Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1361 Scott Adams： Socialism on Trial, Trickle Down Economics, Alternate Headlines, and Monsters Under the Bed

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the absolute best part of your

00:00:10.660 whole day, and there's no doubt about it. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or

00:00:16.720 chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite

00:00:21.260 liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of

00:00:26.560 the day that makes everything better. And it's happening all over the world at the same time.

00:00:33.120 It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it happens now. Go. Stop it, Daniel. Stop it. Troublemaker.

00:00:44.900 All right. Let's talk about all the news. Most of it is fake.

00:00:50.360 Who would have known I could make an entire job out of just pointing out how fake the news is

00:01:01.260 every single day? Wouldn't you think that there would be days at a time when I would try to talk

00:01:08.240 about fake news and I would look at the news and I'd be like, darn, there's no fake news today to 0.66

00:01:14.660 talk about. But no, we never have to worry about that. We never have to worry about that. There's 0.56

00:01:21.480 always fake news. Here's at the top of the list. Did you hear the poll that's found that 85% of the

00:01:29.980 viewers of Biden's joint session address liked it? 85% liked his address. Wow. That's pretty high,

00:01:40.660 isn't it? Totally real news there, isn't it? Well, of course, they only polled, not only, but almost

00:01:51.300 overwhelmingly, they polled Democrats who wanted to watch a Biden speech. What type of result do you get

00:01:59.660 if you do a poll of mostly Democrats who liked Biden enough to watch his speech? I feel like 85% is just

00:02:10.160 about what you'd expect out of that number. So it meant absolutely nothing because they just

00:02:15.620 polled the people who said exactly what you'd think they would say.

00:02:22.460 Rasmussen has some poll results, just came out, that by more than a three-to-one margin,

00:02:29.900 voters say capitalism is better than socialism. I have questions. Wait a minute. Are you telling me

00:02:39.960 that in the year 2021 that in the United States, it's only three to one? Don't you feel like that

00:02:49.740 should have been a little higher as in 20 to one or 100 to one? Are there really that many people who

00:02:57.720 said, huh, capitalism versus socialism, capitalism versus socialism? Yeah, socialism. But apparently,

00:03:07.160 yes. How can you explain this? Well, I have a potential explanation. It goes like this.

00:03:13.100 There's nobody in the world who has the same definition of what socialism means.

00:03:20.580 People just have different definitions. If people use the same definition, I feel like you'd have a lot

00:03:27.020 more agreement. But as long as people think socialism is everything from lots of it to a little bit of it,

00:03:34.100 then people just answer whatever political direction they think their answer ought to be.

00:03:41.060 But if you ask me, is socialism better than capitalism, I would say, I don't know what you're

00:03:47.120 talking about. Because they're always paired. Is there any place in the world, any country,

00:03:55.140 in which there is capitalism, but there's not also socialism? I can't think of one. Maybe I can.

00:04:05.560 Saudi Arabia? Maybe? Because I'm trying to think of a situation where they don't have taxes.

00:04:11.800 Because if you pay taxes, you're a socialist country. Right?

00:04:17.560 Is anybody going to disagree with this statement? That if you have a capitalist system,

00:04:26.720 but you also pay taxes, that you're functionally, you're a socialist country? Yeah. It's just a

00:04:34.740 definition. We don't like to think of it that way. But it's sort of a definition. You take taxes from

00:04:41.640 some people. You use it for the betterment of the whole. Socialism. How about public school?

00:04:51.380 Socialism. Roads. Pretty much everything. Now somebody's saying, that's dumb. So you're going

00:04:58.960 to see what I call the word thinkers pouring in. Once you see this distinction in the way that people

00:05:06.340 think, you can't unsee it. So I'm going to ruin your brains here for a minute. There is a big hunk of 0.96

00:05:14.280 the public who believes that words and the definition of words are a complete replacement

00:05:21.860 for logic and reason and facts. Now that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? And you think to yourself, 0.71

00:05:29.640 there's nobody like that. Everybody knows the difference between a logical argument

00:05:35.340 and something where you're just arguing about what a word means. There's nobody who can't tell the

00:05:41.660 difference. Yeah, there is. Watch the comments. You're going to see all the people get really mad

00:05:46.940 when I say, well, for all practical purposes, paying taxes is socialism. And those people,

00:05:53.280 no, no, the word, the word hurts me. Oh, I'm out. I'm out. I'll never listen to you again.

00:06:03.380 Because you used a word in a way that I didn't like. So the word thinkers usually are the first

00:06:11.140 ones to bail out of any conversation that looks at cost benefit or nuance or anything else.

00:06:18.100 Word thinkers, first out. But I would say that everything from social security, even though we

00:06:26.000 pay into it, blah, blah, blah, we don't pay enough to cover it. We have socialism all over the place

00:06:32.180 in our system. Here's a better way to ask the question. You ready for this? Here's your payoff.

00:06:39.820 And by the way, if the Rasmussen folks are listening, I don't know if there's a way to

00:06:45.340 make a polling question out of this, but I'd love to see it. Instead of saying, what's the better system,

00:06:51.500 socialism or capitalism? And then you just get into word thinking and what words mean. Instead,

00:06:57.260 ask this, which gets away from the whole, what words mean problem. All right. Here would be my

00:07:03.920 poll question to the public. What is a better system? One that focuses on human motivation

00:07:10.500 or one that focuses on equitable outcomes? That's the question. Because, you know, the socialism just

00:07:19.240 means too many things to too many different people. But if you said, what's a better system?

00:07:24.720 One that focuses on human motivation or one that tries to focus on an equitable outcome?

00:07:33.720 How do you think people would answer that? Well, I asked that question in my highly unscientific

00:07:39.940 Twitter poll. As you might imagine, 98% of the people said you want a system that focuses on human

00:07:48.700 motivation. Let me go further. Name a system that doesn't take into account human motivation

00:07:57.140 and still works. I don't think you can. I mean, it'd be fun to see if somebody could. There must be,

00:08:06.140 you know, maybe there's some special case or something. But I don't think there's any history,

00:08:10.300 any situation, any example in which somebody designed a system that works against human motivation,

00:08:17.980 and it worked out fine. I can't think of one. So that's the way I'd ask the question. Now,

00:08:27.180 let's say you were a capitalist or a Republican. Let's say you're a conservative and you wanted to

00:08:34.740 warn people away from the risks of socialism. How would you do that? Would you go on social media

00:08:42.920 and say, socialism is bad? Useless. Because the person you're talking to doesn't even know what 1.00

00:08:50.460 you're talking about. So when you say, socialism is bad, the other person hears, what's wrong with

00:08:57.540 public education? You're not even on the same conversation. So social media is useless for

00:09:05.360 changing anybody's mind about socialism. You'll just be caught up in the definition of things.

00:09:10.740 So how would you do it? Let's say you wanted to be a high-level persuader and you wanted to

00:09:17.260 persuade people, but you know you can't do it directly. You can't just argue with them. They'll

00:09:22.180 never change their mind. Nothing you say in public is going to make any difference, right? So what do you

00:09:27.340 do? Here's what I would do if I were trying to be the master manipulator here. I would create a

00:09:35.600 one-minute video about socialism and focus on just that human motivation element and say,

00:09:44.220 whenever you create a system where the human motivation is right, you get good results. But

00:09:49.720 put it in a little one-minute package that can educate people really quickly. So it'd have to be

00:09:55.900 interesting, visual, probably have to have good production values, maybe something funny, but

00:10:02.640 not necessarily. Something that everybody could get just the one-minute description of what the problem

00:10:10.420 is. Now, let me tell you, let me show you how bad this is. I'm seeing in the comments somebody

00:10:17.280 saying, we'll just show them Venezuela. Done. Right? Worst persuasion ever. Try it on me. Try it on me.

