Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 23, 2022


Episode 1663 Scott Adams： Putin's Brain, Russian Public Opinion, Long Haul TDS and More Fun


Episode Stats

Length

58 minutes

Words per Minute

143.55206

Word Count

8,440

Sentence Count

594

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

25


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever happened to anybody who's
00:00:12.820 ever been born anywhere. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. Every now and then I like
00:00:19.300 to remind my audience, just in case you're wondering, that I have more than one t-shirt
00:00:25.740 that looks just like this one. Some of you may be concerned that I only own one t-shirt,
00:00:33.060 but no, I own about a dozen of these, and I call it my uniform. See, if you can get people to think
00:00:42.800 that you're dressing one way because you have a look, I'm talking about the Steve Jobs look,
00:00:49.100 I'm talking about the Mark Zuckerberg look, you know, he wears a hoodie or the black shirt.
00:00:54.180 Yeah, the trick, if you can convince people that you have a look, all of your problems are solved,
00:01:02.040 if you know what I mean. Now, don't go full Elton John. You don't want to convince people that your
00:01:09.160 look is an Elton John, you know, over the top, needs props and all that stuff. That's way too much work.
00:01:15.760 If you're going to do a uniform and a look and a brand, go for basic. Save you a lot of time.
00:01:24.800 Hey, who came here for the simultaneous sip besides everybody? And all you need is a cup or a mug or a
00:01:30.620 glass of tank or Chelsea's dine, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your
00:01:35.900 favorite liquid. How much do I like coffee? A lot. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,
00:01:44.340 the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes all of you better looking, a little bit sexier,
00:01:49.820 definitely smarter. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens right now. Go.
00:01:54.820 Yes. I would like to pay respect to my, what would it be, my ethnic origins by doing the whitest
00:02:14.980 thing anybody's ever done after the simultaneous sip. Now, feel free to enjoy your own cultural
00:02:22.780 heritage and celebrate the way that makes the most sense or whoever you are, be you born in America
00:02:33.500 or born somewhere else. Use your cultural heritage and join me now doing your own after the sip
00:02:40.880 celebration. I will be doing the whitest white person guy celebration ever. And it goes like this.
00:02:47.340 Okay. Now, I hope that wherever you are, you did something that was as perfectly suited to your
00:02:56.340 cultural background as I did. Somebody dabbed. That's exactly right. Well, Rasmussen has a poll
00:03:06.280 asking, should the Democratic Party be more like Biden or more like Harris? Now, what do you think?
00:03:13.580 Democrats said the Democratic Party should be more like Biden, 36 percent, but only 11 percent thought
00:03:21.720 Harris. And so, how's the progressive wing of the Democratic Party looking? Not so good. Not so good.
00:03:32.000 You want to hear some more bad news for the progressive part? I was asked a question on the
00:03:39.180 Locals platform just before I went live on YouTube. They get a little extra over on Locals. It's a
00:03:45.820 subscription service. And I was asked, what has the worst recent murder rate? We're going to compare
00:03:55.380 two regions. I'm going to ask you this question, and it's a serious question. It's not a rhetorical
00:04:01.860 question. I actually don't know the answer to it. And the question is, has the death rate and the
00:04:09.080 murder rate, let's say, has it been worse in the last few months in Chicago or in the occupied
00:04:16.560 separatist regions of Ukraine? Which has been the more deadly place? Now, it kind of doesn't matter
00:04:26.180 what the answer is. It kind of doesn't matter what the answer is. It's the fact that we can even ask
00:04:32.300 that question. And it's not a joke. I actually don't know the answer to that question. I don't know.
00:04:39.620 Maybe there'll be a crossover point. But if I had to bet, I think I'd put my money on Chicago.
00:04:46.980 Because, you know, I assume there's shelling and there's chicanery and there's, you know, false flags
00:04:53.100 and all kinds of stuff happening in the separatist regions. But they didn't kill as many people as a
00:05:01.160 weekend in Chicago does. Am I right? I don't know if I'm right. But you seem to think I am. And
00:05:07.740 that's good enough. You know, we live in a subjective reality. And while I strive to be correct and right
00:05:16.220 about everything, I will settle for you agreeing with me. Because it feels the same. On my end,
00:05:22.480 anyway. So thank you for that. Speaking of wokeness, it's a story that the media is talking
00:05:30.480 about this story, which is that Newsweek and LA Times are both recently warning Democrats that
00:05:38.800 they'd better get over the wokeness. Because they're looking at this one anecdote here, I guess,
00:05:44.480 the situation where in San Francisco, the Democrats voted out some school board members for being too
00:05:52.080 woke and not being useful enough. And the striking part about it is that they were overwhelmingly voted
00:06:00.960 out. The wokesters were just driven out by even Democrats because it's a Democrat city. So that seems
00:06:09.120 like a pretty big story. But are things getting better or worse for the wokest of the woke? Well,
00:06:16.240 shall I continue? It's turning out to be a really bad year to be woke. Am I right? Part of it is
00:06:27.280 because Trump is less in the news. Because there's not a natural enemy, you know, that's just really
00:06:34.640 salient at the moment. So if you just let the wokeness exist on its own, it just looks like, you know,
00:06:43.760 toxic bile. It's just, you know, it's like an acid eating itself. But if Trump were in the news every
00:06:52.800 day, then the wokeness would have something to play off of, you know, some kind of a productive
00:06:58.320 contrast. But when you take the contrast away, it just has to be looked at on its own. Nobody likes it.
00:07:05.200 Well, that's an exaggeration. It's not so popular. And that brings us to Greta Thunberg.
00:07:13.440 And I tweeted yesterday that Greta Thunberg caused this mess. And by this mess, I mean Ukraine.
00:07:21.920 Now, do you all see the connection? Because I'm not joking. Greta Thunberg,
00:07:28.880 she sort of caused the Ukraine war. Does everybody see it? I can explain it. Okay.
