Episode 1648 Scott Adams： Governments Are Failing and the Public is Taking Over Everywhere
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Summary
On today's show, we discuss a new poll that shows 58% of the public thinks the media is the enemy of the people, a new report that the White House may have improperly stored documents at Mar-A-Lago, and the latest in the ongoing saga of Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.
Transcript
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To undoubtedly a peak experience in your life. I'm talking gold metal experience here.
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Not sulfur, not copper. Gold metal, all the way. And if you'd like to take it up to whatever is
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beyond that, and it's almost beyond imagination, all you need is a, oh it's a bronze, okay,
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you don't want that either. All you need is a copper, margarita glass, a tanker,
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chalice is trying to get to each other glass vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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Oh, we've got a problem with the audio, which I'm going to fix.
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Right now, because I think I know that problem. Hold on.
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All right, YouTube, with any luck, what I just did fixed your sound. Anybody? Anybody? All right, well,
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so we're still bad on YouTube. Interesting. Let's see. I've got, oh, I know the problem.
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All right. So here's something to learn, you know, sort of a learning moment.
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The reason I use iPads instead of other things is that I just keep them on and just set up all the
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time. If you make any change to your setup, you end up with this. And yesterday I said to myself,
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you know, I wouldn't mind watching a show while I'm doing some drawing. So I changed one thing on one
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iPad and forgot to change it back. Don't ever be like me. But how would you like to simultaneous sip?
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Sip interruptage. We're going to take it up from where we began. Go.
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Well, I'm pretty sure the rest of the show will be better than that rocky start. According to a
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Rasmussen poll, 58% of the public agree that the media is the enemy of the people. Now, this is similar
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to how it's been in prior months. But every time I see this, I just shake my head. How much of this was
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just Trump? Do you remember in the earliest days when people were mocking me for saying that Trump
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was persuasive? And oh, my God, the level of hate I got for suggesting that whether you liked him or
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didn't like him, whether you liked his policies or not, the one thing you couldn't deny is that he was
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persuasive. And now 58% of the people think the news is fake. That was him. Am I wrong? I mean,
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it was all of us two, you know, piling on. But I don't think we would be even half of that number
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without Trump specifically. I don't think anybody's ever been more persuasive than that. I mean,
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that is a big deal. So let's, we'll talk about some of the news's performance here as we go.
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The latest story is that lots of news entities are reporting that Trump, quote, improperly,
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improperly, I say, removed documents from the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago.
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Some of them included stuff like the so-called love letters with Kim Jong-un
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and some other stuff. And all I have to say about this is, the walls are closing in on Trump.
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Yeah, you thought Russia collusion was going to take him down? It didn't. We were all amazed.
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You thought grab him by the, we're going to keep him from being president? Nope. Didn't stop him a bit.
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Did you think that the fake news about Charlottesville and drinking bleach fake news,
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did you think they were going to take him out? Nope. Uh, he escaped all that. What about his legal
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problems with his, his taxes and his, his, uh, well, mostly his taxes? Yeah, so far doesn't look like
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anything. Well, but, uh, you know, what about, uh, Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniel? Well, yeah,
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it didn't really seem to make much difference in the end. What about all the, I don't know. I think
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we're down to this, aren't we? That bastard improperly took documents, which are almost certainly
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digitally saved somewhere anyway. Am I wrong in assuming that every document is digitally
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archived no matter whether you have the document or not? Am I wrong about that? Don't you think?
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Wouldn't everything be digitally archived at this point? I don't know. So I don't even know what it
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means to take a document out of the, out of the White House once it's been digitally stored. And I'm
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just guessing, I mean, I'm just guessing they would all be digitally archived. Um, but it seems reasonable.
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So this is what it's come to. All, all of the, uh, insurrection talk, everything, it all came down to,
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well, I think some of those documents that we have digital pictures of have been improperly,
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improperly stored. What are we going to do to fix this situation? Oh, we just took them back where
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they were supposed to be. That was it. That was it. Um, so Trump gave Joe Rogan some advice. Trump did a, uh,
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press release. And because it's Trump, I'm going to read his exact words. Because nobody writes
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like he writes. You could not write in his voice if you tried. I mean, it would look like it was
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obviously a joke. But I swear to it, nobody writes like he does. Nobody. And it is really sensational
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writing. From, take it from a professional writer, if you could write as well as Trump does,
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you would be a best-selling author. He does, he does write at that level. It's just that he does it so,
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in such a sort of a folksy, plain manner, that you don't take it that way. But it's brilliant writing.
