Episode 1673 Scott Adams： More Things We Are Learning About The Ukrainian Invasion. Yikes
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
148.11812
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, we talk about fake news, the U.K. war, and fake facts. We also get into the latest in the latest fake news scandal involving fake facts and fake stories.
Transcript
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good morning everybody welcome to the highlight of civilization called coffee with scott adams
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now we might be talking about the ukraine war because i guess the pandemic's over so it's time
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to talk about that but first let's take it up a notch shall we yes and all you need is a cup
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a mug or a glass of tank of chalice time canteen jug a flask a vessel any kind fill it with your
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favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day
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thing makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip go
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i had a suggestion uh the other day that i should do a um an interview slash competition with snoop dog
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to see who could pass out uh during during an interview first if you know what i mean
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i think that would be hilarious do you think snoop would take my invitation if i had a split screen
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and i said here's the deal we're just going to do what we do if you know what i mean
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if you know what i mean wink wink while the interview is going on
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and uh we're going to see if my questions get dumber than his answers so we'll we'll see who can
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who can hang in there longer i think i could take him
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and by the way me interviewing snoop dog that should be pay for pay-per-view
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because that because i think it would be the best interview he ever gave
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something tells me well once again the science is pointing toward my opinion um there's yet another
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study which we don't we don't trust any studies but they're fun to talk about uh published in the
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esteemed journal nature which is a pretty good one i understand and it says uh uh basically any
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amount of alcohol damages your brain that's the base the basic thing is that any amount of alcohol
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damages your brain and they can detect it now apparently now i'm not so sure that they have
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cause and effect right because one of the things they do is they say okay we looked at these people
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who had you know one beer a day and their brains were short were smaller than or they looked like what
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uh the brains appeared two years older than those who drank only half a beer so if you had two beers
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your brain looked two years older than if you had half a beer but something tells me there are
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probably a lot of things going on with the people who drink more alcohol compared to the people who
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don't am i right because at the very least some other people might be reading books while you're
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drinking if that were the only difference one day a week you drink and maybe one day a week somebody
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else reads a book i don't know i think you'd see a difference in the brains after a while wouldn't
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you it doesn't mean that the uh it doesn't necessarily mean that the alcohol is shrinking your brain
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could mean that the reading increases it or keeps it younger so i would imagine there are lots of
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correlations that they didn't pick up in this study just guessing but it agrees with me so i tell you
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about it well let's talk about all the fake news we'll start with trump related fake news
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i call it a fake news that trump called putin a genius although it actually happened it's fake news
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but it literally happened and the fake part is the context they put it in so here's trump explaining
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in his own words the next day after he got some criticism for calling putin smart i guess he was
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talking to a fundraiser at mar-a-lago and he said uh they say trump said putin smart i mean he's taking
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over a country for two dollars worth of sanctions trump told the crowd at the fundraiser i'd say that's
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pretty smart he's taking over a country really a vast vast location a great piece of land with lots of
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people and he's just walking right in now obviously it's going to be harder than walking right in and
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the sanctions are going to be more than two dollars so this is a little in a sense you know he was using
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dated information when he made his opinion but i don't disagree with his opinion do you
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who who would disagree with the opinion under the assumption that putin could just walk in and take
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over the country now that turns out not to be true it's going to be way harder than putin might
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have imagined but if your assumption was that it was an easy easy takeover which a lot of people
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thought in the beginning thought it would take two days if you have that assumption that it would be
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smart but evil to do this wouldn't you say it's not nobody asked trump if he was if putin is evil
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right ask him the question mr trump you said you think putin is smart do you think he's also evil
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if he if trump says no he's fine not only is he smart but he's completely moral and ethical too
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well then i think you'd have some good complaints about trump but if trump says yeah he's making smart
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moves based on the information he has but he's also evil then that's not too far from what people
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thought a week ago today i think i'll bet trump would revise his opinion today i'll bet as of today
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trump would say you know this doesn't look so smart anymore because he's not going to get he's not
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going to get ukraine on the cheap so i'd like to see you an update on trump's opinion based on new
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information here's another for the trump was right all along file do you remember the
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saudi arabia and the prince crown prince allegedly um ordered the assassination of khashoggi