00:10:27.540 See if you can convince me. I mean, I already, I'm already a capitalist. But let's see if you could

00:10:32.680 convince me with that argument. Scott, we don't want to become like Venezuela. To which I say, 0.95

00:10:39.100 the problem with Venezuela was how they picked their politicians, meaning that they had a dictator.

00:10:47.840 The problem with Venezuela was a dictator. And then everything else you say about Venezuela

00:10:54.480 is just yak, yak, yak, because you're done. Venezuela had a dictator. Everything that comes after that,

00:11:03.560 you don't even need to debate it. You're kind of done. Dictator equals bad shit. So anybody who says,

00:11:13.540 we don't want to become like Venezuela, you should be talking about how we pick our leaders. We're not

00:11:18.720 going to slide into their economic policies, you know, like nationalizing companies and stuff. I don't

00:11:24.800 see that coming. So that's a terrible argument because Venezuela is too different on the political

00:11:30.940 element to compare them in any way on an economic argument. It's, it's, it's just apples and oranges.

00:11:38.920 They voted for their dictator. Somebody says, sure they did. Allegedly. Maybe they did.

00:11:47.860 It doesn't matter how they get there, how they got there. They got there. So yeah, one minute video

00:11:54.000 showing that there's no such thing as a system that can survive without human motivation calculated in.

00:12:00.400 That would be one thing. All right. CNN, I think it was CNN in an opinion piece yesterday, maybe

00:12:07.220 talked about how Joe Biden was different than Trump in terms of the lying and fact checking.

00:12:16.480 Now, apparently even the left, CNN specifically, is in fact calling out Biden for a number of things

00:12:25.040 he says, which are not accurate. So I'll give him that, right? It would have been sort of hard for

00:12:31.260 them to just never fact check Biden. You know, I don't think they could have gotten away with

00:12:35.800 just not fact checking him. And indeed they found, you know, a bunch of things he said that were not

00:12:41.860 correct. Now, given that the reason he ran for office, one of the biggest ones was that Donald Trump was a

00:12:50.820 big old liar. It's kind of weird that he's also getting fact checked and lots of stuff he says 0.97

00:12:57.400 is not true. But as CNN points out, he does seem to have one pattern, which they would consider an

00:13:05.400 improvement over Trump, which is that when he gets fact checked, he typically backs off the fact,

00:13:11.880 which would have been a lie, not a fact. Now, would you say that's true? First of all,

00:13:18.600 have you observed that? Have you observed that he's made claims that didn't pass the fact checking,

00:13:24.880 but then fairly quickly, maybe not the same day or something, but fairly quickly modified off that

00:13:31.340 claim? And I'm looking at your comments to see if you've noticed this. I would say I have,

00:13:39.140 but only by reading the reporting. I haven't noticed it directly, but I've noticed that the

00:13:44.780 reporting seems to say it. I've seen it in a few different places. All right. Most of you are

00:13:50.300 saying, no, no, no, hell no, hell no, no, no, no, no. All right. Let me ask you this. When was the last

00:13:57.020 time Biden used the fine people hoax? Because remember, he used it every single time he talked

00:14:04.820 in the campaign. Every time. How many times has he used it lately? None. All right. Can you think

00:14:15.420 of a time that he used the fine people hoax lately? It went from his main theme to doesn't exist

00:14:24.400 anymore. Do you know why? Well, it got fact checked. Yeah, it got fact checked. Now, not by CNN,

00:14:31.220 because they can't fact check it because they're part of the lie, but it got fact checked by enough

00:14:36.080 places that it must've been embarrassing after some point. What about the Trump said, drink bleach?

00:14:41.900 You don't see Biden saying that. He may have said it at some point, but I don't think he says it

00:14:46.280 anymore. So there might actually be something to this. I hear what you're saying that you don't,

00:14:53.620 you don't believe he's backing off his lies, but keep an eye on it. Just, just clear your history

00:15:00.000 cash and just say, all right, starting now, let's see if he does back off anything that gets fact

00:15:06.760 checked. We'll see. But I think we did some good work making him back off of the fine people hoax

00:15:13.480 and the bleach hoax. And when I say we, I mean, literally we, you know, people who followed me

00:15:20.300 and amplify it, et cetera. All right. CBS News reports about a new paper by David Hope of the

00:15:31.240 London School of Economics and Julian Lindbergh of King's College, London. And they said the

00:15:36.520 following. They examined 18 developed countries from Australia to the United States. They looked

00:15:42.800 at a 50 year period from 1965 to 2015. And they were trying to figure out if tax cuts were good

00:15:51.960 or bad, right? You know, did you come out ahead because you cut taxes, especially on the rich?

00:15:58.360 And they looked at the Reagan tax cuts, et cetera, and the other countries as well. And here's what

00:16:02.940 they found. They found that the per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly

00:16:10.300 identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and those that didn't.

00:16:17.760 So what do you make of that? This says that the GDP was no better whether you cut taxes on the rich

00:16:24.280 or not. And also unemployment was no better. So here's how this was reported. If it's no advantage

00:16:32.580 to cut taxes on, to cut taxes on the rich, then maybe you shouldn't do it because you didn't get

00:16:40.500 any GDP benefit and you got no, I'm sorry, opposite. I'm speaking upside down right now. So the study

00:16:50.900 would suggest, and I'll use the word suggest, that cutting taxes on the rich does nothing good

00:16:57.660 because it doesn't help your GDP, doesn't help employment.

00:17:05.500 Is there something wrong with this? Do you see it? Do you see something wrong with this?

00:17:13.500 Here's another way to say the same thing, and I'm not going to change any facts. I'll just use the

00:17:18.800 facts as they report them. There's no reason to take money from the rich because it doesn't help

00:17:25.880 anybody. Right? According to their study, if you take money from the rich in terms of cutting their

00:17:34.680 taxes, or I'm sorry, increasing their taxes, if you increase the taxes on the rich, the rich will have

00:17:40.540 less money, but the GDP will not be improved nor will employment. I believe that their study shows the

00:17:48.980 opposite of what they wanted to show, that there was no benefit of taking money from people who

00:17:55.860 had earned it. Legally, under the rules of capitalism, for whatever reason, some people

00:18:03.480 get lucky, some people inherit, but it showed there was no benefit for taking their money. And in a free

00:18:10.260 country, allegedly, why are you taking money from the rich, if it doesn't make any difference?

00:18:17.360 Now, it does, I would say that this does, if the data is accurate, you always wonder about that.

00:18:25.140 But if the analysis is good and the data is accurate, it does argue against, it argues against

00:18:31.480 trickle-down economics working. Meaning it doesn't say that the GDP went up if you cut your taxes.

