Episode 1678 Scott Adams: How Russia and Ukraine Can Make a Deal
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the highlight of civilization itself, Scott Adams talks about the dangers of wearing a mask in public school, and why you should be proud of anyone who takes their mask off today. He also talks about how the media loves to tie to every controversial topic, whether it's Trump, Elon Musk, or Joe Rogan.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization itself.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, probably the best thing you've ever experienced, and
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And all you need is a copper, a mug, a glass, a tanker, a chalice, a stein, a canteen, a
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jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind, filling with your favorite liquid.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day thing that makes
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Except, apparently, the Ukraine war, but we're going to fix that later.
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I like to start the day with one thing that goes perfectly.
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And, again, if you can take a compliment without being too embarrassed, I think you look fabulous
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A little bit sexier than even yesterday, and yesterday was kind of a high point, so good
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I think you've been exercising, probably watching your diet.
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Well, in my local shithole of town, it will be the last day of masking in schools.
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Today, all the school kids in my town will go to school, and they will all wear masks.
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They will have masks on today because the science says that that would help.
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Over the weekend, the science will be flipping, and on Monday, it will be safe to not wear masks.
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But today, God help anybody who takes their mask off today, because that's somebody who doesn't
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understand science, because the science is completely different on a Thursday.
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There's no school on Friday locally, so in case you're confused about the days.
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So, yes, but while today is a dangerous, dangerous day for a child, it's dangerous out there, children.
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But sometime around midnight on Sunday, the science flips.
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Sort of like, have you heard that the north and south poles, the magnetic poles, they might
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It's exactly like that, except with all of the variables different.
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And so, I would be really proud of any kid who took their mask off today and said, are
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you teaching us science, or are you teaching us superstition?
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Because make your argument that the science is going to be different on Monday, Mr. Teacher.
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Can you imagine going into your science class in high school?
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You say, I was just wondering, since we're in science class, would it be inappropriate
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to ask if the science will be changing between now and Monday?
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Just to see what your science teacher says about all the science.
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Well, I guess United Airlines is talking about dropping vaccine mandates for employees.
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So, I think one by one, we'll see these mandates falling away.
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I'm not too worried about a permanent loss of freedom.
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And in this country, I don't think we're going to see some kind of a general social credit
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Because if everybody lives online, you can kind of see everything about anybody you want
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So, I'm not sure that that would even make a difference.
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So, tell me, am I wrong that the media always needs some famous person to tie to every story
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So, it doesn't matter what the topic is in politics or in the world.
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It's got to be about Trump, Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk.
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Like, every story has to be seasoned with a provocative, powerful male figure.
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Somebody that you can love or hate, but boy, that's the element you want to talk about.
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You want to talk about what Trump said about it, or what Joe Rogan said about it, or what
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And we're, yeah, I guess it's just an observation about how the business model works.
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If you want clicks, you've got to put a person on it.
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Let me give you one of the most important persuasion tips of all time.
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Years ago, I was asked to draw some Dilbert art to be considered, and I emphasize to be
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considered for, being on the cover of Newsweek, back when Newsweek was a big thing in a popular
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And they said to me, we haven't decided if Dilbert will be on the cover, because the
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other possibility we're looking at is a human model, probably a female model, who is doing
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something and is just a generic model being photographed doing something that tells a story.
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I said, so you're asking me to completely waste my time.
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You want me to compete against a live human model, then they're going to do a test on
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And you think that the more people would buy a comic, a Dilbert, like Dilbert's face on
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You think more people would buy that magazine than a human, attractive female on the cover?
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Because, you know, at the time I knew a lot about Persuasion already.
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But because I'd worked with Newsweek before and the people who were asking, you know, I
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Because they tested the two covers and the one with the attractive female on it sold like
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Now, extend this to products that have been very successful.
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Let me give you the name of a product that's been very successful.
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It started out as almost sort of a dating site workaround for Zuckerberg in college.
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Anything with faces, especially female faces, is going to be popular.
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So, almost anything that's got lots of female faces on it, if you can figure out some way
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to make that make sense with your product, you're going to sell more.
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Why does Sports Illustrated have a swimsuit model issue?