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and the world said trump why are you not coming harder on saudi arabia why are you not pushing harder
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on saudi arabia do you remember what i said at the time when trump was not pushing hard on saudi arabia
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i said that's the right play because basically now saudi or saudi arabia owns you a owes you a favor
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that's how it works you do somebody a favor that was a pretty big one basically trump not going hard
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as saudi arabia for the khashoggi thing that was a favor it felt like it to me at the time it felt
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like it was a personal favor and i think trump collected not only did he collect by getting the
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abraham accords through one of the you know greatest diplomatic accomplishments accomplishments of all
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time but now saudi arabia is uh let's see um how did i lose that story they're they're talking about
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maybe being an ally with israel someday so the crown prince is actually saying you know maybe maybe
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someday we should be thinking more about israel as an ally
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i think i think trump played this exactly right now the murder of khashoggi may have been a horrible
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brutal thing that nobody can individually be in favor of of course but if you were playing the the real
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politic thing where you know it's a dirty world i think trump played the dirty world just right
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am i wrong don't don't you think that trump played the dirty world you know where nothing's perfect
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and there are killers in the world and it's just not a clean world i think he played it right because
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he ended up with saudi arabia largely where we want them to be in terms of allies in terms of how they
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would treat israel in the future especially i don't know i i would say that this is one of trump's
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greatest moves and will never be recognized as such he'll probably be criticized for not you know
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not being harder on saudi arabia at the same time to me it looks clear that was the right move in
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retrospect all right do you remember the tragic story of the stanford stock soccer star a young woman katie
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meyer who died um and initially there was no information on how she died didn't everybody
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think that was a vaccination death because on social media there was this you know this indication
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sort of a hint oh and then suddenly there were all these stories about uh all the athletes dying from
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vaccinations which is all debunked by the way there is no excess athletes dying from vaccinations that's
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completely debunked but it turns out we get an update and she died of suicide so um you know it's
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it's twice as tragic if it's suicide i guess um and you think about this this is somebody who had
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everything she was healthy she was at stanford she was a soccer star we we've got a problem in this
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world with uh mental health that's um as big as you think that problem is it's probably bigger than
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you think like i think mental health is a giant problem you probably think it's a giant problem
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too but however big you think it is i think it's maybe five times that like i don't think we're even
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close to appreciating the mental health problem that's that's a bigger pandemic than the pandemic
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all right here's some uh uk updates that i find interesting the second biggest oil company i think
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cnn was reporting this uh luck oil has called for an end of the war no no they're not directly
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criticizing putin that would be dangerous but apparently it's noteworthy that they're calling
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for an end to the violence without you know blaming anybody because apparently the value of their stock
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has lost 99 of its value essentially every public company in russia is worthless now
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literally literally worthless meaning nobody would buy it now i guess i guess there's some you know big
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companies in america are going to gamble on some of the some of the depressed assets but that's just a
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gamble that's not really an investment you could call it an investment if it's part of a big portfolio
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i'll give you that though um but really a russian company maybe all of them have lost 99 of their value
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now do you think that the russian public is now unaware that uh putin's got them in a little trouble
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i think these sanctions are going to work way better than all the experts predicted
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that putin would just walk into ukraine in two days into kiev expert the military experts have been
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100 wrong am i right i don't believe there were any military experts saying well it's gonna be a long slog
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i don't recall seeing that once did you did did any any notable experts say russia's gonna get bogged
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down there i don't remember seeing it somebody says yes there might have been it's being said now of
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course now it's being said but before the actual invasion how many military experts said that they
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were going to get bogged down the way they are besides me i mean i said it so i think the military
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experts were largely completely wrong so far uh although i suspect they're going to be right
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about russia flattening ukraine unfortunately um
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so i i think um i think putin is going to be losing the persuasion war even within russia because
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once you do this much damage to the economy and i guess i guess uh even the oil and energy segment
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in russia that was carved out to be free of the sanctions nobody even wants to touch the part
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that's carved out because i figure it won't stay carved out which is a good play right they're thinking
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it's too risky to even deal with russia on the stuff that's not illegal because it might be illegal later
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um so rt russia today which is basically a russian propaganda site which full disclosure i have appeared