00:18:39.300 But it did let people keep more of the money they earned, and didn't make any difference. That's

00:18:48.480 better. It's better to let people keep their money. Now, let's see. And it says the incomes of the rich

00:19:00.880 grew much faster where the rates were lower. So the rich got richer. But here's the other thing that

00:19:06.780 this analysis, I'm pretty sure left out, which is the differences in tax shelters and write-offs and

00:19:13.880 all that. When taxes were highest in the United States, were rich people paying the most? Or were

00:19:21.800 they using the most tax shelters and really not paying much at all? I don't know if you can look

00:19:28.020 at tax rates and say you've got some kind of apples to apples. Because if the tax rates are this,

00:19:35.300 but all the rules of how you hide stuff and avoid taxes are completely different from one to the

00:19:42.100 other, that's an apple and an orange. You can't compare them. So I don't think there's anything

00:19:47.180 useful in this economic analysis, except that it didn't find any big difference when you steal the

00:19:54.080 money from the people who earned it. So why do it? The other thing I think I worry about is that

00:20:01.160 cause and effect might be backwards. Because when are the situations in which you can raise taxes on

00:20:07.540 the rich? When is the time you can raise taxes on anyone? When the economy is good, right? So is it the

00:20:16.700 tax change that causes the economy? Or is it that the economy is good, and this is a good time to pay

00:20:23.300 down some debt? So you raise some taxes. Hey, economy is looking good, sort of the Bill Clinton

00:20:29.180 situation. Clinton could raise taxes because the economy was good. The economy caused the tax change. 1.00

00:20:39.060 It wasn't the tax change that caused the economy. So I don't think this economic analysis has any value

00:20:45.380 whatsoever. Just none. But it's in the news. People are going to make all kinds of assumptions

00:20:51.660 about it. Let's do some alternate headlines. I'll tell you how the news was reported, and then I'll tell

00:20:59.540 you another way you could have reported the news with the same facts. So I won't be adding or subtracting

00:21:06.800 facts. I'll just be describing it differently. And you're the judge. If the original headline or my

00:21:14.260 headline is more accurate, all right, here's something from the Hollywood Reporter. This is in a tweet.

00:21:19.880 But the tweet described the situation this way. It said a group of 467 purported former participants

00:21:28.320 on the show, this is Jeopardy! is the show, wrote an open letter on Medium accusing the game show's

00:21:36.960 producers of failing to catch what they allege is a white power hand gesture. Now, I'm not going to do

00:21:44.020 an impression of it, because then somebody takes a screenshot, blah, blah, blah. But suffice to say

00:21:50.360 that his thumb and forefinger were together, and his three remaining fingers on one hand

00:21:57.740 were exposed. All right, so that's what he was doing. So he was definitely making an intentional gesture.

00:22:05.980 So nobody is questioning that. It's just, what was the gesture? His claim, because he was horrified,

00:22:15.860 so the person who made the claim, no, he wasn't making the OK sign. That's the automatic thing you

00:22:21.780 think. But he wasn't doing it because you didn't see the O. So normally the O part, see, I'm not going

00:22:28.200 to do it with my hand. Let's use these scissors. Let's say this part of the scissor was where your 1.00

00:22:36.980 thumb and your index finger would cause a little O, like the OK. That wasn't there, because his hand

00:22:45.160 was like this. All right, so the audience, and who he was presenting it to, couldn't see the OK part of

00:22:53.080 the OK. All you could see is that three of his fingers were below it. All right. Now he says it

00:22:59.100 was the third time he won, and each of the other times he won, he did a gesture. He did one gesture

00:23:06.560 for one when he won once, a gesture for two when he won the second time, and a gesture for three when

00:23:12.840 he won the third time. But wait a minute, why did he have to do it that way? How do people typically

00:23:19.140 say three like that? All right? This is the way you say three, but he didn't do that. So why did he

00:23:30.960 do that weird other thing where these two fingers are together, but the other three are giving the

00:23:36.240 number? Have you ever seen that before? In baseball. In baseball they do that. So if you're a baseball

00:23:45.620 catcher and you're indicating a call to the pitcher, you do that signal. It's one of the ways you

00:23:53.420 indicate three, but baseball players tend to do it. Now that doesn't mean that's why he did it. I have

00:23:59.460 no idea what's in his mind. But as far as I know, there's nothing on social media, nothing his friends

00:24:04.960 are saying, nothing he said, that would even come close to making him a white supremacist, which is the

00:24:12.180 accusation, right? Nothing in his background, any suggestion that there's anything like that,

00:24:18.200 right? So pretty unlikely it was true. So that's the headline that all these people are accusing him

00:24:23.720 of making a alleged white power hand gesture. Let's see, let's see the alternate summary.

00:24:30.340 Could have been the same tweet. In other words, it could have been the same facts. Here's how I would

00:24:35.480 have written it. Man holds up three fingers to indicate three victories in a row. Mass hysteria

00:24:42.000 ensues. Is that an inaccurate statement of what happened? He held up three fingers and people lost

00:24:50.020 their ship. That's a fair statement based on what we can observe, right? There's no indication he has

00:24:58.500 any connection with any racist anything. So the only thing we know is he held up three fingers and there

00:25:04.300 was a bunch of mass hysteria that happened. How is that not accurate? Same story. All right,

00:25:10.920 here's another one. You remember the NXIVM so-called cult that wasn't really a cult, but people calling

00:25:19.940 it that. The New York Times once wrote this headline. And, you know, so this is a while ago, but the

00:25:27.620 headline was, inside a secretive group where women are branded. So you know the story that there was

00:25:34.860 some small group of people who got a brand, you know, a little, little brand that had the,

00:25:43.100 the leader's name, initials, you know, sort of embedded in it, et cetera. So that was the story.

00:25:49.780 Now, is this accurate? Inside a secretive group where women are branded? Well, I would say that's

00:25:57.160 accurate statement. It was a semi-secretive group. That's true. And that women were branded. 0.94

00:26:07.420 But don't you assume they were branded beyond, outside their, their, their willingness to do it?

00:26:14.740 Doesn't it sound like they were victims? That's what it sounds like, right? Here's another alternate

00:26:21.400 headline. And, uh, I believe the, this is all true. So it's just a, another way to look at it. It's all

00:26:28.540 true. So first of all, these brands have a name. I don't know if you've heard it, but it's called

00:26:33.660 scarification. Have you heard of it? So giving yourself a little brand or scars with a cauterizing

00:26:42.060 pen. So there's actually tools to do this. It's a thing. So it's a growing trend where you'll get

00:26:48.600 like a little bit of scar instead of a tattoo, right? Now, how many of you knew that? How many

00:26:55.680 were you, how many of you were aware that this thing called scarification already existed? It's a,

00:27:03.620 it's a growing trend with professionals who use professional equipment. Now, did you know

00:27:09.580 that prior to this so-called branding that the people who participated, did you know that they

00:27:16.860 called in an expert on scarification to learn how to do it safely and voluntarily? Did you know that?

00:27:26.000 Did you know that they got expert advice? So it'd be safe and that nobody did it unless they wanted

00:27:31.300 to. Did you know that the, uh, well, look, so here's the alternate headline is scarification,

00:27:40.860 the new tattoo. We report on a group of friends who are part of this growing trend.

00:27:47.020 That could have been the headline, right? Is scarification, the new tattoo, because that puts

00:27:53.240 it in context, that it's a thing. Most of the public doesn't know it's a thing. So if you just heard

00:27:58.900 if somebody got branded and you didn't know that there's a name for it, it's, it's a safe growing

00:28:05.460 in popularity, you know, thing, uh, then, uh, you would think of it differently. And it was a group

00:28:14.540 of friends who decided among themselves to put these brands on each other. Now, have you also heard that,

00:28:24.980 uh, it was a sex cult for Keith, uh, Rainier, Raineri, Keith Raineri? You heard it was a sex cult, 0.91

00:28:34.460 right? Did you know that the people having sex with him were already having sex with him before any of 0.98

00:28:41.700 this happened? And that the people who are already having sex with him, who all knew about each other,

00:28:47.540 it was completely open. Do you know that they were the core of the people who recruited the other

00:28:53.140 people, but there was never any requirement of any kind of sex or anything? That was never even part

00:28:58.760 of it. So when it's reported, it's that this, you know, they'll call it a cult and they'll say that

00:29:06.620 a bunch of women in the cult were having sex with the leader. Is that true? Yes. It's also true 0.96

00:29:15.740 that they were having sex with him voluntarily before any of the group was even formed and that 0.53

00:29:22.420 they were part of forming the group. So now, of course, I'm also dealing with information that,

00:29:29.020 you know, comes from the group. I wasn't there. So you have to factor in, you know,

00:29:33.360 whether there's any context, I don't know, but look at the way this stuff gets reported.