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So, so here's what he said in a, uh, press release. Rogan is an interesting and popular guy. But he's
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got to stop apologizing to the fake news and radical left maniacs and lunatics. How many ways can you say
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you're sorry? Joe, uh, just go about what you do so well and don't let them make you look weak and
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frightened. That's not you and never will be. So, that's very Trumpy. And it's, it's well-written in a
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Trump style. So, I like everything about that. I like, you know, every, basically persuasion-wise,
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writing-wise, communication-wise, it's just an A+. But here's my take on it. Remember I said that
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you should be careful about giving Joe Rogan advice? Because of the obvious reason? Whatever
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decisions Joe Rogan makes got him to where he is. And whatever decisions you make in life got you to
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where you are. Who's doing better? If you're doing better than Joe Rogan, well, maybe you would be
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exactly the person to give him some advice. But if you're not, maybe be a little humble about the value
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of your advice versus the value of his own opinions, right? Now, here's my take on his apology.
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Some of you said it is strategically bad to apologize. And I get that. So, I'm not going
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to disagree with you on the strategy. So, strategically, it probably is a bad idea to look weak and apologize.
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But here's the thing I think everybody's overlooking. What if he meant it? Well, why,
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why do we even, why do we discount, let me think about this. We kind of discount the possibility that
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he was sincere. Why? Why, why is, what is it that Joe Rogan has ever done in his, at least,
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public life that we know about? What has he ever done that would suggest he would give an insincere
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apology? I can't think of anything. That would be inconsistent with basically everything we know
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about him. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, we're right or we could read his mind or any of that.
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But just in terms of consistency, he is, and one of the reasons he's so popular, he's one of the most
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most credible people in the world. Credible in the sense that you think you'll give an honest opinion,
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even if he's wrong. Here's my take. I don't think he apologized for economic reasons. There was an
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economic reason. But I think he actually felt it. Did you, did you get the sense that he was
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apologizing fakely? I didn't get that at all. I think that he was genuinely unhappy with how it
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looked. I think he was, again, we're, we can't read his mind, but I'm just, the only thing we can look
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at is the consistency in his history. If the history and the consistency suggests that any
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apology he gives actually he means, that is none of our business. It isn't. It's not Trump's business.
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It's not my business. It's not your business. If, if he felt, and I'm just saying if, because we'd have
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to speculate about his inner thoughts, but if he thought that he honestly owed an apology,
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that's the end of the conversation. It doesn't matter if it's strategically smart. It really
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doesn't. Because it's, it's not our lives, it's not our lives to manage. And it's not us, it's not up
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to us to decide, should he put a strategy over his own just sense of what is right or wrong?
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Well, I don't know. I get that strategically it was suboptimal, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it wasn't.
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Because again, if my podcast, if my podcast were anywhere near the successes of his, I would say,
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well, you should take my opinion on everything. Look at what I've done. But again, maybe being genuine
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and apologizing in a way that, at least to me, looked completely genuine, maybe that is the
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very best thing to do. How would you know? Right? If it's an opinion, and his opinions got him to
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where he is, and your opinions got you to where you are, I don't know. I think I would defer to his
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opinion on whether an apology was necessary or useful. And keep in mind that, you know, he's also
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solving personal issues beyond the business model, right? Because this was a problem that was not just
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a business problem, it was a personal problem. So I don't judge him good or bad, effective or
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ineffective. To me, that looked like something he thought he needed to do. And if he thought he
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needed to do it, that's the end of the question, isn't it? It should be. It should be the very end of
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it. It's like, oh, he thought that was a good idea. He did it for himself. If he's happy with it,
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If you don't brainwash your own kids, what's going to happen?