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on uh back in probably 2016 or 17 maybe now at the time i didn't know it was a you know russian propaganda
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but i was just doing everybody's propaganda i also appeared on cnn which i also think is
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propaganda so i've appeared on msnbc rt cnn and as long as they showed my interview without editing
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which they did because it was live i'll appear almost anywhere in fact i think i would yeah i
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probably would i think i would appear on russia state media if they invited me as long as they
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showed my live interview because i get to say what i get to say i think i'd do that so scott adams
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media whore it is it a media whore or am i using them for my own purposes because remember it's my opinion
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it's not their opinion i wouldn't be going on their show to give them their opinion i'd be giving my opinion
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um apparently elon musk agrees with me because he's been asked by several nations to block russian
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propaganda on the starlink network and elon musk says sorry not going to happen unless it's at gunpoint
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because he's a free speech absolutist and i respect that opinion especially if you're if you've got a
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network that carries traffic you should be a free speech absolutist um so i respect that even though
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it has its own set of costs i guess anyway um paul joseph watson tweets that's ironic that rt is being banned
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for their propaganda when pretty much all of the legacy media is just running one fake story after
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another about ukraine am i right i think mike serdovich is doing the best job of calling out
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the media for running just pure ukrainian propaganda like all the stories of the the 13 people on the
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island that was fake the the ghost of kiev the the ace fighter pilot who's shooting down all the russian
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jets never happened complete fabrication so most of what you're hearing from ukraine is pure
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bullshit and our legacy media is just reporting it like it's true so where do you draw the line
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between you know honest mistakes are they you know which part of our media is just uh carrying water for
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the cia some of them it certainly looks to me like the cia is directly managing some parts of our
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media right now it looks like it i mean i don't i don't see the mechanism but it looks like it you
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know the the output looks like it anyway it's a good question you know who decides who is uh propaganda
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and what is not when all of it looks like propaganda uh also speaking of serdovich he points out and
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this is always a good thing to look for all right we're in the fog of war so you expect and you accept
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that there'll be lots of mistakes made in the reporting correct we we we get that a lot of the
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early reporting is just going to be totally wrong but we also sort of uncritically accept
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that they're just mistakes but as mike serdovich points out why do the mistakes always seem to go
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in one direction meaning that the stories that are incorrect turn out to have been in pro ukraine
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is it a coincidence that all of the fake news is pro ukraine that would be a pretty big coincidence
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wouldn't it now it's also possible that's a that my assumption is wrong that the fake news is not
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all pro ukraine maybe i just see it that way could be could be a perceptual thing so you know throw that
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in the mix that's a possibility too scott how about it's because russia is evil says says the ukrainian
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control perhaps maybe allegedly all right a russian tv station that was um essentially
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decommissioned by russia because i guess they were being too independent about the war they were they
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were already suspended their operations but i guess they had one final broadcast and they pretended that
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the entire staff was you know resigning on air to protest um protest the war basically so i guess
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they all got up and and resigned on live tv in russia that's pretty impactful now it didn't mean anything
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because they'd already been suspended so wasn't wasn't any work to do anyway
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um but i think that's pretty meaningful do you think the message is getting through to the russian
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public i think the the impact on the economy and stuff like this probably is starting to get through
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but i'll bet you you can't reach 50 of the russian public about 50 of the russian public is impervious
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to any propaganda um let's say fighting that they're just going to believe the russian the russian side
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and there's nothing you can do about it and if and how much support does putin need within russia to
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keep control i don't know the answer to that but if 50 are going to support him no matter what
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because he can can control the propaganda i don't know that's probably enough to hang on
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i think he could hang on with 50 popular support because keep in mind if russia does get full control
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of ukraine the russian public or some part of it may consider this a success what do you think i'm going
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to say that 50 this is just my impression it's not based on any science or anything my guess is that
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50 of the russian public at least this would be my low number 50 will decide that putin succeeded and
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and russia was justified and that it was a good war and a good outcome i say at least 50 will believe
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that because putin can control the narrative that well now um let's talk about some more of the the
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fake news and the narrative so greta tunberg did a little selfie today holding a handmade sign in
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support of ukraine now how much balls does it take to be greta tunberg and publicly take a selfie
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saying you're favoring ukraine because although she is not single-handedly responsible she is the biggest
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name in favor of reducing our energy security i'm not making that up i don't think that's a
