55.900
he was pretty awesome. He had some drug problems. And people have drug problems. And you know, if he
00:28:01.900
did other crimes, those are other crimes. But so I don't know why that's legal. All right. The other
00:28:10.140
thing is the jury, of course, will be influenced by, you know, Maxine Waters claiming that there should be
00:28:18.380
more confrontational stuff, which even the judge pointed out is probably grounds for dismissal,
00:28:24.300
or what do you call it? Grounds for appeal. So here we have a situation where this is how
00:28:31.820
ridiculous this is. Chauvin apparently is probably going to go to jail for a different crime. Did you
00:28:37.500
know that? I heard this on Frey and Barnes too, that that apparently Chauvin has a whole separate
00:28:44.700
legal problem with allegedly not paying his taxes for years. So he's going to go to jail for 10 years
00:28:50.460
or something anyway. Beyond that, we have an emotional case, not a factual case. We have three
00:28:57.900
different sets of jury instructions. We have 12 people who couldn't possibly, at least collectively,
00:29:04.220
all of them couldn't possibly understand the complexity of even what the charges mean or how
00:29:09.260
to sort them out. We don't, there's no such thing as 12 people who can do that. It isn't even a thing.
00:29:23.500
Yeah, I guess that's the main thing. All right. And we know that it'll be overturned on appeal,
00:29:28.380
or at least the appeal would be pretty solid. So you've got jurors who are worried about their own
00:29:33.740
life if they're smart. You know, somebody said on social media, well, they were instructed not to
00:29:40.300
watch the news so that they don't really know that they're in danger. They know they're in danger.
00:29:46.140
Come on. Of course they know. They knew before they took, they got on the jury. Everybody knew
00:29:52.540
that if you're on this jury, there was a little bit of extra danger.
00:29:58.540
So here are the charges. Now that you've heard the whole case, let me describe what the charges mean
00:30:04.060
and see if these apply. There's second degree unintentional murder. So that would allege that
00:30:09.820
Chauvin caused Floyd's death without intent. So there's no intention is required while committing
00:30:18.060
or attempting to commit felony third degree assault, meaning that the third degree is default. The third
00:30:25.260
degree assault was intentional infliction of substantial bodily harm. So was Chauvin in intentionally
00:30:33.100
inflicting substantially bodily harm in a way that a reasonable person could have known, you know,
00:30:39.260
death was a possibility? And I would say no, because he was doing something that has worked lots of times
00:30:46.940
without killing anybody and is actually part of police procedure described as the least dangerous
00:30:53.180
thing you can do under some circumstances. So I would say at least in terms of reasonable doubt,
00:30:58.620
there's so much of it here that, uh, I don't think a reasonable jury, if they were basing it on the
00:31:04.940
facts, second degree unintentional murder, I don't see any chance. Now there is a chance in the political
00:31:10.860
sense, he'll be guilty of that, but not on a factual basis. I don't think it's even close. Then there's the
00:31:16.860
third degree murder charge that says, uh, that the death was caused by Chauvin perpetrating an act
00:31:23.420
eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind without regard to human life.
00:31:29.500
So an example that I understand would be shooting into a crowd. You weren't trying to kill some
00:31:34.860
specific person, but you were certainly not caring if anybody died and your actions caused it. Did,
00:31:42.540
is that what happened? Do you think that, um, he would, that Chauvin was perpetrating an act
00:31:49.020
eminently dangerous to others. Now this is where it gets complicated. He was doing something that
00:31:55.420
only was a danger to the person he was dealing with. And he had a specific reason to do it,
00:32:01.100
which could be a good reason or a bad reason, but he had a specific reason
00:32:05.660
that was within the realm of police work. So I don't see how this could possibly apply,
00:32:11.500
but I guess you'd have to really be a lawyer to know. But how is the jury going to even deal with
00:32:16.540
this question? Like I read this question and I don't even know how to deal with it. Do you think
00:32:21.100
the jury does all to all people? They're, they're all more capable than I am at dealing with the
00:32:27.100
complexity of this question. What exactly are they determining? Are they determining Chauvin's guilt
00:32:34.460
or is the jury trying to figure out if their own reading comprehension sucks?