00:29:39.140 When you see that the headlines are so disconnected from anything that actually happened. And by the

00:29:46.100 way, just because I know this will get taken out of context, I'm not defending anything that anybody

00:29:52.780 did. I don't know what Keith Ranieri did or did not do with anybody or whether he did or did not

00:30:00.460 break any laws. I do know that everything about the prosecution was sketchy. I do know that there's a

00:30:07.740 lot of sketchiness about how he got prosecuted, but that's independent of whether he broke any

00:30:12.820 laws. I wouldn't know. So I have no personal knowledge of any of that. So I don't defend

00:30:17.400 anything I don't know it about. By the way, the Dilbert NFT is up to, the bidding is up to $12,600

00:30:23.860 with one day left. I imagine most of the bidding will be the last day because there's not much reason

00:30:30.780 to do it before the last day. So this is the day. This is the last day. So if anybody was thinking of

00:30:36.500 that, and by the way, I don't know why anybody buys collectible anything, but if you wanted this one,

00:30:42.860 it's available. The disturbing story about Rudy Giuliani being raided at his New York apartment,

00:30:52.380 I guess, by federal agents who had a warrant for all of his electronic devices. They're trying to

00:30:57.620 figure out, apparently, if he had some kind of foreign agent, unregistered help he was giving to

00:31:05.780 Ukraine to lobby the United States on their behalf. But apparently, at least Giuliani says he's never done

00:31:12.340 anything like that. And he had also offered all of this stuff without being asked for it.

00:31:19.260 Everything that they took, he had already offered to give them. Now, that's his version. So I don't know

00:31:25.220 if that really means everything. But the weird part of the story is, I heard this on Tucker Carlson's show,

00:31:31.420 is that Rudy Giuliani says he tried to give them Hunter Biden's hard drives because that was covered in the

00:31:38.400 warrant. The warrant said, get all of his electronic devices. Some of his electronic devices had Hunter Biden's

00:31:46.960 information on it. And he was trying to give it to him. Please, take this. Your warrant says it's for you.

00:31:55.080 Here. And they wouldn't take it. What's that tell you? What's that tell you? Well, it tells you that there

00:32:02.880 must have been some kind of agenda. Now, everything about this is disturbing. But keep in mind, we also

00:32:11.400 don't know exactly what their motivation was, the federal, the people who served the warrant.

00:32:18.580 And it's not their job to tell us, because it's a, you know, it's a legal action. They shouldn't be

00:32:27.380 telling the public everything that they're doing, right? But we can't really trust them anymore,

00:32:32.200 if we ever could. So I don't think we're in that world where our intelligence agencies can do stuff like

00:32:39.160 this without a real good explanation to the public. So let me speak to our, you know,

00:32:46.920 law enforcement people in the Department of Justice. You have seriously degraded your credibility with

00:32:53.640 this. I mean, a lot. You know, everybody has their line. You know, maybe it was the Roger Stone raid

00:33:01.580 was your, where it crossed the line for you. They say, okay, I'm out. That's way too much showmanship

00:33:07.260 for whatever they were trying to accomplish. But until we hear more about this Rudy Giuliani case,

00:33:15.420 maybe there's something we don't know. I'm going to say that this has really taken the Department of

00:33:22.020 Justice's credibility down a whole other level to me. But we'll see. Maybe there's, maybe there's

00:33:30.180 something else we learned about that. So this tells you, this next story tells you a lot. You know,

00:33:36.740 you heard the Joe Rogan story, and he had, he had said that if a 21-year-old healthy person asked him,

00:33:43.800 should I take the vaccination, that he would say, maybe not. Now, how did that get reported by the

00:33:51.880 illegitimate media? That immediately got reported as that he's some kind of anti-vax person.

00:33:57.820 Not even close to true. He plans to get the vaccination, or already has. You know, he's happy

00:34:05.960 his parents got it. He has no objection to it. He does, however, have a cost-benefit opinion about

00:34:16.320 whether an individual would be better off in a special case. Special case is you're healthy and

00:34:22.780 you're 21. Now, the experts weigh in and say, you anti-vaxxer. The reason that the 21-year-old

00:34:32.000 should get vaccinated is that that's the group of people who are spreading it. So it's not about

00:34:37.920 the 21-year-old's own health. It's about the spread. To which I say, that wasn't the question.

00:34:45.540 The question was whether the 21-year-old should get a vaccination. The question wasn't whether the

00:34:52.700 21-year-old should do a solid thing for the rest of the public. And of course, Joe Rogan clarified

00:35:01.420 that. But in my opinion, that clarification was unnecessary, because that's what I heard the

00:35:07.760 first time. The first time I heard it, I did not hear him say that he was saying that the 21-year-old

00:35:15.480 should or should not protect other people. As he said, that's a separate question. It's a separate

00:35:22.660 question. The question is, is the 21-year-old making the right cost-benefit analysis for their own

00:35:28.980 situation? And I did not see the experts push back on that, except that there were some long-haul

00:35:35.960 problems. But how many of the long-haul problems happen to 21-year-olds? I don't know. Do you? Have

00:35:46.600 you seen any statistics that told you that a healthy, fit 21-year-old would also have lingering,

00:35:55.520 you know, the long-haul problems that some of the older people are getting? Again,

00:36:00.000 I think Joe Rogan made a perfectly reasonable statement that captured all of the nuance.

00:36:09.220 It captured all of the nuance. He understood that, you know, there's a spread question from the

00:36:14.880 people who don't get vaccinated. But that wasn't the question. He was talking about this one person's

00:36:20.500 cost-benefit analysis. So the fake news is trying desperately to turn this into a story.

00:36:27.160 But the real story should be Joe Rogan agrees completely with experts on the scientific part.

00:36:36.460 There's no difference between what he's saying in a cost-benefit way and what all the experts are

00:36:43.400 saying. There's no difference. But they try to make it into one by acting as though, you know,

00:36:50.040 he's talking about something that he isn't, which is, you know, blocking the spread to other people,

00:36:55.440 which is an important question. It just wasn't what he was talking about.

00:37:00.100 Are you as weirded out as I am by Biden saying, let's get out of Afghanistan,

00:37:06.340 and suddenly everybody's cool with that?

00:37:10.880 Does that bother you? Because it's bothering me. Because I'm pretty sure if Trump had said,

00:37:17.820 as he did, let's get out of Afghanistan, it looked like the world was going to end and 1.00

00:37:22.520 all bad things were happening. And then Biden says it. I feel like people just said, all right,

00:37:29.180 okay. Yeah, now that you mentioned it, there's no reason to be there. Now, of course, the reason

00:37:35.180 would be, you know, we're seeing stories in the news that al-Qaeda is already, you know, going to

00:37:41.020 take over Afghanistan. And the Taliban is going to let them and whatever. Who do you think is planting 0.96

00:37:47.500 those stories? Do you think reporters are saying to themselves, hey, I've got an idea for a story.