00:07:38.000 I got a few no's there. So let me explain it. So it goes like this. If we didn't have Greta,
00:07:45.040 climate change wouldn't be, you know, as potent a topic as it is. That's, no, that's a,
00:07:51.920 that's a presumption on my part, right? So that part's speculative. But I think most of you would
00:07:57.040 agree with that, that she's, she's turbocharged the topic. She's added a lot. Most people would
00:08:03.840 agree with that. Now, if climate change did not have such a, let's say, persuasive quality to it,
00:08:13.200 how would Trump's policy about energy look compared to Biden's? Biden didn't really have a choice, did he?
00:08:19.880 You know, if you're a Democrat, don't you have to go full Thunberg or, or at least move in that
00:08:27.000 direction? He, he, he didn't go full Thunberg by any means, but he had to be pushed in that direction,
00:08:32.200 right? So one of the things that Trump would have done that, uh, we know for sure that, uh, Biden did not
00:08:41.900 do is promote domestic energy production in the United States because Biden wants to be more green
00:08:49.580 and save the world and be more Greta Thunberg. And Trump was more, I think this climate thing,
00:08:57.100 change thing was a Chinese hoax to slow down our economy. Let's pump, uh, oil and gas as much as we
00:09:05.180 can, build some pipelines and be independent to build up our economy. And by the way, when you substitute,
00:09:11.260 uh, gas, natural gas for coal, it reduces your emissions. So Trump, who was criticized for saying
00:09:21.460 that climate change was a Chinese hoax, I think we're all sure, even the Democrats would say this
00:09:28.460 is true. He would have kept the domestic energy production high, which means that prices for energy
00:09:36.200 would have been lower, which means that your inflation would be lower under Trump in that
00:09:43.020 one way. It, Putin would have far less money to be adventurous and he would basically have less
00:09:52.180 power because if Europe needed to get a, a different source of gas for a while, it might cost more.
00:10:00.760 But if you took some of the inflation out of it, the more wouldn't be as much as it would be now.
00:10:07.460 So you've got, um, a situation in which energy is sort of the most important product because there's
00:10:15.460 not enough of it, which makes Putin the most important person because he's got an army and he's
00:10:23.080 got energy. He's got the two things that matter the most today. So quite reasonably, you could say
00:10:32.040 that the connection between Greta Thunberg and her influence, which was very effective,
00:10:38.760 definitely put pressure on, uh, Democrats. The Democrats definitely reduced energy production.
00:10:46.080 The reduction in energy production definitely increased the cost of energy,
00:10:50.420 which definitely increased the profits for Russia, which definitely increased their strategic
00:10:56.380 power, which definitely increased their confidence, which almost certainly was a major factor in
00:11:03.880 getting exactly where we are now. Who, who disagrees with that analysis? Now I'm not going to say
00:11:11.080 it's the only variable, right? You know, maybe Putin would have done what Putin was going to do,
00:11:15.380 but you can see the connection, can't you? It does seem like it's maybe 20% of the story and that's
00:11:25.180 pretty big. Yeah. I'd say it's 20% of the story. I mean, climate change itself, not just Greta.
00:11:32.920 Right. So, you know, nothing is, there's no analysis. That's the whole story, right? Everything's got
00:11:38.680 lots of facets. So, I don't think the, uh, the woke side of the world is looking so good.
00:11:46.860 Now here's another interesting angle on Ukraine.
00:11:51.100 Jonathan Turley, who's always a great read, uh, has an article today. He's talking about,
00:11:56.320 and I wasn't, I'm not sure how, uh, aware of this I was. How many of you were aware of this story?
00:12:03.800 That for over two years, uh, there's been an investigation, um, I guess it was a state
00:12:10.760 investigation into Hunter Biden and his, uh, tax and financial issues, uh, specifically related to
00:12:18.440 his foreign dealings. Now, were you aware that there's a two-year investigation ongoing about
00:12:24.860 Hunter Biden's, uh, activities and his foreign dealings, which presumably is either all Ukraine or
00:12:32.820 mostly Ukraine is what they're concerned about. And the part of that is they seem to be indicating
00:12:38.360 that Hunter Biden had a lot more cash or that, that seems to be where the evidence is pointing
00:12:43.940 that he seemed to have a lot more cash than his reported income would suggest.
00:12:52.240 Now, we don't, I'm going to use the same standard that I would use for Trump or anything else,
00:12:58.880 right? Try to be fair about it. Hunter Biden is not charged with anything. No court has found
00:13:07.000 Hunter Biden guilty of anything. I hate, I hate to say it, but unfortunately that's the standard.
00:13:12.920 You know, if you're going to, if you're going to be like a decent citizen, you have to accept
00:13:21.540 the standard. Like the standard is more important than the person, right? So as painful as it is
00:13:27.180 to say that he hasn't been convicted of anything, that does matter. You know, unfortunately,
00:13:33.020 unfortunately it matters. So, uh, and I wouldn't want to change that. But at the same time, they
00:13:39.800 have been investigating for two years and probably not for nothing. I mean, there must be at least
00:13:44.520 some smoke. It doesn't mean they'll ever find any fire. But here's the question which must be asked.
00:13:51.900 Do you think that Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, do you think he has, uh, information about the
00:14:02.120 Biden family that we haven't heard yet? What are the odds? I mean, just think what the odds would
00:14:09.440 be. So if we know the Hunter was mucking around in Ukrainian business, that much seems true.
00:14:16.360 But we, we have not seen anything directly illegal about that. Only that it seems deeply sketchy and
00:14:24.000 questionable and unethical, but not technically illegal as far as we know.
00:14:33.200 So do you think that maybe Ukraine has something on the Biden family at the same time that Biden is
00:14:41.300 trying to manage this situation that's the most important thing going on at the moment?