00:32:39.660
Because that's really what will determine whether he goes to jail, whether the jury has good reading
00:32:47.500
comprehension. There's your system for you. All right. Then how about second degree manslaughter?
00:32:52.620
Now here we get into something that at least has a chance of being, um, factually proven. And that,
00:32:59.500
that charge alleges that Chauvin causes Floyd's death by quote,
00:33:03.900
culpable negligence, whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk and consciously takes chances
00:33:10.940
of causing death or great bodily harm. So do you think that what Chauvin was doing
00:33:18.140
was consciously here, because here's the mind reading part. You have to know that Chauvin was
00:33:24.620
consciously doing something that was obviously dangerous. But again, it was police procedure.
00:33:31.420
It was considered the least harmful way to do this situation. Floyd was kicking. There's reasonable
00:33:40.060
doubt all over this thing, because in order to say he's guilty of this, you have to know his state of
00:33:45.900
mind. He didn't even testify. How in the world are you going to read Chauvin's mind to come up with
00:33:53.580
he consciously knew he was doing this, when he did it in slow motion in front of witnesses with cameras?
00:34:00.140
There's so much reasonable doubt here. This would be the easiest, if it were not political, it would be
00:34:07.660
the easiest case in the world to win. But because it's political, who knows? All right. Um, now I heard
00:34:15.100
some people say to me that their interpretation of the, uh, the jury instructions were that Chauvin's
00:34:23.820
state of mind, and I think the prosecution said this too, that what Chauvin was thinking or intending
00:34:29.820
doesn't matter. It's just what he did. But do you think the jury will ignore, will take the prosecution's
00:34:38.780
interpretation, and just ignore what Chauvin was thinking? Would you do that? Would you ignore
00:34:45.820
that Chauvin might not have known he was doing anything that could have been dangerous? How do
00:34:52.380
you ignore that? Because even if it's technically illegal and you should go to jail for your actions,
00:35:01.340
would you on a jury actually put somebody in jail if you knew they didn't even know they were doing it?
00:35:07.900
Really? Because I'm not sure I would. Even if I understood the law had nothing to do with intention,
00:35:17.820
I would still include it in my decision, because I'm a human being, and it does matter.
00:35:23.020
I don't care that it doesn't matter under the law. I'm a human. I'm a juror. See, one of the things that
00:35:31.180
many of you don't understand is that the law is very specific about what the jury is supposed to do.
00:35:38.540
But once it's your responsibility as a human being, and an American, and you've been put on a jury,
00:35:44.620
what is your responsibility? Is your responsibility to protect the law? No, it's not. Your responsibility
00:35:54.140
is to be responsible. That's it. Your responsibility is to do the right thing.
00:36:00.860
Okay. As you would want it done to you, you know, or as you would like the system to be. So if you
00:36:07.740
think the law is not an appropriate law, and maybe the law does say, it doesn't matter if you knew you
00:36:14.140
were doing it or not, you're still going to put that in there. I would. I wouldn't even consider
00:36:21.260
following the law if I considered the law unjust. Would you? And why? Why would you do that?
00:36:30.860
So I certainly would ignore any instructions that said that I couldn't consider my own feelings
00:36:38.060
about whether the law should even be a law. Speaking of that, well, let me tell you what
00:36:45.500
I would do if I were in the jury. And I got a lot of pushback from trolls, maybe Chinese trolls on
00:36:55.820
on social media. Here's what I do. On the first day of deliberations, I'd say,
00:37:00.460
mind reading isn't a thing. And if you don't know what he was thinking, we're done here.
00:37:05.740
That's it. That would be my entire deliberation. And no matter what they said, you know, what arguments
00:37:13.340
or what topics when they got to me, I'd say, well, you know, mind reading, still not real. It's still
00:37:21.820
only imaginary. And while we can be right quite often about people's intentions, we're not often
00:37:29.020
right enough that I'm going to send somebody to jail because you think you could do it this time.
00:37:34.460
Mind reading, not real. And then when somebody says, but we're supposed to ignore what he was
00:37:40.460
thinking, I would say, sure, you can do that. I'm done. And unless you could convince me that mind
00:37:48.380
reading is real, there's nothing to talk about. Right? I'm just done. But I would also vote guilty on
00:37:55.500
all counts to protect my family. But I would tell the public I did that. So after the trial,
00:38:03.580
I would go to the public and say, I didn't really consider any of the evidence in this case.