00:37:54.240 I'll go research what's going to happen after we pull out? Maybe. But that's not exactly how the

00:38:00.960 world works. It is slightly more likely that whoever is planting these stories about al-Qaeda

00:38:08.060 taking over Afghanistan is somebody roughly associated with the military-industrial complex.

00:38:16.680 Probably. Right? Or somebody who has an interest in staying there or furthering warfare.

00:38:23.560 So, but Biden gets a pass. He just says we're getting out because there's no reason to be there.

00:38:29.480 And there's no metric we can measure to even know if anything's working. We don't have anything to

00:38:35.440 measure over there to say it was good or bad, better or worse. Apparently, it's hard to tell.

00:38:42.880 So, if you can't measure your progress, get the hell out. Here's a good general statement of truth.

00:38:52.540 It's like a management, I guess, it's just a given. Anybody who studies management. If you can't

00:39:01.580 measure that the things you're doing are affecting the things you want to change, if you don't have

00:39:08.260 any measurement, get the hell out of there. You don't want to be anywhere where you can't measure

00:39:14.880 that you did something that makes a difference. If your actions appear random, get out. You don't

00:39:23.460 need to be there. You only want to be where you know your actions have some kind of a, you know,

00:39:29.940 likely predictable outcome. And there's nothing like that in Afghanistan. There's just no way to 1.00

00:39:35.740 predict that anything we do makes any difference in the long run. So, get out. And I think in a way

00:39:42.480 that that's what Biden, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but I think he's basically saying that, that we can't

00:39:49.680 see any reason. So, get the hell out of there. I'll give Biden credit for that. And, of course,

00:39:56.140 Trump as well. He started that. So, Trump more than Biden, I think, in this case.

00:40:01.580 All right. I owe you this private information. One of the pitfalls of being a public person,

00:40:11.780 such as myself, is that every now and then there's a private thing that happens in your life

00:40:16.580 that any reason to appeal to the greater good requires me to tell you this, which is I am going

00:40:26.060 to get vaccinated Monday. So, I have decided. Finally, I can get it close enough that I don't

00:40:33.320 have to wait five hours. So, only recently it became available somewhat easily. So, I'm going to get

00:40:39.540 vaccinated on Monday. And I owe you my reasons. Because it's a topic we talk about all the time,

00:40:46.520 right? I'm watching the comments. You haven't heard my reasons yet, have you?

00:40:53.500 Don't you think you should hear my reasons before you have such strong opinions?

00:40:58.020 How do you know you disagree with me until you've heard why?

00:41:00.520 I'm watching all the people. Am I scared?

00:41:08.980 All right. Let me give you my reasons. It goes like this. Number one, I'm in a category

00:41:17.340 with some comorbidities, right? So, I've got a little high blood pressure and, you know,

00:41:26.000 it's under control, but a little bit high. And I've got asthma, which I've had for many years.

00:41:31.660 So, in my case, I've got a little extra risk.

00:41:36.360 Number two, at this point, it's obvious the vaccinations work. There's nobody who disagrees

00:41:42.960 with that, right? I don't think there's any question at this point. No reasonable person

00:41:48.200 could say that they don't decrease the number of deaths. Are you right? Does anybody disagree

00:41:55.200 with that so far that the vaccinations do, at least what they said they would do, decrease

00:42:01.960 the number of deaths? Okay. So, that's the first thing. Now, I didn't know that for sure

00:42:07.960 two months ago. Two months ago, if you said, are you sure these vaccinations even work? I would

00:42:17.080 have said, well, I'd like to wait a little bit longer just to be sure. Now, we're not talking

00:42:23.160 about the risks yet. So far, we're only talking about whether they, you know, they help against

00:42:28.120 the coronavirus. I think at this point, it's unambiguously true. There's no expert anywhere

00:42:34.100 in the world who says they don't work, as far as I know. Next, let's talk about my personal risk

00:42:41.540 risk versus social risk. All right. If I were looking at only for my personal risk, maybe I'd make a

00:42:50.580 different decision. I don't know. But I don't like the long haul risks. And most people just ignore that

00:42:58.640 when they talk about the risk of dying from COVID. I'm not as worried about dying because the risks are

00:43:05.320 so small. I'm definitely worried about a long haul problem. And I think I'm in the age group where

00:43:11.920 that's worth worrying about. I wouldn't worry about it at 21. But I do worry about it at this age.

00:43:17.420 All right. So, I've got a little bit of personal risk here of the COVID that's bigger than most people.

00:43:24.620 And I judge without having perfect information, because we're all making decisions with imperfect

00:43:30.520 information, right? There's a little bit of guessing going on. My feeling, and that's about as far as I

00:43:37.480 can go with it, is my hunch, my feeling, my common sense, if any of those are real things, is that my

00:43:45.440 risk would be similar and maybe a little bit better, you know, lower risk if I get the shot, right? Now,

00:43:54.380 I'm unlikely to get blood clots, because I'm male. So, there's that. But then the second part is the

00:44:03.640 social part. As a patriot, as a member of the American family, a member of the world, let's say, as a citizen

00:44:14.840 of the world, I'm sort of in that category where if I get sick with COVID, there's a little more chance

00:44:25.240 I'm going to give it to somebody. Because if you're older, you might get a worse case. If you get a worse

00:44:31.020 case, you're more of a spreader. Maybe you don't know it. So, as a patriotic, I'm not going to say

00:44:39.720 duty. I'll say a patriotic preference, as well as for the world, which is not patriotism per se.

00:44:48.780 I think that there are people who are in the category where they should take a risk

00:44:54.240 for the other people. And I'm in that group. Meaning, I've had a good run. I've had a good run.

00:45:02.280 If I die, it's going to happen sometime. If it happens now, I've had a good run. Honestly,

00:45:11.720 I really think that. And everything I do now is just bonus. If I get another good year out of my

00:45:17.380 life, hey, that's great. So, if I were just doing it for myself, I probably would. Because I think I

00:45:25.340 have a little bit better risk-reward getting the shot than not. And for the benefit of the public,

00:45:32.500 there's no doubt that people like me, especially public figures. So, if a public figure gets the

00:45:40.360 shot and I'm in the older person category, it probably reduces the risk for the rest of the

00:45:46.200 public, is good for the economy. Somebody says, aren't you a recluse? Well, I'm largely a recluse,

00:45:54.220 but other people are not. Meaning that people come in and out of my environment, even if I'm

00:46:01.560 relatively a recluse. Take a selfie and post it. I don't think I'll be doing that.

00:46:09.020 Yeah, and there's the other thing. If you would like to put your money where your mouth is,

00:46:16.540 for those of you who think I'm taking on the risk of death, I guess everything's a risk of death.

00:46:22.020 Probably I have higher risk of... Oh, here's a good question for you. Let me see if you can

00:46:32.640 calculate these risks without knowing the data. Do you think my risks of dying are greater from the

00:46:39.660 vaccination or from the drive to the vaccination site? Which is the higher risk of dying?

00:46:47.440 This is a legitimate question. No, no hyperbole. I actually don't know. I feel as if, and I don't

00:46:57.040 know if it could be calculated exactly, I feel as if the drive to the vaccination is more dangerous than

00:47:02.440 the vaccination. That's the point we're at, right? Because I don't, and I think you, maybe you could

00:47:09.120 calculate that if you said, all right, let's say my vaccination is five miles away. You can figure out

00:47:15.460 your risk of dying per mile. You could compare that to the risk of dying per millions of vaccinations.

00:47:22.700 Somebody should actually do that. By the way, that's actually a really good calculation.