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It's because people buy more magazines as a female on it.
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So, it's not an accident that these news stories are often paired with a famous person.
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It might be a coincidence that they're usually male, or maybe it's because of the patriarchy
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I don't know if it matters that they're male or female.
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All right, DuckDuckGo, CEO, has announced that he says he's sickened by Russia's invasion
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of Ukraine, and at DuckDuckGo, they've been rolling out search updates that downrank sites
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Now, as you know, DuckDuckGo is most famous for being a search engine alternative that doesn't
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But they're saying now that they will rig the results if they believe that it's for the
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benefit of, let's say, reducing Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine.
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Do you believe that any search engine company should ever change their search results to match
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Now, what I saw was just a tag that says something was associated with Russian media, which I'm
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So one of the people who tweets with me all the time, Chen, who I imagine has some association
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So Chen gets a little automatic Twitter note that says he's associated with Chinese state media, and I think DuckDuckGo wants to do something like that with RT, Russia Today, and some of those medias.
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But I don't know how you can make this work, right?
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I feel like as soon as you take that first step, what do you do?
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Like, we have a lot of problems like this lately.
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I was hearing Gottfeld saying this yesterday about Ukraine.
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I'm okay with adding tags to stuff, because I think people are sophisticated enough to deal with that.
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But you do have to ask yourself, can't we identify media platforms in this country that are just telling you state-run, basically the state program?
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Is that independent news, or is that just state-sanctioned Democrat news or CIA news?
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So I don't think there's any way you can ever really even meet the bar that you set for yourself if you were going to get rid of state-run media or state-controlled media.
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I mean, some of it is clearly obvious, all right?
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Can you start downgrading NBC to a largely American audience of users?
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I don't know what to think about the celebrities who are saying that we should all pay more at the gas pump and everything will be fine if we just pay more at the gas pump.
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But the all-time most tone-deaf, and usually I wouldn't even talk about a story like this, but it's just so outrageous.
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Today, the average gas price in America hit an all-time record high of over $4 per gallon.
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Okay, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two.
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Hell, I'll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla, Colbert said.
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He's saying he doesn't mind if you pay more for gas because not only does he not pay for gas, he's so rich he has a Tesla.
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So, I'm not even sure that tone-deaf even covers this, does it?
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That is a serious, jerky thing to say in public.
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Speaking of people who once were worthy of respect, but maybe not so much anymore.
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AOC, okay, maybe you didn't respect her, but I did.
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She's really quiet about the price of gas lately.
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And the progressives are all, you know, this would all be fixed if you did some more impractical things,
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such as instantly add lots of green technology that works all day long.
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How about getting right on that, instantly adding some economical green technology that works all day long and at night,
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So, I think AOC started out with a sort of hyperbolic opinion that I could support.
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I mean, I could support it as a, let's say, as a technique, not as a political policy.
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But I could support her saying, you know, hey, we're all going to come to doom if we don't do something about climate change.
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Sure, it was extreme, but, you know, that's how you get stuffed up.
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I don't complain when Trump says outrageously hyperbolic things, if it works, you know,
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if it gets you in the direction of someplace you want to go.
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But, unfortunately, the current situation with gas prices and energy makes AOC not look like a clever operator
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who's using hyperbole in exactly the right effective way.
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I've got a feeling she's going to disappear for a while.
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Because if she puts her head up about any issue in public, somebody's going to ask her about gas prices.
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She basically has to hide it until gas gets under $4 a gallon again, doesn't she?
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The best thing about having gas at $4 an hour is it makes AOC shut the fuck up.
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You know, you were complaining about gas prices being too high until I told you one of the benefits.
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But I don't think we can ignore that rising gas prices are insanely expensive.
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At the same time that gas prices are up, employers are telling people to come back to work and stop working at home.
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Don't you think employers should maybe say, yes, if working for homework during the pandemic, maybe it should still work?
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Yeah, well, you should work remotely and save money, right?
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So you can save even more money by working remotely.
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So Russia has confirmed using a thermobarbaric weapon.
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I literally almost said a thermobarbaric weapon.
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Like, that would have been pretty clever, but it wouldn't have been planned.