00:38:08.460
I just voted guilty to protect my family. Now, what happened to me when I said that on Twitter?
00:38:18.300
Coward, people said. Coward. See, it's happening in the comments here. Nice. A moral coward.
00:38:26.460
Would you do it for money? That's not the topic. So who else thinks that that would be cowardly?
00:38:31.180
Let me break this down for you. If you would put the outcome of this trial over your family,
00:38:44.700
I applaud your braveness. Your bravery is impressive. You would actually kill your own family
00:38:51.660
family to protect a system which is not doing anything useful whatsoever. And you would be
00:38:59.820
very, very brave for that. So congratulations for all of you. I applaud you. You're a better person
00:39:06.860
than me. Those of you who would kill your own families to support a verdict which has no bearing
00:39:13.420
on anything and will just be political. Congratulations. You're very brave and I wish
00:39:18.140
I could be more like you. Now, what I would do, as opposed to that impressive bravery which all of
00:39:27.020
you seem to have, killing your families to gain nothing, nothing at all. But you did kill your
00:39:33.900
family, maybe. So very brave of you. Here's how I would have played it. I would have broken the entire
00:39:42.140
system. In other words, the moment I went to the press and said I didn't use the facts to vote,
00:39:47.820
because I was afraid for my family. The appeal wins, right? That's the end of the system. So I
00:39:54.860
would break the entire system because it's all bad. It's based on emotions and politics. It's not based
00:40:02.700
on the facts. If you want to protect the system, you have to break it. The only way to protect our
00:40:08.700
system, in this case, is to just break it. Now, I do think that if they tried it again,
00:40:14.380
in, if they could find some circumstance to get, you know, to get the emotion out of it,
00:40:22.300
and he's guilty, that's fine. I mean, I'm not, I'm not defending Chauvin. He looks like a bad,
00:40:28.740
good, bad dude to me. I don't feel any love for him. And for those of you who think,
00:40:34.500
hey, Scott, you must be defending Chauvin because he's white. You don't know white people very well.
00:40:42.460
White people don't defend guilty white people. It's sort of a strategic superpower.
00:40:53.380
Take two cultures, and you don't know anything else about them, except one of them punishes their
00:40:59.280
guilty people and rewards the people who are not guilty, and the other one doesn't do that.
00:41:05.460
Who comes out of the head in the long run? Well, I think popularizing your criminals, and
00:41:13.060
that's probably a bad strategy for the long run. All right, speaking of injustice,
00:41:20.760
there's a YouTube star named James Charles. Do you all know him? So James Charles is a young man who does
00:41:29.100
makeup videos. So he does, I guess, how would, what would be the most non-offensive 2021 way to say
00:41:41.320
this? I don't know what his sexual orientation is. It's at least bisexual, but I don't want to
00:41:50.520
characterize him. So it's at least bisexual. That's all I know. Or gay, or he doesn't, non-binary. Who
00:41:59.740
knows what it is? But that's not important. What's important is he does makeup videos in which he has
00:42:05.800
over 25 million subscribers. He's enormous. If you've ever watched his show, he's really good.
00:42:13.840
I've watched his content a number of times. Christina is a fan. And apparently he's really
00:42:22.160
good with makeup. So, you know, he's just sort of quite gifted in makeup and explaining it.
00:42:31.320
So in terms of talent, he is very talented. And in my view, he's earned everything he got. He's just
00:42:37.960
really good at it. But here is what he is accused of, and apparently has admitted in part, that he
00:42:46.340
did some sexy texting with some people. He says, claimed they were 18, but now we know they might
00:42:54.540
have been 16. Now he admits doing it, but he also, and admits it was a mistake, but he also says that
00:43:01.760
he asked them and they said they were 18, or he assumed they were 18. Now keep in mind, he's a young
00:43:06.860
man. So he's not like, you know, some old creeper. So had they been 18, they would have been, you know,
00:43:15.340
not too grossly in of the range of, you know, people get together. Not like my situation, which has you
00:43:23.240
all upset. So here, now here's the kicker. YouTube demonetized him. All right. Now keep in mind,
00:43:35.980
the facts that we all understand, and I don't know that there's much difference in how we interpret
00:43:41.380
the facts, is that he admits what happened. He says he was not aware any crime was being committed
00:43:48.460
because he wasn't aware of their age, right? And how old is he? Somebody says he's 21.