00:47:28.460 If you want to convince people to get a vaccination, do that calculation.

00:47:34.780 Do the calculation. I want to know the actual risk of driving five miles compared to the risk of

00:47:42.020 somebody my age and demographic of getting the shot. Now, of course, if you're saying you can't

00:47:48.040 really know, yeah, I get that. But it feels like it's similar. It feels like it's in the same

00:47:55.020 neighborhood. All right. The other reasons I'm doing it is that we're seeing a number of businesses

00:48:01.920 are going to require it. Here's my prediction. If we look at what the experts are saying, they're

00:48:10.020 saying that even vaccinated people need to wear masks. And it looks like that would be the case

00:48:15.720 through maybe the end of the year. If you're only listening to the experts, it would feel like that,

00:48:21.620 right? That even when we're fully vaccinated or as close as we can get, you're still going to have

00:48:27.380 to wear a mask all year. Here's my prediction. No way. There's just no way. The public

00:48:36.680 will take some pushing. You can push the public quite a bit, but you got to have a reason.

00:48:45.160 As soon as the reason goes away, the public is going to turn on you like a motherfucker. 0.99

00:48:51.560 And we're getting closer and closer to that point, aren't we? Like you're hearing plenty of people 1.00

00:48:56.360 complaining and saying, why do I have to wear a mask if I got the vaccination? But wait till 80%

00:49:02.900 of the country is vaccinated and has to keep wearing a mask. Once you get about 80% vaccinated,

00:49:10.020 good luck, good luck telling the 80% they got to wear a mask. I don't think it's going to work.

00:49:18.340 If you tell me I have to wear a mask during a scary pandemic where there's nothing else I can do about

00:49:24.700 it. Yeah, I'll wear a mask. Even if I'm not positive, it works. Even if I'm not sure the cost

00:49:31.760 benefit's worth it, I'm going to take that guidance. If smart, well-meaning people tell me to do it,

00:49:37.540 I'll take that. But you get me vaccinated and you tell me that my risks are nil, my risk of spreading

00:49:45.920 it are nil, and I still got to wear a mask. I don't think that's going to fly. So whatever you think

00:49:53.000 about the official people telling you you're going to need a mask until the end of the year,

00:49:57.360 I don't see it. I think it's somewhere around mid-summer. By mid-summer, my guess, the mask

00:50:06.860 thing is just going to have to go away. Imagine, if you will, two restaurants. One is right next to

00:50:12.540 the other. One says, if you're vaccinated, come on in. No masks. The other one is being a little

00:50:18.980 cautious and they say, well, the experts still say masks are good, so maybe you should do it. Which

00:50:24.320 one do you go to? It's just, it's going to be easy. So I wouldn't worry about masks in the long

00:50:30.540 run. So I don't know what the hell is happening in India. There's certainly something we don't 0.59

00:50:37.700 exactly understand, but we have terrifying numbers that up to 30,000 people per day could be the death

00:50:46.940 rate pretty soon based on what they believe is the infection rate. 30,000 per day. So if you're

00:50:56.120 saying to yourself, gosh, I'm glad we helped out India a little bit, that's not enough. That's not 0.81

00:51:04.600 enough. If you want India, you being the United States, let's say, if the United States wants India 0.93

00:51:10.760 to be its ally for the next 100 years, we need to step up to this, right? Because allies don't let

00:51:20.340 allies lose 30,000 people a day, if there's anything you can do about it. Now, who knows, you know, what

00:51:26.520 you can do about it? Who knows how much we would be taking from Americans if we were to help them

00:51:33.060 more? But I got to say, the 30,000 people dying in India, you pretty much have to treat that like

00:51:40.420 it's happening in your backyard, if they're an ally, right? And even if they're not, right? A human,

00:51:47.380 just being human means you should care about it. But when you're talking about your most important

00:51:52.480 strategic ally, vis-a-vis, you know, China, your most important ally for the next 100 years,

00:51:59.260 we should just drop everything, not do anything that would hurt our domestic effort. But man,

00:52:07.000 we should do everything we can to help on this, for our strategic benefit, and for humanity, really.

00:52:18.480 Here's a Matt Gaetz update. It's a good thing we have Matt Gaetz, because otherwise there wouldn't

00:52:25.700 be any good news. Like, interesting news, not good news. So here's the latest on that. So apparently

00:52:31.400 this, the fellow Greenberg, who was part of this story, and, you know, was pals with Matt Gaetz.

00:52:39.980 So there's a story that there's some documents that have come up in which Greenberg had been

00:52:47.300 talking about some things and mentioned that there was a 17-year-old girl, according to Greenberg.

00:52:52.300 So we only have one person saying it. We still don't know that there's a real girl,

00:52:58.800 or she would be a woman by now. So we don't know that there's a real person, but we know one person's

00:53:05.260 talked about this real person, if it's real. And said that Greenberg had just learned that she was

00:53:12.680 not really 19, had been lying about her age, and she was 17. Now here's the question.

00:53:17.180 We now have a document that looks reasonably credible that would say with certainty that

00:53:25.800 Matt Gaetz did not know if it happened. He denies that anything like this happened. But if it happened,

00:53:33.280 the Greenberg documents would indicate that he didn't know that Greenberg's the one who told them,

00:53:38.560 and he was horrified. Now, does that make it not illegal if it happened, which Matt Gaetz says

00:53:46.220 unquestionably did not, right? So keep in mind, the person who knows for sure says it didn't happen

00:53:54.100 in any form, right? Not just that he didn't know, that just didn't happen. So keep that in mind,

00:54:02.080 because we just assume guilt when we hear stories like this. But if we know he didn't know, how

00:54:09.700 illegal would it be? So we'll talk about the exchange of money part separately, but just the

00:54:16.880 underage part. How illegal is it if you didn't know? Does anybody know? How many of you know the

00:54:25.420 answer to that? How illegal is it if you didn't know? And the person who is involved lied to you.

00:54:36.120 Somebody says it's still tactically illegal. Is it? Well, the answer is it depends. Let's say,

00:54:45.080 for example, the woman, and this will be a hypothetical. This has nothing to do with Matt Gaetz. This will be

00:54:51.200 a hypothetical example. In a hypothetical example, let's say the underage 17-year-old had a fake ID.

00:54:59.460 If you saw a fake ID, but you're not some expert on ID, and it looked real to you,

00:55:06.060 you would be in the clear. Did you know that? Did you know that if you had really strong evidence

00:55:13.160 that she was of legal age, such as a fake ID that looked real to you, you'd be in the clear?

00:55:19.160 Now, I just read that this morning on some legal website. So if I'm wrong about that,

00:55:26.320 I'll expect the real lawyers to weigh in and get me. Now, if you're saying that's not true,

00:55:31.560 here's what might be the difference. If the female in question is under 14, there's no defense. 1.00

00:55:39.800 All right, let me say that again. If the female is actually under 14, there's no defense. No defense. 1.00

00:55:48.720 There's nothing you can say. You can't say you didn't know. Because if you're with somebody who's

00:55:55.040 even anywhere in the neighborhood of under 14, you've got some explaining to do, right? That you

00:56:00.300 didn't know. So I think we all agree that there has to be some age below which you just can't use any

00:56:07.760 I didn't know defense, right? Even if sometimes somebody goes to jail for that. You just sort of

00:56:13.300 have to have a standard for that. But at 17, simply being deceived is actually a complete legal defense.

00:56:21.780 It may be a difference by state. It might be a state difference, but I think probably it'd be similar.