00:14:46.360 Now, let me do something that I hate to do because of its ordinariness. But damn it,
00:14:55.180 sometimes you have to do the ordinary. And this is so uncreative that it actually hurts me to do it,
00:15:01.460 but sometimes you got to do it. Imagine if this were Don Jr. I hate it. I hate it. I hate doing this.
00:15:11.280 I hate doing this. Because it's so uncreative. Like, how many times have we done that? I mean,
00:15:18.400 Don Jr. does it all the time, right? In his tweets, he goes, imagine if this were me.
00:15:22.900 And it's, unfortunately, it is exactly the right thing. It's the right thought. Can you even imagine,
00:15:32.120 just hold this thought for a moment, imagine a world in which Trump were president, and we had
00:15:37.980 this problem with Ukraine and Russia, which maybe we wouldn't even have, but let's say we do. And
00:15:43.340 imagine that this story had been Don Jr. doing business in Ukraine, and that there were questions
00:15:48.940 about it, and, and a current, ongoing investigation about it. Can you even imagine? I mean, seriously,
00:16:00.760 my head is going to explode imagining the difference between how the media would be talking about that,
00:16:07.120 and how they're just not talking about Hunter Biden at all. This doesn't even exist.
00:16:14.500 I feel, somebody said impeachment here on YouTube in the comments. Maybe, maybe. Would you trust,
00:16:22.820 and let's be honest, would you trust Trump's judgment if Don Jr. might have some hidden secrets,
00:16:29.760 you know, that would come out if you acted a different way? No, even I wouldn't, right? Like,
00:16:36.180 I've been pretty supportive of Trump on a number of issues. Not in everything, but a lot of stuff.
00:16:42.500 But I wouldn't be comfortable with that. And by the way, I think Don Jr. is awesome. I like him.
00:16:49.080 I like Trump. But if you just put those two people I like in that situation, I wouldn't like that.
00:16:56.300 Oh, no. No, that, I would back out immediately. I'd be like, okay, I'm out. These two people can't
00:17:01.920 be involved in the same situation. This is too much of a conflict of interest. We're not even
00:17:07.680 talking about conflict of interest, are we? Have you even heard the phrase, conflict of interest?
00:17:16.300 Can you imagine that you would never hear that phrase if this were Don Jr. and Trump, right?
00:17:23.060 I mean, it's just mind-boggling, the difference. All right.
00:17:30.980 Let's talk about some other stuff.
00:17:34.700 In theory, we should be seeing some massive cognitive dissonance by the people who were
00:17:41.260 most supportive of Biden and least supportive of Trump over the past five years.
00:17:47.220 Now, because we're living in different realities, if there are any Democrats watching this right
00:17:54.380 now, you may be saying to yourself, I don't know what you're talking about.
00:17:59.440 Scott, I don't know what you're talking about. And you don't. And I can't fix that. I'm sorry.
00:18:04.860 So to those of you who don't fall into that category, I guess I'm just talking to you today.
00:18:09.400 It's kind of obvious at this point, like super obvious, that on a whole range of issues, not all
00:18:17.200 of them, not all of them, but on a whole range of issues, Trump was clearly the superior president
00:18:22.960 at this point. It's just obvious. You know, there was certainly a point where you could have said,
00:18:28.280 well, let's see what Biden could do, right? I think it was entirely possible that Biden could have
00:18:34.460 come up with some, you know, southern border solution that was, you know, kind and generous
00:18:40.360 and yet good enough for the United States. Maybe. I don't know. Give him a chance. Didn't happen.
00:18:47.140 You know, maybe, maybe Biden could come up with some productive way to deal with Russia and China.
00:18:53.060 I don't know. Didn't happen. So, you know, maybe Biden could do something better for the energy.
00:18:58.980 Maybe, no, it didn't happen. So, at this point, wouldn't you expect, and just talking to my own
00:19:06.240 audience here, I know you lean a particular way, but don't you think there should be some prominent
00:19:13.040 Democrats just sort of going crazy now because they can see what they did? You know, they caused this
00:19:20.680 problem by insisting on a brain-dead president. Well, here's an example, maybe.
00:19:28.160 Stephen King had this tweet. I swear to God, this happened today. No, yesterday, I guess.
00:19:36.240 So, it's fresh. He tweets, so Stephen King, the novelist, he writes,
00:19:42.020 Mr. Putin has made a serious miscalculation. He forgot he's no longer dealing with Trump.
00:19:47.620 What? Is he watching the same reality that I'm watching? Because I don't think that Russia
00:19:59.480 did much when Trump was in charge. So, to me, it looks like cognitive dissonance. Somebody
00:20:07.800 else called it out on, Dale called it out on Twitter. But Rahim Kassam had a reply to it. He goes,
00:20:19.520 congrats, you're the dumbest MF-er in America. It's funny. It's only funny because that was my exact
00:20:25.340 thought. When I read it, it was like, wow, you might be the dumbest MF-er in America. Then I read
00:20:31.440 Rahim's comment, congrats, you're the dumbest MF-er. Okay. Now, this does suggest that there
00:20:42.820 might be a medical problem that is under-recognized. And I would call it long-haul TDS. Long-haul TDS.
00:20:51.920 Yeah, long-haul TDS. The original TDS would give you some insanity and anxiety, fear. So, you don't
00:21:05.960 want to catch a bad case of TDS, which, by the way, can be transmitted by personal contact. If you
00:21:16.120 stand, and six feet isn't enough for TDS. For COVID, six feet's pretty good for social distancing.