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They don't grow up being independent thinkers. That's not an option. If you don't brainwash your
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kids, somebody's going to do it. The school is going to do it, social media is going to do it,
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etc. And I think that in our modern world, we've kind of delegated the brainwashing to the schools
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and the news and social media and their friends and stuff. So at the point, at this point, kids are
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just like free range chickens, it seems like. You know, they leave the house to go to school in the
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morning. They come home, they're with their friends, they're doing homework. You may or may not even see
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them before they go to bed. You might not eat a meal together. You know, they're sort of being
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socialized without your parental guidance in a lot of cases. But how much damage is that? Well,
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it turns out that there's some thoughts by the professionals that TikTok in particular
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is super dangerous, especially to young females. So here's a quote from one expert, Paul Sonseri,
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a psychologist. And he says a quote for, I think this was on CNN. He said, for a young girl who's
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developing her identity to be swept up into a sexual world, talking about TikTok videos, like that is
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hugely destructive. But he also said, when teen girls are rewarded for their sexuality, they come
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to believe that their value is in how they look, he said. He said approximately a quarter of the
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female patients at his clinic have produced sexualized content on TikTok. Now, I wouldn't trust
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that percentage, because something tells me that a quarter of everybody who's ever, a quarter of all
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females probably have made sexually suggestive content on TikTok, right? A quarter of the people
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using TikTok. That sounds like just probably the right number of people in general. And it's the 25%
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again, yeah, the magic 25%. So do you believe this? Do you take this as sort of obviously true? Or would
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you need some more science to make the case? To me, I would say this is obviously true.
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It looks obviously true. The kids are obsessed by looks and sex appeal, obsessed. But are teenagers
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always obsessed by that? Maybe they always were. Does it really make it worse? Probably, because it's so
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visual and so overwhelmingly there all the time. So I would imagine that just the fact that it's visual
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and the fact that you spend so much time on it probably causes problems. Now, here's a prediction.
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You know, I've made some unusual predictions way outside the mainstream. I'm going to make a way
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outside the mainstream prediction that social media will eventually be banned for children under a
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certain age. Now, at the moment, you'd say to yourself, that can't happen because the social
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media companies are just too powerful. They can just make sure they don't get banned.
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I don't think so. I think that over time, it will become so obvious that it's child abuse. Actual child
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abuse. That as soon as somebody frames it as child abuse, maybe I just did, it's sort of a one-way trip
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after that. You can't really come back from that. I think the science is going to be overwhelmingly
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certain that social media is absolutely dangerous for developing minds. Or maybe there needs to be
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some crippled version of social media or something. But the age should be set around 70. You're safe
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after about 70. I think 21. Yeah. I think age 21 would be about right for legal social media access.
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All right. By the way, does anybody agree with my prediction? How many of you think it will happen?
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Because I would think most of you would disagree with that. See some yeses and nos. No, no.
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It's going to be hard. Yeah, the power of the social media companies is pretty great. And they can
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make us not know that what they're doing is bad for us. So they control the harm, but also the
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information about the harm. So you won't know how much damage there is if they don't tell you.
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And it's not in their interest to tell you. So here's the question that I think is fascinating
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about the Ukraine situation. So Putin sort of painted himself in the corner there. He can't
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really attack without bad things happening to Russia. And he can't not attack. So what's he
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going to do? And here's a question I ask. What does war look like in 2022 if the highest advanced
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countries are involved? You know, the countries that can produce the best weapons? What happens
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if two of them, or at least, you know, even if it's a proxy war? What if the best weapons
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are turned against the armies of the other? Because the Ukrainians might not have access to
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the best weapons. Or maybe they do. Would we know? Do you think we would know in public
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what secret new, really good weapons the Ukrainians will have access to? They shouldn't tell us.
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If we know, then maybe it's in the, you know, in the context of trying to convince Russia not
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to attack. But I feel like it's obvious things are going to go poorly if they attack. I think
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Putin must know that. It's going to be expensive. So here's what I'm wondering is going to happen.
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Number one, if Putin attacks the capital of Ukraine, wouldn't you say that he's attacking
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a civilian population? You would, right? If he takes over a city, especially the capital,
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it's not really army on army. It's going to be mass casualties of civilians. If that happens,
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do you think that the Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, have a moral, a moral, let's say,
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let's say, are they morally, I guess it's never moral. Do you think that they would return the
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favor? Do you think that the Ukrainians would attack a Russian city? Now, probably not with a straight
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military attack, because that would be a little difficult to pull off. But you don't think that
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there are already Ukrainian operatives in Russia? I would assume so, right? I would assume that
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they've penetrated Russia. It wouldn't be that hard, especially if they have a lot of Russian-speaking
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people. They look the same, speak the same. So what would happen if these alleged speculative
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Ukrainians who wanted to give as good as they're getting decided to take Moscow out and they had
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access to the best weaponry and strategies of the United States? I'm not saying that's true.
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I'm saying, seems likely. It seems likely that the Ukrainians would want to attack directly into
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the heart of Russia to make it really hurt. I mean, if it's all out war, it's all out war, am I right?