00:56:26.600 So what would happen if what we find out is that the Greenberg document documents quite clearly,

00:56:36.060 if there is actually this person even exists, that Gates didn't know? So I would say,

00:56:43.520 is that the same as looking at an ID? I don't know. If you date somebody, do you ask to look at their ID?

00:56:54.140 I don't know. Did they go to, let's say, did they go to a restaurant and order drinks?

00:57:02.040 And again, none of this is an evidence. We have no reason to believe any of this happened.

00:57:06.200 But just hypothetically, suppose Matt Gates had gone on a date and the woman had bought a drink,

00:57:14.800 took out a fake ID. The server looked at it and said, all right, and served them. Would he be in the clear

00:57:21.600 if he observed a waiter looking at a fake ID and say, yeah, you're 21?

00:57:30.520 I don't know. That would be sketchy because I think she claimed she was 19,

00:57:34.420 so she still couldn't drink. So I guess that example wouldn't work in this case.

00:57:38.960 But this gets a little less clear than you think. Now, what about the question of exchange of money?

00:57:44.180 So apparently there is acknowledgement by all parties that money has been exchanged.

00:57:52.200 But was it money for sex? And where do you draw the line when it's money for sex?

00:57:58.520 Let me give you an example. Let's say a billionaire who has never had sex with you 0.93

00:58:04.020 invites you to take a private jet to France on a date. 0.98

00:58:09.420 And then you have sex. Did the billionaire pay for sex? 0.99

00:58:16.720 Because he just provided you a value of, let's say, $50,000.

00:58:21.800 Because the jet plus the high-end accommodations, whatever.

00:58:25.880 Pretty expensive.

00:58:28.220 Would you say that's the case of buying sex?

00:58:30.260 Well, if you live in the real world, you probably do.

00:58:36.040 Legally, no. Right?

00:58:37.900 Legally, no agreement of money for sex happened.

00:58:42.280 All right, let me give you another one.

00:58:44.040 Suppose there's a millionaire who buys some diamond jewelry

00:58:49.000 for a woman he's never been intimate with, 0.79

00:58:53.560 and then soon after that, they have some sex. 0.97

00:58:56.400 No, there's no discussion of money for sex or diamonds for sex. 0.90

00:59:03.860 But they've never had sex. 0.72

00:59:06.260 He gives her a real expensive gift. 0.68

00:59:09.320 And then some sex happens soon after. 0.98

00:59:12.360 Did he pay for sex? 0.99

00:59:14.800 Yes. 0.57

00:59:16.000 In the real world, absolutely.

00:59:18.820 It was part of his package.

00:59:20.540 It wasn't the only thing.

00:59:22.300 I mean, presumably he was not disgusting.

00:59:25.000 But it's part of the package.

00:59:28.180 So it's really...

00:59:30.880 The problem here is that beyond a certain level of income, 0.82

00:59:36.420 men are always paying for sex. 1.00

00:59:38.700 They just don't talk about it that way.

00:59:41.680 So let me say this again so you don't miss this point.

00:59:44.520 Above a certain income,

00:59:46.720 all men are paying for sex all the time. 0.97

00:59:49.480 No exceptions.

00:59:50.320 Because unless they don't know who you are,

00:59:54.460 and a rare case where somebody just didn't know you had money or something,

00:59:58.580 if they know you have money,

01:00:01.220 that's part of the decision.

01:00:03.680 I've never met a woman who was unaffected 1.00

01:00:06.000 by what a man did for a living.

01:00:09.960 I've never seen that.

01:00:11.600 You know, even if they say,

01:00:14.160 I don't care about money,

01:00:15.500 they certainly care about what he does for a living

01:00:17.420 and whether that whole package is attractive or not.

01:00:22.700 So, I'm not casting aspersions on the men or the women

01:00:27.700 or anybody in my examples.

01:00:29.840 These are all just free people making free decisions.

01:00:34.460 Money is always part of big decisions.

01:00:36.500 So, I feel as though the dividing line should be this.

01:00:42.880 Let me just put this out here for discussion.

01:00:45.600 Suppose we found out that the girls 0.73

01:00:48.140 that this Greenberg and Matt Gaetz were involved with,

01:00:51.760 suppose we found out that none of them were prostitutes. 0.98

01:00:57.160 Because there's no information that says they are, right?

01:01:00.120 So far, I'm aware of no reporting

01:01:02.240 that says that they were working in that capacity.

01:01:06.500 Do you think that you could convict somebody

01:01:09.260 for paying for sex

01:01:11.140 if the person who accepted the money for hotels

01:01:15.320 and tuition or whatever things were going on,

01:01:18.600 if they accepted these gifts, 0.97

01:01:20.660 but they did not work as a prostitute 1.00

01:01:22.840 in any other form that you could identify? 0.98

01:01:26.640 Is that paying for sex?

01:01:28.920 Because it's really murky, isn't it? 0.91

01:01:32.800 Who knows?

01:01:33.620 I would say that if money is involved

01:01:36.600 and it's a rich person,

01:01:37.720 you're always paying for sex 0.67

01:01:38.880 and there's no way to avoid it.

01:01:40.420 It's just you don't always talk about it that way.

01:01:44.960 New York Times has a story about this Arizona audit,

01:01:49.500 and I just love the fake news way they talk about it.

01:01:53.780 Here's an actual quote from a story in the New York Times.

01:01:57.400 It's almost unbelievable that this is even written down.

01:02:00.140 And it says, quote,

01:02:01.800 almost half a year after the election Donald Trump lost,

01:02:05.340 the audit that Arizona Republicans promised

01:02:08.100 has become a partisan snipe hunt.

01:02:13.260 What?

01:02:14.500 Do you know what a snipe hunt is?

01:02:17.700 How many of you even know what that is?

01:02:19.620 First of all, I'll tell you while I wait for your comments.

01:02:22.940 A snipe is a bird that doesn't exist.

01:02:29.900 And a snipe hunt is a reference to a famous historical prank 0.89

01:02:36.040 in which you get somebody who's new or young or dumb,

01:02:39.920 and you convince them that there's this thing called a snipe, 0.94

01:02:42.760 a certain kind of bird,

01:02:44.160 and that you're going to go hunting for them,

01:02:46.180 and then hilarity ensues, right?

01:02:49.380 So you try to get people to go hunting the snipe that doesn't exist.

01:02:54.180 So the New York Times refers to the audit as Republicans

01:02:57.620 on a partisan snipe hunt.

01:03:03.820 How do they know how the audit ended?

01:03:07.560 Because that's not part of the reporting.

01:03:11.220 Now, if the reporting came at the end of the audit,

01:03:15.060 and the whole audit had found nothing improper,

01:03:20.100 then calling it a snipe hunt after the audit

01:03:23.900 when you didn't find anything,

01:03:26.420 perfectly appropriate.

01:03:28.560 Perfectly appropriate.

01:03:29.540 A good analogy, actually.

01:03:31.100 Somebody looking for something that they believe exists

01:03:33.480 but is just imaginary.

01:03:34.780 That's a snipe hunt.

01:03:36.800 But if you say it before the audit has any results,

01:03:43.140 that's not news.

01:03:45.960 That's just propaganda.

01:03:47.940 How in the world do they know it's a snipe hunt?

01:03:50.540 They don't know how it ended.

01:03:52.460 Now, they also make reference,

01:03:53.960 and this is the other part of the fake news,

01:03:56.200 they say the other audits,

01:03:58.320 they have nothing to do with this one,

01:04:00.560 other audits showed nothing.

01:04:03.280 Well, those were different audits.