00:43:57.980
Can somebody confirm that? Because it does matter. If he's close to 18, that matters, right?
00:44:09.140
So he's admitted it, and he said he wouldn't have done it if he had been aware that they were the age
00:44:16.460
they were. Now he got demonetized. Do you know how much money is involved if you have 25 million
00:44:21.840
subscribers? We're talking about millions, tens of millions of dollars that YouTube took from him
00:44:28.740
based on a crime he has not been committed for. So he's not, he's not been, he's not been convicted
00:44:35.780
of any crime. Not only has he not been convicted of a crime, but his telling of it is at least as
00:44:44.560
plausible as the alternative teller. It's not like he has an implausible story, right? It's not implausible.
00:44:54.140
It's actually quite plausible. Do you believe that had he known there were 16, he would have left
00:45:00.300
permanent records on text or messaging that could be discovered later? Obviously, he could be blackmailed
00:45:09.200
by anybody that he had said this to. So I'm seeing people saying that he's 21, almost 22. All right,
00:45:14.700
that matters. So here's my problem. Again, I don't want to be the guy who is, who, you know, I know the
00:45:20.680
trolls will come and say, Scott, you're, you're defending, um, people trying to do things with underage
00:45:29.000
kids. No, I'm not doing that. I'm just saying if somebody doesn't know they're committing a crime,
00:45:35.860
very much like the Chauvin case, right? If they don't know, how can, how can YouTube demonetize
00:45:42.880
this guy? So, uh, apparently this is YouTube's response. And if this is not chilling, I don't
00:45:50.720
know what is. So this is a quote from YouTube. If we see that a creator's on and or off platform
00:45:59.200
behavior. So things they did not on, on YouTube harms our users, community, employees, or ecosystem,
00:46:06.840
we may take action to protect the community. So in other words, YouTube can demonetize you
00:46:12.380
if there's something you did in your private life that you have not been convicted for,
00:46:18.220
not been convicted for, innocent until proven guilty, but YouTube doesn't like it because they're
00:46:26.640
going to say it harms them. They can kick you off. How many of us are vulnerable to that?
00:46:34.500
Well, I am. So apparently this, this rule gives YouTube all they need to kick me off right now
00:46:42.060
for, for things I've done outside of YouTube. So in other words, if you look at my Twitter feed,
00:46:50.680
you could see that countless people are accusing me of being a racist because I think probable cause
00:46:56.660
should be important in a, in a, in a legal trial. Of course, I would have the same opinion if the
00:47:02.480
races were reversed in the case. Of course I would because reasonable doubt is more important than
00:47:08.780
all of that stuff. Right? But YouTube can now quite reasonably look at my Twitter feed and say,
00:47:16.960
hey, hundreds of people are accusing you of a horrible thing, being a racist. We don't want
00:47:22.860
any of that. So even though you've never done anything on our platform, which would cause us
00:47:27.780
a problem, we have a rule which would allow us to kick you off based on you not being quite the
00:47:33.440
kind of person that we think, um, is good. And we think you might be dangerous to people on our platform.
00:47:38.920
Just think about the power that that has. They have the power to control your, your economic life and
00:47:50.120
also the power to take it away based on them not liking what you did outside of your dealings with
00:47:56.200
them that were not even illegal or had not been convicted for. That's pretty bad.
00:48:02.880
Um, there's a CNN, some CNN propaganda happening right now in which they're running a story about
00:48:13.360
two friends. Uh, I think it was a white woman and a young black guy. And they were talking about how
00:48:19.820
they were treated differently by cops at a traffic stop. Now, when you hear that story, you say to
00:48:25.160
yourself, well, I know where this is going to go. The, the police will treat the young black man very
00:48:30.680
roughly. They'll treat the white person in this case, a woman. Uh, I think, um, they would treat
00:48:37.080
her less likely. And now we'd see another evidence that the police are brutal against black people,
00:48:41.940
which is exactly what you want to see when the Floyd, uh, verdict is coming, right? So if this looks
00:48:49.280
like they're throwing matches into gasoline, they are, but then you listen to the, the actual story
00:48:56.360
and it turns out that the police handcuffed and briefly detained the young black man they,
00:49:02.720
they found because there was a warrant out by somebody with his exact name. And I think it was
00:49:09.140
an unusual name. You can tell from the recording that the police realized they have the wrong guy.