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i don't believe that that's a any kind of a weird interpretation of events i think that's just
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straightforward she's the voice of climate change climate change is the thing which created uh energy
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insecurity because the green stuff can't grow fast enough doesn't work all the time you know if the
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wind does blow the sun isn't out so greta at least as a as a symbol she is really the cause of the
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ukraine war because if russia didn't have this much control over energy they never would have been
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emboldened to do what they're doing so how much balls does it take for her to say she's in favor of
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ukraine she is closer to the cause of the war than the than the solution now again you know i'm using some
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hyperbole you recognize that right you know ukraine wasn't caused by one thing you know it requires
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you know putin's brain and lots of other things too um so cnn is running a opinion piece by douglas london
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who is uh decades uh in foreign uh foreign experience in the cia and he's talking about putin and uh the
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start of his article is putin the emperor with no clothes now on principle alone i almost didn't read
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this article because i'm going to add the emperor has no clothes to my empty npc statements uh that's
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like soylent green hey that's like the matrix it looks like wag the dog is happening and then i'm
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going to add the emperor has no clothes these are all the things that you say if you don't have anything
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to add whatsoever there's just nothing to add all right but i'm guessing that uh maybe the editors
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had something to do with the title because the article itself was pretty good and uh douglas london's
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take is that putin is not crazy not crazy and that the problem is he's terribly misinformed by his inner
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circle who don't want to tell him the truth do you buy that do you buy that uh putin is perfectly sane
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the only problem is all of his information about what's practical to do and what the situation is
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is skewed by his inner circle because they just will agree with him like sycophants
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i don't agree with that i don't agree with that i don't believe that putin's sources of information
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are just as sycophants do you believe that you know i i don't think it's so far out of the
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bill scott says scott is a paid corporate shill
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have you been paying attention to my career at all have you heard of dilber it's a it's a popular
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comic it's not really that complementary to management and to corporate interests just saying
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um anyway um i don't think i buy that putin is only misinformed by his own sycophants
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he i think it's probably his own opinions that are misinformed meaning that he's got the input he just
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processes it differently that would be my guess but again we're all guessing nobody knows what putin's
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really thinking um i watched a little bit of putin's address to russia i think it was yesterday in
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which he was doing a televised address giving them an update on stuff and if you look at putin's face
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and his body language he's he's having a tough time now some of it could be just war face you know if
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if you're the person who's killing thousands of people every day imagine imagine waking up
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you're putin and you know that today you will kill thousands of people that didn't need to die
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how does that feel you know i think i could be a war president if if my country had been attacked
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like i could rationalize sending people to defend the country even if they some of them died
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but how do you rationalize a war of choice because it was choicey i think he had a choice
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and he just decides to the thousands of people will die in his own country you know his own citizens
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he'll send out there to die how do you live with that i don't know um
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but to me he looked uh like he's not in his best mental state he looks like a person who knows he's losing
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again we can't we can't read his mind so everybody's just guessing about putin but my take on him this
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is just you know the totality of my life experience is that he had a face that looks like he knows he's
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wrong he shouldn't have been there and that he's going to lose that's what his face said to me again
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just an impression don't put too much in that um joel pollack points out that uh you know there
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there are calls for the biden administration to get behind the idea that uh that putin's a war criminal
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um but again so as uh joel says a reporter at the press conference uh correctly pointed out
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that the biden administration's empty threats to accuse russia of war crimes that they're empty
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threats when the when the international criminal court does not have jurisdiction over non-member
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russia and the u.s especially for war crimes committed with non-member ukraine so basically there's no
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entity that could you know deem him a war criminal and make it stick but i don't think that's the
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important part i don't think that we're talking about him being a war criminal because it matters
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if somebody designates him that i think it's just persuasion if you can make everybody talk about
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whether he is or is not a war criminal or better yet talk about whether some international group will
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designate him one that's making you think past the sale if what you're talking about is if there's a
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legal entity to designate him a war criminal you've kind of already uncritically accepted that he's a
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war criminal and the only question is whether there's an entity to label him
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it's persuasion it's all persuasion so it's good persuasion if you're if you're on the team that
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wants putin to look bad it's good persuasion the war criminal thing is really sticky i think it's