00:21:24.240 But for TDS, you've actually got to be outside of the listening distance. So, you want to be,
00:21:30.680 well, you want to keep your distance of, say, a quarter mile from other people to reduce the
00:21:38.180 transmission of TDS. Because if you get closer than a quarter mile, they can still shout. You can hear
00:21:44.220 them. That's a little too close. Because it gets transmitted by talking and ideas. So,
00:21:51.140 there was a bad case of TDS going through the country for a few years. But now that's mostly
00:21:55.800 subsided. We've, now it's more endemic situation. We've learned to live with it. Sort of a baseline
00:22:02.720 problem like the flu. And, but we still have to be concerned about long-haul. Are there any long-haul
00:22:10.320 symptoms? And I think this cognitive dissonance is sort of the myocarditis of TDS. That it does seem
00:22:19.280 that having once had TDS, you are more likely to have cognitive dissonance, even a year later.
00:22:28.660 Speaking of Trump, he is getting some attention by calling Putin, his moves, genius and very savvy
00:22:35.740 for the way that he, the way that he reframed the separatist regions and then moved in to protect
00:22:44.480 them. So, Trump said that that was really smart. And then Trump's critics said, you fool, you Putin
00:22:52.080 lover, you S-kissing Putin puppet you, why are you saying good things about Putin? You must be a monster
00:23:00.080 like him. So, is that exactly what was going on? I have two comments about this, maybe more.
00:23:12.920 Number one, there's one thing that Trump never gets credit for. His honesty about how he feels.
00:23:23.220 Now, I will grant you that when he's talking about the outside world and the facts in the world, he can
00:23:33.740 play fast and loose with the facts. He is a salesperson. He is unapologetic about that. He uses
00:23:41.360 hyperbole to persuade. He's unapologetic about that. So, he is what he is. And you either like that or
00:23:48.500 you don't. But I think we all understand it. But the thing that you miss about Trump is that when
00:23:54.960 he tells you what his opinion is, am I right? When he tells you what his opinion is, you always
00:24:01.080 believe that, don't you? You never believe that he's telling you something he doesn't personally
00:24:06.080 believe. I don't think I've ever once had that feeling. But when Biden speaks, Biden sounds like a
00:24:14.220 politician, doesn't he? You don't really think he believes what he even says is his opinion.
00:24:21.500 The things he says he really cares about, I don't know that he does, really. Who knows?
00:24:28.040 Might be convenient to say he cares about that stuff. Who knows? But here's, so when Trump calls
00:24:34.780 Putin a genius and savvy, it's basically very similar to what I was thinking. In my private
00:24:44.020 thoughts, I was thinking, damn, that's pretty smart the way he's doing this. Looks like it's,
00:24:49.760 you know, pretty successful. At least in terms of, you know, getting stronger control over those
00:24:55.280 separatist regions. It looked pretty smart. Now, it's, you know, it's evil and manipulative and,
00:25:00.440 you know, Hitler-like. I'm not downplaying any of that. But it's smart. So that's the first thing
00:25:09.040 that we miss about Trump, is that he looks at something that looks smart, and he says, hey,
00:25:13.720 that looks smart. He's not approving of it. He's just saying it looks smart. That's just his honest
00:25:20.340 opinion. I don't know. I miss it. I miss it. I miss that part of it. I honestly don't miss the
00:25:25.940 conflict. I feel like I'm a little better off without all of the TDS. The TDS was a,
00:25:34.260 for me, surviving the TDS was almost as hard as surviving the pandemic, to be honest. You know,
00:25:40.280 if you're right in the middle of it, I mean, there weren't enough vaccinations to get me through TDS.
00:25:47.080 But, you know, I got through the pandemic. It was a pain in the ass, but I got through it.
00:25:50.920 The TDS, I think, is going to last forever. The TDS will affect my career and my reputation,
00:25:57.000 my Wikipedia page, for the rest of time. All right. But let's talk about Trump strategically,
00:26:05.180 given that he might be a future president. Who knows? What he says about Putin really does matter,
00:26:12.140 and even as an ex-president, it would matter.
00:26:14.120 Is it smart or not smart to call Putin a genius and to say that his moves are savvy? Go.
00:26:27.780 Would you say that Trump is smart or not smart to call Putin a genius in public?
00:26:37.640 I think it's smart. Because if you want to talk to somebody productively later,
00:26:44.120 you call them smart, you call them smart.
00:26:50.180 I hate to be the one who always has to explain this to the general public. Apparently, people who
00:26:55.700 watch this live stream are all, you're all educated about how this works. But the general public doesn't
00:27:02.640 understand that there was only one person who handled this right, and it was Trump. He's the only one who
00:27:08.880 handled it right. Because ultimately, we got to talk to that guy, Putin. We got to talk to him.
00:27:15.840 Who is going to get a better reception? The one who Trump called smart? Or the one who's just,
00:27:23.800 you're evil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I feel that we're all human, right? Like even Putin's
00:27:30.440 a human being. Do you think that Putin is unaffected by Trump calling him smart? Do you think he's
00:27:38.640 unaffected by that? I think he's affected by it. I think it actually works. And that if anybody were
00:27:48.240 to talk to Putin in the future about any of this, I would want it to be Trump. I would want it to be
00:27:57.560 Trump. Now, I saw some people commenting about how they were suspicious because Trump and Putin
00:28:04.260 had a private conversation once with an interpreter, I guess. But since it was not recorded what that
00:28:10.600 conversation was, people are afraid that, oh, that's where all the bad stuff happened. Maybe
00:28:15.820 that's where all the collusion happened. We don't know what happened. You know, there's no way to know
00:28:20.700 anything about that. But here's what I would guess. Just speculative. Trump understands that it's
00:28:29.340 always personal. That's it. Trump understands that it's always personal. And I'm not sure why other
00:28:37.560 people don't kind of understand that as well as he understands it. Everything's personal.
00:28:43.340 Here's another thing. In the book Persuasion by Cialdini, do you know what one of the ways
00:28:52.380 science has shown you can befriend somebody and get them to trust you as a friend? You tell them a
00:28:58.480 secret. That's a well-known persuasion trick. You tell them a secret. That's what Trump did.