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If it's all out war, Ukrainians can attack Moscow, the population. They can. And what would they do to,
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how would they do that? Well, I would do it with drones. If you had one drone per each Ukrainian
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operative, and you had, say, dozens of operatives, and they all released their suicide drones at the
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same time, I'm not talking about the big ones that are the size of aircraft. I'm talking about the ones
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that can carry enough weight to take out a sizable floor of a building, let's say.
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I don't know how many of them they would have to drop on Moscow before Moscow said, we're out.
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We don't support this war. I don't know if they support it or if it matters. But I feel like
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Russia has to calculate a certain amount of destruction in Moscow as part of their calculation.
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Am I wrong? Is there any part of what I said is wrong? And I'll just put it in more general terms.
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Number one, does Ukraine have a right to attack a population center in Russia? I say yes.
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Anybody disagree? Only if they get attacked first. Does anybody disagree that they would have the right
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to attack a population center? Any disagreement at all? I don't think so, right? That's war.
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The reason you don't go to war is that, right? I mean, more than anything, it's that one thing,
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because it always happens. Yes. So if they have the right to attack, do they have the ability?
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Well, I think the ability would depend on how well they could penetrate Russia. And given that they
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look Russian, they speak Russian, they're on the border, probably, right? You know, why would the
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Ukrainians not have operatives in Russia? It doesn't make sense. Russia has plenty of operatives in
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Ukraine, one assumes. And so if you know those two things are true, they would have the right and the,
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let's say, the incentive to attack Moscow population center. They would certainly have the people.
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all they would need is the technology. That's all they would need. The technology exists.
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All they would need is somebody to give it to them. Could the United States, you know, covertly,
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supply suicide drones to Ukrainian operatives? Totally. Does anybody think they couldn't do that?
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Now, I'm not saying they would. And maybe the United States doesn't even need to be involved.
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Maybe the Ukrainians can get all the drones they want just through, I don't know, black market or
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whatever. So I have a feeling that Putin's going to have to look at a lot of destruction in Moscow
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as the cost of attacking Ukraine. And by the way, the Ukrainians should say that directly.
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They should say that directly. They should say that Moscow is a target if there's an invasion.
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They don't have to give any details. Just say it clearly. If we're attacked, if you take over our
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capital, you're going to lose the capital building in Moscow, or I don't know, wherever the capital is.
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Who knows? They should put a target list out and say, you're going to lose these targets.
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We're going to take out this, this, and this, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
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Not with suicide drones, right? If they have suicide drones, there's nothing they can do to stop it.
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So they can just tell you what the cost is. We're going to take out your tallest building.
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We're going to take out your government building. And then name a few others. Military headquarters,
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whatever. Anyway, I don't think Putin's going to attack.
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I don't think he's going to attack. And this would just be one of the reasons.
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But I could be wrong about that. The mandates seem to be bending, if not breaking.
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So a number of states have now announced masking will go away. They've given dates.
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Our own Governor Newsom has said that indoor masking will partially go away in terms of the state's
00:24:32.780
mandates. So the schools and the, I guess, the towns or counties can still mandate stuff.
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But the state of California will be out of the mandating business for masks as of February 15th.
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Now, let's say you lived in California. And you knew that, what's today, the 8th?
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If you knew in one week that the mask mandate was going to be dropped, are you going to wear
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You know, I told you all that that was my last day.
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that people are going to wear masks when they go out to eat?
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in California, nobody really wore masks to eat anyway.
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So, you know, you just walk past the hostess at that point.
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So I would say that the governor really had no choice,
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Governor Newsom, in at least letting the mandates expire,
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because he got caught without his mask in a very public way.
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I think it was politically impossible for him to extend it.
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really, are you telling me that waiting this extra week
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What a weak, weak, pathetic way to run a state.
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If you're deciding it's going to be gone next week,
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I'm not going to wear a fucking mask for a week.
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But once you've decided to end the mask mandate,
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Why do you have to leave the scab for the public?
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and you're not sure who's doing the right thing.
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This has nothing to do with teamwork, politics, priorities.
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obviously following the science is not a thing.
00:30:00.900
So the New York Times apparently is admitting that,
00:30:10.780
So the New York Times is saying get rid of the masks.
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Because if trusting the science were a real thing,
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all the governors would be ending the mask mandates.
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People are whatever is the opposite of science.
00:32:26.380
Follow the science is a good idea for scientists.
00:32:59.420
So Orange County will not be dropping the mask mandates