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really sticky all right uh nato said it won't give air cover as you know to ukraine which is
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essentially telling uh putin he can have ukraine
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am i right when nato says we definitely won't do air cover as opposed to saying well we're considering
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it suppose they said we don't say what we're going to do militarily
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could they have done that could nato have said we don't we don't tell anybody what our military
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plans are but instead they said nope absolutely we're not going to do any uh air support is that
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the right thing to do i don't know but to me it sounds like they just told putin he can have ukraine
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there's nothing to stop him um now a number of people said that uh here here's what the experts
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say now remember the experts the experts said that putin could take ukraine in 48 hours
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why do you think that the only reason that uh putin thought he could take ukraine in 48 hours if he did
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we don't know that but if he did do you think it's because his sycophants would not give him the right
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information or was it because every single military expert on every side said it would take two days
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and and and so cnn's running an article that says he's getting into this information or an opinion
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piece saying he's probably getting his information from just the sycophants and he doesn't know what's
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going on but suppose he did suppose putin was watching all the western press and he knew exactly
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what cnn and all the military experts said what would they have been saying they would have agreed
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with his sycophants if putin had the information outside of his his little unit of agreeers he would
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have seen the same message that he could take ukraine in two days i'm not wrong about that right so why
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would we think that his his uh small band of advisors are the problem when they're saying the same
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thing everybody else was saying presumably again we don't know for sure yeah um
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people are telling me that this is also what the experts say and confirm this for me confirm that
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the experts do say this the military experts say that the size of the military that putin seems to be
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putting into ukraine would be nowhere near nowhere near what it would take to hold the country even if
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you if you conquered it to occupy it i completely disagree
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do you know why because putin can control propaganda completely if you can control propaganda
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completely you don't need an occupation force you just do it with persuasion now i'm waiting to see
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the first person to say something that that i'm going to criticize go i say that putin can occupy ukraine
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successfully with nothing but persuasion because he'll control the information
00:31:13.280
now come on i'm waiting i'm waiting for the criticism i know it's coming come on come on why isn't somebody
00:31:25.680
saying why couldn't he do it in afghanistan or why couldn't the soviet union where's that why are
00:31:32.240
why are you telling me why couldn't they do it in the soviet union and when they were in afghanistan they
00:31:37.360
didn't have the internet and the mujahideen are not on twitter so you can't you can't hold afghanistan
00:31:45.760
with persuasion because you don't have the communication channel there's no way to hold
00:31:51.440
ukraine there's no way to hold afghanistan with just persuasion you would have to have an occupation
00:31:56.640
force that was big enough but ukraine do you know what the ukrainian people will hear
00:32:04.160
like within within a week of putin owning all the communications and media in ukraine which seems
00:32:12.160
likely the ukrainian people are going to hear you probably were not aware how many nazis were in
00:32:18.480
your government before we came in here am i right and they'll say it over and over again and they'll show
00:32:25.600
you videos and lots of images and scary things that they saved him from you don't think that half of
00:32:33.200
ukraine which is about all it would take to hold ukraine probably you don't think that half of
00:32:38.080
ukraine could be convinced that maybe the ukraine was on the wrong side yeah that that's very possible
00:32:45.600
practical and doable now remember persuasion doesn't get everybody all the time it's not that kind of a
00:32:53.680
weapon but you can get half the people reliably on any message if the government is behind the messaging
00:33:00.960
you can get half of the people to agree with just about anything and that's probably enough to hold
00:33:05.680
the country or at least reduce the net the reduce the size of an occupation force so here's my uh
00:33:15.520
disagreement with the experts summarized that the size of your occupation force is directly related to
00:33:23.040
the quality of your persuasion if your persuasion is high your occupation force could be small and vice versa
00:33:31.760
they're they're uh what do you call the substitutes they're not perfect substitutes but they're substitutes
00:33:45.040
i just got a weird question by by text and the answer is no
00:34:03.520
no to the question by text all right um you're dismissing the rage of loss of country family
00:34:11.360
and friends yes the ukrainian citizens are not going to be happy with putin and that's going to last
00:34:18.400
but what i'm saying is that there will be enough people who who uh are persuaded to the russian point
00:34:27.520
of view that it reduces the amount of occupation force they need that's all and and if you get the
00:34:35.200
right people in charge of you know the security apparatus then ukraine's own own security apparatus
00:34:46.320
is that an official prediction it's an official let me say statement of how the world works so the
00:34:53.520
statement of how the world works is that uh the better the persuasion the smaller the occupation force you
00:34:59.840
need so that that's i guess that's not a prediction that's a statement but i will say it's not a
00:35:07.920
prediction but in my opinion it's possible for putin to hold you ukraine without a gigantic occupation
00:35:15.440
force so that's all i'll say it's possible that doesn't mean you'll do it because the crushing
00:35:21.200
sanctions are pretty crushing so you know there's a lot of variables in play here
00:35:28.880
all right uh why is russia focusing on ukraine's nuclear sites i have a question that i need uh mark
00:35:37.200
schneider or somebody who's smart about nuclear to answer for me i've not seen anybody say the following
00:35:45.440
that russia might be concerned that ukraine would get a hold of a dirty bomb
00:35:51.600
can you make a dirty bomb if you had access to a nuclear power plant and let's say you were all on
00:35:58.800
the same team and you went there and said hey nuclear power plant you're on the side of ukraine
00:36:05.120
so are we is there any way we can get some of your dirty stuff to make a dirty bomb
00:36:11.360
somebody says you could do it from spent fuel rods
00:36:18.480