00:29:09.540 Now, we don't know what they talked about privately. But because we don't know, what is that called?
00:29:17.600 A secret. Right. Just, it might have been nothing. Maybe they didn't talk about anything important
00:29:25.060 at all. But Trump created a situation where he and Putin are sharing a secret. You didn't see that
00:29:33.440 coming, did you? That's about the best technique for persuasion you're ever going to frickin' see in
00:29:41.720 your life. Say what you will about Trump. You know, he's not free from criticism, right? I'm not the one
00:29:50.060 who's going to tell you he's the God King and everything he does is right. But you've got to give
00:29:58.180 him credit for the things that are just so right that nobody's ever going to match it, in my opinion.
00:30:03.340 I don't think anybody will match him for personal persuasion. Now, keep in mind, I don't know how
00:30:10.580 many of you have ever been in the room with him, but he does have that thing. That thing, whatever that
00:30:16.720 thing is, that X factor, that charisma, whatever it is. I'm sure Putin has it too. But you put him in a
00:30:25.680 room and he's going to convince you of something. He is good. Now, by the way, I think Biden's
00:30:31.980 probably pretty good at that too, or he wouldn't be where he is. So I'm not saying he's bad at it.
00:30:36.720 But the style difference is striking. And I think Trump is the one who played it, who would have
00:30:42.260 played it completely correctly. You want Putin to think you can work with him, that he can trust you.
00:30:49.340 What is the biggest thing that... Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what Russian
00:30:55.980 people think about all of this. So the Russian people... Let's see. I'm going to skip ahead to
00:31:07.280 that part. CNN was talking about a poll. It's hard to get information about the Russian public,
00:31:13.600 but I guess CNN ran some kind of a proprietary poll or personal poll or something or a special
00:31:22.300 poll. They have some word. Forget what word that is. It doesn't matter. And here's what
00:31:26.400 they found. One out of every two Russians, actually 50% of them, said it would be right...
00:31:34.600 Right... More Russians think it would be wrong than right to use military force to reunite
00:31:44.660 Russia and Ukraine. So Russians don't want to use military right, military force to take over
00:31:55.080 Ukraine. But the Russian public does think NATO is an offensive force. What? So Russians believe
00:32:10.520 NATO is an offensive force with plans to destroy Russia. And the Russians... But they do think
00:32:21.480 that the Ukraine people and the Russian people are one people, which is what Putin says. So Putin
00:32:29.080 has managed to convince much of Russia that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are all one
00:32:34.960 people. But the Ukrainians don't believe that. Not even close. So this is one of those cases where you
00:32:41.740 can see the power of propaganda. Because I need more of a fact check on this, but I believe that the
00:32:48.820 Russian public has access to the Russian public has access to the internet, right? Now, there's some
00:32:53.020 things that are, you know, regulated and some things that are censored. But generally speaking,
00:32:58.980 the average Russian can get the internet, right? And so if you imagine the average Ukrainian and the
00:33:07.400 average Russian both have access to the outside world, you can see the power of propaganda. Because the
00:33:15.500 only thing, you know, it would be one thing, like North Korea, to keep your people completely walled
00:33:22.300 off from other information. Then you can control their thoughts pretty well. But if people have
00:33:28.540 access to the alternative opinions, you can see how powerful the propaganda is. Because, you know,
00:33:34.860 they've been turned away from accuracy toward inaccuracy. So look at the difference between Ukrainian
00:33:40.780 and Russian public opinion about this one question. Are the Ukrainians and the Russians one people?
00:33:48.220 Only Putin was the one who was pushing the we're all one people thing. And he successfully did it
00:33:55.900 through propaganda. You can see how many or what percentage of the public can be moved
00:34:01.880 by something as pure as propaganda. It's about half. It's about half. You can tell any story if
00:34:11.240 you tell it often enough and you control enough of the media that, you know, you can get a monopoly on it.
00:34:17.160 Now, he doesn't even have a monopoly. That's my point. If he had a monopoly on information,
00:34:23.000 well, then you'd understand how that many people could be convinced.
00:34:25.960 But he did that. This is the scary part. He did that without a monopoly on information. He did that
00:34:34.200 just with persuasion. Just with persuasion. So I would say that the percentage of the public
00:34:41.160 that you can move with pure propaganda is around half. And, you know, the topic would vary. So I'm
00:34:49.240 sure there are some topics you can get 80 percent, sometimes 20. But I think you could count on getting
00:34:54.760 half of the public, which is enough to start a war. You know, if you've got half of the public
00:34:59.800 on your side, you can kind of go to war. That's about enough. You know, 55 percent would be better.
00:35:07.000 So that answered my question. I was just asking the other day on live stream here,
00:35:13.080 what's the average Russian know about the whole situation? The other thing is that there are a whole
00:35:18.440 lot of people in Russia who don't think there's going to be an invasion proper, you know,
00:35:24.360 where Ukraine itself has completely taken over. There are a lot of people in Russia who don't
00:35:29.560 think that's going to happen. And there are a lot of people in Ukraine, like a big, big chunk
00:35:35.880 of Ukraine doesn't think there's going to be an invasion. But if you ask the people in the United
00:35:40.600 States, wouldn't we say 90 percent of us who are paying attention? What do you think it would be?
00:35:48.040 What do you think it would be in the United States? Now, it's different if you ask people who are
00:35:52.520 paying attention to the news versus people who are not. So I guess it's nonsense to ask the general
00:35:57.720 public. They're not even paying attention. Yeah. So I think maybe 10 percent. Well,
00:36:04.840 let me ask the question here. How many people on this live stream
00:36:11.240 do not think Russia will try to take over all of Ukraine? So tell me if you don't believe he's going
00:36:19.400 to try to take all of Ukraine. I want to see how many. Okay. A lot of people. Now, how many of you
00:36:27.960 were influenced by me? Because I'm not too confident on my opinion on this. Was anybody influenced by me?