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So their thermobarbaric weapon, which apparently is hellacious, like it sucks the oxygen out of the area and your lungs catch on fire or you're filled with liquid or some damn thing.
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But it's not a good way to go, as if any of them are.
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But I guess it's banned by the Geneva Convention to be used on civilians, but apparently they do get used on military targets.
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Apparently the United States, can you confirm this?
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Imagine if Russia had never been a major arms dealer.
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One of the precedents that Putin sets by being a major arms dealer is that selling weapons to somebody isn't the same as being in the fight.
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That's Russia's own, that's the standard that they set.
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Because remember, they gave lots of MiGs and stuff to North Korea, I'm sorry, to North Vietnam.
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So Russia has a long history of giving pretty serious weapons to other countries, including countries that were, at least the Soviet Union, countries that were on the other side from us.
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So if the standard is set that, hey, I'm just selling weapons, I'm not in the fight, that's Russia's own standard.
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Why are we walking away from their own standard?
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Because before they would launch a nuclear weapon, let's say the U.S. got some MiGs from some NATO country and got it into the country in Ukraine.
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Would Putin then launch an immediate surprise nuclear attack?
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Wouldn't he talk about it first, as in, if you don't get those planes out of there, I will nuke you?
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I mean, don't you think there'd be a little bit of warning?
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The response should be, Russia, can you explain your standard?
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Mr. Putin, in fact, actually, we should do this today.
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We should ask Putin to define their standard for military sales.
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What standard does Russia use to decide what kinds of weapons to sell to whom?
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Ask them for a public statement of their standard, and then use it.
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Because their standard is they'll sell anything to anybody who'll buy it, right?
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I'll bet they don't use any kind of other standard.
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And if they tried to say that they have some standard like that, it would just be laughable.
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But I think that you should put them on the spot.
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I think we should directly ask Putin and Lavrov.
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Ask him specifically, what is Russia's policy of what kind of weapons to sell or provide?
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And then use that standard to put any fucking weapon you want into Ukraine, if that's what you want to do.
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I'm not sure that's what we want to do, but at least be smart about it.
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So I don't think that we should be tiptoeing about what weapons we put in there.
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However, I do think that there's some weight to the argument that adding some MIGs to the mix wouldn't fix anything.
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I don't think adding those MIGs would have made any difference.
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And what about the handheld stingers and anti-tank stuff?
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How many anti-tank and anti-aircraft handheld weapons do you have to get into the hands of Ukrainians,
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who I understand, I understand from Ukrainians themselves, they're very, I won't say warlike,
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But apparently you don't want to mess with Ukrainians.
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It's like you don't want to mess with anybody in Afghanistan because it's not going to work out for you.
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But apparently that seems to be somewhat true with the Ukrainians.
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If anything we're hearing about people coming into Ukraine to fight is true,
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In the comments, can a drone launched from Ukraine reach Moscow?
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Can a drone launched from Ukraine, I'm saying almost all no's.
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So then what is the, no, it's not a setup for a joke.
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In case you're wondering, yes, I'm talking about a one-way trip.
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All right, what's the distance to Moscow from Kiev?
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Well, it's interesting that we don't have an instant answer on that.
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But I'm wondering about it as a communication mechanism.
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has a completely different idea of what's going on.
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When I talk about military action in Ukraine or Russia,
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just so it doesn't look like I'm backtracking later.
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I'm just working through what is likely to happen,
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Well, I will give you a suggestion in a little while,
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who do you trust more to handle U.S. national security,
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Now, that's not too far from just the number of Republicans
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plus independents who are really Republicans, right?
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or Republican-ish saying they trust themselves.
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Here's my one suggestion on solving Ukraine and Russia.
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So, I'm going to talk generically about how you handle,
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Putin got himself in a position where he can't lose,
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At least not win in a way that he doesn't lose more than he wins.
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If that doesn't work, you just shake the box again,
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but you're going to have to throw some new variables in there.
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that you couldn't quite wrap your head around it right away.
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You know, how are you going to get a wall that will be,
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that it actually changes how you think about things.
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It's not just a little variable you throw in there.
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It just changes the whole way you think about it.
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Now, of course, China would have a problem with that,