now here's the question why has nobody reported that let's get let's go back to the mike cernovich
00:36:26.080
question which is why does all the reporting coincidentally favor ukraine is that a coincidence
00:36:34.320
now it could be that the only reason that uh ukraine that russia wants to take over the nuclear sites
00:36:47.680
what what if russia had heard that ukraine might blow one of its own own nuclear sites
00:36:54.320
which would be the worst case scenario but imagine they would melt down their own site
00:36:58.160
to blame russia and that would basically turn the world against russia until the end of time if a
00:37:05.600
nuclear site goes down in ukraine and russia gets blamed that's a different situation isn't it
00:37:13.840
now would somebody in ukraine do something that evil well i don't know if your whole country is
00:37:19.280
being threatened and you're on a kill list you put me on a kill list let me let me say this clearly
00:37:24.800
if you put my name on a kill list i might take down a nuclear facility to get myself off it
00:37:34.960
now i'd hope that the people who maybe did this false flag this is all speculative there's no evidence
00:37:39.840
of any of this but i would hope that anybody who did take down the nuclear site you know got people
00:37:44.640
out of there so so nobody died directly from it but yeah yeah if i were in a government that was on
00:37:51.760
a kill list and i had maybe 48 hours to live and i thought maybe i had to do something drastic
00:37:58.080
i i would consider taking on a nuclear site in my own country because remember the nuclear sites
00:38:04.000
aren't going to help them because the russia is going to turn off the lights until russia has control
00:38:10.240
so they don't need any nuclear sites they're not working but if they could use it to to change the
00:38:16.640
course of the war or get nato involved or something i can imagine i can imagine that russia has some
00:38:23.280
valid reasons for wanting to control those sites that are not um bad now did you see the story that
00:38:31.440
the russians had put explosives around one of the sites so they would blow the nuclear site if
00:38:38.320
i don't know if something went wrong do you believe that story do you believe that the russian army has orders
00:38:44.960
to blow a nuclear site in ukraine under any conditions that sounds like really fake news to me
00:38:53.600
i don't see any argument that the russian army or the russian government or putin could possibly
00:39:02.720
have any benefit from blowing up a nuclear site in ukraine just not possible right
00:39:09.760
so i think that's the fake news story that russia was putting bombs around the nuclear site now again
00:39:18.400
like all of these things if i say something with great confidence those of you who know me well enough
00:39:25.200
you should know if i say something like that and it sounds like confident that a hundred percent of
00:39:31.120
everything you say about this ukrainian situation is iffy can we agree on that i think the only thing we
00:39:38.640
know is that there's some kind of a war going on after that it's all just it's just bullshit after that
00:39:45.040
so if i look confident just know that that's just a mannerism it's not what's happening in my head about anything
00:39:54.080
all right um now they're saying that zelinski has survived three assassination attempts there are these
00:40:01.360
assassination squads you know they're chechens uh but they they've all been thwarted because the
00:40:08.320
plucky and highly capable uh ukrainian security uh got tipped off possibly by somebody in russia
00:40:16.640
because even russia doesn't like this they say and so they the death squads were thwarted and eliminated
00:40:25.520
i believe none of it i believe none of it there's probably not a single thing about this story that's
00:40:36.240
except the general thing that russia might want is zelinski dead
00:40:39.840
um so don't believe any of that even it might be true but i would say the credibility of the source
00:40:46.640
is just zero it's just zero am i right do you all agree with the following statement that it's possibly
00:40:55.120
true possibly true but the source that told you it's true zero critical zero in fact every lie
00:41:03.680
that we've heard it came from this source all right
00:41:14.320
let's talk about something else so remember i was uh i guess we were all asking the question why isn't
00:41:21.600
ukraine if it still has military assets and some some assets in the sky and drones why are they not
00:41:30.160
wiping out that stalled um russian column that was 40 miles long and they're not going anywhere
00:41:37.760
and i had speculated with my total lack of military um experience that the smartest thing the ukrainians
00:41:45.840
could do is just pick off the supply trucks you know pick off the gas and and food supplies and
00:41:53.840
that's it and just let the convoy be trapped because they can't do anything they're just going to
00:42:00.480
starve to death and uh so we saw a report and again remember a hundred percent of the news and of ukraine
00:42:07.120
is sketchy i'll just tell you what the report is but don't automatically assume that i think it's
00:42:12.880
true i'll just tell you what it is that apparently the you uh the report is that the ukrainians have
00:42:19.760
special forces that have been trained by america the the belief there that their special forces are
00:42:27.840
quite good and that the special forces have been targeting primarily the rear of the column to get
00:42:34.880
this supply trucks and successfully so they're sending out the the best of their special forces and just
00:42:42.320
picking off the supply trucks and they're doing it successfully now that's the report but it's in
00:42:48.480
the context of only propaganda right so we don't really know if that's even happening if if we're
00:42:54.000
being honest we don't know if anything like that's really happening but that's the report now those of
00:43:00.320
you who would like to make fun of my lack of military expertise i would point out that that's what i would
00:43:06.320
have done and i said that publicly before we saw a report that that's what they're actually doing
00:43:11.680
can can you back me on that the i want to make sure that i really did say that in public do you
00:43:17.680
remember hearing it okay so i'm getting some confirmation that people did hear that yeah all
00:43:23.120
right so remember every every time that you're saying but scott the military experts blah blah just
00:43:30.480
remember that i beat the military experts about how effective russia would be in 48 hours i was i
00:43:38.080
was better than the military experts and on the supply truck column my theory of how to address it is
00:43:50.000
now i also have uh a i guess a speculation or prediction that the turkish-made drones that are flying
00:43:58.880
over ukraine and attacking russia someday we're going to find out that ukrainians were not piloting
00:44:04.240
those which military expert is telling you that i mean they can't really they can't tell you that
00:44:13.120
but there's no way in hell that we sent a bunch of gazillion dollar uh you know expensive drones over
00:44:21.440
there and we told the ukrainians hey you know take an hour to learn how to use this thing
00:44:26.880
because there's no way the ukrainians had enough trained drone operators there's no way and even
00:44:33.760
if they did wouldn't you want the best drone operators on this job i mean i i think they did they
00:44:40.960
probably just shuffled some paperwork and said all right you were working for nato yesterday but on
00:44:45.920
paper you're working for ukraine now we fire you and then this the guy in the same chair just kept running
00:44:50.880
running running the drones that's what i think i don't i don't think that um the ukraine military
00:44:59.920
built a drone operating center that is successfully operating from ukrainian territory well let me ask it
00:45:07.440
this way do you believe that the drones are being operated from the ground and that the ground source
00:45:16.080
is in you in ukraine today do you believe that do you believe that the ground operation for the drones
00:45:27.600
somebody says yes that would be the worst place to put it you don't think the russians could find that thing
00:45:34.960
i i can't believe that there would still be a central ground operation place for the the drones if russia is