00:36:36.600 Because early on, I said, I don't think he's going to do it. And I'm sticking with my prediction
00:36:41.800 just because the reasons for the predictions haven't changed. Although I have to admit,
00:36:48.360 it looks a lot like he's going to attack. I wouldn't bet on me. Let's put it this way.
00:36:55.000 If I were you, I wouldn't bet on me to be right. But just to be consistent, because my reasons for
00:37:01.240 the prediction never changed, I'm going to stick with it. Now, I'm not going to let my confidence be
00:37:07.400 influenced by the fact that it looks in every possible way. It looks like exactly like an
00:37:13.080 invasion. Because bluffing would look exactly the same if you wanted to do a really good job of it.
00:37:22.120 Bluffing would look the same. What would also look the same is not having decided yet.
00:37:27.800 That would look exactly the same. If you were, if the only thing you were doing is, you know,
00:37:33.080 pushing for negotiations to get some concessions, and just making us think he's going to attack at
00:37:39.080 any moment. Or even to find out what a response is. Because maybe he just is testing public opinion.
00:37:45.880 Maybe he's just testing the resolve of NATO. But apparently, there's a big opinion. And this is a
00:37:55.080 weird one. A lot of people in Russia think that the United States is trying to trick Russia into
00:38:01.480 attacking Ukraine. Is there anybody in the United States you've heard besides me say that?
00:38:09.400 That I'm not going to say that we're actually literally trying to trick them into attacking
00:38:14.360 Ukraine. But I've actually tweeted that it looks like it. In other words, what we're observing looks
00:38:21.960 exactly like trying to trick them into attacking Ukraine. Now, I don't know why we would do that.
00:38:27.400 Except that maybe it would be bad for Russia. But is it weird that the Russian public actually thinks
00:38:35.000 that? A lot of them. They think we're trying to trick them into attacking Ukraine.
00:38:43.080 How in the world is the Russian public having that opinion? And I'm the only one.
00:38:49.160 Do a fact check. Have you heard anybody else in America say that it looks like we're trying to
00:38:56.280 trick them into attacking? Because I didn't even believe my own opinion. I'm just saying that if you
00:39:01.240 look at the facts, it just looks like it. I mean, it doesn't seem likely, but it looks like it.
00:39:06.920 Oh, Cernovich and Posobiec, you've heard that? That would make sense.
00:39:16.920 Well, I'm not talking about a wag the dog situation. The wag the dog, I think that's a more specific
00:39:23.320 situation, isn't it? All right. Some more interesting factoids here. Let's get back to this. I saw a good
00:39:34.920 tweet by Eddie Kwan. He says, if you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's
00:39:40.680 taking the scientists out for lunch. That one just stops you in your tracks, doesn't it?
00:39:47.480 If you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the scientists out
00:39:51.640 for lunch. I don't think I've ever seen anything summarized that well. Actually, I'll give you one
00:40:01.960 one thing. Once a friend of mine described the comic strip Marmaduke, which at that point had
00:40:09.240 been like 50 years of Marmaduke comics. He summarized the entire life of the comic as a big dog is on
00:40:16.920 something you want. Now, that was a terribly unfair summary, but it's the only one I've seen that was
00:40:22.760 more succinct than if you think trusting the science is smart, wait until you learn who's taking the
00:40:27.400 scientists out for lunch. You could just be done. You should have a college course
00:40:35.560 for credit, like full credit. It's a Harvard class. And you go into the class and the first day you sit
00:40:42.360 down and they just show you this tweet. They go, class, if you think trusting the science is smart,
00:40:48.280 wait until you learn who's taking the scientists out for lunch. Class dismissed. Anybody who can remember
00:40:54.920 that tomorrow gets an A in the class and there's no coursework because that's all you need to know.
00:41:01.240 It's all there. The entire classwork of how to understand the media, how to work with it,
00:41:11.240 how to understand science, how to work with it, human motivation, it's all there in one tweet.
00:41:17.240 Meanwhile, speaking of the Canadian gulag,
00:41:25.320 sure enough, Canada is going hard after the people involved in the protest. Their accounts are being
00:41:31.720 frozen. Some of them can't get bail. Their names are being posted. The names of people who donated
00:41:38.840 to the truckers are being posted on trees in some neighborhoods so that you can know who to be mad at
00:41:45.400 in Canada. This is the most chilling thing that I've seen in a long time. And I've seen some
00:41:54.200 chilling things. So I don't even know what to say about this. I mean, it's so bad that like words,
00:42:02.280 words start to escape. But then you find out that two thirds of the Canadian public is totally on board
00:42:10.280 with this sort of stuff. Did you know that? Something like 65% of the Canadian public says,
00:42:17.480 you know, they don't like the convoy and they're pretty happy that the government was tough on them.
00:42:22.760 It's something like that, right? Two thirds. So if Canada is getting what it wants by a two thirds
00:42:29.000 majority, I'm not sure how concerned I should be.
00:42:31.400 Here's another scary thing. Homeland Security is looking into battling online misinformation
00:42:42.840 and has considered that misinformation could rise to the level of terrorism.
00:42:47.320 I mean, in effect. Now, do you believe that? Do you believe that misinformation,
00:42:52.680 be it intentional or not? I guess the intentional kind would be the worst kind that homeland security
00:42:59.640 would care about, but that the misinformation could be like as bad as terrorism?
00:43:05.800 I would say yes. I would say yes. You can see the effect in Russia versus Ukraine,
00:43:13.400 that public opinion and misinformation could actually cause a land war in Europe.
00:43:18.920 It could be a misinformation war. So on one hand, I can totally see how homeland security thinks
00:43:28.440 information and the control of it is necessary to avoid terrorism. On the other hand, there goes your free speech.