00:49:16.260
And then later they found out that somebody else had used this fellow's name when stopped and didn't
00:49:22.900
have ID, I guess. So there was somebody unrelated to this story, some other person at a different
00:49:29.620
time who would use this perp's not perp's. I'm sorry. He was an innocent guy. This perp had used
00:49:36.520
the innocent guy's name. And so when the innocent guy was stopped by the police for whatever normal
00:49:42.400
thing, they briefly detained them, determined fairly quickly that he was the wrong guy, probably just
00:49:49.560
from photos. And then released him with something that sounded sort of like an apology. Now, is this a
00:50:00.120
case of the police treating this guy poorly? I don't think so. Don't you imagine that if the white person
00:50:08.300
had had an unusual name and an arrest warrant under that name, they would have at least held the other
00:50:16.340
person until they found out if they had the right person and then released them when they found out
00:50:20.980
they didn't? How in the world would those two cases be treated differently? You know, one is speeding and
00:50:26.900
one has got an arrest warrant. It turns out wrong. It's a wrong arrest warrant. But one has an arrest
00:50:34.620
So here's a comment that's happening right now. And you want to ask, is this a Chinese bot? So look at
00:50:48.100
this one. So somebody named Sheena345M, we don't know if this is a real person or troll, says,
00:50:54.640
why is Scott so obsessed with supporting a knee on a neck for nine minutes?
00:50:58.660
Exactly the opposite of what's happening. But you can see that the trolls are trying to gin up
00:51:07.920
an imaginary situation in which I was supporting a knee on a neck for nine minutes. After I just told
00:51:14.780
you, it looked to me like the officer probably killed him, meaning that it was the proximate cause,
00:51:22.580
the last part of the cause. We don't know if there was anything before that. We don't know if the
00:51:28.020
fentanyl was enough. We don't know if anything else was a cause. We just don't know that it wasn't.
00:51:35.540
So is that defending it? Or are you possibly not a real person, and rather a troll, who has come here
00:51:44.880
to create as much racial animosity as possible? Because if all you're doing is trying to create
00:51:50.620
racial animosity, I'm going to assume you're a troll. And I'm going to assume you don't work for this
00:51:57.680
country, because I can't believe an American would do something so bad to America. I'm sure they would,
00:52:06.160
but I'd like to assume that you're a foreign entity, if you're trying to make something out of nothing.
00:52:16.580
All right. So watch for the Chinese trolls. There will be a lot of them.
00:52:20.080
Oh, and here's another one. Steve Cortez. You all know Steve Cortez from Twitter and TV,
00:52:29.000
etc. Twitter has suspended him. Apparently he... Oh, I just realized I'm going to get suspended if I
00:52:37.480
tell you this story. Oh, how can I tell you this story without getting suspended for the same reason
00:52:45.620
that Steve Cortez got suspended? In this case, I'd be getting suspended from YouTube. How can I tell
00:52:53.240
you? I don't know if I can. Can I? Well, I'll give it to you in broad strokes. I guess you'll have to
00:53:02.300
Google it yourself, because I don't have freedom of speech in any practical way. I mean, legally I do,
00:53:08.220
but not in any practical way on this topic. So let's say that Steve Cortez, he cited a Stanford
00:53:16.260
study, and I won't even tell you what the topic is, because if I told you the topic, I would get
00:53:22.560
kicked off of social media. But it's a legitimate study on a Stanford, and it disagreed with the
00:53:30.520
narrative. And because he cited a legitimate, at least we know, at least a legitimate organization,
00:53:39.220
Stanford, just because he mentioned a study, he was kicked off of social media. And I can't even
00:53:46.800
tell you what it was about. Because if I were to suggest that a study exists on this topic that
00:53:54.280
violates the narrative, I would get kicked off of social media according to what I understand are
00:54:01.280
the rules now. Right? It was about masks. It was about masks. So it was a study that alleges
00:54:14.380
that masks don't work, and that the study showed that. Now, you know my opinion, which is I don't
00:54:22.200
think there are any studies, this one or any else, that tells you anything. I believe all the studies
00:54:27.440
are pretty close to worthless. So I would not have been on the same page with Steve Cortez on this,