00:45:45.680
in ukraine and has probably some reasonably good intelligence can they can they find where the signal's
00:45:52.880
coming from they can can't they don't you think
00:45:57.680
somebody says no way somebody says no way that they could find where the the source of the signal is
00:46:07.600
is there somebody who's smart enough to know if remember uh elon musk just warned that the starlink
00:46:15.120
terminals could be located by somebody who's you know got the right equipment and that they could be
00:46:20.800
bombed if you can if you can find a starlink terminal now i get that the starlink terminal
00:46:27.280
is not designed to be military grade security i get that but something tells me if a signal is going
00:46:34.080
into space from a place you can't find the source of the signal especially when you've turned off the
00:46:40.480
electricity to pretty much all of ukraine couldn't you just turn off all of the electricity in ukraine
00:46:46.400
and then you'd find basically one signal that's still working and that would be the drone operators
00:46:53.680
because they'd have a you know it's their own source of energy probably
00:46:59.920
somebody says satellites well yeah i mean the satellites are involved but there's still a ground source
00:47:09.440
uh somebody in the comments says i could do it in five minutes with equipment i already own
00:47:18.880
so there's somebody saying they could detect the ground-based operators of the drones with just
00:47:24.880
equipment he owns assuming it's an engineer all right um so there's a thought that the russian influence
00:47:37.840
campaign on the internet has dried up because their source of funding is unavailable because of the
00:47:43.680
sanctions do you believe that do you believe that the russian influence just sort of stopped because
00:47:49.760
their money source for paying the trolls dried up well i saw um senior editor at pc world mark hackman
00:47:58.240
he showed two screenshots of uh showing facebook posts you know the top posts from a week ago
00:48:06.240
and then now and the implication is that a week ago the russian influence campaign was in full swing
00:48:12.720
but now because of the sanctions maybe not and if you look at the uh the list of what the top
00:48:23.360
uh i would say i wouldn't put any real faith in that analysis whatsoever because i i think that
00:48:32.480
what trends changes for lots of reasons so i would i would say low credibility on that but it made me
00:48:40.720
wonder where all of my trolls went because i feel like a week ago i had a whole bunch of uh uh no picture
00:48:49.120
in the profile trolls that were pro-russia ish and i don't see any of them today
00:49:00.080
now it could be the nature of my tweets right so remember i'm this is not a scientific study this is
00:49:06.880
me being biased and trying to recognize a pattern that may not be there today
00:49:10.720
yeah don't you know feed the trolls so is it really russian trolls yes that's a good question
00:49:22.320
but i just know that they seem to have disappeared so here's the question to you if any of you feel
00:49:28.640
that the russian troll bots have been bothering you did they disappear from you somebody says it's the
00:49:34.800
weekend oh yeah maybe maybe maybe they don't work on weekends you know what's funny is that that's
00:49:42.880
actually a pretty good hypothesis but you know it wasn't the weekend that stopped i think it stopped a
00:49:49.440
few days ago maybe it's cia bots i don't know maybe all right uh that
00:49:57.040
is my fascinating uh take um i'll just note that uh are all of you following ian bremer about the ukraine
00:50:08.160
situation uh i'm finding him the best source of you know quick updates on things as well as uh framing it
00:50:16.240
in in productive ways and uh he he's got an article he's uh i think he wrote or referred to uh on g0 i guess
00:50:26.000
he wrote it that uh um he's thinking that the it'll be a pyrrhic victory in other words that
00:50:33.200
putin might succeed in conquering ukraine but it will be the end of russia or the end of putin in
00:50:40.880
terms of their current level of prestige and influence and even economics how many of you would
00:50:47.840
agree with his prediction which is agrees with my prediction at this point as well how many of you
00:50:52.720
agree that uh putin will get control of ukraine but he will be really sorry that he did
00:51:02.160
let me see your yeses and nos it's too early yeah anybody who says too early i automatically agree
00:51:07.680
with that you will get half that's a reasonable yeah he'll get half is a reasonable thing i don't
00:51:14.880
think you'll stop at half but because the other half isn't hard is it the other half is you just
00:51:21.600
surround it you just surround it and take your time don't you um i think he's doing the he's doing
00:51:29.760
the hard half first isn't he even though they're more russian so that makes more sense but it's the
00:51:35.040
harder to conquer part i believe um yeah now i was looking at uh a comment by andres backhouse who's
00:51:47.680
noting that uh both ukraine and russia are aging populations and if you put together two aging
00:51:54.240
populations and uh you know maybe maybe things are not looking good for russia in the long in the long
00:52:00.800
term but i do agree with trump's real estate instinct can we agree on one thing that trump probably
00:52:12.240
understands real estate does everybody agree on that right he understands real estate and his take
00:52:20.960
on ukraine was almost a real estate take wasn't it if you could get ukraine for two dollars worth of
00:52:28.000
sanctions you've got some good real estate it's almost the way it's almost exactly how trump is
00:52:33.360
describing it is good real estate you get good real estate that's worth a lot for a little bit of
00:52:38.480
sanctions now he was wrong about the little bit of sanctions i think the sanctions have a way more bite
00:52:43.680
than initially reported scott's still coping i can't tell if that's a joke
00:52:51.600
elaine morris says scott is still coping i think i'm going to add coping to uh soil and green the matrix
00:53:03.120
the emperor has no clothes uh and you're coping
00:53:08.960
i think that you're coping is probably a sign of cognitive dissonance if you're using that word because
00:53:15.040
if you're trying to explain how somebody else is saying something that doesn't make sense to you
00:53:19.040
if it doesn't make sense to you it could be the problems on your side and one way to know that
00:53:25.200
the problem is probably on your side is if you think the other person is just coping which doesn't really
00:53:34.880
this is real news and star wars references of course isn't coping a stage yeah sign of grief i suppose
00:53:44.080
um russia paralympic athletes thrown out of competition in china why
00:54:05.360
was the greatest live stream of all time possibly we'll be able to top it tomorrow but i don't know
00:54:12.720
pretty high bar um let me ask you something in the comments
00:54:19.200
i worry that everybody talking about ukraine is just going to end up saying the same stuff as everybody
00:54:24.160
else am i saying anything different than everybody else is saying this is a real question are you
00:54:30.880
getting any value added out of this at all because i can't tell
00:54:34.880
yeah you know i i think i'm going to get the same pushback pretty soon as i did with covid which is
00:54:45.840
you know the topic you just you can't mind the same topic forever but at the moment
00:54:52.320
is unfortunately interesting unfortunately interesting what's this uh hedging scott is always hedging his
00:55:01.840
predictions he said russia will win and spends the rest of the show praising ukraine military and sanctions
00:55:10.560
really all right is this an npc comment the npcs can only handle the binary
00:55:17.520
something's either a yes or a no as soon as you get past that people can't handle it so here's
00:55:22.480
what i think i'm doing i'm predicting that russia will control ukraine and i'm predicting that the
00:55:28.560
ukrainian military will do will do a surprisingly good job of defending but ultimately will be
00:55:36.480
overwhelmed because putin has the advantage now that as soon as he turns off the media he can do
00:55:42.320