00:43:40.040 Am I right? How in the world can you regulate speech
00:43:46.440 free speech as a tool of terror and expect anybody's going to give you a fair opinion that doesn't have,
00:43:54.360 you know, somebody's self-interest in the government involved?
00:43:58.680 They can't coexist. You just can't have, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can
00:44:05.560 have government control over information without giving away free speech. They're just too connected.
00:44:12.760 All right. I thought Biden was kind of clever in saying that this was a start of an invasion instead
00:44:23.960 of an invasion. You remember all yesterday, there was the argument, is it an invasion or is it not an
00:44:29.800 invasion? And then Biden comes out and he goes, it's the start of an invasion. And I thought,
00:44:34.600 oh, that's good. That's actually pretty good. Because that does, that does actually, I don't know,
00:44:44.120 it feels like he high grounded it. Like once he says that, you go, ah, oh yeah, that's true. Right?
00:44:52.600 Now, because if you thought it was an invasion, he said it's the start of an invasion. And if you
00:44:59.640 thought it wasn't quite an invasion, you could say, well, yeah, it's just the start. I thought it was
00:45:05.000 one of the most clever political twists, you know, linguistic tricks I've seen in a long time. No, I don't
00:45:12.520 think he wrote it. I mean, I think somebody came up with it. But if, you know, if Trump had said this,
00:45:17.160 I'd think it was clever. So I'll give Biden this. So we've got all these sanctions that are going on
00:45:27.800 so far. Can anybody tell me that they know if these sanctions are powerful or not? Is it my
00:45:34.920 imagination, or every time we hear about sanctions, isn't there always more to the story? Like, oh,
00:45:41.960 our sanction is we're going to behead every baby that's born in Russia. And then you read,
00:45:49.240 but the context is that no babies are actually born in Russia because it's called the Federation
00:45:54.840 of Russian. You know, there's always some technicality where you think, oh, we got them now.
00:46:01.640 Look at those sanctions. We've got those sanctions now. And then you turn out that the Nord Stream pipeline
00:46:09.240 is just a delay of certification. What? He's not going to be afraid of a delay of certification
00:46:17.720 because you know what will stop the delay of the certification? Running out of fuel in the winter.
00:46:24.920 Yeah. That will pretty much speed up your certification. You're going to get real flexible
00:46:30.600 with Russia as soon as it gets real cold and you're running out of energy. So that's like a nothing.
00:46:37.400 Every time you hear that there's a something, somebody in five minutes later is going to say,
00:46:43.240 yeah, but you know, it'd be pretty easy to get around that one. So I can't even tell as an
00:46:48.840 observer if any of this makes any difference. So two banks were targeted. So sanctions on Russian
00:46:58.520 sovereign debt. I don't even know what that means. Honestly, I don't even know what that means.
00:47:04.280 I mean, obviously they'll have trouble refinancing and getting extra debt, but I don't know the larger
00:47:11.160 ramifications. Does that mean they just get help somewhere else and it doesn't matter?
00:47:16.920 You know, was China going to buy up all their debt anyway? Does it matter? I don't know. Do you?
00:47:22.360 A ban on purchases of Russian bonds. I don't know. Was that a big deal? Nobody else is going to buy them?
00:47:32.200 How do I judge that? How do they judge it? Sanctions on Russian elites and their families. Oh,
00:47:38.360 now we got them. We got some sanctions on Russian elites. Of what kind? Like what, what is it that they
00:47:45.800 can't do? If you've got $10 billion, tell me what you can't do. Am I right? I mean, travel? Is there
00:47:56.280 travel restrictions? Are they not going to let these oligarchs be involved in businesses that we do
00:48:02.760 business with? Is it even practical to stop? Would we be shooting ourselves in the foot harder than we're
00:48:08.760 shooting them if we did? Why is it that we have no idea if these sanctions even matter?
00:48:16.520 We have no idea. And the news doesn't know, because I don't think there's anybody smart
00:48:20.680 enough to analyze it and give you the story.
00:48:30.520 There's no region in Ukraine and no age group where a majority of respondents say the Russians
00:48:36.280 in Ukraine are one people. That's also from the CNN stuff. All right, here's another interesting
00:48:41.560 twist on CNN. Chris Silliza, who's one of their main opinion people, he does a whole piece about
00:48:47.480 how Mitt Romney was right when Romney said, as he was running against Obama, he said that Russia was
00:48:54.520 our biggest foe. And of course, Obama just slaughtered him in the debate by saying that China was obviously
00:49:02.520 the biggest foe and Russia's our, you know, that Romney stuck in the past. Well, now Silliza is
00:49:09.080 basically saying that Romney was right, that Russia is the bigger problem. And
00:49:18.120 when do you see CNN agreeing with a Republican? Doesn't that raise a little flag for you?
00:49:24.360 Is it a coincidence that CNN is telling us that we should focus on Russia as the problem and not
00:49:32.680 China? That doesn't feel like an independent opinion to me. Now, I can't read anybody's mind,
00:49:41.960 and I'm not going to allege anything. I'm just saying that when I read it, it doesn't look like
00:49:46.440 somebody independently said, oh, let me think about this. With no influence from my corporate masters,
00:49:52.040 let me just say that maybe Russia is the problem and not China. When CNN has, I believe,
00:50:01.000 more to lose by making China unhappy than Russia. Because CNN has been anti-Russia. Russia is connected
00:50:08.680 to Trump, even though it's not forever. So this feels just more like CNN's wave of propaganda against
00:50:17.800 Russia because you tie them to the Republicans or to Trump.
00:50:24.360 So how many of you believe that this new study in Nature, so it's been out a few weeks, I guess,
00:50:31.720 and I think I talked about it, that the risk of myocarditis is five times greater if you had COVID
00:50:38.600 than if you didn't. And that it's, well, it's five times higher than even a risk of myocarditis from
00:50:48.280 the vaccinations. Do you believe that data? We don't believe any data these days. But it looks like it
00:50:57.800 was a credible publication for a study. But of course, you should be skeptical about everything.