00:54:36.480
but I certainly would have retweeted it. Because if a legitimate organization does a study on an
00:54:43.520
important topic, I would retweet that even if it didn't agree with my preconceived notions. This is
00:54:48.620
pretty important. So let me give you my opinion on masks. If you're anti-mask, and I know most of you
00:55:01.280
are, I'm certainly anti-mask for people who've been vaccinated. But if you're anti-mask, and certainly
00:55:09.720
young people and outdoors people, so I'm more anti-mask than mask for most of our situations. But I still
00:55:17.140
think on a risk management situation, you still want to take them seriously. Here's my take on why
00:55:25.540
I still think masks are important, depending on the situation. Fact check me on this. There are no
00:55:33.840
major industrialized countries who believe masks don't work in this context. Am I right? If we were
00:55:42.200
being fed a scientific lie, or even if this country was bad at reading scientific data,
00:55:51.040
and we had gotten the wrong answer on masks, you would expect that the other countries would be
00:55:57.900
all over the map. You'd expect that there would be more countries that just said masks don't work,
00:56:03.600
like Germany. Wouldn't you expect to see Great Britain or France or Germany, South Korea,
00:56:12.200
Canada, Japan, Australia, Canada? Wouldn't you expect one of those countries to say masks don't work?
00:56:24.040
I know what you're saying, Sweden, but Sweden is not the case. I'm pretty sure Sweden says masks work.
00:56:31.400
They just would have a different opinion about, you know, when to use them, etc. I think. Check me on
00:56:36.520
that. So I don't believe there is any country, you know, there may be some smaller countries and
00:56:43.200
third world countries, but I don't believe there's any major industrial country with a robust scientific
00:56:49.560
community who is, has a different opinion. Right? Can anybody fact check me on that? And I don't think
00:56:59.080
Sweden counts and states don't count. I'm talking about entire countries.
00:57:07.160
Now, there may be places where they're playing it differently. Sweden's a case where they're
00:57:12.700
playing it differently. It's not a case where they say masks don't work. So just fact check me on this.
00:57:21.300
So this is where I come down on it. I'm no expert on masks. But in any case where there is ambiguity,
00:57:28.660
you would expect that at least countries would disagree. You can certainly see that people within
00:57:34.500
countries would disagree, and that wouldn't tell you what you need to know. But there's no entire
00:57:39.140
country that has a robust scientific community that's on the other side.
00:57:45.100
Ask yourself why. Are they all wrong? All of them? I don't know. So where I am on masks is if it turns
00:57:58.760
out that masks made no difference, I would be surprised, but I would not be wrong. Does everybody
00:58:07.540
understand that? So I'm pro-mask, but later if we were to learn that they made no difference at all,
00:58:14.600
and they actually were bad for us, I would still be right. Do you understand that? Because it's a
00:58:21.760
risk management decision. And if you see all of the best experts in every country are on the same
00:58:28.160
team, the risk management says to go with that team, right? Even if it's wrong. If it turns out
00:58:37.100
you're right, and you're right all along that masks don't work, that would have been a good guess.
00:58:42.660
You could be right by guessing. But let's be honest, it wasn't based on your scientific
00:58:49.960
knowledge, because we don't have any. All right. Should be an individual decision,
00:58:57.660
somebody says. Oh, somebody says Steve is back. Good.
00:59:02.260
Somebody says, are you left of Bernie the same way you identify as black? That's a longer discussion.
00:59:14.220
But how you identify determines how people receive your message. So from a pure communication
00:59:21.480
standpoint, sometimes it's good to be on the same team you're trying to convince.
00:59:26.400
Let's see. At least one person liked my show today. I saw a lot of griping today.
00:59:39.920
I'm just looking at your comments here for a moment.
00:59:50.360
Life is risky. Yeah, separate from the science, there's a decision of whether
00:59:54.920
your individual rights should let you be maskless if you want.
00:59:59.760
Oh, okay. Well, some of you like the show. Thanks for that. And let's go watch the rest
01:00:09.700
of our day. Happy 420. I plan to enjoy it quite a bit. And I will talk to you tomorrow.