anything he wants there won't be any pictures right as soon as there's no pictures and no reporting on the
00:55:48.000
ground putin can just level everything and he's almost there so there is no inconsistency between saying
00:55:56.400
putin will control the country ukraine and also saying that it's going to be really really hard and
00:56:02.240
might take russia down in the long run those are all consistent it's the same same prediction
00:56:08.800
what about china helping russia china i think is brutally self-interested which will work to our
00:56:16.080
advantage you know we keep saying oh russia is going to be saved by china do you know what is the last
00:56:23.600
thing that putin wants to be saved by china literally the last thing he wants do you know why
00:56:34.080
china doesn't help you for free am i right china is only going to help if it's good for china period
00:56:42.720
and i think china is going to expect some you know a little something in return so by the time china is
00:56:49.760
directly helping russia which i don't think is going to happen in in the real over direct way
00:56:55.840
by the time they do that china is putting themselves out there pretty far and they don't do that the only
00:57:04.400
way they would put themselves out which is it would be a complete difference in how they've handled
00:57:09.600
their non-involvement up till now not just non-involvement in ukraine but china likes to stay
00:57:15.760
uninvolved in all of this stuff it's like really really central to their their main philosophy is
00:57:20.560
don't get involved in other people's wars pretty good idea so if they did get involved even on the
00:57:29.040
financial part to like save russia i think they would be taking a big favor in return and i don't know what
00:57:36.720
that would be but it's not something putin's one again gonna want to give them so yeah i i don't think
00:57:43.600
that's how they win russia doesn't win by getting controlled by china
00:57:52.880
i just saw the best comment i've seen so far on locals somebody said they just ate a pound of bacon
00:58:00.160
good for you it was actually the best best comment of the day
00:58:06.160
mass formation and zelensky yes yes the zelensky has hypnotized the western world
00:58:13.840
and uh i have to say that i would like to you know thank some of the independent voices on twitter
00:58:21.040
for literally waking me up on him because i i fell for it pretty hard in the first days
00:58:27.440
i kind of fell for the zelensky you know plucky hero story uh but then as cernovich is doing the best
00:58:37.520
job of you know keeping us sane about that uh he points out that it can't be that all the stories
00:58:43.520
go in one direction you know and it's just obviously propaganda at this point so i see two corrupt uh
00:58:52.320
two corrupt governments fighting each other i'm not entirely i'm not even i don't even care which
00:58:59.520
corrupt government wins frankly i only care about the people is that fair is that a moral and ethical
00:59:08.480
place to be that you have two corrupt governments i don't really care which corrupt government wins
00:59:15.120
but i do care about what happens to the citizens so you know that pushes you in one direction over the other
00:59:27.760
now let me ask you this if you wanted to design
00:59:30.880
an escape let's say an escape hatch for putin so that he could back down and still save something
00:59:38.080
what would it look like let me suggest a trump-like way to approach this somewhere behind the scenes
00:59:48.080
assuming we can get to putin indirectly i'm sure we can it would be really interesting if the united
00:59:55.040
states was offering a complete amnesty program with catches
01:00:01.520
a complete amnesty program and it would look like this we'll take all of the sanctions off for russia
01:00:17.920
what just happened when i said that what happened to your brain
01:00:21.760
do you see it now this entire thing could be to put put putin into position to uh to join our side
01:00:34.800
instead of china because that's the big ask because remember china is not sanctioning putin so china
01:00:42.320
loses that leverage they don't have anything to take away they only have only ways to help them which
01:00:47.280
may not even be good for china so if if putin gets to the point of complete desperation which seems
01:00:56.240
likely at this point not guaranteed but it seems likely that putin will reach a point of near
01:01:03.520
desperation what will be his options you know go into exile and never happen um use a nuclear weapon
01:01:12.480
that's not going to help him because there would be a decapitation strike immediately don't you think
01:01:20.080
if uh if putin used a nuclear weapon we would go directly for the decapitation strike probably with
01:01:26.640
nuclear right i mean that's just a given so he can't really use the nuclear thing without dying for
01:01:34.160
sure he can't really go into exile that's not going to happen right so his his options are just going to
01:01:40.880
shrink and shrink he could try to ride it out but then the oligarchs are going to be after him
01:01:45.280
because they're losing all their boats apparently i don't know how many stories have there been so
01:01:50.160
far of oligarchs losing their yachts two or am i hearing the same story twice
01:01:58.720
um i'm seeing so he's saying it's the most bizarre thing i've said in the week now if we push putin to
01:02:05.280
the point where his only choices are to preside over the destruction of russia or to turn from china
01:02:15.120
and be you know more of an ally to the united states which would require a whole host of changes i mean
01:02:21.120
it would be a big realignment but he could do it because as i've told you a million times
01:02:28.560
putin doesn't really have any reason to be our enemy and we don't have a reason to be theirs except
01:02:33.600
we've decided that we are we've sort of just decided we're enemies that's not a reason to be an enemy
01:02:41.200
in in terms of what's good for russia in the long term and the united states in the long term
01:02:46.640
it is to be allies who would disagree with that that because you know china is the the emerging long
01:02:55.440
term threat i guess you could say it that way i say i i think that the arc of history
01:03:02.080
is bending unambiguously toward a russian and american alliance and europe russia europe america will be
01:03:14.880
how many of you think that's true i'm seeing mostly yeses which is weird i you know what what are the
01:03:24.160
so at odds with russia and then i could ask the public here in america
01:03:28.720
america do you think that in the long run we'll be allies with russia and i got nearly i don't know 95
01:03:35.360
or 100 people said yes no not not 100 i'm seeing some no's now
01:03:41.920
i don't know i think it's inevitable i think all of the forces are pushing us in that direction
01:03:48.240
all right um somebody says in the comments we could we should because we're white guys
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america isn't a bunch of white guys anymore it's 2022 america is finally the melting pot that it was
01:04:04.560
always trying to be but now we're actually a melting pot in terms of numbers i know you don't like the
01:04:10.960
melting pot analogy but i still like it russia is uh definitely not a bunch of white guys somebody says
01:04:27.840
predict will the ukraine special forces uh succeed in starving the russian column uh starving is uh
01:04:37.680
too big of a word meaning that i don't believe that the russian soldiers will actually die of
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starvation i do believe that they have made the column at least temporarily useless i think they
01:04:50.800
took them out of the fight so i do think they'll take them out of the fight and continue to take them
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out of the fight until russia has like total control and you know even over the special forces i guess
01:05:02.400
should we stock up on food who's we in the west i don't think so
01:05:20.800
all right that is all for now and uh he does whatever a dugan who's that
01:05:26.720
all right stock up on toilet paper i don't think we need to
01:05:36.720
complete nonsense people say all right all right that's all for now i'll talk to you tomorrow youtube