00:51:04.280 Now, what would happen if this data stands? Do you think that there'll be future data that will
00:51:11.960 overturn this idea? The idea being that long COVID is bad for your cardiovascular system
00:51:22.840 and that you'd be better off getting the vaccination according to this, not according to me,
00:51:27.960 because I'm not the authority here. But according to this data, do you think that that someday will
00:51:34.040 change? Do you think that someday the consensus of science will flip? Do you think in 20 years we'll
00:51:43.560 look back and say, oh, the vaccinations were the real health problem, not the actual COVID, long COVID?
00:51:51.080 I don't know. I think this is one of those anything could happen situations. I wouldn't be surprised
00:51:58.200 either way. Wouldn't be surprised either way. But suppose it's true that there's a 60% chance of
00:52:12.360 greater cardio problems. Doesn't that mean that we could have a lot of extra COVID deaths
00:52:21.080 as much as a year or more after the actual COVID? And therefore, they would not be attributed to COVID.
00:52:28.600 But there might be more of those deaths than we've even seen so far.
00:52:34.360 Am I doing the math right? Let's say a million people died.
00:52:43.320 Am I doing the math right? Help me out here with just top of the envelope. If a million Americans died of
00:52:49.160 COVID, but compare that to how many people got COVID, but then just recovered.
00:52:56.040 Now, if the group that got COVID and recovered would have a baseline rate of,
00:53:02.920 I don't know, 10% of them maybe dying of cardiovascular problems every year, what's the
00:53:11.640 number 5%? Maybe 5% of them were going to die anyway of cardiovascular. But now let's say that
00:53:21.240 the COVID, let's say this study was accurate. If the COVID gave them a 50 or 60% higher chance of dying,
00:53:30.920 because given that cardiovascular is, I believe, the number one cause of death in the United States,
00:53:36.840 fact check me, I believe it's number one. So the number one cause of death, if that got ramped up by another 50%,
00:53:45.640 and it doesn't kick in for a year or more, shouldn't we see over time, maybe it takes five years,
00:53:53.320 but shouldn't we see over time more people dying in the future from the pandemic
00:53:58.200 than from the past? Are my numbers way off?
00:54:08.440 What do you think? Now, that's a big assumption, right? The big assumption is that. Now, also,
00:54:14.200 you'd have to add to that any side effects from the vaccination itself. Because if you're looking at
00:54:21.560 pandemic deaths, you do have to count everybody who died because of the shutdowns, everybody who died
00:54:29.160 because of the COVID itself, everybody who died because the vaccination was, you know, unfortunately,
00:54:34.280 they were one of the ones who had a bad effect. You'd have to add all of that together. And so I have
00:54:40.920 a feeling that the COVID death is about double what is reported so far, and that we might lose another
00:54:47.960 million people sooner than they had to go. You know, you could argue that all the changes,
00:54:54.200 it was a little sooner, but that's true for all of us. All right.
00:55:02.360 Is there anything else happening?
00:55:06.760 Well, Jack Posobiec tweeted that 65% of Democrats, I feel like everything's 65% today. That's weird.
00:55:15.000 65% of Democrats approve of Trudeau's crackdown on freedom protesters and freezing of bank accounts.
00:55:24.840 So that's obviously Democrats meaning Americans. So I wasn't really completely aware of this until
00:55:33.240 at least halfway through the convoy situation. I didn't realize that so many Democrats were
00:55:41.240 completely in favor of the government's actions there. Now, I guess I would have thought that if
00:55:48.120 I had seen how many people wear masks in California after it's not required. It is really, really amazing
00:55:57.640 to see how many people are wearing masks without it being required. Now, I'm not going to name names,
00:56:04.040 but I actually witnessed yesterday, somebody put on a mask, somebody I know, put on a mask in a public
00:56:14.040 place. And I said, oh, masks are not required. And said individual who shall remain nameless said,
00:56:21.480 I know, I prefer it. Not for health reasons. Not for health reasons. Felt more comfortable.
00:56:30.120 That's a real thing. That is a real thing. Now, you know, people have different reasons. But
00:56:40.200 everything from people think the, and by the way, there's a name for, have you ever heard of the name
00:56:48.760 mask fishing? I heard this recently. Have you heard of mask fishing? So cat fishing is when you
00:56:58.920 pretend you're a different person than the picture. Mask fishing is when you're attractive,
00:57:09.880 but only in this little zone here. And the rest of it is just a hot mess. So apparently,
00:57:17.240 there are a number of people who are pretty happy wearing masks. It improves their overall attractiveness.
00:57:22.280 And that's not a joke. It's not a joke that it improved some people's overall attractiveness,
00:57:28.840 and they wanted to keep it. And other people, I think, were shy. And I have to admit that I felt
00:57:36.920 that too. When I walked into a store without a mask after having been so acclimated to wearing masks,
00:57:43.800 I actually felt a little naked and exposed. Has anybody had that yet? Now, it wasn't enough to
00:57:50.440 make me put a mask on, but I felt a little naked and a little bit exposed. I didn't have any feelings
00:57:57.160 about virus. It was just a social feeling. And I can absolutely, you know, and I'm not embarrassed by
00:58:07.080 pretty much anything. So it wasn't really embarrassment or anything like that.
00:58:15.320 Anyway, that is everything I think I wanted to say today. And you have been witness to the best
00:58:22.520 live stream that's ever happened in the history of the world with some of the most fun people,
00:58:27.800 obviously the sexiest, smartest, most flexible and open-minded human beings of all time.
00:58:36.840 Give yourself a pat on the back. Okay, that's enough. That's enough. Cut it out.
00:58:42.840 All right. And tomorrow, we'll do it again every single day.