01:04:05.520 They were limited in scope.

01:04:07.940 They weren't really anything like this one.

01:04:09.900 But the New York Times would like you to believe

01:04:12.820 that because completely different situations

01:04:16.360 had an outcome that we know,

01:04:20.860 that this completely other different situation

01:04:22.980 is now predictable,

01:04:24.600 and it too will be a snipe hunt.

01:04:27.280 Nothing like that is in evidence.

01:04:30.320 Now, it might be true that it's a snipe hunt

01:04:32.360 when we're done.

01:04:32.920 What would be your bets?

01:04:36.600 Let me test your predictive abilities.

01:04:42.160 All right.

01:04:42.580 In the comments,

01:04:43.500 I want you to commit

01:04:44.660 after the Arizona audit,

01:04:47.160 and we assume that whatever they find

01:04:49.720 would have to be verified by somebody else

01:04:51.840 because nobody trusts the auditors.

01:04:53.800 But whatever they find

01:04:54.820 is something they could just show you,

01:04:56.840 and then other people could look at it

01:04:58.360 and say it's either true or not.

01:05:00.140 But do you think the Arizona audit

01:05:02.240 will find enough impropriety

01:05:04.780 to reverse any outcome,

01:05:08.540 or at least the outcome of the state?

01:05:11.600 How many of you think the audit

01:05:12.920 will reverse the outcome?

01:05:14.640 In the comments,

01:05:16.600 I'll just read them.

01:05:17.640 Find nothing, yes, no, absolutely not.

01:05:20.840 Some but not enough,

01:05:22.960 yes, no, yes, don't know, 60% chance.

01:05:26.980 Well, the smartest person here

01:05:29.480 gives percentages.

01:05:31.100 By the way, if you said yes or no,

01:05:33.620 you're not as smart as the person

01:05:35.100 who said 60%.

01:05:36.280 And I don't know if 60% is a good estimate,

01:05:39.600 but if you fell into the binary,

01:05:42.180 it's a yes or a no.

01:05:44.640 You should have gone with the statistics.

01:05:47.900 All right, but in terms of prediction,

01:05:49.660 it does have to be yes or no.

01:05:51.240 So I'm looking at your predictions,

01:05:53.340 and they're actually kind of mixed.

01:05:56.000 Kind of mixed.

01:05:57.520 Yeah, and now I'm seeing people

01:05:58.820 saying slightly more than half percent chance

01:06:02.880 that it's wrong.

01:06:03.880 You know, I'll tell you what.

01:06:07.260 But if I had to bet,

01:06:11.620 I don't know.

01:06:12.540 This one's a tough one.

01:06:14.940 Statistically speaking,

01:06:16.160 this is something Matt Brainerd said.

01:06:19.040 Based on everything we know

01:06:20.680 about other elections,

01:06:22.740 based on everything we know

01:06:23.940 about mail-in votes,

01:06:26.520 so based on all of that,

01:06:29.080 if you just looked at the sheer number of votes

01:06:31.600 in the millions,

01:06:34.280 and you said to yourself,

01:06:36.020 if this many millions of votes

01:06:37.600 had happened just like they always happen,

01:06:41.020 if it was similar to the past,

01:06:43.600 you would have more than 12,000 votes

01:06:46.080 that are, you know, sketchy,

01:06:48.600 and that would be enough to change the election.

01:06:50.640 Because the election was, you know,

01:06:52.240 kind of close.

01:06:52.820 So, is Matt Brainerd right

01:06:55.980 that you wouldn't have to know much about anything

01:06:58.860 to know that if there are this many votes,

01:07:02.340 there are always, always,

01:07:04.940 it has nothing to do with Arizona,

01:07:06.900 has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans,

01:07:09.820 has only to do with a type of system

01:07:12.320 that has a certain kind of frailty to it,

01:07:15.720 which is it's imperfect.

01:07:17.900 The size of the votes

01:07:19.140 guarantees that enough of them will be wrong,

01:07:21.680 that it could change the outcome.

01:07:24.780 But, it could be wrong in the other direction.

01:07:28.180 We could end up, at the end of the audit,

01:07:31.180 one of the two possibilities

01:07:32.580 is that Biden won by more votes than we thought.

01:07:37.720 There's nothing that would make that impossible.

01:07:41.360 So, just because there's close to 100% chance

01:07:45.060 that there are enough sketchy votes

01:07:47.240 to change the election,

01:07:49.040 that doesn't mean

01:07:50.320 that they're all in the same direction.

01:07:52.840 It does mean that there might be problems.

01:07:55.820 Right?

01:07:57.280 So, I'm going to take your 60% estimate.

01:08:02.320 Based on the Matt Brainerd estimate

01:08:05.740 that there are so many votes,

01:08:07.360 you will have a question

01:08:08.820 about whether the election was affected.

01:08:11.840 I'm going to say,

01:08:12.820 I'm going to go with the 65%. 0.94

01:08:14.320 65%.

01:08:14.960 I'd say there's a 65% chance

01:08:17.740 that it doesn't matter

01:08:19.720 if it's Arizona or anyplace else,

01:08:21.720 there'll be at least enough sketchy votes

01:08:23.880 that there'll be an issue.

01:08:25.640 At least a question about the result.

01:08:28.040 So, that's my final answer.

01:08:29.480 65% chance

01:08:30.680 that we will have some question

01:08:32.680 about the accuracy of the outcome

01:08:34.380 when we're done.

01:08:35.060 So, that is what is exciting today.

01:08:45.660 Now, here's a question for you.

01:08:48.220 Will I be demonetized

01:08:49.980 for what I just said?

01:08:52.160 What do you think?

01:08:53.560 Now, it would be grounds for demonetization

01:08:56.960 if I were to say

01:08:58.160 that I believe the election

01:09:01.060 is fraudulent.

01:09:04.140 But I didn't say that, right?

01:09:06.340 Right?

01:09:06.980 Everybody's clear.

01:09:08.540 I am not alleging fraud in the election.

01:09:11.840 I made a statement

01:09:12.980 about accuracy of elections in general

01:09:15.580 and a statement

01:09:17.120 about how large the number of votes is.

01:09:19.180 That's all I've done.

01:09:20.500 That's all I've done.

01:09:22.260 So, I don't think anybody

01:09:23.700 has much pushback on those two things.

01:09:26.340 So, I'm hoping I can stay

01:09:27.520 on YouTube for saying that.

01:09:31.060 Somebody says that I insinuated fraud.

01:09:38.980 Did I?

01:09:40.200 Did you hear me insinuate fraud

01:09:42.160 in this broadcast?

01:09:46.060 Because I feel like maybe

01:09:47.480 that was in your head.

01:09:49.400 I definitely insinuated inaccuracy.

01:09:53.680 Right?

01:09:55.160 You heard me insinuate

01:09:56.320 that anything large of this nature

01:09:59.040 will have a certain percentage

01:10:00.360 of inaccuracy.

01:10:02.280 That's all.

01:10:03.320 That's the whole story.

01:10:05.340 Inaccuracy doesn't mean fraud.

01:10:06.520 And it doesn't even mean

01:10:07.840 it changes the election.

01:10:11.020 Alright.

01:10:11.820 That's all I've got for now.

01:10:12.680 And I will talk to you

01:10:13.680 tomorrow.

01:10:15.160 That's all I've got for now.

01:10:30.500 We'll talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 30, 2021

Episode 1361 Scott Adams： Socialism on Trial, Trickle Down Economics, Alternate Headlines, and Monsters Under the Bed

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